The spectacular life of spectacles is the topic of the esoteric, informative and revelatory book. Alluring details describe how the humble pair of glasses might just be one of humanity's greatest inventions, allowing millions to see a world that would otherwise appear a blur. Yet how much do any of us really know about these things perched on the end of our noses? Travis Elborough traces the story of spectacles from their inception as primitive visual aids for monkish scribes right through to today's designer eyewear. We learn how glasses were the making of rock 'n' roller Buddy Holly, helped liberate an exasperated John Lennon from Beatlemania and added to Michael Caine's sexual allure. We see women in glasses through the lenses of crime fiction by Dorothy L. Sayers and Raymond Chandler, and the full-screen figure of Marilyn Monroe. There are encounters with ingenious medieval Italian glassmakers, myopic Renaissance rulers, and spectacle-makers and opticians - brilliant, mad, bad and dangerous - in the Londons of Samuel Pepys, Dr Johnson and Sherlock Holmes. Peering into early theories about how the eye worked, Elborough considers the theological and philosophical arguments about the limits of perception by Greek thinkers, Roman statesmen and Arab scholars. Chapters include Steam-Powered Vision and Working Glass Heroes. The book opens with a Welby Fine Frames Limited trade advert of 1970 with glamorous blondes in heavy rimmed and horn rimmed and bejewelled frames and a Michael Caine lookalike fella in the centre. 341pp, illus.

Edward R. Murrow, America's most prominent journalist, in March 1961 ended a quarter century career with the Columbia Broadcasting System to join the administration of John F, Kennedy as Director of the United States Information Agency (USIA). Charged with promoting a positive image abroad, the agency sponsored overseas research programmes, produced documentaries, and operated the Voice of America to spread the country's influence throughout the world. As Director, Murrow hired African Americans for top spots in the agency, and leveraged his celebrity status at home to challenge all Americans to correct the scourge of domestic racism that discouraged developing countries, viewed as strategic assets, from aligning with the West. Using both overt and covert propaganda programmes, he forged a positive public image for Kennedy's administration policies in an unsettled era that included the rise of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and support for Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem. This magnificent historical work tackles an understudied portion of Murrow's life and exposes the importance of public diplomacy in the advancement of US foreign policy. It is an invaluable look back on the virtues and a few vices of the approach taken 50 years ago by the legendary broadcast journalist in the service of a remarkable administration. The book is both fun and informative, 353pp, 12 illus, chapters include 1776 Pennsylvania Avenue, From Fiasco to Progress in Latin America and Birmingham, The Story Heard Round the World.

The Office for National Statistics Census 2021 is the basis of this official story in numbers. In 1841 there were 734 female midwives working in Britain, along with nine artificial eye makers, 20 peg makers, six stamp makers and one bee dealer. Fast forward nearly two centuries and there are 51,000 midwives working in the UK and not an eye maker in sight. For the past 200 years, through the Census and national surveys, the Office for National Statistics and its predecessors have charted the lives of the British - our jobs, home lives and strange cultural habits, with questions on occupation, housing, religion, travel and the family. The Census findings have informed the economy, politics and every other national matter, and its collected data forms the single most valuable ongoing historical resource of modern times. Delving deep into statistics and including the latest findings on the Covid-19 pandemic, where to give one example the ONS with its partners set up the Virus Infection Survey to gauge the prevalence in the community, going from its announcement to first publication of results in barely three weeks, it taught us the value of timely, accurate, trustworthy, comprehensive information. The book marks the 25th anniversary of the ONS creation now that it is being brought together with the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys. Among the questions that have stumped the normally indefatigable ONS Press Office down the years were: 'What percentage of the UK are aristocrats?' and 'How many rats and squirrels are there in the UK?' 298pp, charts, diagrams.

One of the finest Hispanists in the country, Sir Paul Preston CBE has written extensively about Spain and in particular the Spanish Civil War, Franco and Spain from dictatorship to democracy. Here he turns his attention to how, from 1874 to the present day, the Spanish people were devastatingly betrayed by their political class, military and church. The sub-title of this monumental history is 'A History of Corruption, Political Incompetence and Social Division in Modern Spain 1874 to 2018'. He chronicles how violent social division throughout the country has been cultivated by institutionalised corruption and startling political incompetence, most spectacularly during the Primo de Rivera and Franco dictatorships when grotesque and shameless corruption went hand-in-hand with inept policies that prolonged Spain's economic stagnation well into the 1950s. Preston looks back to the years prior to 1923 when electoral corruption excluded the masses from organised politics, giving them a choice between apathetic acceptance and violent revolution. Bitter social divisions, economic tensions and conflict between centralist nationalism and regional independence movements then exploded into the Civil War of 1936-39. The horrors of that war and the dictatorship that followed broke the pattern. The moderation shared by the progressive right and a chastened left underlay a bloodless transition to democracy after 1975 yet as before, corruption and political incompetence continued to have a corrosive effect, and still does to this day. The history sparkles with vivid portraits of politicians and army officers, some corrupt and others clean, and the triumphs and disasters of kings Alfonso XIII and Juan Carlos. A work of deep historical scholarship superbly written by an outstanding historian. 750pp, illus.

1922. Empires fell. The Ottoman Empire collapsed after more than six centuries. The British Empire had reached its zenith, but its heyday was over. The Irish Free State was declared, and demands for independence in India grew. New nations and new politics came into existence. The Soviet Union was officially created, and Mussolini's Italy became the first Fascist state. In the USA, Prohibition was at its height. The Hollywood film industry, although rocked by a series of scandals, continued to grow. A new mass medium - radio - was making its presence felt and the BBC was founded. In literature it was the year of peak modernism. Both T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland and James Joyce's Ulysses were first published in full. In society, already changed by the trauma of war and pandemic, the morals of the past seemed increasingly outmoded; new ways of behaving were making their appearance and the Roaring Twenties had begun to roar and the Jazz Age had arrived. In a sequence of vividly written sketches, Nick Rennison conjures up all the drama and diversity of this extraordinary year juxtaposing quirky unexpected items with political events in this enjoyable slice of popular history assembled in a month-by-month almanac including most notable moments from science, politics, art and culture. Short chapters include Einstein's Nobel Prize, The Swatow Typhoon, and New Uses for the Aeroplane like failing to fly around the world. 256pp, paperback.

Sub-titled 'The Power of Decency in a World Turned Mean', more than a business book, this is the primer for anyone fed up with the meanness of much of society and looking for inspiration to do better. Bodanis makes chilling parallels between our era and the 1930s and chapters on the lives of contemporaries: Goebbels and F. D. Roosevelt are gripping to read or the example of Captain Bligh from Mutiny of the Bounty who was a model of good captaincy with excellent relations with his volunteer crew until he snapped when the pressure got too high. Bodanis reveals how it was fairness, applied with skill, that led the Empire State Building to be constructed in barely a year, and how the same techniques brought a quiet English debutante to become an acclaimed jungle guerrilla fighter. The ten vivid profiles feature pilots, presidents, and even a producer of Game of Thrones - we see that you can succeed without being a bully and that simple fair decency can prevail. 321pp, illustrated paperback.

A Financial Times Science Book of the Year sub-titled 'How Covid-19 Can Help Us to Save Humanity.' You could not hope for a better guide to the pandemic world order than Mackenzie who has been on this story from the start. Her readable and authoritative explanation of how this could possibly happen, and more importantly how it will happen again if we don't change, deserves a read. The Covid-19 pandemic has left a trail of loss, misery and economic ruin in its wake. With such destruction, can there be a silver lining? As science journalist Mackenzie illuminates in her eye-opening book there is one - with the lessons learned from this disaster we can avoid going through a nightmare like this, or worse, ever again. Here she lays out the full story in gripping detail, the previous viruses that should have prepared us, the shocking public health failures that led to this catastrophe, the wrong decisions made at every turn. Employing what we have learned about viruses, vaccines, inequality, global cooperation and more, Mackenzie charts a bold and optimistic path forward for protecting humanity from threats to come. It is a heart-pounding telling of the misadventures and the responsibilities of countries to work together to fight disease. 353pp, paperback.

Following World War II, Stalin's Iron Curtain quickly descended, leaving only West Berlin as a democratic island within Communist eastern Europe. In 1948 Stalin blockaded all the land routes which brought in supplies. The Allied powers, now under new management as Roosevelt had died and Attlee had succeeded Churchill, decided at all costs to keep West Berlin supplied with necessities. The American General Clay was all for going overland with tanks, but it was clear that the Russians could halt any expedition by blowing up bridges and making the land route impassable. The solution was the Berlin airlift which lasted almost a year before Stalin admitted defeat. This photographic record of the airlift is accompanied by a detailed commentary on the progress of the operation. Starting with photos of the end of the war, with Russian soldiers raising their flag on the Reichstag and Americans in Grosser Stern, the situation changes quickly with a photo of static railway wagons at the border post of Helmstedt-Marienborn. By 28 June the tiny fighter station of Wunstorf became a major headquarters as eight Dakota squadrons arrived with full personnel. In November the Handley Page four-engine troop carrier, the largest built for the RAF, was brought into service, and meanwhile the propaganda war was being fought with posters such as the spectacular art deco design of "Coal to Berlin". A picture of an old woman scavenging for scraps of fuel indicates the hardship experienced by the Berliners. Finally, back in Helmstedt-Marienborn on 12 May 1949, the Russians are seen preparing to open the crossing. 184pp, softback, photos on most pages.

Welcome leopard-lovers to this totally roarsome book about the evolution of leopard-print fashion, learn a few leopard-themed jokes, or plan a party fit for a spot-obsessed friend, on a journey from the age of the silver screen, through punk via glam rock to today's influencer-obsessed fast-fashion culture. Learn how the trend for wearing real fur was overtaken by luscious silks and expensive gowns created to showcase these spotted designs, and how leopard print is constantly evolved and adapted to suit the fashions of the day. Get creative and make leopard print cakes and cookies. Kids will love the Hide and Seek Bread and Spotted Jelly, the easy-peasy leopard face paint will make fancy dress parties a doddle for adults and kids, and for a touch of class in a glass, try out the spot painting technique. Facts, fiction and philosophy, read about the majestic snow leopard, analyse your leopard dreams and even learn a proverb or two. Have you heard about the leopard that lost its spots or the unusual strawberry-coloured leopard that's been sighted in South Africa? Which celebrity includes a leopard-print rug in their rider? Crazy quotes, silly jokes for all fellow feline friends. Big colourful graphic designed pages with large text, this is a favourite of our Chrissie here at the Bibliophile office. Remainder mark, 128pp.

In a lively book, these are the musings of a man who has thought deeply about his medium of documentaries. Why are they made? Who is in the tribe of documentary filmmakers? Do their films really change the world? Mark Cousins wrote 'When you film a documentary, life comes barrelling at you like a wild bear.' Some 20 years ago Nick Fraser created BBC Storyville, producing films that won Oscars, BAFTAs and Peabody Awards. He found filmmakers from all across the world covering important subjects in documentaries. His book describes the frenzied, intense world of documentary filmmaking, tracing its history back to the early pioneers such as Dziga Vertov and his ground-breaking 'Man with A Movie Camera.' The book deals with the British documentary tradition founded by John Grierson, and discusses the work of American masters such as the Maysles brothers, Frederick Wiseman and D. A. Pennebaker, as well as Europeans such as Marcel Ophuls, Claude Lanzmann, Chris Marker and Verner Herzog. He interviews acclaimed documentary filmmakers and discusses the work of Ken Burns, Errol Morris and Joshua Oppenheimer as well as listing his top 100 documentaries and where readers can watch them. In a world beset with 'fake news', he argues documentaries are better at getting at the verities about life and death, and that the new journalism will come from films made using new technology. Beautifully written and elegantly structured, it is a personal, funny and moving account which has helped the author recover from his 2017 stroke. 400 page large softback, illus.