Do you eat too much sugar? Is violence in the world increasing or decreasing? What proportion of your country are Muslim? What does it cost to raise a child? How much do we need to save for retirement? How much tax do the rich pay? When we estimate the answers to these fundamental questions that directly affect our lives, we tend to be vastly wrong, irrespective of how educated we are. This landmark book—informed by more than 10 exclusive major polling studies by IPSOS across 40 countries—asks why in the age of the internet, where information should be more accessible than ever, we remain so poorly informed. Using the latest research into the media, decision science, heuristics, and emotional reasoning, Bobby Duffy examines why the populations of some countries seem better informed than others, and how we can address our ignorance of key public data and trends. An essential read for anyone who wants to be smarter and better informed, this fascinating book will transform the way you engage with the world.

Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In is a massive cultural phenomenon, and its title has become an instant catchphrase for empowering women. The book soared to the top of bestseller lists internationally, igniting global conversations about women and ambition. Sandberg packed theatres, dominated opinion pages, appeared on every major television show and on Time magazine cover, and sparked ferocious debate about women and leadership. Ask most women whether they have the right to equality at work, and the answer will be a resounding yes, but ask the same women whether they’d feel confident asking for a raise, a promotion, or equal pay, and some reticence creeps in. Although an improvement on previous decades, the statistics is certainly not in women’s favor – of 197 heads of state, only twenty-two are women. Women hold just 20 percent of seats in parliaments globally, and in the world of big business, a meager eighteen of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women. In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg – Facebook COO and one of Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Women in Business – draws on her own experience of working in some of the world’s most successful businesses and looks at what women can do to help themselves and make the small changes in their life that can affect change on a universal scale.

Everything a NQT always wanted to know about starting their teaching career but never dared to ask! This book will take the NQT through a journey which starts with interviews, leads them through the first visit before taking up the job and then into the first hectic weeks and months. Light in touch but rich in content, it can be read around the pool during the holidays before the start of term or kept by the bedside or in a desk drawer for an emergency flick through once teaching gets under way! It expands on the stuff that teacher training touches on, but importantly provides a refreshing look at the nitty-gritty stuff that most training doesn’t! A brilliant book for NQTs.

From the prizewinning author of the acclaimed “Last Orders, The Light of Day, “and “Waterland,” a powerfully moving new novel set in present-day England, but against the background of a global “war on terror” and about things that touch our human core.
On an autumn day in 2006, on the Isle of Wight, Jack Luxton–once a farmer, now the proprietor of a seaside caravan park–receives the news that his brother Tom, not seen for years, has been killed in combat in Iraq. The news will have its far-reaching effects for Jack and his wife, Ellie, and compel Jack to make a crucial journey: to receive his brother’s remains, but also to return to the land of his past and of his most secret, troubling memories. A gripping, hauntingly intimate, and compassionate story that moves toward a fiercely suspenseful climax, “Wish You Were Here “translates the stuff of headlines into heartwrenching personal truth.

From the writer of Sunday Times no. 1 bestseller, The President is Missing.

TARGET: HEAD OF STATE

Men and women from across the nation line the streets of Washington D.C. to mourn the unexpected death of the President. Hit by painful memories of the loss of his first wife, Alex Cross is left reeling by this tragedy.

TARGET: UNITED STATES CABINET

A sniper’s bullet strikes another devastating blow to the heart of Washington with the assassination of a prominent Senator. The shock of this attack puts huge pressure on the police to deliver a speedy response, and as Chief of Detectives, Alex’s wife Bree Stone is given an ultimatum: solve the case, or lose her job.

TARGET: ALEX CROSS

The new President calls on Alex Cross to lead an unparalleled FBI investigation to help capture America’s most wanted criminal. Alex has a terrible feeling that the assassination is just the beginning of a much larger plan. All too soon this fear springs to life as a terrifying chain of events plunges the government and the entire country into chaos.

The stakes have never been higher for Alex Cross as his courage, his training and his capacity for battle are stretched to their limits in the most important case of his life.

An inspiring personal story of redemption, second chances, and the transformative power within us all, from the founder and CEO of the massively successful nonprofit charity: water.

At 28 years old, Scott Harrison had it all. A top nightclub promoter in New York City, his life was an endless cycle of drugs, booze, models–repeat. But 10 years in, desperately unhappy and morally bankrupt, he asked himself, “What would the exact opposite of my life look like?” Walking away from everything, Harrison spent the next 16 months on a hospital ship in West Africa and discovered his true calling. In 2006, with no money and less than no experience, Harrison founded charity: water. Today, his organization has raised over $300 million to bring clean drinking water to more than 8 million people around the globe.

In Thirst, Harrison recounts the twists and turns that built charity: water into one of the most trusted and admired nonprofits in the world. Renowned for its 100% donation model, bold storytelling, imaginative branding, and radical commitment to transparency, charity: water has disrupted how social entrepreneurs work while inspiring millions of people to join its mission of bringing clean water to everyone on the planet within our lifetime.

In the tradition of such bestselling books as Shoe Dog and Mountains Beyond Mountains, Thirst is a riveting account of how to build a better charity, a better business, a better life–and a gritty tale that proves it’s never too late to make a change.

100% of the author’s net proceeds from Thirst will go to fund charity: water projects around the world.

Award-winning Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino shows us why creative rebellion is essential at work and in life, and why the most successful among us are those who break the rules.

On the first day of a new job or at the start of a new relationship, we feel energized and excited. Yet this euphoria doesn’t last. Why? Because of conformity, Francesca Gino contends. From an early age, we are taught to follow the rules, and the pressure to fit in only increases as we age. But going along to get along comes at a steep price for our careers and personal lives. When we conform to well-accepted rules and norms rather than constructively rebel against them, we keep our doubts and disagreements to ourselves and ultimately become less happy and less successful. As leaders, we are less effective and respected. As employees, we feel dissatisfied and are more likely to be overlooked for top assignments and promotions. As partners or friends, we are checked out and unhappy.

Gino has been studying how rebels can be successful in life and in the workplace for more than fifteen years. She has discovered that conformity has crippling effects and that sheep are easier to herd than wolves. But while rebels—those who practice “positive deviance” at work—may seem harder to manage, they are good for the bottom line: their passion, drive, curiosity, and creativity raise the entire organization to a new level. In personal relationships, rebels foster smooth sailing rather than fights against turbulent seas.

Rebel Talent provides strategies and examples for cultivating and embracing nonconformity in the workplace and in life, and offers illuminating case studies ranging from The World’s Best Restaurant to fast food chains to corporations such as Google and Pixar. Gino encourages all of us to rebel and question the status quo so we can thrive.

For a country that has always denied having dreams of empire, the United States owns a lot of overseas territory.

America has always prided itself on being a champion of sovereignty and independence. We know it has spread its money, language and culture across the world – but we still think of it as a contained territory, framed by Canada above, Mexico below, and oceans either side. Nothing could be further from the truth.

How to Hide an Empire tells the story of the United States outside the United States – from nineteenth-century conquests like Alaska, Hawai‘i, the Philippines and Puerto Rico, to the catalogue of islands, archipelagos and military bases dotted around the globe over which the Stars and Stripes flies. Many are thousands of miles from the mainland; all are central to its history.

But the populations of these territories, despite being subject to America’s government, cannot vote for it; they have often fought America’s wars, but they do not enjoy the rights of full citizens. These forgotten episodes cast American history, and its present, in a revealing new light. The birth control pill, chemotherapy, plastic, Godzilla, the Beatles, the name America itself – you can’t understand the histories of any of thesewithout understanding territorial empire.

Full of surprises, and driven by an original conception of what empire and globalisation mean today, How to Hide an Empire is a major and compulsively readable work of history.

Packed with tested strategies and practical tips, this book is the essential, life-changing guide for everyone who owns a smartphone.

Is your phone the first thing you reach for in the morning and the last thing you touch before bed? Do you frequently pick it up “just to check,” only to look up forty-five minutes later wondering where the time has gone? Do you say you want to spend less time on your phone–but have no idea how to do so without giving it up completely? If so, this book is your solution.

Award-winning journalist Catherine Price presents a practical, hands-on plan to break up–and then make up–with your phone. The goal? A long-term relationship that actually feels good.

You’ll discover how phones and apps are designed to be addictive, and learn how the time we spend on them damages our abilities to focus, think deeply, and form new memories. You’ll then make customized changes to your settings, apps, environment, and mindset that will ultimately enable you to take back control of your life.

The generation now coming of age has been taught three Great Untruths: their feelings are always right; they should avoid pain and discomfort; and they should look for faults in others and not themselves. These three Great Untruths are part of a larger philosophy that sees young people as fragile creatures who must be protected and supervised by adults. But despite the good intentions of the adults who impart them, the Great Untruths are harming kids by teaching them the opposite of ancient wisdom and the opposite of modern psychological findings on grit, growth, and antifragility. The result is rising rates of depression and anxiety, along with endless stories of college campuses torn apart by moralistic divisions and mutual recriminations.

This is a book about how we got here. First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt take us on a tour of the social trends stretching back to the 1980s that have produced the confusion and conflict on campus today, including the loss of unsupervised play time and the birth of social media, all during a time of rising political polarization.

This is a book about how to fix the mess. The culture of “safety” and its intolerance of opposing viewpoints has left many young people anxious and unprepared for adult life, with devastating consequences for them, for their parents, for the companies that will soon hire them, and for a democracy that is already pushed to the brink of violence over its growing political divisions. Lukianoff and Haidt offer a comprehensive set of reforms that will strengthen young people and institutions, allowing us all to reap the benefits of diversity, including viewpoint diversity.

This is a book for anyone who is confused by what’s happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live and work and cooperate across party lines

Saba has spent her whole life in Silverlake, a dried-up wasteland ravaged by constant sandstorms. The Wrecker civilization has long been destroyed, leaving only landfills for Saba and her family to scavenge from. That’s fine by her, as long as her beloved twin brother Lugh is around. But when four cloaked horsemen capture Lugh, Saba’s world is shattered, and she embarks on a quest to get him back.

Suddenly thrown into the lawless, ugly reality of the outside world, Saba discovers she is a fierce fighter, an unbeatable survivor, and a cunning opponent. Teamed up with a handsome daredevil named Jack and a gang of girl revolutionaries called the Free Hawks, Saba’s unrelenting search for Lugh stages a showdown that will change the course of her own civilization

In 2012, Beck Dorey-Stein was just scraping by in Washington DC when a posting on Craigslist landed her, improbably, in the Oval Office as one of Barack Obama’s stenographers. The ultimate DC outsider, she joined the elite team who accompanied the president wherever he went, recorder and mic in hand. On whirlwind trips across time zones, Beck forged friendships with a tight group of fellow travellers – young men and women who, like her, left their real lives behind to hop aboard Air Force One in service of the president. But as she learned the ropes of protocol, Beck became romantically entangled with a colleague, and suddenly, the political became all too personal. Set against the backdrop of a White House full of glamour, drama and intrigue, this is the story of a young woman making unlikely friendships, getting her heart broken, learning what truly matters and discovering her voice in the process.