Asking questions about human motivation and living and reaching some conclusions, this book aims to be at the heart of things we see and do and the subjects that bedevil us: from parenting to crime, sport to politics, fat to cheating, fear to traffic jams.

Addressing economics, fascism, history, socialism and the Holocaust, Hayek unwraps the trappings of socialist ideology. The Road to Serfdom remains one of the all-time classics of twentieth-century intellectual thought.

This work abandons the conventional distinctions between history and science. Diamond focuses on what ancient people were endowed with in the way of land, animals and plants, and on the confrontations between less and more advanced people to see how this led to today's inequalities.

A brilliant survey of the history and civilisations of the Middle East by one of the world's greatest authorities on the subject

A controversial study, first published in 1973, of the economic structure of the western world. Schumacher maintains that man's current pursuit of profit and progress has resulted in gross economic inefficiency, environmental pollution and inhumane working conditions.