Social & cultural anthropology

bell hooks challenges assumptions about love in her new book, and argues that love is not romanticism, nor is it narcissism, but that it is the will to nurture our and others' spiritual growth, whether within families, relationships or with friends. A New York Times bestseller and enduring classi...

The Amur River is almost unknown. Yet it is the tenth longest river in the world, rising in the Mongolian mountains and flowing through Siberia to the Pacific. For 1,100 miles it forms the tense border between Russia and China. Haunted by the memory of land-grabs and unequal treaties, this is the...

The Amur River is almost unknown. Yet it is the tenth longest river in the world, rising in the Mongolian mountains and flowing through Siberia to the Pacific. For 1,100 miles it forms the tense border between Russia and China. Haunted by the memory of land-grabs and unequal treaties, this is the...

This book traces our rise, both as a species and as moulders of our own environment and future. Covering invention, from the flint tool to the theory of relativity, it demonstrates man's ability to understand nature and to control it. Dr Jacob Bronowksi's The Ascent of Man traces the development ...

Isabel Fonseca lived and travelled with Gypsies all over the world. She writes about individuals, but also bears witness to the genesis of the Gypsies as a political entity. This book is a compelling portrait of Europe's largest minority. Gypsies have always intrigued and fascinated - partly beca...

When author Peter Mortimer was commissioned to write a play about the little-known 'Arab Riot' between Yemeni and British seamen at the Mill Dam, South Shields, in 1930, he decided to take the long trip to Yemen itself in search of inspiration. This book documents this remarkable journey. When au...

In her previous two books, Professor Alice Roberts has powerfully and evocatively revived people of the past through examining their burial rites, bringing a fresh perspective on how they lived. In 'Crypt', she tells the story of Britain from 1066 to the present day - by exploring changing method...

As winter comes and the hours of darkness overtake the light, we seek out warmth, good food, and good company. But beneath the jollity and bright enchantment of the festive season, there lurks a darker mood - one that has found expression over the centuries in a host of strange and unsettling tra...

'Deporting Black Britons' exposes the relationship between racism, borders and citizenship by telling the painful stories of four men who have been exiled to Jamaica. It examines processes of criminalisation, illegalisation and racialisation as they interact to construct deportable subjects in co...

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are all too aware of the urgent health inequalities that plague our world. But these inequalities have always been urgent: modern medicine has a colonial and racist history. Here, in a searingly truthful account, Annabel Sowemimo unravels the colonial root...