A history of one of the world's deadliest diseases traces the influence of the smallpox plague on the course of human civilization, describes Jenner's creation of a vaccine against it and the World Health Organization's global efforts to eradicate it, and examines the dangers it still poses today as

In this provocative, wide-ranging book, Against the Grain, Richard Manning offers a dramatically revisionist view of recent human evolution, beginning with the vast increase in brain size that set us apart from our primate relatives and brought an accompanying increase in our need for nourishment. For 290,000 years, we managed to meet that need as hunter-gatherers, a state in which Manning believes we were at our most human: at our smartest, strongest, most sensually alive. But our reliance on food made a secure supply deeply attractive, and eventually we embarked upon the agricultural experiment that has been the history of our past 10,000 years. The evolutionary road is littered with failed experiments, however, and Manning suggests that agriculture as we have practiced it runs against both our grain and nature's. Drawing on the work of anthropologists, biologists, archaeologists, and philosophers, along with his own travels, he argues that not only our ecological ills-overpopulation, erosion, pollution-but our social and emotional malaise are rooted in the devil's bargain we made in our not-so-distant past. And he offers personal, achievable ways we might re-contour the path we have taken to resurrect what is most sustainable and sustaining in our own nature and the planet's.

We are well aware of the rise of the 1% as the rapid growth of economic inequality has put the majority of the world’s wealth in the pockets of fewer and fewer. One much-discussed solution to this imbalance is to significantly increase the rate at which we tax the wealthy. But with an enormous amount of the world’s wealth hidden in tax havens—in countries like Switzerland, Luxembourg, and the Cayman Islands—this wealth cannot be fully accounted for and taxed fairly. No one, from economists to bankers to politicians, has been able to quantify exactly how much of the world’s assets are currently hidden—until now. Gabriel Zucman is the first economist to offer reliable insight into the actual extent of the world’s money held in tax havens. And it’s staggering. In The Hidden Wealth of Nations, Zucman offers an inventive and sophisticated approach to quantifying how big the problem is, how tax havens work and are organized, and how we can begin to approach a solution. His research reveals that tax havens are a quickly growing danger to the world economy. In the past five years, the amount of wealth in tax havens has increased over 25%—there has never been as much money held offshore as there is today. This hidden wealth accounts for at least $7.6 trillion, equivalent to 8% of the global financial assets of households. Fighting the notion that any attempts to vanquish tax havens are futile, since some countries will always offer more advantageous tax rates than others, as well the counter-argument that since the financial crisis tax havens have disappeared, Zucman shows how both sides are actually very wrong. In The Hidden Wealth of Nations he offers an ambitious agenda for reform, focused on ways in which countries can change the incentives of tax havens. Only by first understanding the enormity of the secret wealth can we begin to estimate the kind of actions that would force tax havens to give up their practices. Zucman’s work has quickly become the gold standard for quantifying the amount of the world’s assets held in havens. In this concise book, he lays out in approachable language how the international banking system works and the dangerous extent to which the large-scale evasion of taxes is undermining the global market as a whole. If we are to find a way to solve the problem of increasing inequality, The Hidden Wealth of Nations is essential reading.

This is a lavishly illustrated and highly detailed account of one of the most elegant and deadly aircraft to see service during World War 2. Designed and built in the late 1930s, originally as a civilian airliner to compete with the American DC-2 and DC-3, the Fw 200 grabbed the international stage when it broke the record for flying non-stop from Berlin to New York in August 1938. However, it is for its role as a maritime strike aircraft in World War 2 that the Fw 200 gained its reputation as the 'Scourge of the Atlantic'. The heavily armed Condor was equipped with a formidable array of bombs, 1000 kg air mines, Hs 293 guided missiles, as well as the latest radio equipment and search radars. It inflicted a massive toll on Allied convoys and merchant shipping over the North Atlantic between 1940 and 1943. As the war progressed and despite the fact that the Allies devised methods to increase convoy defence, the Condor soldiered on, latterly operating supply missions from bases in Norway in October 1944. The author, a renowned aviation specialist, has uncovered unique and unpublished material on this most revered aircraft of the Luftwaffe that will appeal to modellers and historians alike. The book will also feature the lesser-known use of the Fw 200 by the Spanish, as well as Focke-Wulf Condors in Soviet and South American colours. This is the most thorough and dedicated history of the only four-engined, long-range aircraft in service with the Luftwaffe during World War 2.