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Daniel Susskind traces the rich, surprisingly brief history of economic growth and responds to its ills. We cannot focus only on growth's upsides, but nor is degrowth a viable policy: the benefits of prosperity are too great to discard. Instead we must face tradeoffs, demoting growth from our top priority and reckoning with its moral challenges.

In July 1945, France's disgraced former head of state was on trial. As head of the Vichy regime, Philippe Pétain was a lightning rod for collective guilt and retribution. But he has also been a conservative icon ever since. Julian Jackson blends courtroom drama and brilliant narrative history to examine one of history's great moral dilemmas.

Michael Kulikowski traces two hundred years of Roman history during which the Empire became ungovernable and succumbed to turbulence and change. A sweeping political narrative, The Tragedy of Empire tells the story of the Western Roman Empire¿s downfall, even as the Eastern Empire remained politically strong and culturally vibrant.

British historians influenced the empire in critical ways. Time¿s Monster shows how the modern vision of history as a form of ethics empowered historians to shape policy, while history became a justification for domination. Later, alternative notions of history revised the discipline¿s ethics and effects, reminding us that ideas have consequences.

On the Shoulders of Giants collects previously unpublished essays from the last 15 years of Eco's life. With humor and erudition, one of the great contemporary thinkers takes on the roots of Western culture, the origin of language, the nature of beauty and ugliness, the imperfections of art, and the lure of mysteries.

The modern Middle East was forged in the crucible of the First World War, but few know the full story of how war actually came to the region. As Sean McMeekin reveals in this startling reinterpretation of the war, it was neither the British nor the French but rather a small clique of Germans and Turks who thrust the Islamic world into the conflict for their own political, economic, and military ends.The Berlin-Baghdad Express tells the fascinating story of how Germany exploited Ottoman pan-Islamism in order to destroy the British Empire, then the largest Islamic power in the world. Meanwhile the Young Turks harnessed themselves to German military might to avenge Turkey¿s hereditary enemy, Russia. Told from the perspective of the key decision-makers on the Turco-German side, many of the most consequential events of World War I¿Turkey¿s entry into the war, Gallipoli, the Armenian massacres, the Arab revolt, and the Russian Revolution¿are illuminated as never before.Drawing on a wealth of new sources, McMeekin forces us to re-examine Western interference in the Middle East and its lamentable results. It is an epic tragicomedy of unintended consequences, as Turkish nationalists give Russia the war it desperately wants, jihad begets an Islamic insurrection in Mecca, German sabotage plots upend the Tsar delivering Turkey from Russiäs yoke, and German Zionism midwifes the Balfour Declaration. All along, the story is interwoven with the drama surrounding German efforts to complete the Berlin to Baghdad railway, the weapon designed to win the war and assure German hegemony over the Middle East.

"How is it that we can walk unfamiliar streets while maintaining a sense of direction? Come up with shortcuts on the fly, in places we've never traveled? The answer is the complex mental map in our brains. This feature of our cognition is easily taken for granted, but it's also critical to our species's evolutionary success. In From Here to There Michael Bond tells stories of the lost and found-Polynesian sailors, orienteering champions, early aviators-and surveys the science of human navigation. Navigation skills are deeply embedded in our biology. The ability to find our way over large distances in prehistoric times gave Homo sapiens an advantage, allowing us to explore the farthest regions of the planet. Wayfinding also shaped vital cognitive functions outside the realm of navigation, including abstract thinking, imagination, and memory. Bond brings a reporter's curiosity and nose for narrative to the latest research from psychologists, neuroscientists, animal behaviorists, and anthropologists. He also turns to the people who design and expertly maneuver the world we navigate: search-and-rescue volunteers, cartographers, ordnance mappers, urban planners, and more. The result is a global expedition that furthers our understanding of human orienting in the natural and built environments"--

Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper show how World War II never really ended in the ravaged Asian lands but continued in bloody civil wars, anti-colonial insurrections, and inter-communal massacres. Forgotten Wars, a sequel to the authors¿ acclaimed Forgotten Armies, is an account of the bitter wars of the end of empire.

Benefiting from recent critical scholarship that has explored new attitudes toward Johnson, Martin offers a sympathetic portrait of the subject. The Johnson that emerges from this biography is still the foremost figure of his age but a more rebellious, unpredictable, flawed, and sympathetic figure than has been previously known.