From angry shareholders to concerned chief executives, almost everyone knows at a gut level that the present political system is not working. This book finds the root cause to be poor corporate governance. In the prequel to this book, The Emperor’s Nightingale, Robert A. G. Monks, one of the world’s foremost shareholder activists, had warned corporations against putting short-profit ahead of long-term value for all stakeholders. Few listened – and the result was system-wide trauma that only bold solutions can heal. In The Emperor’s Nightmare, his latest book, Monks reveals what can happen when corporate leadership abandons the common good to court and conquer a powerful elite. This insightful, honest, and direct portrayal of corporate governance and the surrounding political system will be of immense value to those interested in corporate governance – particularly shareholder and stakeholder advocates, and the true corporate leaders who serve them. In the end, better corporate governance means better democracy. This book shows the way.

'Dreams are products of the mind, and do not come from any external source' Artemidorus' The Interpretation of Dreams (Oneirocritica) is the richest and most vivid pre-Freudian account of dream interpretation, and the only dream-book to have survived complete from Graeco-Roman times. Written in Greek around AD 200, when dreams were believed by many to offer insight into future events, the work is a compendium of interpretations of dreams on a wide range of subjects relating to the natural, human, and divine worlds. It includes the meanings of dreams about the body, sex, eating and drinking, dress, the weather, animals, the gods, and much else. Artemidorus' technique of dream interpretation stresses the need to know the background of the dreamer, such as occupation, health, status, habits, and age, and the work is a fascinating social history, revealing much about ancient life, culture, and beliefs, and attitudes to the dominant power of Imperial Rome. Martin Hammond's fine translation is accompanied by a lucid introduction and explanatory notes by Peter Thonemann, which assist the reader in understanding this important work, which was an influence on both Sigmund Freud and Michel Foucault.

The Emperor's most trusted guardians fight beside his elite witch-hunters to defend the Golden Throne. The Custodian Guard have stood watch over the Emperor's Palace on Terra since the foundation of the Imperium. Charged with protecting the Master of Mankind from all threats, within and without, their fearsome resolve is renowned throughout the galaxy, and their golden armour is the last thing that a would-be assassin or saboteur will ever see. Alongside the Null-maidens of the Sisters of Silence, who are anathema to psykers and sorcerers alike, there is no threat to the Golden Throne that they alone cannot vanquish... until now.

Ever since he could remember, 17-year-old Eloik MacMillan has suffered terrifyingly real nightmares. Tormented and guilt-ridden by his fears, teased and bullied by his peers, Eloik wants nothing more than to be left alone... But he will unwittingly go from outsider to insider to play a key role in an epic battle which will determine the ultimate fate of the universe. With his newfound Dreamrider friends Janika, Dylan and Nilianna, he must now confront Küwürsha, the Queen of Nightmares, Widow-with-a-Thousand-Faces, whose relentless goal is to rule supreme over the dream world and the unconscious mind. If she succeeds, it will be the end of humankind... Are our dreams an escape from reality or are they a bridge to a completely different universe? The Dreamer's Awakening spans this great divide, shedding light on vastly unexplored worlds beyond our consciousness.

As war splits the galaxy, the Emperor toils in the vaults beneath the Imperial Palace. But his great work is in peril, and the forces of Chaos are closing in… While Horus’ rebellion burns across the galaxy, a very different kind of war rages beneath the Imperial Palace. The ‘Ten Thousand’ Custodian Guard, along with the Sisters of Silence and the Mechanicum forces of Fabricator General Kane, fight to control the nexus points of the ancient eldar webway that lie closest to Terra, infested by daemonic entities after Magnus the Red’s intrusion. But with traitor legionaries and corrupted Battle Titans now counted among the forces of Chaos, the noose around the Throneworld is tightening, and none but the Emperor Himself can hope to prevail.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Best Books of 2023: New Yorker, The Economist, Smithsonian Most Anticipated Books of Fall: Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, TODAY, Literary Hub, and Publishers Weekly "A vivid way to re-examine what we know, and don’t, about life at the top.... Emperor of Rome is a masterly group portrait, an invitation to think skeptically but not contemptuously of a familiar civilization." —Kyle Harper, Wall Street Journal A sweeping account of the social and political world of the Roman emperors by “the world’s most famous classicist” (Guardian). In her international bestseller SPQR, Mary Beard told the thousand-year story of ancient Rome, from its slightly shabby Iron Age origins to its reign as the undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean. Now, drawing on more than thirty years of teaching and writing about Roman history, Beard turns to the emperors who ruled the Roman Empire, beginning with Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BCE) and taking us through the nearly three centuries—and some thirty emperors—that separate him from the boy-king Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE). Yet Emperor of Rome is not your typical chronological account of Roman rulers, one emperor after another: the mad Caligula, the monster Nero, the philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Instead, Beard asks different, often larger and more probing questions: What power did emperors actually have? Was the Roman palace really so bloodstained? What kind of jokes did Augustus tell? And for that matter, what really happened, for example, between the emperor Hadrian and his beloved Antinous? Effortlessly combining the epic with the quotidian, Beard tracks the emperor down at home, at the races, on his travels, even on his way to heaven. Along the way, Beard explores Roman fictions of imperial power, overturning many of the assumptions that we hold as gospel, not the least of them the perception that emperors one and all were orchestrators of extreme brutality and cruelty. Here Beard introduces us to the emperor’s wives and lovers, rivals and slaves, court jesters and soldiers, and the ordinary people who pressed begging letters into his hand—whose chamber pot disputes were adjudicated by Augustus, and whose budgets were approved by Vespasian, himself the son of a tax collector. With its finely nuanced portrayal of sex, class, and politics, Emperor of Rome goes directly to the heart of Roman fantasies (and our own) about what it was to be Roman at its richest, most luxurious, most extreme, most powerful, and most deadly, offering an account of Roman history as it has never been presented before.

The fascinating story of the Austrian, German and Russian imperial families during the four years of the First World War and the political and personal struggles that brought about their ruin