Icon Books is an independent British publisher which publishes popular and engaging non-fiction for adults. We're proud to be part of the Independent Alliance in the UK, publishing companies who share a common vision of editorial excellence and original, diverse publishing. This ebook sampler – available free on Kindle, in EPUB and as a PDF download from our website – covers subjects from popular science to sports biography to philosophy. The sampler includes extracts from: Atomic by Jim Baggott; Crashed & Byrned by Tommy Byrne; Fordlandia by Greg Grandin; God's Philosophers by James Hannam; The Lives and Times of the Great Composers by Michael Steen; Love, Sex, Death and Words by John Sutherland and Stephen Fender; A Mind of Its Own by Cordelia Fine; Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Woolf; Quantum by Manjit Kumar; Sex, Botany and Empire by Patricia Fara; The Real Oliver Twist and A Time to Dance, A Time to Die by John Waller. From Proust and the Squid, a fascinating exploration of the science of the reading brain – 'We were never born to read,' begins Maryanne Wolf – to Greg Grandin's Fordlandia, the riveting story of the American town Henry Ford tried to build in the Brazilian Amazon and Manjit Kumar's BBC Samuel Johnson prizewinning Quantum, these books represent the best of over 20 years of non?fiction publishing from Icon Books.

This is a vivid and personal account of 21st century banking excess. "How I Caused the Credit Crunch" traces seven years at the forefront of the credit markets - a tale from the heart of the bewildering banking maelstrom whose catastrophic collapse has plunged the world towards the worst recession since the 1930s. Tetsuya Ishikawa's story reveals how a young Oxford graduate finds himself in command of vast sums of other people's money; how a novice to the mysteries of hedge funds, subprime mortgages and CDOs can fix complex deals for billions of dollars in the exclusive bars, brothels and trading floors of London, New York, Frankfurt and Tokyo, and reap the benefits in a colossal annual bonus and an international luxury lifestyle. Ishikawa's book, which deftly explains the arcane financial instruments now grimly associated with the credit crunch, is both a powerful tale of lost innocence and an expose of the disturbing truth of the collective folly, frailty and greed at the heart of the banking crisis.

This tech could change everything for women - here's how. From periods and childbirth to menopause, female pain has been normalized, as society shrugs and says 'welcome to being a woman' instead of coming up with better solutions. But it doesn't have to be this way. In The Vagina Business, award-winning journalist Marina Gerner takes an eye-opening look at the innovators challenging the status quo to deliver the healthcare solutions women need. With interviews from 100 entrepreneurs, researchers and investors across 15 countries, The Vagina Business explores the future of women's health, where female-focused companies are developing products to help women at every stage of life. From a life-saving bra to non-hormonal contraception and new takes on fertility and menopause, it shines a light on innovation that matters. Women should not be denied solutions to health issues just because people are embarrassed to talk about vaginas. We deserve much better.

This Practical Guide shows you how raising your self-esteem can make you feel better about yourself; let you stop you worrying about whether you are doing the right thing or whether you are good enough; help you engage in relationships constructively without putting yourself down and allow you to assert yourself effectively in all situations. Self-esteem has been shown to be a key indicator of success in life and in the work place. Filled with straightforward, practical advice, this guide shows you how to improve your self-esteem and stop worrying about what other people think.

Can someone's life be predicted? Are physicists on the verge of discovering the first time machine? And why does a Nobel prize-winning scientist believe that humans are capable of sensing danger before it happens? Following a prediction of his sister's death, William Little sets out to find the truth about the power of fortune telling and prophecy. On a journey that takes him to a witches' coven in a haunted wood, on the hunt for murderers with psychic detectives and to the doorsteps of the world's most powerful and revered psychics, William Little goes on a quest to find out whether people can see into the future - or if the many millions who consult horoscopes, listen to psychics on TV, or who read Nostradamus are simply being sold a lie.

Brilliant illustrated guide to the best-known and most controversial continental philosopher of the latter 20th century. Jacques Derrida is the most famous philosopher of the late 20th century. Yet Derrida has undermined the rules of philosophy, rejected its methods, broken its procedures and contaminated it with literary styles of writing. Derrida's philosophy is a puzzling array of oblique, deviant and yet rigorous tactics for destabilizing texts, meanings and identities. 'Deconstruction', as these strategies have been called, is reviled and celebrated in equal measure. Introducing Derrida introduces and explains his work, taking us on an intellectual adventure that disturbs some of our most comfortable habits of thought.

A Guardian Book of the Day 'By telling the story of Putin and Berezovsky - a sort of modern reincarnation of Stalin and Trotsky - Knight shines a penetrating light on post-communist Russia' In The Kremlin's Noose Amy Knight tells the riveting story of Vladimir Putin and the oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who forged a relationship in the early years of the Yeltsin era. Berezovsky later played a crucial role in Putin's rise to the Russian presidency in March 2000. When Putin began dismantling Boris Yeltsin's democratic reforms, Berezovsky came into conflict with the new Russian leader by reproaching him publicly. Their relationship quickly disintegrated into a bitter feud played out against the backdrop of billion-dollar financial deals, Kremlin in-fighting and international politics. Dubbed the 'Godfather of the Kremlin' by the slain Russian-American journalist Paul Klebnikov, Berezovsky was a successful businessman and media mogul who had an outsized role in Russia after 1991. Worth a reported $3 billion by 1997, Berezovsky engineered the re-election of Yeltsin as president in 1996 and negotiated an end to the 1995-96 Chechen war. Despite his own wealth, power and influence, once he became Putin's enemy, Berezovsky was forced into exile in Britain, where he waged a determined campaign to topple Putin. Kremlin authorities responded with bogus criminal charges and demanded Berezovsky's extradition. Death threats soon followed. In March 2013, after losing a British court battle with another Russian oligarch, Berezovsky was found dead at his ex-wife's mansion outside London. Whether he died from suicide or murder remains a mystery. The Kremlin's Noose sheds crucial new light on the Kremlin's volatile politics under Yeltsin and Putin, helping us understand why democracy in Russia failed so badly. Knight provides a fascinating narrative of Putin's rise to power and his authoritarian rule, told through the prism of his relationship with Russia's once most powerful oligarch, Boris Berezovsky.