Thomas explored why so many of the greatest thinkers were Nonconformists and the rise of the rejection of orthodox religion and the rise in literacy and role of women in spreading reading are the subjects of her book. She explores the evolution of dissenting thought and how Nonconformity shaped the transformation of England from a rural to an urban, industrialised society. The foundations for the Industrial Revolution were in place from the late Middle Ages when the early development of manufacturing processes and changes in the structure of rural communities began to provide opportunities for economic and social advancement. Successive waves of Huguenot migrants and the influence of Northern European religious ideology also played an important role in this process. The Civil Wars provided a catalyst for the dissemination of new ideas and helped shape the emergence of a new English Protestantism and divergent dissident sects. The persecution which followed strengthened the Nonconformist cause, and for the early Quakers it intensified their unity and resilience, qualities which would prove to be invaluable for business. In the years following the Restoration, Nonconformist ideas fuelled enlightened thought creating an environment for enterprise but also a desire for more radical change. Reformers seized on the plight of a working poor alienated by innovation and frustrated by false promises, the vision which was at first the spark for innovation would ignite revolution. B/w illus. 280 pages.

If you use a mobile phone, connect to a WiFi network, withdraw cash from an ATM, or watch a film on Netflix, you are using cryptography. Cryptography secures 7 billion bank cards, 55 billion daily WhatsApp messages and three quarters of the connections made on the world wide web. This go-to book on the subject explains the technology and its implications in a way that the averagely intelligent person can understand. Cryptography is essentially an application of mathematics and has indirectly given rise to popular movies such as Enigma and Skyfall. You can get by without being aware of it, but in a series of imaginary day to day scenarios the author explains that knowing a bit about how it works can help make you more secure. Around 30% of fraud in the business world concerns cybercrime, and the cybersecurity firm Norton estimates that in 2017 there were 978 million global victims. The downside of cryptography is that on the one hand it protects the ordinary user in cyberspace, but it can also be used to protect organised crime, terror cells and child pornographers. In 2017 in the UK forty hospitals found their computer systems had been disabled by attackers who wanted a ransom to return the systems to normal, raising moral questions about the way we handle crime. Cryptography is political and there are no simple answers between freedom and control. The author explains keys and algorithms, bits and bytes. An encryption algorithm takes two core ingredients - plain text and key - and mixed them up to produce a cyphertext. If the text does not fit the bytes, padding is used. Then the bytes, columns and rows are all scrambled more than once. But who exactly is threatening us out there? The author considers an imaginary child, twelve year old Chloe, who uses social media, and the potential dangers. The book concludes by looking at possible future scenarios. 308pp.

In order to succeed in lobbying, you must first and foremost be politically aware and have knowledge of the political landscape. What is your political profile? Are you aware of who and what politicians are about? Do you know which politicians you have to persuade and who else is in the political arena, friends and allies? How do you deal with political risk and what do you do about politicians making decisions that will inevitably fall on your business? The lobbying game is not the preserve for the privileged few with deep pockets, personal contacts and an encyclopaedic knowledge of politics. All that is needed is the confidence and the wherewithal to go out and make a compelling case, at the right time, to the right people. To become an influential player in the corridors of power you must know what decisions are going to be made, who will be taking them, and how to shape the debate and the decisions. This book shows you how to get on the inside track, make your presence felt, and make politics work for you. It also can be applied to your business or personal success. The author draws on 30 years? successful lobbying in European and international arenas to life the veil on this elusive art, revealing strategies he has used and strings he has pulled, from the practicalities of planning campaigns and being the most persuasive person in the room to how to deal with political risk and crises. 278pp, paperback.

Take a minute to answer these questions - what's the average number of sexual partners? What proportion of your country are immigrants? What does it cost to raise a child? Do you think teenage girls are getting pregnant at an alarming rate or that a large percentage of the prison population are immigrants? This brilliant investigation by the Head of Ipsos Mori Social Research Institute analyses the role of social media and fact-checking in this post-truth age. In the final chapter he gives a list of ten useful things we can do to manage ourselves. Brexit and Donald Trump, Facebook, Google, climate change, educational levels, political misdirection and disengagement, wishful and wrongful thinking, filtering our worlds, he looks at worldwide worry and how we should manage our misperceptions. With useful statistics and questions and answers, graphs and pie charts, in these days when we probably no longer trust the clergy, then journalists and least of all politicians, can we trust our own education and perception? Much food for thought. 304pp in paperback.

Trade is the lifeblood of nations. It has provided vital goods and wealth to countries and merchants from the ancient Egyptians who went in search of gold and ivory to their 21st century equivalents trading high-tech electronic equipment from the Far East. In this beautiful book, more than 70 maps give a visual representation of the history of World Commerce, accompanied by text which tells the extraordinary story of the merchants, adventurers, middle-men and monarchs who bought, sold, explored and fought in search of profit and power. The maps are all works of art, and include Çatalhöyük and Neolithic trade Plan, c. 6200BC, Petra and the Frankincense route, Babylonian Map of the World, c. 600BC, the Amber road, Charlamagne and Carolingian trade, the trans Saharan gold trade, the Silk Road, Marco Polo, the rise of the maritime republics, Venetian trading empire, Bruges and the cloth trade, plagues and pandemics, and the voyages of Zheng He, Stone Map of China, 1136, Hereford Mappa Mundi, c. 1300, Buondelmonti Map of Constantinople, c. 1420, the Portuguese trading empire in Africa, circumnavigating the globe, Ottoman trade in the 16th century, Aztec trade, pirates and privateers, Newfoundland and the cod trade, the Dutch and Manhattan, the Hudson's Bay Company and the fur trade, trade in the birth of the United States, South America and the Spanish, the Dutch East India Company, Portugal's China trade, Sweden, Russia and the north European trade in the 16th century, the British in India, the slave trade, the sugar, cotton and coffee trade, the China tea trade and the Clippers, the age of steam, world cities, imperialism, the Suez and Panama canals, the Trans-Siberian railway, the Cape to Cairo railway, the wool, coal, coffee and oil trades, electronics and the internet, banking and finance to trade blocs, tourism, and threats to world trade. Plus The Waldseemüller Map, 1507, James Rennell Map of Hindoostan, 1782, Air Age Map, 1945 and Johns Hopkins Covid-19 Dashboard, 2020. Endlessly fascinating browsing. Colour full page maps, 21 x 27.5cm, 224 pages.

Covering a 3000-year period from 3100 BCE to 332, this book on a complex subject is written in a readable chronological style and looks at ancient diplomacy, travel, trade, warfare, domination and immigration. It covers military campaigns including the battle of Qadesh under Rameses II and Hatshepsut's trading mission to the mysterious land of Punt. The rich story behind Egypt's Foreign Relations includes the Nubian Kingdom of Kerma, Nile fortresses, the Sea Peoples and Persian satraps. An Egyptian priest named Manetho estimated that 30 dynasties had ruled Egypt during this time, and modern scholars have adopted Manetho's dynastic divisions largely unchanged, grouping them into longer periods such as the "Early" or "Middle" Kingdom. The book explores Egypt's foreign relations from the Predynastic period to the arrival of Alexander the Great. Egyptians saw their land as representing order, balance and justice, while the regions beyond represented disorder, and there was a further barrier between humans and gods. Peoples were roughly grouped as Egyptians, Nubians, Libyans and Asiatics. Egyptian iconography shows its rulers smiting and destroying their enemies, and a pharaoh's sandals had images of his enemies on the sole so that he was permanently represented as trampling them into the dust. The reality, though, was that Egyptian rulers also exchanged elaborate courtesies with neighbouring potentates, and in daily life foreigners in roles such as soldiers or diplomats were treated as equals. Egypt was a land of slaves, many of whom had been seized around the Mediterranean coast to work as household servants or navvies on building projects. In the political unrest at the end of the Old Kingdom, the royal court moved from Memphis to Herakleopolis, possibly driven by climate change and drought. Archaeological evidence shows that Nubians of different ethnicities continued to live in the unified territories, and that was still the case when Tuthmosis II and his wife Hatshepsut consolidated their control. His New Kingdom successor, Tuthmosis II, forged north into the Levant, marching through Gaza to confront a hostile coalition of city states at Megiddo. We know that the later Pharaoh Akhenaten received tributes from foreigners because they are pictured at Amarna, while a wrecked sea vessel of the same period provides evidence for trade with Mycenae. Amarna was also the site of diplomatic correspondence, strongly suggesting that the empire looked to Greece during its period of decline. 213 pages, many maps, photos.

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) is perhaps the foremost economic thinker of the 20th century. On economic theory, he ranks with Adam Smith and Karl Marx; and his impact on how economics was practiced, from the Great Depression to the 1970s, was unmatched. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was first published in 1936. But its ideas had been forming for decades ? as a student at Cambridge, Keynes had written to a friend of his love for 'Free Trade and free thought'. Keynes's limpid style, concise prose, and vivid descriptions have helped to keep his ideas alive - as have the novelty and clarity, at times even the ambiguity, of his macroeconomic vision. He was troubled, above all, by high unemployment rates and large disparities in wealth and income. Only by curbing both, he thought, could individualism, ?the most powerful instrument to better the future', be safeguarded. The 21st century may yet prove him right. In The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), Keynes elegantly and acutely exposes the folly of imposing austerity on a defeated and struggling nation. 538 page paperback.

Turing said 'If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent.' Spring 1940, the Battle of the Atlantic rages. Vulnerable merchant convoys are at the mercy of German U-boats controlled by a cunning system of coded messages created by a machine called Enigma. Only one man believes that these codes can be broken - mathematician and Bletchley Park cryptanalyst Alan Turing. Winston Churchill later describe Turing's success in breaking the Enigma code as the single biggest contribution to the victory against Nazi Germany. Unheralded during his lifetime, he is now recognised as the father of modern computer science and as possessing one of the greatest minds of the 20th century. Here his ground-breaking work and his private side lifts the veil of secrecy, particularly with regard to his post-war contribution to computing science with the Americans and his work as Manchester Computing Machine Laboratory. Only in 1974 was the official ban on any mention of Ultra lifted. Watched by MI5, Turing died of cyanide poisoning. A vat of cyanide was found in the 'nightmare room' between his bedroom and the bathroom, and the coroner ruled that Turing had committed suicide 'while the balance of his mind was disturbed'. Yet no evidence was given about the state of his mind and the verdict has been questioned ever since. Slim illustrated biography, New full price paperback128pp.

20 million copies have been sold worldwide and this is a superb Penguin paperback reprint of the greatest success classic of all time. Regarded as the number one inspirational and motivational classic for individuals who are interested in furthering their lives and achieving their goals, the book draws inspiration from the lives of Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and other millionaires of his generation. Napoleon Hill was America's most beloved motivational author who devoted 25 years and interviewed over 500 affluent men and women of his time. He uncovers the secret to great wealth based on the notion that if we can think to learn like the rich, we can start to behave like them. By understanding and applying the 13 simple steps that constitute his formula, you can discover how the principle of autosuggestion can increase your confidence, magnetism and capabilities; how you can master your mind to receive ideas from the Infinite Intelligence; the method of accurate thinking; how to avoid anything that could impede your success. Kick start your journey of self-discovery today in chapters covering faith, desire, imagination, organised planning, decision, persistence, the power of the master mind, the mystery of sex transmutation, the subconscious mind, the brain and the sixth sense and how to outwit the six ghosts of fear. 'One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat.' 266pp, paperback with fairly large print.

'Chess Records and the Business of Rock & Roll', Macher is a Yiddish word for a big wheel or an operator. On the South Side of Chicago in the late 1940s, two immigrants, one a Jew born in Russia, the other a black Blues singer from Mississippi, met and changed the course of musical history. Muddy Waters electrified the Blues, and Leonard Chess recorded it. Soon Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry added a dose of pulsating rhythm, and Chess Records captured that too. Rock & Roll had arrived, and an industry was born. In a book as vibrantly and exuberantly written as the music and people it portrays, Rich Cohen tells the engrossing story of how Chess, with the other record men, made this new sound into a multi-billion-dollar business, aggressively acquiring artists, strong-arming distributors, riding the crest of a wave that would crash over a whole generation. The book is full of absorbing lore and animated by a deep love for popular music - it's a big, tough, funny, clever story. Not politically correct, the book begins at a Bar Mitzvar and immediately draws connections between blacks and Jews. 220pp, photos.