Jonathan Cowley

Crossing paths at an inn, thirteenth-century travelers impart the tales of a monastery oblate, a Jewish refugee, and a psychic peasant girl with a loyal greyhound, the three of whom join forces on a chase through France to escape persecution.

Goldacre puts the 600-billion-dollar global pharmaceutical industry under the microscope. What he reveals is a fascinating, terrifying mess.

"Meritocracy: the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their status at birth. For much of history this was a revolutionary thought, but by the end of the twentieth century it had become the world's ruling ideology. How did this happen, and why is meritocracy now under attack from both right and left? Adrian Wooldridge traces the history of meritocracy forged by the politicians and officials who introduced the...

"From the author of the international bestseller Our House, a new novel of twisty domestic suspense asks, "Could you hate your neighbor enough to plot to kill him?" Lowland Way is the suburban dream. The houses are beautiful, the neighbors get along, and the kids play together on weekends. But when Darren and Jodie move into the house on the corner, they don't follow the rules. They blast music at all hours, begin an unsightly renovation, and run...

A new look which fundamentally overturns our understanding of this famously "out of touch" queen. Who was the real Marie-Antoinette? She was mistrusted and reviled in her own time, and today she is portrayed as a lightweight incapable of understanding the events that engulfed her. In this new account, John Hardman redresses the balance and sheds fresh light on Marie-Antoinette's story. Hardman shows how Marie-Antoinette played a significant but misunderstood...

"Why is Chef Anthony Warner so angry? Two words: pseudoscience bullshit. Lies about nutrition are repeated everywhere--in newspaper headlines, on celebrity blogs, even by our well-meaning friends and family. Bad science is no reason to give up good food (we miss you, bread)! It's high time to distinguish fact from crap.. As the Angry Chef, Warner skewers common food myths that range from questionable (“coconut oil is a weight-loss miracle”) to...

"The definitive biography of a banker, essayist, and editor of the Economist, by an acclaimed financial historian. During the upheavals of 2007-9, the chairman of the Federal Reserve had the name of a Victorian icon on the tip of his tongue: Walter Bagehot. Banker, man of letters, inventor of the Treasury bill, and author of Lombard Street, Bagehot prescribed the doctrines that--decades later--inspired the radical responses to the world's worst financial...

November 1932. With the German economy in ruins and street battles raging between rival political parties, the Weimar Republic is on its last legs. In the halls of the Reichstag, party leaders scramble for power and influence as the elderly president, Paul von Hindenburg, presides over a democracy pushed to the breaking point. Chancellors Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher spin a web of intrigue, vainly hoping to harness the growing popularity...

"A biography of J. B. S. Haldane, the brilliant and eccentric British scientist whose innovative predictions inspired Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. J. B. S. Haldane's life was rich and strange, never short on genius or drama-from his boyhood apprenticeship to his scientist father, who first instilled in him a devotion to the scientific method; to his time in the trenches during the First World War, where he wrote his first scientific paper; to...

"More than four billion people--some 60 percent of humanity--live in debilitating poverty, on less than $5 per day. The standard narrative tells us this crisis is a natural phenomenon, having to do with climate, geography, and culture. It tells us all we have to do is give aid to help poor countries up the development ladder. If poor countries would only adopt the right institutions and economic policies, they could join the ranks of the rich world....