The History of Love

What if society wasn't fundamentally rational, but was motivated by insanity? This thought sets Jon Ronson on an utterly compelling adventure into the world of madness.Along the way, Jon meets psychopaths, those whose lives have been touched by madness and those whose job it is to diagnose it, including the influential psychologist who developed the Psychopath Test, from whom Jon learns the art of psychopath-spotting. A skill which seemingly reveals that madness could indeed be at the heart of everything . . .Combining Jon Ronson's trademark humour, charm and investigative incision, The Psychopath Test is both entertaining and honest, unearthing dangerous truths and asking serious questions about how we define normality in a world where we are increasingly judged by our maddest edges.

Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand’s magnum opus: a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller—nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.Who is John Galt? When he says that he will stop the motor of the world, is he a destroyer or a liberator? Why does he have to fight his battles not against his enemies but against those who need him most? Why does he fight his hardest battle against the woman he loves?You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the amazing men and women in this book. You will discover why a productive genius becomes a worthless playboy...why a great steel industrialist is working for his own destruction...why a composer gives up his career on the night of his triumph...why a beautiful woman who runs a transcontinental railroad falls in love with the man she has sworn to kill.Atlas Shrugged, a modern classic and Rand’s most extensive statement of Objectivism—her groundbreaking philosophy—offers the reader the spectacle of human greatness, depicted with all the poetry and power of one of the twentieth century’s leading artists.

Before the multi-million, runaway bestseller The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown set his razor-sharp research and storytelling skills on the most powerful intelligence organization on earth--the National Security Agency (NSA)--in this thrilling novel, Digital Fortress. When the NSA's invincible code-breaking machine encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant and beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage...not by guns or bombs, but by a code so ingeniously complex that if released it would cripple U.S. intelligence.Caught in an accelerating tempest of secrecy and lies, Susan Fletcher battles to save the agency she believes in. Betrayed on all sides, she finds herself fighting not only for her country but for her life, and in the end, for the life of the man she loves.From the underground hallways of power to the skyscrapers of Tokyo to the towering cathedrals of Spain, a desperate race unfolds. It is a battle for survival--a crucial bid to destroy a creation of inconceivable genius...an impregnable code-writing formula that threatens to obliterate the post-cold war balance of power. Forever.

Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory is opening at last!But only five lucky children will be allowed inside. And the winners are: Augustus Gloop, an enormously fat boy whose hobby is eating; Veruca Salt, a spoiled-rotten brat whose parents are wrapped around her little finger; Violet Beauregarde, a dim-witted gum-chewer with the fastest jaws around; Mike Teavee, a toy pistol-toting gangster-in-training who is obsessed with television; and Charlie Bucket, Our Hero, a boy who is honest and kind, brave and true, and good and ready for the wildest time of his life!

"Henri Charrière himself is Papillon. Convicted in Paris in 1931, aged 25, for a murder he had not committed, Charrière was sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana. One thought obsessed him: escape. Forty-two days after his arrival in 1933, he made his first break, traveling on the open sea in a tiny boat, in desperate stages, 1500 miles in all, he reached Colombia. There he was recaptured by the French authorities and sentenced to two years in solitary confinement. Eventually he was sent to Devil's Island. No one had ever escaped from this notorious prison--no one until Papillon flung himself from a giant rock into the foaming sea, to float for days in the shriveling sun--his makeshift raft, two sacks of coconuts. At last, in 1945, he found sanctuary in Venezuela, of which country he is now a citizen. In the course of twelve years, he had undertaken nine daring escapes. Thrilling as the escapes are, life inside the penal settlements is as vividly portrayed: Papillon's fellow prisoners--colorful, ruthless, corrupt, loyal; the horrors of confinement in an open cage; the nightmare of a dungeon where the seawater rose in the cells at high tide, floating with rats and centipedes; the constant threat of suicide or madness--or death at the hands of the guards or of fellow prisoners. It was, of course, the quality of the man himself which enabled him to survive, to escape the horror of the complete annihilation of human values. Not only to escape, but to triumph. As he tells his story straightforwardly, spontaneously, he is revealed as a leader--self-disciplined, modest, humorous, capable of great loyalty--inexhaustibly challenging the injustices of a dehumanized establishment. Papillon has written an adventure story in the deepest sense. Papillon is an odyssey of the human spirit."--Jacket.

Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays safely at home he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History of Nearly Everything is his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. Bill Bryson's challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry and particle physics, and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science.The ultimate eye-opening journey through time and space, A Short History of Nearly Everything is the biggest-selling popular science book of the 21st century, and reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

This classic science fiction masterwork by Isaac Asimov weaves stories about robots, humanity, and the deep questions of existence into a novel of shocking intelligence and heart. “A must-read for science-fiction buffs and literature enjoyers alike.”—The Guardian I, Robot, the first and most widely read book in Asimov’s Robot series, forever changed the world’s perception of artificial intelligence. Here are stories of robots gone mad, of mind-reading robots, and robots with a sense of humor. Of robot politicians, and robots who secretly run the world—all told with the dramatic blend of science fact and science fiction that has become Asimov’s trademark. The Three Laws of Robotics: 1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2) A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. With these three, simple directives, Isaac Asimov formulated the laws governing robots’ behavior. In I, Robot, Asimov chronicles the development of the robot from its primitive origins in the present to its ultimate perfection in the not-so-distant future—a future in which humanity itself may be rendered obsolete. “Tremendously exciting and entertaining . . . Asimov dramatizes an interesting question: How can we live with machines that, generation by generation, grow more intelligent than their creators and not eventually clash with our own invention?”—The Chicago Tribune

"Catch-22 is one of this century's greatest works of American literature. First published m 1961, Joseph Heller's profound and compelling novel has appeared on nearly every list of must read fiction. It is a classic in every sense of the word. Catch-22 took the war novel genre to a new level, shocking us with its clever and disturbing style. Set in a World War II American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, Catch-22 is the story of John Yossarian, who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. Yossarian is also trying to decode the meaning of Catch-22, a mysterious regulation that proves that insane people are really the sanest, while the supposedly sensible people are the true madmen. And this novel is full of madmen -- Colonel Cathcart, who keeps raising the number of missions the men must fly m order to finish their tour; Milo Minderbinder, a dedicated entrepreneur who bombs his own airfield when the Germans offer him an extra 6 percent; Major Major Major, whose tragedy in life is that he resembles Henry Fonda; and Major -- de Coverley, whose face is so forbidding no one has dared ask his name. No novel before or since has matched Catch-22's intensity and brilliance in depicting the brutal insanity of war. Heller satirizes military bureaucracy with bitter, stinging humor, all the while telling the darkly comic story of Yossarian, a bombardier who refuses to die. Nearly forty years later, Yossarian lives"--Cover.

'A cult figure.' Guardian 'A dark and brilliant achievement.' Ian McEwan 'Shamelessly clever ... Exhilaratingly subversive and funny.' Independent 'A modern classic ... As relevant now as when it was first published. ' John Banville A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon; a man torn between his love for her and his womanising. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals; while her other lover stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by choices and events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance and weight - and we feel 'the unbearable lightness of being'. The Unbearable Lightness of Being encompasses passion and philosophy, infidelity and ideas, the Prague Spring and modern America, political acts and private desires, comedy and tragedy - in fact, all of human existence. What readers are saying: 'Some books change your mind, some change your heart, the very best change your whole world ... A mighty piece of work, that will shape your life forever.' 'One of the best books I've ever read ... A book about love and life, full of surprises. Beautiful.' 'This book is going to change your life ... It definitely leaves you with a hangover after you're done reading.' 'A must read - loved it, such beautiful observations on life, love and sexuality.' 'Kundera writes about love as if in a trance so the beauty of it is enchanting and dreamy ... Will stay with you forever.' 'A beautiful novel that helps you understand life better ... Loved it.' 'One of those rare novels full of depth and insight into the human condition ... Got me reading Camus and Sartre.' 'One of the best books I have ever read ... An intellectual love story if ever there was one.'

#1 New York Times BestsellerThe villainous Bane breaks the Bat in one of the most popular and well-known Batman tales! The inmates of Arkham Asylum have broken free and Batman must push himself to the limits to re-apprehend the Joker, Poison Ivy, the Riddler, Killer Croc and more. Pushed to the limits, he comes face-to-face against the monstrosity known as Bane, who delivers a crippling blow destined to change the Caped Crusader forever!This volume collects Batman: Vengeance of Bane Special #1, Batman #491-500, Detective Comics #659-666, Showcase '93 #7-8 and Batman: Shadow of the Bat #16-18.

The revolutionary literary vision that sowed the seeds of Objectivism, Ayn Rand's groundbreaking philosophy, and brought her immediate worldwide acclaim.This modern classic is the story of intransigent young architect Howard Roark, whose integrity was as unyielding as granite...of Dominique Francon, the exquisitely beautiful woman who loved Roark passionately, but married his worst enemy...and of the fanatic denunciation unleashed by an enraged society against a great creator. As fresh today as it was then, Rand’s provocative novel presents one of the most challenging ideas in all of fiction—that man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress...“A writer of great power. She has a subtle and ingenious mind and the capacity of writing brilliantly, beautifully, bitterly...This is the only novel of ideas written by an American woman that I can recall.”—The New York Times

From one of America's most beloved funnymen comes a hilarious look at the lighter side of fatherhood. So, what is fatherhood...' It's pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope. It's helping your children learn English as a second language. It's asking your son to make up a name rather than tell anyone who he is. It's knowing that "Everything's okay, Dad!" means "I haven't killed anyone!" It's the book every father will love. It's Bill Cosby at his wittiest, wisest, and warmest. "Bill Cosby makes fatherhood come alive. He takes us on a comedic yet insightful journey through the awesome shifting sands of parenthood. Though this volume is titled Fatherhood, its effect will be to strengthen the entire family." --from the afterword by Alvin F. Poussaint, M.D.

This schools' edition of Mark Haddon's multi-award-winning novel adapted for the stage of the National Theatre by Simon Stephens is perfect for Key Stages 3 and 4. Christopher, fifteen years old, stands beside Mrs Shears's dead dog. It has been speared with a garden fork, it is seven minutes after midnight, and Christopher is under suspicion. He records each fact in the book he is writing to solve the mystery of who murdered Wellington. He has an extraordinary brain and is exceptional at maths, but he is ill-equipped to interpret everyday life. He has never ventured alone beyond the end of his road, he detests being touched and he distrusts strangers. But Christopher's detective work, forbidden by his father, takes him on a frightening journey that turns his world upside-down.This educational edition in Methuen Drama's Critical Scripts series has been prepared by national Drama in Secondary English experts Ruth Moore and Paul Bunyan. Building on a decade of highly effective work and publications endorsed by national organisations and supported by teachers and consultants across Britain, each book in the series: meets the requirements at KS3 and GCSEfeatures detailed, structured schemes of work utilising drama approaches to improve literary and language analysis places pupils' understanding of the learning process at the heart of the activities will help pupils to boost English GCSE success and develop high-level skills at KS3will save teachers considerable time devising their own resources.Simon Stephens's adaptation of Mark Haddon's bestselling, award-winning novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time offers a richly theatrical exploration of this touching and bleakly humorous tale.

Charles Saatchi is a man with strong opinions on everything from movies to morals, superstition to suicide, and in this book he answers nearly 300 questions from readers and journalists, offering much for everyone to reflect on.

For the first time in one hardcover edition, here are three best-selling books by one of 20th century's greatest movie directors. Woody Allen is an American cultural icon -- funny, philosophical, and controversial in his work and personal life. In this side-splitting collection, containing Without Feathers, Getting Even, and Side Effects. the Academy Award-winning filmmaker explores subjects ranging from sleeplessness to the UFO menace. No Woolly fan will want to be without his hilarious ruminations on the moral and ethical predicaments of modern life.

'The funniest person in the world' Caitlin Moran'My comfort read. The best diaries ever written - with apologies to Samuel Pepys, Bridget Jones and me' ADAM KAYCelebrate Adrian Mole's 50th Birthday with this new edition of the FIFTH BOOK in his diaries, where Adrian faces divorce, fatherhood and (short-lived) television stardom . . . __________Adrian Mole is thirty, single and a father. His cooking at a top London restaurant has been equally mocked ('the sausage on my plate could have been a turd') and celebrated (will he be the nation's first celebrity offal chef?). And the love of his life, Pandora Braithwaite, is too busy as the newly elected MP for Ashby-de-la-Zouch to notice him.Frustrated, disappointed and undersexed, Adrian despairs until a letter from his past changes everything . . .'With the Mole books, Townsend has an unrivalled claim to be this country's foremost practising comic novelist' Mail on Sunday'Adrian Mole really is a brilliant comic creation. Every sentence is witty and well thought out, and the whole has reverberations beyond itself' The Times'One of the greatest comic creations. I can't remember a more relentlessly funny book' Daily Mirror'Three cheers for Mole's chaotic, non-achieving, dysfunctional family. We need him' Evening Standard

A translation of the Kabbalah for the layperson includes a compact presentation of each primary text and features a practical analysis and vital historical information that offer insight into the various aspects of Jewish mysticism.

This collection of previously unpublished poems offers the author's take on squabbling neighbours, off-kilter lovers, would-be hangers-on, and the loneliness of a man afflicted with acute powers of observation. The tone is gritty and amusing, spiralling out towards a cock-eyed wisdom.

The first novel in the Heaven series from the internationally bestselling author, Mitch Albom.THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN is a wonderfully moving fable that addresses the meaning of life, and life after death, in the poignant way that made TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE such an astonishing book. The novel's protagonist is an elderly amusement park maintenance worker named Eddie who, while operating a ride called the 'Free Fall', dies while trying to save a young girl who gets in the way of a falling cart that hurtles to earth. Eddie goes to heaven, where he meets five people who were unexpectedly instrumental in some way in his life. While each guide takes him through heaven, Eddie learns a little bit more about what his time on earth meant, what he was supposed to have learned, and what his true purpose on earth was.Throughout there are dramatic flashbacks where we see scenes from his troubled childhood, his years in the army in the Philippines jungle, and with his first and only love, his wife Marguerite. THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN is the perfect book to follow TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE. Its compellingly affecting themes and lyrical writing will fascinate Mitch Albom's huge readership.

Why do underdogs succeed so much more than we expect? How do the weak outsmart the strong? In David and Goliath Malcolm Gladwell, no.1 bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers and What the Dog Saw, takes us on a scintillating and surprising journey through the hidden dynamics that shape the balance of power between the small and the mighty.From the conflicts in Northern Ireland, through the tactics of civil rights leaders and the problem of privilege, Gladwell demonstrates how we misunderstand the true meaning of advantage and disadvantage. When does a traumatic childhood work in someone's favour? How can a disability leave someone better off? And do you really want your child to go to the best school he or she can get into? David and Goliath draws on the stories of remarkable underdogs, history, science, psychology and on Malcolm Gladwell's unparalleled ability to make the connections others miss. It's a brilliant, illuminating book that overturns conventional thinking about power and advantage.'A global phenomenon... there is, it seems, no subject over which he cannot scatter some magic dust' Observer

Have you ever wished your partner came with an instruction booklet? This international bestseller is the answer to all the things you've ever wondered about the opposite sex.For their controversial new book on the differences between the way men and women think and communicate, Barbara and Allan Pease spent three years traveling around the world, collecting the dramatic findings of new research on the brain, investigating evolutionary biology, analyzing psychologists, studying social changes, and annoying the locals.The result is a sometimes shocking, always illuminating, and frequently hilarious look at where the battle line is drawn between the sexes, why it was drawn, and how to cross it. Read this book and understand--at last!--why men never listen, why women can't read maps, and why learning each other's secrets means you'll never have to say sorry again.

Winner of the 2012 Premio Valle Translation Prize Shortlisted for the 2011 INDEPENDENT FOREIGN FICTION PRIZEIn the forecourt of a petrol station outside of Buenos Aires, a father says goodbye to his son: 'Kamchatka,' he whispers softly into his ear. And then they part, forever. A ten-year-old boy lives in world of Superman comics and games of Risk - a world in which men have superpowers and boys can conquer the globe on a board game. But in the outside world, a military junta have taken power; and amid a political climate of fear and intimidation, people are beginning to disappear without trace... Kamchatka is a heartbreaking novel; set in Argentina during the bloody coup d'etat of 1976, it tells the enchanting story of a young boy trying to make sense of a world during a time of extraordinary upheaval.

One book. Two readers. A world of mystery, menace and desireA young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger. Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story and by its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own, leaving the book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them both into the unknown. THE BOOK: Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but enigmatic writer named V. M. Straka, in which a man with no past is shanghaied onto a strange ship with a monstrous crew and launched on a disorienting and perilous journey.THE WRITER: Straka, the incendiary and secretive subject of one of the world's greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumours that swirl around him. THE READERS: Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a disgraced grad student, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who they might become, and how much they're willing to trust another person with their passions, hurts and fears.S., conceived by filmmaker J.J. Abrams and written by award-winning novelist Doug Dorst, is the chronicle of two readers finding each other in the margins of a book and enmeshing themselves in a deadly struggle between forces they don't understand. It is also Abrams and Dorst's love letter to the written word.