Julian Elfer

What is capitalism? Is capitalism the same everywhere? Is there an alternative? The word "capitalism" is one that is heard and used frequently, but what is capitalism really all about, and what does it mean? This Very Short Introduction addresses questions such as, "what is capital?" before discussing the history and development of capitalism through several detailed case studies, ranging from the tulipomania of 17th century Holland, the Great Depression...

Andrew Lambert, author of The Challenge-winner of the prestigious Anderson Medal-turns his attention to Athens, Carthage, Venice, the Dutch Republic, and Britain, examining how their identities as "seapowers" informed their actions and enabled them to achieve success disproportionate to their size. Lambert demonstrates how creating maritime identities made these states more dynamic, open, and inclusive than their lumbering continental rivals. Only...

For decades, proponents of artificial intelligence have argued that computers will soon be doing everything that a human mind can do. Admittedly, computers now play chess at the grandmaster level, but do they understand the game as we do? Can a computer eventually do everything a human mind can do? In this absorbing and frequently contentious book, Roger Penrose puts forward his view that there are some facets of human thinking that can never be...

For most of history, humans did without refined sugar. Granulated sugar was first produced in India around the sixth century BC, yet for almost 2,500 years afterward sugar remained marginal in the diets of most people. Then, suddenly, it was everywhere. How did sugar find its way into almost all the food we eat, fostering illness and ecological crisis along the way? The World of Sugar begins with the earliest evidence of sugar production. Through...

Berlin Alexanderplatz, the great novel of Berlin and the doomed Weimar Republic, is one of the great books of the twentieth century, gruesome, farcical, and appalling, word drunk, pitch dark. In Michael Hofmann's extraordinary new translation, Alfred Döblin's masterpiece lives in English for the first time. As Döblin writes: The subject of this book is the life of the former cement worker and haulier Franz Biberkopf in Berlin. As our story begins,...

One of the most celebrated British writers of his generation, Graham Greene's own story was as strange and compelling as those he told of Pinkie the Mobster, Harry Lime, or the Whisky Priest. A journalist and MI6 officer, Greene sought out the inner narratives of war and politics across the world; he witnessed the Second World War, the Vietnam War, the Mau Mau Rebellion, the rise of Fidel Castro, and the guerrilla wars of Central America. His classic...

Celebrated historian John Hirst offers a fascinating exploration of the qualities that made Europe a world-changing civilization. The Shortest History of Europe begins with a rapid overview of European civilization, describing its birth from an unlikely mixture of classical learning and Christianity and German warrior culture. Over the centuries, this unstable blend produced highly distinctive characters-pious knights and belligerent popes, romantics...

Erhard Steiniger presents his must-listen memoir, Radio Operator on the Eastern Front: An Illustrated Memoir, 1940-1949.

The final book in the action-packed, military science fiction Lightship Chronicles series. Peter Cochrane and his wife, Karina, have been married less than a year. And although things have been quiet in relation to the old Empire during that time, they're about to get a lot hotter. They find themselves on a diplomatic mission to Korivar, an old ally of Pendax, a new member of the Union. But during their mission, the government of Korivar attacks Peter's...

The story of an era shrouded in mystery, and the gradual changing of a nation's cultural identity. We speak English today, because the Anglo-Saxons took over most of post-Roman Britain. How did that happen? There is little evidence: not much archaeology, and even less written history. There is, however, a huge amount of speculation. King Arthur's Wars brings an entirely new approach to the subject-the answers are out there, in the British countryside,...