Isolated in the vastness of the South Atlantic and fortress-like in appearance, the Island of St Helena was important for centuries only as a victualling station for ships of the British East India Company on their long voyages to and from India via the Cape of Good Hope. It was on one of those journeys that Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, took note of the island's remote impregnability. It was Wellington who suggested St Helena as Napoleon Bonaparte's place of imprisonment and exile after his defeat at Waterloo in 1815, thrusting the island to the centre of world affairs. Until his death in 1821, the former Emperor spent his final years under a constant British guard. His exile transformed a speck on the maritime map into the most famous island in the world. Today the island is a unique colonial survivor, almost without an economy of its own, lacking an airport, the only regular link is by the Royal Mail Ship. Napoleonic historian Johannes Willms visits this strange colonial survivor and unearths a past and present that both disturbs and delights with observations far beyond the ghost of Bonaparte. It is a vivid account of a visit to the last place on earth and how a remote people and place respond to their legacy and isolation in a global world. The Guardian said. 'Willms is a wry, entertaining commentator, properly suspicious of hagiography.' Longwood Old House was designed as just a temporary arrangement but Napoleon stubbornly refused to take any interest in his new abode, although contemporary watercolours and photographs of a later date make it clear that the house he was in must have been the finest property on St Helena apart from the Governor's Residence. 231pp in the compact Haus Publishing Armchair Travel series.

'The Hidden Heroines of British Anthropology' is the sub-title of this multiple biography of five women who arrived at the University of Oxford determined to study remote communities a world away from their own. Barbara Freire-Marreco travelled to New Mexico and Arizona in 1910 and 1913. Katherine Routledge voyaged to Easter Island in 1913-16 and to French Polynesia, south of Ecuador to Mangareva 1921-23. Maria Czaplicka journeyed from Paris through Moscow and Minusinsk to Golchikha in Siberia 1914-15. Winifred Blackman travelled from London to Cairo via Venice and Corfu in 1920-39. Beatrice Blackwood took a voyage from Port Said via Columbo, Sydney and through New Caledonia to Papua New Guinea to Melanesia in 1929 and also to the Solomon Islands 1929-30 and the Mandated Territory of New Guinea 1936-38. These are the voyages as mapped in colour on the endpapers and there are 28 further illustrations in the text showing the intrepid travellers taking tea with local officials or in a family group photograph on a rare visit home, travelling in a wicker carriage through Siberia or as students on an Archaeology summer camp. In the unchartered interiors of New Guinea amid uprisings along the Nile and on remote Easter Island, they found new freedoms and bore witness to now-vanished worlds. Through their work they overturned some of the most pernicious myths that dogged their gender, and proved that women could be explorers and scientists too. Yet when they returned to England they found only loss, madness and regret waiting for them. Following the lives of her subjects through women's suffrage, two world wars and into the second half of the 20th century, Larson's masterful biography is a revelatory portrait of a pioneering quintet who went on search of nomadic reindeer-herders who had never before seen a European woman or to work in the pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona or to live in the New Guinea interior with warriors who still made their weapons from wood and stone. Their travels were sensationalised in the press. These five women were not simply adventurers, they were intellectual pioneers, professional anthropologists who set out to study human cultural diversity as part of an academic community. On her return from Siberia, Maria Czaplicka was given a lectureship at Oxford, but she lost her job when the male lecturer she had replaced came home at the end of the war. Routledge married a man who shared her intellectual interests, but when their marriage fell apart, she had no recourse when he secured a High Court order to take control of her formidable assets. Anthropology offered all five women an escape and field work a temporary relief from the strictures of English society and in new cultures an opportunity to negotiate their own identity. 337pp, illus.

The award winning documentary maker Jon Ronson is fascinated by madness, extraordinary behaviour and the human mind. He has spent his life investigating crazy events, following fascinating people and unearthing unusual stories. He is after all the author of the famous 'The Men Who Stare at Goats.' Collected here from various sources including the Guardian and GQ America are the best of his adventures. Jon meets the man preparing to welcome the aliens to Earth, the woman trying to build a fully conscious robotic replica of the love of her life, and the Deal or No Deal contestants with a fool proof system to beat the Banker. Jon realises that it's possible for our madness to be a force for good when he meets America's real-life superheroes, or a force for evil when he meets the Reverend 'Death' George Exoo who has dubiously assisted in more than 100 mercy killings. He goes to a UFO convention in the Nevada Desert with Robbie Williams, asks Insane Clown Posse (who are possibly America's nastiest rappers) whether it's true they have actually been evangelical Christians all along, and rummages through the extensive archives of Stanley Kubrick. Frequently hilarious, sometimes disturbing, always entertaining, these compelling encounters with people on the edge of madness will have you wondering just what humans are capable of. 448pp, paperback.

A rather special photography book showcasing the Kodak camera company's finest examples of their 565 Coloramas. They were massive backlit transparencies which measured 60ft wide by 18ft tall and changed every few weeks between 1950 and 1990, dominating the east wall of New York City's Grand Central Terminal train station. They were conceived at this imposing size and vibrancy to demonstrate the brilliance of colour photography and the Eastman Kodak Company products, and many feature people at exotic locations like the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu and a family at Yosemite National Park, California, in 1968. There are the Moon landings of 1971, Mars, beach holidays and water skiing, skiing and snow scenes, teenage parties, a child and mother playing with dolls, duck hunting, family camping, nine beautiful models in tight corseted swimsuits in 1954 on a beach, and our favourite must be The Rocketts pictured in 1958, all 36 young lady dancers in bright red satin basques with white fur hats and big smiles, all pointing their left foot identically and in a sweeping Colorama panorama which is a splendid gatefold page. Another gatefold is Yosemite Park. Another favourite are 15 babies in colourful baby grows pictured in 1984 and then again four years later to compare how they have grown, and there are pandas and koalas and superb images from the likes of famous photographers Ansel Adams, Lee Howick and Neil Montanus. What better way to memorialise all of life's moments? A truly beautifully made tome from TeNeues publishers, landscape format 12" x 9½".
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From the voyages of Christopher Columbus into the unchartered dark blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean to the daring exploration of the Louisiana Purchase by Meriwether Lewis, the book brings to life the epic stories of 14 adventurers in the New World. Struggle alongside the conquistadors as they conquer new lands for Spain, and journey down the Mississippi River with French explorers. Learn about the work of Vitus Bering whose discovery of Alaska established Russia's claim to the region, and Alexander Mackenzie's 107 day trek across Western Canada that opened the frontier to settlement, commerce and development of its natural resources. Read about Henry Hudson's sea voyages in search of the Northwest Passage which led to the colonisation of New York, the exploration of the Hudson Bay in Canada, and Hernan Cortes whose victorious battles against the Aztecs conquered Mexico for Spain. Other names include John Cabot, Jacques Cartier, Hernando de Soto, Francisco Coronado, Samuel de Champlain, Captain John Smith, Governor of the Jamestown colony and explorer of the American coastline, Robert Cavelier de La Salle, explorer of the Great Lakes, and Daniel Boone, pioneer of the Ohio Valley. With maps, 303pp.

The Kisokaido route through Japan was ordained in the early 1600s by the country's then-ruler Tokugawa Ieyasu, who decreed that staging posts be installed along the length of the arduous passage between Edo (present-day Tokyo) and Kyoto. Inns, shops, and restaurants were established to provide sustenance and lodging to weary travellers. In 1835, renowned woodblock print artist Keisai Eisen was commissioned to create a series of works to chart the Kisokaido journey. After producing 24 prints, Eisen was replaced by Utagawa Hiroshige, who completed the series of 70 prints in 1838. Both Eisen and Hiroshige were master print practitioners. In The Sixty-Nine Stations along the Kisokaido, we find the artists' distinct styles as much as their shared expertise. From the busy starting post of Nihonbashi to the castle town of Iwamurata, Eisen opts for a more muted palette but excels in figuration, particularly of glamorous women, and relishes snapshots of activity along the route, from shoeing a horse to winnowing rice. Hiroshige demonstrates his mastery of landscape with grandiose and evocative scenes, whether it's the peaceful banks of the Ota River, the forbidding Wada Pass, or a moonlit ascent between Yawata and Mochizuki. Taken as a whole, The Sixty-Nine Stations collection represents not only a masterpiece of woodblock practice, including bold compositions and an experimental use of colour, but also a charming tapestry of 19th-century Japan, long before the spectre of industrialisation. This new Taschen super-sized XXL edition revives the series with due scale and splendour. Sourced from the only-known set of a near-complete run of the first edition of the series, this legendary publication is reproduced in optimum quality, bound in the Japanese tradition and with uncut paper. It is at once a visual delight and a major artefact from the bygone era of Imperial Japan. Japanese binding in clothbound box, 44 x 30cm, 234 pages, text in English, French and German.

A charming book about language, love and the wine-dark sea by the author who has delighted readers with her irreverent tales of pencils, punctuation and punctiliousness over three decades in The New Yorker's celebrated copy department. Here Mary Norris delivers a wise and witty paean to the art of expressing oneself clearly and convincingly, this time filtered through her greatest passion - all things Greek. From convincing her bosses to pay for Ancient Greek studies to travelling the sacred way in search of Persephone, her book is also an unforgettable account of her lifelong love affair with words and her solo adventures in the land of olive trees and ouzo. Along the way she explains how the alphabet originated in Greece, making the case for Athena as a feminist icon and revealing the surprising ways Greek helped form English. With delightful facts and brimming with nerdish, bookish joy, Mary is a jaunty companion and her lessons slip down sweetly as we join her pouring beer libations and skinny-dipping in the waters of Aphrodite. 228pp with appendix of the Greek Alphabet. Remainder mark, US first edition.

The top range authoritative and accurate atlas in a protective slipcase fully updated with extra information next to each colourful map. Fourth edition August 2019, it includes detailed up-to-date reference mapping on Population, Politics with statistics, and historical maps like the Chinese Empire and Japan in this publication which has evolved since The Times first published a World Atlas in 1895. Commissioned by John Bartholomew & Son, the renowned Edinburgh cartographers, production took 15 years and had 112 map plates. With many revisions between 1955 and 1960, this present edition has been resigned to give a less Euro-centric view and a more balanced view of the world and revised to reflect the latest geopolitical changes. The introductory section combines unique continental satellite images, dramatic views of the universe, thematic maps, photographs, graphics and contributions from experts in many fields and the maps themselves are simply stunning, in colour and with varying scales, island insets, city plans and administrative divisions. Over 50,000 index entries, 26.7 x 31.75cm, 320pp, slipcased and at a bargain price for the first time.

Sub-titled 'One Man's Walk In Search of his Father and A Lost England' this powerful and moving book is about the need to write new stories for our communities and ourselves. In 1981, Mike Carter's dad Pete organised the People's March for Jobs which saw 300 people walk from Liverpool to London to protest as the Thatcher government's policies devastated industrial Britain and sent unemployment skyrocketing. Just before the 2016 EU referendum, Mike set off to walk the same route in a quest to better understand his dad and his country. As he walked, Mike found many echoes of the early 80s - a working class overlooked and ignored by Westminster politicians, communities hollowed out, anger and despair co-existing with hope and determination for change. He also found that he and his father shared more in common than he might have thought. The book begins with the story of Pete who left school in West Bromwich at the age of 15 in 1953, illiterate, one of six children of alcoholic parents. He trained as a bricklayer where he was radicalised on the building sites and joined the Young Communist League, and by the early 70s, led the Birmingham Building Workers in their successful strike action against the use of casual labour. He went on to become the industrial organiser of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Working on the Guardian, his son Mike asked himself "what had happened to the Britain that my father had promised me?" Clearing his father's belongings, Pete discovered papers, photographs and scrapbooks and newspaper cuttings about the industrial disputes of the 70s, love letters and letters to himself and his sister and his father?s old flat cap. He put it on and decided to follow the route of the March which had set off on 2nd May 1981 35 years to the day later. 391pp, paperback.

"Where Freya Stark wrote of the Marsh Arabs, Elizabeth Warnock Fernea goes into the deep interior of desert Iraq in 1955, some fifty years later." A delightful, extremely well-written, and vastly informative ethnographic study, Guests of the Sheik is an account of the author's two-year stay in the tiny rural village of El Nahra in southern Iraq. To help her anthropologist husband gather data, Mrs. Fernea agreed to dress only in the all-enveloping black veils of the women of the harem. Although she shared a small mud-brick cottage with her husband, her daily life was spent only with the women of the town, for in this polygamous society there existed no social communication between the sexes. The hardships were many but the rewards greater, especially for the readers of this extraordinary narrative: this volume gives a unique insight into a part of Middle Eastern life seldom seen by the West and life of the women who have no outwardly apparent role in society, but whose thoughts and ideas are now emerging with force and helping to shape modern Middle Eastern society. "Lives are hard, repetitively hard and unrelenting in all respects. Men live by the goodwill and social standing of those a rung above. And they, by those above them. Tribal status among other tribes, and status within the tribe, dictate where a man may work, whom he might marry and how his children will or will not prosper. Honour is a concept as much alive then as it is today." Paperback, facsimile reprint of the 1965 original, 346 pages, small remainder mark.