Society & Politics

'the best food reference work ever to appear in the English language ...read it and be dazzled' Bee Wilson, New Statesman First published (read more)

'the best food reference work ever to appear in the English language ...read it and be dazzled' Bee Wilson, New Statesman First published in 1999, the ground-breaking Oxford Companion to Food was an immediate success and won prizes and accolades around the world. Its blend of serious food history, culinary expertise, and entertaining serendipity, was and remains unique. Interest in food, cooking, and the culture surrounding food has grown enormously in the intervening period, as has the study of food and food history.

University departments, international societies, and academic journals have sprung up dedicated to exploring the meaning of food in the daily lives of people around the world, alongside an ever-increasing number of articles, books, programmes, and websites in the general media devoted to the discussion of food, making the Oxford Companion to Food more relevant than ever. Already a food writing classic, this Companion combines an exhaustive catalogue of foods, be they biscuits named after battles, divas or revolutionaries; body parts (from nose to tail, toe to cerebellum); or breads from the steppes of Asia or the well-built ovens of the Mediterranean; with a richly allusive commentary on the culture of food, expressed in literature and cookery books, or as dishes peculiar to a country or community. While building on the Companion's existing strengths, Tom Jaine has taken the opportunity to update the text and alert readers to new perspectives in food studies.
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The history of Parliament is the history of the United Kingdom itself. It has a cast of thousands. Some were ambitious, visionary (read more)

The history of Parliament is the history of the United Kingdom itself. It has a cast of thousands. Some were ambitious, visionary and altruistic.

Others were hot-headed, violent and self-serving. Few were unambiguously noble. Yet their rowdy confrontations, their campaigning zeal and their unstable alliances framed our nation.

This first of two volumes takes us on a 500-year journey from Parliament's earliest days in the thirteenth century through the turbulent years of the Wars of the Roses and the upheavals of the Civil Wars, and up to 1801, when Parliament - and the United Kingdom, embracing Scotland and Ireland - emerged in a modern form. Chris Bryant tells this epic tale through the lives of the myriad MPs, lords and bishops who passed through Parliament. It is the vivid, colourful biography of a cast of characters whose passions and obsessions, strengths and weaknesses laid the foundations of modern democracy. (hide)

Gamblers have been trying to figure out how to game the system since our ancestors first made wagers over dice fashioned from knucklebones: (read more)

Gamblers have been trying to figure out how to game the system since our ancestors first made wagers over dice fashioned from knucklebones: in revolutionary Paris, the 'martingale' strategy was rumoured to lead to foolproof success at the roulette table; now, in the 21st century, professional gamblers are using cutting-edge techniques to tilt the odds further in their favour. At the roulette wheel, card table or racecourse, science is giving us the competitive edge over opponents, casinos and bookmakers. But is there such a thing as a perfect bet? The Perfect Bet looks beyond probability and statistics to examine how wagers have inspired a plethora of new disciplines - spanning chaos theory, behavioural psychology, machine learning and game theory - which are not just revolutionising gambling, but changing our fundamental notions about chance, randomness and luck.

Explaining why poker is gaming's last bastion of human superiority over artificial intelligence, how methods originally developed for the US nuclear programme are helping pundits predict sports results and how a new breed of algorithms are managing to lose banks and asset traders millions, The Perfect Bet has the inside track on just about any wager you'd care to place.

Pub Date:05/05/2016 (hide)

As the 2015 general election looms on the horizon, the only thing anyone can seem to agree on is that it will be unpredictable, not (read more)

As the 2015 general election looms on the horizon, the only thing anyone can seem to agree on is that it will be unpredictable, not least because, for the first time in our history, we are experiencing the brave new world of four-party politics. Here, in one volume, is everything you need to know about what is shaping up to be one of the most exciting general elections of the last twenty years. In this unique guide to the state of the parties, policies and polls, you'll find expert predictions and commentary from political pundits, as well as all the facts and figures you need to make an informed decision at the ballot box.

This essential guide includes: Analysis of key marginal seats Information about demographics, voting intentions and past electoral behaviour Examples of historical precedent Lists of prospective candidates Profiles of the main party leaders Articles on the role of social media and the traditional media Breakdowns of regional and constituency data A book that will appeal to enthusiastic politicos and inquisitive voters alike, this is the essential guide to the most eagerly awaited general election in recent history. (hide)

Politics has changed. For decades Britain was divided between Left and Right but united in its belief in a two-party state. Now, (read more)

Politics has changed.

For decades Britain was divided between Left and Right but united in its belief in a two-party state. Now, with nationalism resurgent and mainstream parties in turmoil, stark new divisions define the country and the centre ground is deserted. As Deputy Prime Minister of Britain's first coalition government in over fifty years, Nick Clegg witnessed this change from the inside.

Here he offers a frank account of his experiences - from his spectacular rise in the 2010 election to a brutal defeat in 2015, from his early years as an MEP in Brussels to the tumultuous fall-out of Britain's EU referendum - and puts the case for a new politics based on reason and compromise. He writes candidly about his mistakes, including the controversy around tuition fees, the tense stand-offs within government and the decision to enter coalition with the Conservatives in the first place. He also lifts the lid on the arcane worlds of Westminster and Brussels, the vested interests that suffocate reform, as well as the achievements his party made despite them. (hide)

The Anthropocene has become central to understanding the intimate connections between human life and the natural environment, but (read more)

The Anthropocene has become central to understanding the intimate connections between human life and the natural environment, but it has fractured our sense of time and possibility. What implications does that fracturing have for how we should think about politics in these new times? In this cutting-edge intervention, Duncan Kelly considers how this new geological era could shape our future by engaging with the recent past of our political thinking. If politics remains a short-term affair governed by electoral cycles, could an Anthropocenic sense of time, value and prosperity be built into it, altering long-established views about abundance, energy and growth?

Published: 23 Aug 2019 (hide)

Published for the first time in 1953, Playboy became not only the first pornographic popular magazine in America, but also came to (read more)

Published for the first time in 1953, Playboy became not only the first pornographic popular magazine in America, but also came to embody an entirely new lifestyle that took place in a series of utopian multimedia spaces, from the fictional Playboy's Penthouse of 1956 to the Playboy Mansion of 1959 and the Playboy Clubs of the 1960s. At the same time, the invention of the contraceptive pill offered access to a biochemical technique able to separate (hetero)sexuality and reproduction, troubling the traditional relationships between gender, sexuality, power, and space. In Pornotopia, Beatriz Preciado examines popular culture and pornographic spaces as sites of architectural production.

Combining historical perspectives with insights from critical theory, gender studies, queer theory, porn studies, and the history of technology, and drawing from a range of primary transdisciplinary sourcestreatises on sexuality, medical and pharmaceutical handbooks, architecture journals, erotic magazines, building manuals, and novels -- Preciado traces the strategic relationships among architecture, gender, and sexuality through popular sites related to the production and consumption of pornography: design objects, bachelor pads, and multimedia rotating beds. Largely relegated to the margins of traditional histories of architecture, these sites are not mere spaces but a series of overlapping systems of representation. They are understood here not as inherently or naturally sexual, nor as perverted or queer, but rather as biopolitical techniques for governing sexual reproduction and the production of gender in modernity. (hide)

From 1999 to 2009, Damian McBride worked at the heart of the Treasury and No10, becoming one of the most controversial political (read more)

From 1999 to 2009, Damian McBride worked at the heart of the Treasury and No10, becoming one of the most controversial political figures of the last decade, before a notorious scandal propelled him onto the front pages and out of Downing Street. In Power Trip he writes candidly about his experiences at the heart of government, and provides the first genuine insider's account of Gordon Brown's time as Chancellor and Prime Minister. He reveals the personal feuds, political plots, and media manipulation which lay at New Labour's core, and provides a fascinating, funny, and at times shocking account of how government really works.

His own journey from naive civil servant to disgraced spindoctor is also laid bare with brutal honesty. Power Trip is a riveting memoir and an eye-opening expose of politics in Britain. (hide)

It is not lost on commercial organisations that where we live colours how we view ourselves and others. That is why so many now place (read more)

It is not lost on commercial organisations that where we live colours how we view ourselves and others. That is why so many now place us into social groups on the basis of the type of postcode in which we live. Social scientists call this practice "commercial sociology".

Richard Webber originated Acorn and Mosaic, the two most successful geodemographic classifications. Roger Burrows is a critical interdisciplinary social scientist. Together they chart the origins of this practice and explain the challenges it poses to long-established social scientific beliefs such as: the role of the questionnaire in an era of "big data"the primacy of theorythe relationship between qualitative and quantitative modes of understandingthe relevance of visual clues to lay understanding. (hide)

Privacy: A Short History provides a vital historical account of an increasingly stressed sphere of human interaction. At a time when (read more)

Privacy: A Short History provides a vital historical account of an increasingly stressed sphere of human interaction. At a time when the death of privacy is widely proclaimed, distinguished historian, David Vincent, describes the evolution of the concept and practice of privacy from the Middle Ages to the present controversy over digital communication and state surveillance provoked by the revelations of Edward Snowden. Deploying a range of vivid primary material, he discusses the management of private information in the context of housing, outdoor spaces, religious observance, reading, diaries and autobiographies, correspondence, neighbours, gossip, surveillance, the public sphere and the state.

Key developments, such as the nineteenth-century celebration of the enclosed and intimate middle-class household, are placed in the context of long-term development. The book surveys and challenges the main currents in the extensive secondary literature on the subject. It seeks to strike a new balance between the built environment and world beyond the threshold, between written and face-to-face communication, between anonymity and familiarity in towns and cities, between religion and secular meditation, between the state and the private sphere and, above all, between intimacy and individualism.
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