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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A sustained attack, Dan Hicks argues, in the form of the weaponisation of civic museums, public art, and even universities. And one that has a deeper history than you might think.

Tracing the origins of contemporary conflicts over art, heritage, memory, and colonialism, Every Monument Will Fall joins the dots between the building of statues, the founding of academic disciplines like archaeology and anthropology, and the warehousing of stolen art and human skulls in museums. Including the one in which he is a curator.

Part history, part biography, part excavation, the story runs from the Yorkshire wolds to the Crimean War, from southern Ireland to the frontline of the American Civil War, from the City of London to the University of Oxford. Revealing enduring legacies of militarism, slavery, racism and white supremacy hardwired into the heart of our cultural institutions. Every Monument Will Fall offers an urgent reappraisal of how we think about culture. And how to find hope, remembrance and reconciliation in the fragments of an unfinished violent past.

Refusing to choose between pulling down every statue, or living in a past that we can never change. The book makes the case for allowing monuments to fall once in a while, even those that are hard to see as monuments, rebuilding a memory culture that is in step with our times.

Every Monument Will Fall : A Story of Remembering and Forgetting – Dan Hicks – 9781804950005

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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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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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The threat to liberal democracy isn’t just autocrats – it’s a lack of effective action by so-called progressives.

We have the means to build an equitable world without hunger, fuelled by clean energy. Instead, we have a politics driven by scarcity, lives defined by unaffordability and public institutions that no longer deliver on big ideas. It’s time for change.

Bestselling authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson have spent decades analysing the political, economic and cultural forces that have led us here. In this once-in-a-generation intervention, they unpick the barriers to progress and show how we can, and must, shift the political agenda to one that not only protects and preserves, but also builds.

From healthcare to housing, infrastructure to innovation, they lay out a path to a future defined not by fear, but by abundance.

Abundance: How We Build a Better Future – Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson – 9781805226062

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If you’re feeling lonely or if you’ve ever felt unseen, if you’re emboldened by solitude or secretly longing for it: Welcome. This cathartic collection of essays illuminates an experience that so few of us openly discuss. Some stories are heartbreaking, such as Jesmyn Ward’s reckoning with the loss of her husband and Dina Nayeri’s reflection on immigrating to a foreign country. Others are witty, such as Lev Grossman’s rueful tale of heading to the woods or Anthony Doerr’s struggles with internet addiction. Still others celebrate the clarity of solitude, like Claire Dederer’s journey toward sobriety and Lidia Yuknavitch’s sensual look at desire. Thoughtful and affirming, The Lonely Stories reveals the complexities of an emotion we’ve all felt–reminding us that we’re not alone.

Contributors include:

• Megan Giddings
• Claire Dederer
• Imani Perry
• Jeffery Renard Allen
• Maggie Shipstead
• Emily Raboteau
• Lev Grossman
• Lena Dunham
• Yiyun Li
• Anthony Doerr
• Helena Fitzgerald
• Maile Meloy
• Aja Gabel
• Jean Kwok
• Amy Shearn
• Peter Ho Davies
• Maya Shanbhag Lang
• Jhumpa Lahiri
• Jesmyn Ward
• Lidia Yuknavitch
• Dina Nayeri
• Melissa Febos

The Lonely Stories : 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone – edited by Natalie Eve Garrett – 9781948226608

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We live in an eerily familiar age. A time of populists and dictators, ideology and dishonesty, racism and political murder. Tank battles are being fought and cities flattened.

Things are falling apart and the centre cannot hold. The 1920s and 1930s are back. Can the cataclysm of the 1940s be far away?The world needs to learn the lessons of those decades.

Urgently. Dennis Glover outlines the story of the interwar years, the warnings of those who spoke out and the lessons now being ignored. If history is repeating, how can make it stop? An urgent, surprising and altogether persuasive read, this book will open your eyes.

‘Like Orwell, of whom he has written so brilliantly, Dennis Glover’s work is charged with courage, intelligence and purpose. He is the complete writer, and one made for our times.’ -Don Watson

Repeat : A Warning from History – Dennis Glover – 9780749033217

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A lively, sharp and thought-provoking exploration of the enduring stereotype of the dangerous single woman in popular culture. From the obsessive ‘bunny boiler’ of Fatal Attraction to the tabloid frenzy over Taylor Swift’s relationship status, Caroline Young explores how single women have so often been portrayed as unstable, dangerous, or incomplete. Blending cultural criticism with her own personal experience, Young examines how these stereotypes have been shaped by broader social trends, including the antifeminist backlash of the 1980s and the current renaissance of the ‘trad-wife’.

Through her analysis of books, movies, and TV shows, she reveals how these narratives reflect deeper anxieties about women’s independence. Engaging, witty, fun and feminist, Single and Psycho is a timely critique of how society views single women – and a celebration of their complexity and resilience.

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In The Slicks, Maggie Nelson positions culture-dominating pop superstar Taylor Swift and feminist cult icon Sylvia Plath as twin hosts of the female urge towards wanting hard, working hard and pouring forth – and as twinned targets of patriarchy’s ancient urge to disparage, trivialise and demonise such prolific, intimate output.

A heady and rallying melding of popular culture and literary criticism, The Slicks is an inspired and unexpected assessment of two iconic female artists by one of the most revered and influential critics of her generation.

The Slicks : On Sylvia Plath and Taylor Swift – Maggie Nelson – 9781911717652

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