Over Iran, the sky is falling in. The US-Israeli bombardment has begun: there are bodies beneath the rubble. The Ayatollah is dead. The guards have abandoned the prisons. The rain is black with fuel; it burns the skin and the streets. In this searing and contemplative work, writer, academic and Tehran resident Raha Nik-Andish documents life in the Islamic Republic in the days and months leading up to « Operation Epic Fury. » In a rarely-seen portrait of a regime in freefall, this is Tehran on the brink; the crushed protests over the collapse of the currency; the taxicabs circling the city for work; the burned out garbage cans and the taped-up windows.

Piercing, poignant and delicately observed, this is the vital story of a city at the end of the world – and an act of witness against darkness.

Tehran Diaries : Dispatches from Iran under Siege – Raha Nik-Andish – 9781806491582

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In the year following 7 October 2023, Samar Yazbek met with hundreds of survivors from Gaza, asking each of them about their experiences of that day and the months of destruction and displacement that followed. Adapted from warning flyers dropped moments before a bombing, the book’s title captures the impossible reality of life for Gazans.

That reality is laid bare in accounts marked by unimaginable loss – homes shattered, loved ones vanished, limbs obliterated – and mechanisms of cruelty that defy comprehension. In gathering these testimonies, Yazbek brings into focus the human lives behind the headlines, and the survivors’ determination, even amid devastation, to speak and to be heard.

Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life : Voices from Gaza – Samar Yazbek – 9781804272411

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Humans on Mars within our lifetimes. This isn’t science fiction. It’s astropolitics.

We’re entering a new space race – and it could revolutionise life on Earth. Space: the new frontier, a wild and lawless place. It is already central to communication, economics, military strategy and international relations on Earth.

Now, it is the latest arena for human exploration, exploitation – and, possibly, conquest. We’re heading up and out, and we’re taking our power struggles with us. China, the USA and Russia are leading the way.

From physical territory and resources to satellites, weaponry and strategic choke points, geopolitics is as important in the skies above us as it is down below. If you’ve ever wondered if humans are going back to the Moon, who will benefit from exploration or what space wars might look like, the answers are here. With all the insight and wit that have made Tim Marshall the UK’s most popular writer on geopolitics, this gripping book shows how we got here and where we’re going, covering great-power rivalry; technology; commerce; combat in space; and what it means for all of us down here on Earth.

This is essential reading on power, politics and the future of humanity.

The Future of Geography : How Power and Politics in Space Will Change Our World – Tim Marshall – 9781783967247

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In a country where hard work and determination are supposed to lead to success, there is something scandalous about this phrase. But skyrocketing rents, low wages, and a lack of tenant rights have produced a startling phenomenon: People with full-time jobs cannot keep a roof over their head. Especially in America’s booming cities, where rapid growth is leading to catastrophic displacement. These families are being forced into homelessness not by a failing economy but a thriving one.

In this gripping and deeply reported book, Brian Goldstone plunges readers into the lives of five Atlanta families struggling to remain housed in a gentrifying, increasingly unequal city. Maurice and Natalia make a fresh start in the country’s « Black Mecca » after being priced out of DC. Kara dreams of starting her own cleaning business while mopping floors at a public hospital. Britt scores a coveted housing voucher. Michelle is in school to become a social worker. Celeste toils at her warehouse job while undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer. Each of them aspires to provide a decent life for their children. End each of them, one by one, joins the ranks of the nation’s working homeless.

Through intimate, novelistic portraits, Goldstone reveals the human cost of this crisis, following parents and their kids as they go to sleep in cars. Or, in squalid extended-stay hotel rooms, and head out to their jobs and schools the next morning. These are the nation’s hidden homeless. Omitted from official statistics, and proof that overflowing shelters and street encampments are only the most visible manifestation of a far more pervasive problem.

There Is No Place for Us illuminates the true magnitude, causes, and consequences of the new American homelessness. And shows that it won’t be solved until housing is treated as a fundamental human right. By turns heartbreaking and urgent.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NON FICTION.

There Is No Place for Us : Working and Homeless in America – Brian Goldstone – 9780593237168

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The United States and Iran have been locked in a decades-long standoff, fueled by missteps, misunderstandings, and clashing ambitions. In these pages a leading Iranian expert clarifies the dynamics driving a conflict that has devastated the Middle East and destabilized the world.

Behrooz Ghamari explores the history of US intervention in the region, focusing on the continuing sanctions imposed on Iran and, behind them, US policymakers’ persistent perception of the Islamic Republic as a major obstacle to American power. Despite the repressive policies of the Iranian state, he contends, Iranian society has remained vibrant with active intellectual, cultural, and social justice movements. The roots of US-Iranian rivalry lie elsewhere.

Challenging the conventional image of Iran as a monolithic totalitarian regime, this timely study calls for a more informed, nuanced approach to Middle East diplomacy.

The Long War on Iran : New Events, Old Questions – Behrooz Ghamari – 9781682196717

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Jina Mahsa Amini’s death at the hands of Iran’s Morality Police on 16 September 2022 sparked widespread protests across the country.

Women took to the streets, uncovering their hair, burning headscarves and chanting ‘Woman Life Freedom’ – ‘Zan Zendegi Azadi’ in Persian and ‘Jin Jîyan Azadî’ in Kurdish – in mass demonstrations. An explosion of creative resistance followed as art and photography shared online went viral. People around the world saw what was really going on in Iran.

This striking collection captures this historic moment in artwork and first-person accounts. It goes behind the scenes at forbidden fashion shows. It records the sound of dissent in Iran where it is illegal for women to sing unaccompanied in public. And walks the streets of Tehran with ‘The Smarties’ – Gen Z women who colour and show their hair in defiance of the authorities, despite the potentially devastating consequences.

Extolling the power of art, writing and body politics – both female and queer – this collection is a universal rallying call. And a celebration of the women the regime has tried and failed to silence.

This is what protest looks like.

Woman Life Freedom : Voices and Art from the Women’s Protests in Iran – edited by Malu Halasa – 9780863569722

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In early 2024, writer and activist susan abulhawa managed to enter Gaza twice through the Rafah crossing. There, at the Culture and Free Thought Association, susan held a series of workshops for young people who had been displaced to tent encampments. The lives of all participants were marked by unrelenting Israeli violence and extraordinary loss–of home, family, safety, education, electricity, and all the structures of life. They’d fled from place to place as Israel’s colonial violence swirled around them, complete with food and water insecurity and constant threat. Still, despite the bitterness of life in tents and the dangers of travel, they came together to share in the refuge of writing and community.

Samya recounts a tender moment with an old man mending shoes in the street, while her cousin Saja hides books in her closet, hoping they and her home will still be there when she returns. Ghassan is haunted by the baby he rescued from the rubble, who for a time became his son. Fatima risks it all retrieve her clothes from a danger zone buzzing with drones and warplanes. Maram’s loving aunt is gone, and chaos inhabits Amr’s mind. Samah, Lubna, Rizq, and Nebal take us by the hand through raining death, trails of tears, classroom shelters, and shared clothes in crowded tents.

Every Moment Is a Life delivers rare, unfiltered portraits of life under genocide, platforming the emerging voices struggling to survive in Gaza today. These essays are raw and real, capturing human moments–buying bread, going to the bathroom, sharing a meal, drinking coffee–all set against the backdrop of history’s first livestreamed ethnic cleansing. With courage, anger, love, agony, and–impossibly–hope, these achingly tender voices from Gaza will stay with us, captured in these pages, forever.

Every Moment Is a Life : Gaza in the Time of Genocide – Huzama Habayeb – edited by susan abulhawa – 9781668222362

*All proceeds go to the contributors in Gaza and to Palestine Writes Literature Festival.

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With the Soviet Union extinct, Saddam Hussein defeated and US power at its zenith, the early 1990s promised a ‘kinder, gentler America’. It didn’t work out that way. Instead, it was a period of punishing economic hardship, rising anger and domestic strife, setting the tone for the polarization and resurgent extremism we know today.

In this original and often hilarious book, John Ganz narrates the fall of the Reagan order and the rise of a new kind of paranoid politics: how a group of con men and conspiracists declared a culture war on liberal elites, rejected ‘globalism’ and called for a ‘populist based presidency’. A rollicking exposé of the end of the post-World War II order, this book shows the advent of a new, more berserk America.

When the Clock Broke : Con Men, Conspiracists and the Origins of Trumpism – John Ganz – 9781405981699

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Borowitz argues that over the past fifty years, American politicians have grown increasingly allergic to knowledge, and mass media have encouraged the election of ignoramuses by elevating candidates who are better at performing than thinking. Starting with Ronald Reagan’s first campaign for governor of California in 1966 and culminating with the election of Donald J. Trump to the White House, Borowitz shows how, during the age of twenty-four-hour news and social media, the US has elected politicians to positions of great power whose lack of the most basic information is terrifying. In addition to Reagan, Quayle, Bush, Palin, and Trump, Borowitz covers a host of congresspersons, senators, and governors who have helped lower the bar over the past five decades.

Profiles in Ignorance aims to make us both laugh and cry: laugh at the idiotic antics of these public figures, and cry at the cataclysms these icons of ignorance have caused. But most importantly, the book delivers a call to action and a cause for optimism: History doesn’t move in a straight line, and we can change course if we act now.

Profiles in Ignorance : How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber – Andy Borowitz – 9781668003893

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In early October 2023, Plestia Alaqad was a recent graduate with dreams of becoming a journalist.

By the end of that November, she would be internationally known as the ‘Eyes of Gaza’, moving millions with her social media posts depicting daily life in Gaza amid Israel’s deadly invasion and bombardment. Written as a series of diary extracts, these texts relates the horrors of Plestia’s experiences, while showcasing the indomitable spirit of the men, women and children of her community.

From the heart of the turmoil, surrounded by falling bombs and widespread devastation, she captures their emotions; their gentle acts of quiet, necessary heroism; and the moments of unexpected tenderness and vulnerability amid the chaos. Through the raw honesty and vulnerability of a normal twenty-one-year-old woman navigating a human tragedy.

Shortlisted for the Westminster Book Awards 2025

‘[A] joyful, tragic account of life in Gaza’ – Miriam Margolyes‘Left me both devastated and inspired’ – Macklemore

The Eyes of Gaza : A Diary of Resilience – Plestia Alaqad – 9781035070275

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