In one brilliant adventure over the course of a year, leading historian and nature writer David Gange kayaked the coasts of Atlantic Britain and Ireland from north to south: every cove, sound, inlet, island. Paddling alone in sun and storms, among whales and seabirds, Gange travelled slowly and close to the water as millions did when coasts were the main arteries of trade and communication. He was in search of island archives and the vast poetic literatures of coastal towns, of neglected social histories that unlock our understanding of this archipelago's past and future. In captivating prose and loving detail, this is a history of Britain and Ireland like not other.

Spanning the North Atlantic rim from Canada to Scotland, and from the Caribbean to the coast of West Africa, the British Atlantic world is deeply interconnected across its regions. In this groundbreaking study, thirteen leading scholars explore the idea of transatlanticism--or a shared "Atlantic world" experience--through the lens of architecture, built spaces, and landscapes in the British Atlantic from the seventeenth century through the mid-nineteenth century. Examining town planning, churches, forts, merchants' stores, state houses, and farm houses, this collection shows how the powerful visual language of architecture and design allowed the people of this era to maintain common cultural experiences across different landscapes while still forming their individuality. By studying the interplay between physical construction and social themes that include identity, gender, taste, domesticity, politics, and race, the authors interpret material culture in a way that particularly emphasizes the people who built, occupied, and used the spaces and reflects the complex cultural exchanges between Britain and the New World.

"Timely and urgent...The core of The Edge of Anarchy is a thrilling description of the boycott of Pullman cars and equipment by Eugene Debs’s fledgling American Railway Union..." —The New York Times "During the summer of 1894, the stubborn and irascible Pullman became a central player in what the New York Times called “the greatest battle between labor and capital [ever] inaugurated in the United States.” Jack Kelly tells the fascinating tale of that terrible struggle." —The Wall Street Journal "Pay attention, because The Edge of Anarchy not only captures the flickering Kinetoscopic spirit of one of the great Labor-Capital showdowns in American history, it helps focus today’s great debates over the power of economic concentration and the rights and futures of American workers." —Brian Alexander, author of Glass House "In gripping detail, The Edge of Anarchy reminds us of what a pivotal figure Eugene V. Debs was in the history of American labor... a tale of courage and the steadfast pursuit of principles at great personal risk." —Tom Clavin, New York Times bestselling author of Dodge City The dramatic story of the explosive 1894 clash of industry, labor, and government that shook the nation and marked a turning point for America. The Edge of Anarchy by Jack Kelly offers a vivid account of the greatest uprising of working people in American history. At the pinnacle of the Gilded Age, a boycott of Pullman sleeping cars by hundreds of thousands of railroad employees brought commerce to a standstill across much of the country. Famine threatened, riots broke out along the rail lines. Soon the U.S. Army was on the march and gunfire rang from the streets of major cities. This epochal tale offers fascinating portraits of two iconic characters of the age. George Pullman, who amassed a fortune by making train travel a pleasure, thought the model town that he built for his workers would erase urban squalor. Eugene Debs, founder of the nation’s first industrial union, was determined to wrench power away from the reigning plutocrats. The clash between the two men’s conflicting ideals pushed the country to what the U.S. Attorney General called “the ragged edge of anarchy.” Many of the themes of The Edge of Anarchy could be taken from today’s headlines—upheaval in America’s industrial heartland, wage stagnation, breakneck technological change, and festering conflict over race, immigration, and inequality. With the country now in a New Gilded Age, this look back at the violent conflict of an earlier era offers illuminating perspectives along with a breathtaking story of a nation on the edge.

COLLECTIVE WINNER OF THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE ‘This is the book that has been wanting to be written for decades: the ragged fringe of Britain as a laboratory for the human spirit’ Adam Nicolson

Shortlisted for the 2021 Lakeland Book of the Year. The Fresh and the Salt is a beautifully written natural history of the Solway Firth, one of the largest estuaries in Europe, told through the people whose lives are linked to the firth and the enormous wealth of wildlife that call it home.

Winner of an Eric Gregory Award, 2020 Winner of a Somerset Maugham Award, 2020 'The old Shetland fishermen still speak with something like reverence of the forgotten art of steering by the moder dy (mother wave), the name given to an underswell which it is said always travels in the direction of home' Written in English, interspersed with Shetlandic dialect throughout, this eagerly awaited debut collection from Shetland poet Roseanne Watt contains profound, assured and wilfully spare poems that are built from the sight, sound and heartbeat of the land as much as from the sea. In rigorously controlled, concise, and vivid language Watt offers glimpses of the landscape alongside which we find the most complex and mysterious of human experiences.

A journey by sea along the western coasts of Ireland and Scotland in search of islands, both real and imagined.