THE TIMES NATURE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019!Shortlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize!Shortlisted for the East Anglian Book Award 2019!If you enjoyed Raynor Winn's The Salt Path, Amy Liptrot's The Outrun, Chris Packham's Fingers in the Sparkle Jar or Helen MacDonald's H is for Hawk, you'll love The Easternmost House.Within the next few months, Juliet Blaxland's home will be demolished, and the land where it now stands will crumble into the North Sea. In her numbered days living in the Easternmost House, Juliet fights to maintain the rural ways she grew up with, re-connecting with the beauty, usefulness and erratic terror of the natural world.The Easternmost House is a stunning memoir, describing a year on the Easternmost edge of England, and exploring how we can preserve delicate ecosystems and livelihoods in the face of rapid coastal erosion and environmental change.With photographs and drawings featured throughout, this beautiful little book is a perfect gift for anyone with an interest in sustainability, nature writing or the Suffolk Coast.

The classic nature memoir of Cape Cod in the early twentieth century, “written with simplicity, sympathy, and beauty” (New York Herald Tribune). When Henry Beston returned home from World War I, he sought refuge and healing at a house on the outer beach of Cape Cod. He was so taken by the natural beauty of his surroundings that his two-week stay extended into a yearlong solitary adventure. He spent his time trying to capture in words the wonders of the magical landscape he found himself in thrall to. In The Outermost House, Beston chronicles his experiences observing the migrations of seabirds, the rhythms of the tide, the windblown dunes, and the scatter of stars in the changing summer sky. Beston argued: “The world today is sick to its thin blood for the lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot.” Nearly a century after publication, Beston’s words are more true than ever.

New from the author of The Times nature book of the year 2019The Easternmost Sky describes country life and living with coastal erosion, in the recent past, the present and the relatable future. By exploring how climate and social changes are affecting coastal Suffolk, and zooming out from the local to offer a more global perspective, Juliet Blaxland forecasts with wit and imagination the future we will all have to adapt to, in Britain and across the world.'A joy to read.' -Ben Eagle

A dramatic account of the slave trade in the early 19th century Indian Ocean is presented through the stories of the Omani Sultan Said and his daughter, Princess Salme, offering insight into the Arabian Peninsula kingdom's lucrative growth and ties to America.

The author of The Great Railway Bazaar explores the South Pacific by kayak: “This exhilarating epic ranks with [his] best travel books” (Publishers Weekly). In one of his most exotic and adventuresome journeys, travel writer Paul Theroux embarks on an eighteen-month tour of the South Pacific, exploring fifty-one islands by collapsible kayak. Beginning in New Zealand's rain forests and ultimately coming to shore thousands of miles away in Hawaii, Theroux paddles alone over isolated atolls, through dirty harbors and shark-filled waters, and along treacherous coastlines. Along the way, Theroux meets the king of Tonga, encounters street gangs in Auckland, and investigates a cargo cult in Vanuatu. From Australia to Tahiti, Fiji, Easter Island, and beyond, this exhilarating tropical epic is full of disarming observations and high adventure.

Is Everything You Know Wrong? Set the record straight! Debunk myths! Learn the truth behind fallacies, falsehoods, hearsay, and lies! Isn’t it time you knew the honest-to-goodness truth? We’ve all come to believe hundreds of “false facts”—myths that we’ve blindly accepted as truth, misconceptions that we’ve ignorantly retold to others—Contrary to Popular Belief provides an instant remedy for your pounding head full of misinformation, giving you quick relief with enlightening and entertaining facts. Inside you’ll learn: George Washington was not the first president of the United States. Leap year does not occur every four years. The ostrich does not bury its head in the sand. Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb. Ship captains cannot perform marriages at sea. Sound does not travel at the speed of sound. The needle on a compass does not point to the North Pole. Leonardo da Vinci did not paint the Mona Lisa. And more than two hundred other bits of conventional “wisdom” that are completely bunk.

The forgotten story of Central Asia's enlightenment—its rise, fall, and enduring legacy In this sweeping and richly illustrated history, S. Frederick Starr tells the fascinating but largely unknown story of Central Asia's medieval enlightenment through the eventful lives and astonishing accomplishments of its greatest minds—remarkable figures who built a bridge to the modern world. Because nearly all of these figures wrote in Arabic, they were long assumed to have been Arabs. In fact, they were from Central Asia—drawn from the Persianate and Turkic peoples of a region that today extends from Kazakhstan southward through Afghanistan, and from the easternmost province of Iran through Xinjiang, China. Lost Enlightenment recounts how, between the years 800 and 1200, Central Asia led the world in trade and economic development, the size and sophistication of its cities, the refinement of its arts, and, above all, in the advancement of knowledge in many fields. Central Asians achieved signal breakthroughs in astronomy, mathematics, geology, medicine, chemistry, music, social science, philosophy, and theology, among other subjects. They gave algebra its name, calculated the earth's diameter with unprecedented precision, wrote the books that later defined European medicine, and penned some of the world's greatest poetry. One scholar, working in Afghanistan, even predicted the existence of North and South America—five centuries before Columbus. Rarely in history has a more impressive group of polymaths appeared at one place and time. No wonder that their writings influenced European culture from the time of St. Thomas Aquinas down to the scientific revolution, and had a similarly deep impact in India and much of Asia. Lost Enlightenment chronicles this forgotten age of achievement, seeks to explain its rise, and explores the competing theories about the cause of its eventual demise. Informed by the latest scholarship yet written in a lively and accessible style, this is a book that will surprise general readers and specialists alike.