Complete Catalog 419 Result(s)

Physicist and complexity researcher Stefan Thurner explains what the world of molecules can teach us about our society.

For thousands of years, humans have lived in complex social networks, from small groups on the savannah to today’s megacities. But what happens when these networks change faster than we can adapt? Why is our society fragmenting into separate bubbles, and why is polarisation increasing? What does the digital revolution mean for friendships, communication, supply chains, flows of information and social cohesion? Stefan Thurner takes us on an extraordinary intellectual journey from atoms and molecules to people and societies. In clear and accessible terms, he shows how natural laws and mathematical models can explain social dynamics—and how cooperation can remain possible even under new conditions.

What shapes the relationship between humans and animals beyond romanticisation, utility and moral outrage?

This book explores our contradictory relationship with animals, our evolutionary relatives. We both protect and hunt them; we value them as helpers and companions; we eat them and we fear them; and we recognise ourselves in the images and fables we create about them. So what connects us with other animals? Drawing on compelling stories and the latest findings from psychology, biology and ethics, this book presents a wide-ranging portrait of human–animal relationships. It demonstrates why animals, as our other selves, are more central than ever to our wellbeing, health and social order. From this emerges the political task of conceiving a right to live with animals and of redefining their claim to our respect.

Agroecology is the future!

Despite historically high levels of productivity, agriculture has reached a turning point: the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and other global crises are exposing the limits of our food system. While the organic movement has shown that more sustainable forms of agriculture are possible, yet it often remains a niche on a global scale. Urs Niggli presents the next step: agroecology. It combines ecological principles with local knowledge, social responsibility and economic viability, while making intelligent use of scientific innovation. Good ideas must continually be rethought, and even the best methods must not be allowed to stagnate. Organic farming was just the beginning. Agroecology is the path towards a form of agriculture capable of feeding everyone.

A literary essay on the origins of tears, told with both melancholy and humour.

Rich in anecdotes and brimming with knowledge about the many changing fashions of shedding tears, Präauer explores our emotional lives, sudden moments of tenderness and the experience of being deeply moved. What makes us cry? What is the chemical composition of our tears? Are tears a sign of weakness—or even a weapon? What comforts us in difficult times? Can crying be suppressed and controlled? And does it help to put a paper bag over one’s head, as Joan Didion suggested? In this book, Teresa Präauer embarks on a quest that is both universal and deeply personal, offering wit, dazzlement and insight. But can the wish never to cry again ultimately be fulfilled?

In a captivating group portrait set in a garden, Christina Walker celebrates solidarity, anarchy and the courage to reinvent oneself.

An allotment site in the depths of winter becomes a place of refuge and unexpected solidarity for two women who could hardly be more different. Marianne ends up in ‘New America’ after losing not only her husband, but also her home and business. Rebellious Didi once again seeks shelter from her mother’s violent boyfriend at the riverside allotments. The site’s chairman, Mr Gregor, soon finds himself vying for Marianne’s attention among the ground elder and tomato plants—while also fighting plans to rezone the allotments for development. With sensitivity and dry humour, Christina Walker tells a story of improvisation and solidarity, self-determination and a natural world that is becoming increasingly difficult to tame.

A multifaceted novel about home and exile, love and violence, delusion and resistance

The Russian-Jewish narrator lives in Berlin. He can no longer visit his ailing mother in Moscow, as he faces arrest if he returns. All that remains are telephone conversations in which her voice grows ever fainter, memories of growing up under a violent dictatorship, and the countless secrets shared around his parents’ kitchen table. Many of these stories were told by the resourceful Natalia, who once worked as a concierge at the Paris hotel where Paul Celan lived and who knows more about Celan’s life and loves than researchers have ever uncovered. With remarkable skill, Schumatsky weaves together his political despair over Russia’s war against Ukraine and the antisemitism on his own doorstep with images from childhood and a deeply personal interpretation of Celan’s life, writing and death.

Sarah Wipauer’s debut novel is a brilliant game of deception involving historical facts, wildly absurd inventions and the secrets hidden beneath the s

What lies beneath a city? In Missing Ghosts, we follow a cunning narrator into Vienna’s legendary network of tunnels. After the Central Cemetery opened in 1874, the system was developed to transport bodies using a pneumatic tube system, and its last ‘passenger’ was allegedly Niki Lauda. And that is only one of the bizarre stories told by Merian, an enigmatic young woman who leads tours through the disused tunnels. But whom should we trust on a journey through the underworld? With a suspicious delight in storytelling and sinister intentions, Merian leads her adventurous—and perhaps slightly too outspoken—visitors into a labyrinth from which not all of them will emerge unscathed …

The moving story of a defiant woman living through difficult times.

In this tender yet realistic book, Peter Henisch sets out in search of his mother, Rosa. Beginning with memories of the turmoil at the end of the war and his childhood in the post-war years, he traces the course of her life. In Search of My Mother interweaves contemporary history with family history, taking the story into the 1980s. Peter Henisch recounts the extraordinary fate of a woman who gradually sought to free herself from her ambivalent relationship with—and dependence on—her husband, a renowned war and press photographer. Written without shying away from taboos, the book is nevertheless a homage.

If the shoe fits, wear it! Not only is the shoe one of humanity’s oldest objects, it is also one of the most versatile.

As a little girl, Rebecca Maria Salentin dreamt of red patent-leather shoes—the very opposite of the hiking boots in which, 40 years later, she became the first woman to complete a solo thru-hike of the 2,700-kilometre International Mountain Friendship Trail. Using the shoes from different stages of her life, she traces the history of footwear: from the earliest Stone Age sandals made from animal hides and plants, through the traditional craft of shoemaking and industrialised mass production. Few objects are as closely intertwined with human history as the shoe. Not only do they protect our feet from dirt, cold and injury, they also reveal our social position, occupation and status. From seven-league boots and high heels to lotus feet, they reflect relations of power and gender.

A brief cultural history of the loo, from chamber pots to heated toilet seats, from outdoor privies to gold taps.

We spend an average of three years on the toilet over the course of our lifetime, yet they are still deeply taboo. Toilets hardly ever appear in films, plays or novels. The French kings used to meet with their ministers while on the pot, while in the nineteenth century there were porters who used to carry mobile WCs on their backs. Quirky and provocative, comical and surprising, Franzobel’s new book tells the story of humanity from the perspective of the gut, while also describing his own very personal connection to the subject: his first loo was a chamber pot, he wrote his early poems on bog roll, and he has familiarised himself with toilets across the world on countless journeys.