All information sourced from publishers.
The Traveller: The Revolutionary Life of George Forster and his Search for Humanity, Andrea Wulf
George Forster was a man out of time: he journeyed to the far reaches of the known world and challenged the worldviews of 18th-century Europe with radical ideas about equality and freedom. Celebrated during his lifetime, he knew Goethe, Benjamin Franklin, Mary Wollstonecraft and Alexander von Humboldt but has since been largely forgotten by history.
The Traveller seeks to restore Forster as one of the great visionaries of his era. At the age of 17, he joined Captain Cook’s second voyage – an exploration of vast contrasts from the icy world of Antarctica to the tropical islands of the South Pacific. A brilliant mind driven by boundless curiosity, he studied the diverse nature, people and cultures he encountered and came back imbued with a deep belief in the equality of races. On his return, he was feted in England, France, Germany and Poland, using his fame to advocate freedom and human rights and argue against empire, racism and slavery. He admired strong and educated women and was proud to have daughters. The book traces how – inspired by the French Revolution – he became a leader of the short-lived Republic of Mainz and was eventually forced into exile in Paris during the Reign of Terror.
Following in Forster’s footsteps from Europe to Tahiti, and drawing on a wealth of correspondence mostly unpublished in English, Andrea Wulf paints a portrait of a remarkable, passionate figure unbound by place, people or establishment. She vividly conveys his extraordinary quest to find what connects us rather than what sets us apart.
Imitation Games: How Gambling Hijacked Sport, Darragh McGee
It has never been easier to stake a bet. Wall-to-wall adverts have hijacked every sporting event – the mobile slot machine in your pocket is all you need to enter an immersive world in which gambling is faceless and frictionless, available 24/7, on almost any aspect of any sport.
Since its origins as a provincial cottage industry almost 25 years ago, online gambling has become a globe-straddling behemoth worth more than £10 billion a year. It can sometimes feel as if the point of sport is to bet on it.
How did we get here? How did a new wave of gambling brands hijack sport on a global scale? In Imitation Games, Darragh McGee travels the world to tell the incredible story of the digital brands who unleashed this new world of gambling onto a new generation of fans (and got very rich doing so).
At the same time, he traces the harm and human cost that gambling leaves behind, and shows how we can create a different future for sport and society. Because when the fun stops, it stops hard.
What I Made For Dinner, Krys Malcolm Belc
When the pandemic sends Krys Malcolm Belc and his young children home to live their lives on laptops, he turns to internet chefs for comfort and inspiration. It begins with Stella Parks and her 46 YouTube videos in which she teaches viewers how to make classic, nostalgic American treats like Cheez-Its, Klondike Bars, and Texas sheet cake. But the recipes aren’t enough – Belc needs to watch her showcase each ingredient, explain its importance, and weigh each item on a scale. His fixation on recipe videos and the women who produce them starts to feel like the only thing that makes sense.
Most of life has been put on pause, but food is the one thing that continues to change day to day, season to season. Belc captures the joy and pleasure of cooking for a large family, as well as the mundane reality and occasional frustrations that come with simply getting food on the table. In the midst of it all, he feels a spark of inspiration to carry a second baby, a decision that forces him to confront how he has used both the internet and cooking to cope and distract.
Following a trans man whose life is largely structured by keeping the family household running, What I Made for Dinner asks the question we all might ask ourselves while elbow-deep in a roasting: Is having the opportunity to cook meals for your family every day a blessing or a curse?
Decoding the Devil: Black Women Codebreakers and the Secret War Against Stalin’s Bomb
Decoding the Devil tells the shocking true story of two segregated codebreaking units in the Army's intelligence agencies during the Second World War and the Cold War.
The result of a racial hiring quota, the Commercial Code unit freed the US from relying on British intelligence on the Axis powers’ trade relations and broke critical Japanese codes.
Led by William Coffee, the unit employed professors, college graduates, and other professionals who decrypted and translated messages from Spanish, German, Italian, French, and Portuguese.
After the Second World War, the Russian Plain text Unit countered the growing threat of Soviet nuclear war. A top-secret operation, the all-Black unit worked under armed guard and was the Allies’ main source of intelligence on the Soviet atomic program from 1947 until the early 1950s.
Decoding the Devil highlights the Black cryptologists’ critical contribution to national security in the civil rights era and promises to captivate readers with its fresh perspective on this pivotal moment in American history.
The Price of Exclusion: The Pursuit of Healthcare in a Segregated Nation, Nicole Carr
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Black Americans died at nearly twice the rate of their white counterparts – a disparity rooted not just in access to care but in a long history of systemic exclusion, exploitation, and racism. How did we get here, and why – despite generations of Black medical excellence – do these inequities persist? In The Price of Exclusion, journalist Nicole Carr uncovers that forgotten history, highlighting the Black medical pioneers who gave their all – and sometimes their lives – so others could thrive.
Told through the extraordinary life of her great-grandfather, Dr Lawrence St Clair Ferguson, a Jamaican-born physician who practised in Philadelphia during the Spanish Flu pandemic, Carr’s exploration is both intimate and sweeping, taking readers from segregated hospital wards to the frontlines of recent public health crises. Tracing Ferguson’s journey – from his early years in colonial Jamaica to his fight to practice medicine in a racially divided America – Carr reveals the long-standing barriers Black doctors have faced, the systemic efforts to erase their contributions, and the consequences that still shape healthcare today.
Through storytelling and research, Carr introduces us to trailblazers like Onesimus, an enslaved African who brought inoculation to the colonies; Dr Rebecca Crumpler, the first Black woman to earn a medical degree; and Dr Charles Drew, whose pioneering work in blood transfusion transformed modern medicine. These were not merely doctors; they were fighters, innovators, and advocates who persevered against relentless discrimination, reshaping medicine and carving paths for future generations. Carr also exposes the mechanisms used to disempower Black doctors, including the American Medical Association’s campaign to exclude Black practitioners from membership, internships, and hospital staff positions.
Here Carr uses the arc of her great-grandfather’s life, and the broader history of Black medical professionals, to expose the root causes of today’s healthcare disparities. She reveals how a century of exclusionary policies has led to the urgent shortage of Black medical professionals and a lingering distrust in medicine – barriers that continue to cost lives today.
Flick: The Story of Female Pleasure, Kate Lister
There is a common misconception that before modern-day feminism, women throughout history simply lay back and thought of England or their respective place of origin; that the modern ‘sex positive’ movement is a radical break from the past. But women demanding better sex did not arrive with free love or the Rampant Rabbit. It has been a very long fight indeed.
From Ancient Mesopotamian sex goddesses to the contraceptive pill, Kate Lister takes us through history to show us how women’s sexual pleasure was controlled, understood and thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed.
