This cultural, political, and social history of tea presents a " fascinating picture of tea's impact on the lives of millions of people around the world." ( Publishers Weekly)From Darjeeling to Lapsang Souchon, from India to Japan—a fresh, concise, world-encompassing exploration of the way tea has shaped politics, culture, and the environment throughout history. From the fourth century BC in China, where it was used as an aid in Buddhist m...

Who went into the Black Hole of Calcutta? Who came out alive? And does it matter anyway? Historically not at all, but it is perhaps important to try to understand why such an event (of which the known facts are so at variance with the legend) ever assumed such significance and became one of the few things that anyone knows about India. In The Black Hole (originally published in 1975), Iris Macfarlane tries to answer these questions.The author aims to fill the gap between t...

This is a book on the life and times of Robert Chambers, founder of W. & R. Chambers publishers. Although there are now books based on some of his letters and on the impact of one of his books, The Vestiges of Natural Creation, there are no books on the whole man and his life. Written by Iris Macfarlane with Alan Macfarlane, the book weaves together three strands. At one level, it is a biography of Chambers and his family; the portrait of a rise from absolute poverty to great weal...

Apart from water, tea is more widely consumed than any other food or drink. Tens of billions of cups are drunk every day. How and why has tea conquered the world? Tea was the first global product. It altered life-styles, religions, etiquette and aesthetics. It raised nations and shattered empires.Economies were changed out of all recognition. Diseases were thwarted by the magical drink and cities founded on it.The industrial revolution was fuelled by tea, sealing the fate of...

A bestselling historian shows how the British Empire created the modern world.**“Scrupulous scholarship and a rattling good tale.” —**Wall Street JournalThe British Empire was the largest in all history, its reach the nearest thing to world domination ever achieved. By the eve of the Second World War, over a fifth of the world's land surface and nearly a quarter of the world's population were under some form of British rule. Yet fo...

VIVE LA REVOLUTION!Dolphins shed and replace their skin every two hoursPluto was named by an eleven-year-old schoolgirlA donkey's personality is called its donkeyshipFreud didn't lose his virginity until the age of 30The bastion that was QI has been stormed, elves have been put to the guillotine, the readers are in charge.After nine and a half years of cumulative reading time, readers of the QI App have selected the definitive Q...

If 1916 is the founding myth of the Irish state then the famine is the founding tragedy.It was a tragedy on a truly epic scale, the events of the famine came to pass not in one of the worlds poorest nations, but in what was at the time part of metropolitan Britain (following the Act of Union of 1800).Caused by the destruction of the staple food of the ordinary Irishman and women, the potato, by blight. the famine resulted in the massive depopulation of Irel...

The tragic true story of Japan's Crown Princess-with a new afterword by the author.It's the fantasy of many young women: marry a handsome prince, move into a luxurious palace, and live happily ever after. But that's not how it turned out for Masako Owada. Ben Hills's fascinating portrait of Princess Masako and the Chrysanthemum Throne draws on research in Tokyo and rural Japan, at Oxford and Harvard, and from more than sixty interviews with Japanese, American, Brit...

Famine may be triggered by nature but its outcome arises from politics and ideology. In Three Famines, award-winning author Thomas Keneally uncovers the troubling truth -- that sustained widespread hunger is historically the outcome of government neglect and individual venality. Through the lens of three of the most disastrous famines in modern history -- the potato famine in Ireland, the famine in Bengal in 1943, and the string of famines that plagued Ethiopia in the 1970s and 19...

After her epic journey from Ireland to India by bicycle in 1963, Dervla Murphy immersed herself in the life of the sub-continent, working for six months in an orphanage for Tibetan children in Northern India. She fell in love with the 'Tiblets' - the cheerful, uncomplaining, independent and affectionate children of the new Tibet-in-exile - but she also managed to explore India's Tibetan frontier, leaving the reader panting in her wake. Alongside her enchantment, Dervla became a perceptive ...

The second instalment of the Pax Britannica Trilogy by Jan Morris, recreates the British Empire at its dazzling climax - the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897, celebrated as a festival of imperial strength, unity, and splendour. This classic work of history portrays a nation at the very height of its vigour and self-satisfaction, imposing on the rest of the world its traditions and tastes, its idealists and rascals.The Pax Britannica Trilogy also includes ...

Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize: "[Bahadur] combines her journalistic eye for detail and story-telling gifts with probing questions . . . a haunting portrait." — The IndependentIn 1903, a young woman sailed from India to Guiana as a "coolie" —the British name for indentured laborers who replaced the newly emancipated slaves on sugar plantations all around the world. Pregnant and traveling alone, this woman, like so many coolies, disappeared into history. N...