Icon Books July - December 2023

Biomimetics

How Lessons From Nature Can Transform Technology

BRIAN CLEGG

An exploration of the transformative ways in which nature has inspired the technological advancement of humankind

Biomimetics literally means emulating biology – and in a broader sense the term covers technological advances where the original inspiration came from nature. The Earth is a vast laboratory where the mechanisms of natural selection have enabled evolutionary solutions to be developed to a wide range of problems.

In this new title in the Hot Science series, science writer Brian Clegg looks at how humans have piggybacked on natural experimentation, redeploying a solution to create things that make our lives easier. He looks at how the hooks on burdock seeds inspired the creation of Velcro, how the stickiness of the feet of geckos and frogs has been used to create gripping surfaces, such as tyre treads, and how even the most basic optical enhancement in the form of spectacles is itself a form of biomimetics.

New for Icon’s Hot Science series which seeks – as with Bill McGuire’s recent bestselling Hothouse Earth –to explain the cutting edge of science and technology for a curious lay audience

Territory:

BRIAN CLEGG’S many books include Dice World and A Brief History of Infinity, both longlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize, and, most recently, Ten Days in Physics That Shook the World.

Short Cuts: Philosophy

Navigate Your Way Through Big Ideas

LAURA D’OLIMPIO

What is knowledge? What makes me, me? Do we have free will?

Short Cuts: Philosophy provides the map you need to travel beyond traditional foundations and explore a diverse array of deep thinkers. Soulsearching questions prompt ‘short cut’ answers written by experts in their field, with each one the setting-off point for instructions that plot a path through the philosophical landscape.

With ‘one-stop’ graphics visualizing a memorable theory or idea for each concept, and ‘route map’ glossaries explaining key words and their connections, Short Cuts: Philosophy will help you wrestle with the meaning of ancient and modern philosophical thought.

LAURA D’OLIMPIO is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Education at the University of Birmingham and adjunct at the Institute for Ethics and Society at the University of Notre Dame Australia.

The Orwell Tour

Travels through the Life and Work of George Orwell

OLIVER LEWIS

A travelogue exploring the life and work of George Orwell through the places he lived, worked and wrote

Following in the footsteps of his literary hero, researcher and historian Oliver Lewis set out to visit all the places to have inspired and been lived in by George Orwell.

Over three years he travelled from Wigan to Catalonia, Paris to Motihari, Marrakesh to Eton, and in each location explored both how Orwell experienced the place, and how the place now remembers him as a literary icon.

Beginning in Northern India, where Orwell was born in 1903, and ending in the Oxfordshire village of Sutton Courtenay, where he was laid to rest in 1950, The Orwell Tour offers an accessible and informative new biography of Orwell through the lens of place.

A deft combination of travel, history and literary criticism from a well-established Orwell expert

OLIVER LEWIS is a researcher, historian and a visiting lecturer at SciencesPo in Paris, where he teaches on the life and work of George Orwell. He lives in Montgomery, Powys, on the border between England and Wales. This is his first book.

Territory: World

Translation rights: Icon Books/Marsh Agency

Raising Raffi

A Book about Fatherhood (For People Who Would Never Read Such a Book)

KEITH GESSEN

A very funny, moving and profound examination of the state of fatherhood

Keith Gessen had always assumed that he would have kids, but couldn’t imagine what parenthood would be like, nor what kind of parent he would be. Then, one Tuesday night in early June, Raffi was born, a child as real and complex and demanding of his parents’ energy as he was singularly magical.

Written over the first five years of Raffi’s life, Raising Raffi examines the profound, overwhelming, often maddening experience of being a dad. How do you instil in your child a sense of his heritage without passing on that history’s darker sides? Is parental anger normal, possibly useful, or is it inevitably destructive? And what do you do, in a pandemic, when the whole world seems to fall apart? By turns hilarious and poignant, Raising Raffi is a story of what it means to invent the world anew.

‘A wise, mild and enviably lucid book about a chaotic scene’ New York Times

‘Memoirs of fatherhood are rarely so honest or so blunt’ Atlantic

‘Raising Raffi is tender and generous’ New York magazine

KEITH GESSEN was born in Moscow in 1975 and came to the United States with his family when he was six years old. He is a co-founder of the literary magazine n+1 and the author of the novels All the Sad Young Literary Men and A Terrible Country. He has translated or co-translated several books from Russian, including Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich. He lives in New York.

Territory: World

George

Russell A Biography

JAMES GRAY

From James Gray, author of the bestselling Max Verstappen, comes the very first biography of Lewis Hamilton’s designated successor George Russell, published to mark the British Grand Prix

From dominating the karting tracks of East Anglia to the top of the podium in Formula 3 and Formula 2, George Russell has now fully established himself as a rising Formula 1 star. After cutting his teeth as a driver with Williams, in 2022 he signed a lucrative contract with Mercedes, highlighting the extent of his raw talent.

Sports journalist and author of Max Verstappen James Gray traces how George Russell has been setting the racing track alight since the age of seven and how he is now destined to become the successor to the crown of British motor racing.

JAMES GRAY is a national newspaper journalist and broadcaster with nearly a decade of experience. Starting with the Daily Express, a title with a long history of motor racing coverage, he has spent most of his career covering Formula 1, tennis, boxing and a host of other sports, now writing for the i newspaper. His first book Max Verstappen was published in 2021.

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Territory: World • Translation rights: Icon Books/Marsh Agency

Charles Leclerc

A Biography

ADAM HAY-NICHOLLS

From acclaimed journalist Adam HayNicholls, the very first biography of rising Formula 1 star Charles Leclerc

Few of the drivers on the F1 grid have the racing pedigree of Charles Leclerc. Now firmly established as Ferrari’s great hope, following in the footsteps of legends Alberto Ascari, Niki Lauda and Michael Schumacher, Leclerc has his eyes set on becoming world champion.

Born in Monaco to a family of comparatively modest means, Leclerc remembers playing with toy cars on a friend’s balcony as the best drivers in the world whizzed around the Monte Carlo circuit on the streets below. This early experience inspired him to get behind the wheel, and so began his meteoric rise in the sport.

Writer Adam Hay-Nicholls provides the inside track on this rising star, recounting how he has taken the racing world by storm.

The very first biography of rising Formula 1 star Charles Leclerc from the F1 correspondent for the UK’s Metro newspaper

ADAM HAY-NICHOLLS has worked in Formula 1 as a journalist since 2005. He has been the F1 correspondent for the UK’s Metro newspaper since 2006, and additionally writes about cars and luxury travel for titles which include GQ, Country Life, Sunday Telegraph and The Sunday Times Magazine.

Lando Norris

A Biography BEN HUNT

From established sports journalist Ben Hunt, the very first biography of the up-andcoming British driver Lando Norris

As the youngest ever British Formula 1 driver, Lando Norris is trailblazing his way through the world of motor racing. After signing for McLaren in 2017, he has since asserted himself as the team’s brightest talent.

Lando’s childhood reflects how even the calmest of upbringings can create an adrenaline junkie. As one of a new cohort of young drivers seeking to assert their dominance in the sport, Lando is a uniquely modern sportsman, but who nonetheless has the killer instinct to take him to the pinnacle of F1.

In Lando Norris, journalist Ben Hunt seeks to understand what makes Lando tick and examines how this young British driver has been raised in the mould of a champion.

The first biography of young British Formula 1 wunderkind Lando Norris from the Formula 1 lead at the Sun newspaper

In a twenty-year career, BEN HUNT has written for every major national in the UK. He is now the Formula 1 lead at the Sun. He has worked in motor sport for eleven years (across disciplines), as well as covering Ryder Cups, Ashes tests and snooker championships.

Saving Freud

A Life in Vienna and an Escape to Freedom in London

ANDREW NAGORSKI

The dramatic true story of Sigmund Freud’s last-minute escape to London following the German annexation of Austria, and the group of friends who made it possible.

March 1938: German soldiers are massing on the Austrian border, on the cusp of fulfilling Hitler’s dream of absorbing the country into the Third Reich. Many Jews make frantic plans to flee to safety. But one of the most famous men in the world, unable to contemplate leaving his beloved Vienna, is not among them. His name is Sigmund Freud.

In examining the histories of both Freud and his closest circle, Andrew Nagorski brilliantly evokes the story of Europe in the first half of the Twentieth Century. This is a tale of a great city, a collapsing empire, a rising terror – and of a man who would change the way we think.

‘Astonishing... In the American journalist Andrew Nagorski this tale has found its ideal narrator’ Sunday Times

‘[A] thrilling book, as edge-of-your-seat gripping as any heist movie’ Guardian Book of the Day

‘A gripping masterpiece’ Freud Museum London

ANDREW NAGOSKI was born in Scotland to Polish parents, moved to the United States as an infant and has rarely stopped moving since, serving as Newsweek’s bureau chief in Hong Kong, Moscow, Rome, Bonn, Warsaw, and Berlin. He is the author of seven previous critically acclaimed books, including Hitlerland and The Nazi Hunters. He now lives in St Augustine, Florida, and continues to write for numerous publications.

Territory:

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rights: Simon & Schuster

Tony Carr

A Lifetime in Football at West Ham United

TONY CARR

The autobiography of a West Ham legend – including exclusive interviews with Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Michael Carrick, Joe Cole and Mark Noble

Tony Carr is one of the most influential coaches of all time. After signing with West Ham, a broken leg ended his dreams of a playing career. Not to be deterred, he joined the youth academy as a coach, and over a decade later was appointed director.

Over the next 43 years he honed his craft, guiding multiple generations of international footballers through the ranks.

In this unique evocation of a coach’s craft, Tony tells the incredible story of his footballing life. He recounts his time with West Ham, with tales of the twelve managers he coached under, and players and ex-players talk frankly about football and their place within it.

‘I highly recommend this fantastic read’

Frank Lampard Jr

‘A must-read for every West Ham United fan’

Mark Noble

‘This man passed on West Ham’s DNA to generations of academy graduates to come through the system’

Rio Ferdinand

TONY CARR was born in Bow, East London and joined West Ham as a teenager, spending 48 years at the club. He won the FA Youth Cup twice and was made an MBE for his services to football in 2010. He lives in Essex.

City of Echoes

A New History of Rome, its Popes and its People

JESSICA WÄRNBERG

A brilliant new history of the city, told through the lens of its popes.

In Rome the echoes of the past resound clearly in its palaces and monuments, and in the remains of the ancient imperial city. But another presence has dominated for 2,000 years, that of the pope, whose actions and influence echo down the ages.

Emerging as the anonymous leader of a marginal cult in the humblest quarters of the city, less than 300 years later the pope sat enthroned in a gilt basilica, endorsed by the emperor himself. Eventually, the Roman pontiff would supplant even the emperors, as de facto ruler of Rome and pre-eminent leader of the Christian world.

Shifting elegantly between the panoramic and the personal, the spiritual and the profane, this is a fresh and often surprising take on a city, a people and an institution that, to many, seems at once familiar and elusive.

JESSICA WÄRNBERG is a historian of the religious and political history of Europe, with a background in the history of art. She has written for academic journals and popular magazines such as History Today. In Rome, the city she knows best, she has worked extensively in the archives of the Vatican and the Jesuits. Jessica has also taught history, including at the University of St Andrews. She lives in London.

Interstellar Tours

A Guide to the Universe from your Starship Window BRIAN CLEGG

Brian Clegg’s acclaimed popular science book Inflight Science explored the science experienced on a plane flight. Interstellar Tours takes that concept and goes large. It takes the reader on a tour of our galaxy on the starship Endurance

That vessel itself is science fiction. But the phenomena you will visit, from the vast nebulae that are birthplaces of stars to stellar explosions in vast supernovas, creating the elements necessary for life – or from the planets of other solar systems to the unbelievably supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way – all reflect the best picture that current science has to offer.

Accompanying Interstellar Tours is an online gallery with over 50 images and videos in full colour, each directly accessible from the page using QR codes. It may never be possible to undertake a voyage through the stars for real. But in reading Interstellar Tours, you can enjoy the ultimate cruise across the Milky Way galaxy.

BRIAN CLEGG’S many books include Dice World and A Brief History of Infinity, both longlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize, and, most recently, Ten Days in Physics That Shook the World.

Territory: World

Translation rights: Icon Books/The Marsh Agency

Short Cuts: Economics Navigate Your Way Through the Big

Ideas

Your expert guide to understanding the models, morals, minefields and mechanisms of the modern global marketplace

What with trickle down and level up, boom and bust, stimulus and stagflation, green investment and Black Monday, the modern landscape of economics is an intriguing place to explore. But how are you expected to navigate the means and ends of this turbulent world?

Short Cuts: Economics provides the map you need to start exploring seriously big ideas. A wealth of provocative questions prompt ‘short cut’ answers written by experts in their field, with each one the setting-off point for instructions to help you plot your path through the economic maze.

TEJVAN PETTINGER teaches economics at Greenes College, Oxford. He studied at Bradford Grammar School and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and writes regularly on economics for publications including the Economic Review. His previous published books include Cracking Economics and What Would Keynes Do? Tejvan lives in Oxford and is a championship-winning hill climb and time trial cyclist.

Elon

Musk Risking It All

MICHAEL VLISMAS

AN ABSOLUTE MUST-READ: A BRAND NEW ELON MUSK BIOGRAPHY

In 2022 Elon Musk made headlines worldwide with his purchase of Twitter, and he is often in the news for his entrepreneurial exploits and his controversial tweets.

As an awkward schoolboy who loved comics and science fiction, Musk’s early years and singular family background were crucial in forming his stellar ambitions. Journalist and author Michael Vlismas, who attended the same high school as Musk, knows well the environment that shaped him and offers new insights into Musk’s development, including his troubled relationship with his father.

Tracing his remarkable life, this is the revealing new story of a man driven to preserve the optimism he sees in humanity and find a future for humans ‘out there among the stars’.

MICHAEL VLISMAS is a sports journalist and broadcaster, who owns his own sports media agency. He is the author of several books including a biography of Chris Froome.

Impossible, Possible, and Improbable Science Stranger Than Fiction

JOHN GRIBBIN

A scintillating collection of short essays that really does cover ‘life, the Universe, and everything’

From the mysteries of the subatomic world to the curious property of water that makes our planet inhabitable, John Gribbin delves into the astonishing facts that underlie our existence.

Some aspects of the quantum world really do seem impossible to ‘common sense’, but have been proved correct by experiments. Other features of the Universe appear obvious, such as the fact that atoms are mostly empty space. But this familiarity hides the truly amazing truths underpinning these observations. And some things merely seem improbable but are also hiding a Deep Truth, such as the fact that the Moon and Sun look the same size as viewed from Earth.

This book will change forever the way you view the world.

NOT FINAL

‘Gribbin has inspired generations with his popular science writing’

JOHN GRIBBIN’S numerous bestselling books include In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat and Six Impossible Things, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize. He has been described as ‘one of the finest and most prolific writers of popular science around’ by the Spectator

rights: David Higham Agency

The Milky Way Smells of Rum

and Rasperries

...And Other Amazing Cosmic Facts

DR JILLIAN SCUDDER

An offbeat guided tour of the Universe, focusing on weird and wonderful facts.

Astrophysicist Dr Jillian Scudder knows more than most of us what a surreal place the Universe can be. In this light-hearted book she delves into some of the more arcane facts that her work has revealed, and tells us how we have actually managed to discover these amazing truths.

Did you know: the galaxy is flatter than a credit card; supermassive black holes can sing a superlow B flat; it rains iron on a brown dwarf, and diamonds on Neptune; you could grow turnips on Mars if its soil weren’t full of rocket fuel; the Universe is beige, on average; Jupiter’s magnetic field will short-circuit your spacecraft - and, of course, the Milky Way smells of rum and raspberries.

DR JILLIN SCUDDER is an astrophysicist and associate professor of Physics & Astronomy at Oberlin College, Ohio, and the author of Astroquizzical: A Beginner’s Journey Through the Cosmos (Icon, 2019). She has been writing about space for a general audience since 2013, with her work published in Forbes, Quartz, The Independent, and The Conversation, among others.

Territory: World

rights: Icon Books/The Marsh Agency

‘[An] entertaining romp ... Armchair astronomers will come away with a renewed sense of wonder at the strangeness of the universe.’ Publishers Weekly

Ten Tantalising Truths

Why the Sky is Blue, and other Big Answers to Simple Questions

JOHN GRIBBIN

Obvious questions do not always have obvious answers

John Gribbin is known for giving us simple explanations of big concepts in science. But there is another way to probe the mysteries of the Universe and our place in it. Faced with persistent enquiries from his grandchildren, Gribbin realised that simple questions, such as ‘Why is the sky blue?’, sometimes require big answers, understandable in straightforward language.

In answering those simple questions, he discovered that he was telling the story of our place in the Universe. The questions may be obvious, but the answers are sometimes surprising and highlight one of the main joys of science –discovering the unexpected.

In this book, Gribbin invites the reader to join him on this voyage of discovery, tantalised by the truth.

‘Gribbin has inspired generations with his popular science writing’

JOHN GRIBBIN’S numerous bestselling books include In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat and Six Impossible Things, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize. He has been described as ‘one of the finest and most prolific writers of popular science around’ by the Spectator In 2021, he was made Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex.

Jim Al-Khalili

Consciousness

How our Brains Turn Matter into Meaning

JOHN PARRINGTON

What is the material basis of the thoughts that occur inside our heads?

Where do imaginative, creative, or spiritual thoughts come from? And is the human mind radically different from that of other species?

In this book, Oxford biologist John Parrington proposes a radical new theory of human consciousness, arguing that a qualitative leap in consciousness occurred during human evolution as language and tool use transformed our brains. He draws on the latest insights from neuroscience to show that meaning is created within our heads through a dynamic interaction of oscillating brain waves.

This new model of consciousness not only provides a material basis of our innermost thoughts but also explains why the mind can sometimes go wrong, causing deep mental distress.

New for Icon’s Hot Science series which seeks – as with Bill McGuire’s recent bestselling Hothouse Earth –to explain the cutting edge of science and technology for a curious lay audience

JOHN PARRINGTON is an Associate Professor in Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology and a Tutorial Fellow in Medicine at the University of Oxford. He is the author of three previous books and over 110 peer-reviewed articles. His research focuses on how chemical signals regulate important processes in the body.

Short Cuts: Maths

Navigate Your Way Through the Big Ideas

KATIE STECKLES

Your expert guide to mastering the numbers behind the mysteries of modern mathematics

What with the mysteries of infinity and imaginary numbers, the power of mathematical modelling, and the logic and structures hiding behind reallife situations and digital worlds, the modern landscape of mathematics is an extraordinary place to explore. But how are you expected to navigate this enigmatic and abstract world?

Short Cuts: Maths provides the map you need to start exploring seriously big ideas. Puzzling questions prompt ‘short cut’ answers written by experts in their field, with each one the setting-off point for instructions to help you plot your path through the mathematical maze.

KATIE STECKLES is a mathematician who lectures in mathematics at Sheffield Hallam University. Since completing her PhD in 2011, she has talked about maths in schools, at science and music festivals and in theatre shows, and has appeared on BBC radio and TV programmes including QI Katie lives in Manchester, England.

Night Terrors

Troubled Sleep and the Stories We Tell About It

ALICE VERNON

** AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK IN DECEMBER 2022 **

Alice Vernon often wakes up to find strangers in her bedroom.

Ever since she was a child, her nights have been haunted by nightmares of a figure from her adolescence, sinister hallucinations and episodes of sleepwalking. These are known as ‘parasomnias’ - and they’re surprisingly common.

Now a lecturer in Creative Writing, Vernon set out to understand the history, science and culture of these strange and haunting experiences.

Night Terrors examines the history of our relationship with bad dreams: how we’ve tried to make sense of and treat them, from some decidedly odd ‘cures’ like magical ‘mare-stones’, to research on how video games might help people rewrite their dreams.

Sunday Times

DR ALICE VERNON is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University, where she teaches students the fundamentals of storytelling. Her research focuses on representations of sleep in science and culture. This is her first book.

Territory: World

Translation rights: Icon Books/Marsh Agency

‘Curious, lively, humble, utterly genuine ... a remarkable debut.’

Damn This War!

Between the Blitz and the Desert, a Story of War-Crossed Love

JULIE HANKEY

The love story of Zippa and Tony is nothing without the context of the Second World War.

The war introduced them - they met as blackout wardens in London. It pressed them into marriage, and when the war decided to deploy him to North Africa, it whispered the urgent question of a baby. To which Tony, thinking of the war, replied maybe not; and Zippa, thinking of the war, said yes.

In spite of themselves, the war experience was changing them both, and yet both were hanging on, looking back, suspended in memory and time, and living from letter to letter.

Decades later, their daughter Julie discovered their letters, and piecing them together began to create a portrait of her parents and their relationship that was completely unfamiliar to her. Vivid, honest and completely absorbing, Damn This War! is a true insight into a wartime love story.

JULIE HANKEY is the author of A Passion for Egypt and Kisses and Ink, books that draw on private letters and wider research to bring the past to life.

Into the Dark

What darkness is and why it matters JACQUELINE YALLOP

Can you remember the first time you encountered true darkness? The kind that remains as black and inky whether your eyes are open or closed? Where you can’t see your hand in front of your face?

Jacqueline Yallop can. It was in an unfamiliar bedroom while holidaying as a child, and ever since then she has been fascinated by the dark, by our efforts to capture or avoid it, by the meanings we give to it and the way our brains process it.

Darkness captivates, baffles and appals us. It’s a shifty thing of many textures, many moods, a state of fascination and of horror, an absence and a presence, solace and threat, a beginning and an end. Into the Dark is the story of the many darks that fascinate and assail us. It faces the darkness full on in all its guises and mysteries, celebrating it as a thing of beauty while peering into the void.

Drawing on science, literature, art and psychology, Jacqueline Yallop explores our fascination with the dark.

JACQUELINE YALLOP is the author of three critically acclaimed novels and three works of non-fiction. Jacqueline teaches Creative Writing at the University of Aberystwyth, and divides her time between the UK and south-west France.

What’s Cooking in the Kremlin

A Modern History of Russia Through the Kitchen Door

WITOLD SZABŁOWSKI

TRANSLATED BY ANTONIA LLOYD-JONES

A truly original dive into modern Russian history, from one of Europe’s greatest nonfiction writers, Witold Szabłowski

A history of modern Russia told from the kitchen, the true narrative of one of the most troubling and fascinating nations on earth. We will learn of the Romanov’s last chef, whose bones were found mixed together with the Tsar’s in their woodland grave; the Ukranian woman who survived the Great Famine and still weeps with guilt; the soldiers who roasted snails and made nettle soup as they fought back Hitler’s army; and the cook who served caviar in the Kremlin during the years of plenty under Brezhnev.

Ultimately, it is a story of survival against the odds, in a country where life is cheap.

WITOLD SZAB Ł OWSKI is an award-winning Polish journalist and the critically acclaimed author of books including Dancing Bears and How to Feed a Dictator Szabłowski lives in Warsaw.

The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens

HELENA KELLY

Think you already know the story of Charles Dickens’ life? Think again.

Dickens’ close friend John Forster wrote an authorised biography 150 years ago. It’s the version of events that Dickens himself chose to make public, and newly accessible archives reveal that it’s crammed with gaps, inconsistencies, and outright lies.

Helena Kelly, author of the acclaimed Jane Austen, the Secret Radical, retells Dickens’ story from his childhood to his deathbed, uncovers the truths he tried to keep hidden, and offers a fresh - and deeply troubling - perspective on the man who remains one of Britain’s bestknown novelists.

You won’t be able to look at him – or his work –in the same way again.

HELENA KELLY grew up in North Kent. She has taught classics and English Literature at the University of Oxford. She lives in Oxford with her husband and son.

How the Victorians Took Us to the Moon

The Story of the Nineteenth-Century Innovators Who Forged the Future

IWAN RHYS MORUS

‘Excellent ... A terrific insight into why the Victorian era was a golden age of engineering.’ Engineering and Technology Magazine

In this rich and absorbing book, distinguished historian of science Iwan Rhys Morus tells the story of how this future was made.

From Charles Babbage’s dream of mechanising mathematics to Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s tunnel beneath the Thames, from George Cayley’s fantasies of powered flight to Nikola Tesla’s visions of an electrical world, this is a story of towering personalities, clashing ambitions, furious rivalries and conflicting cultures – a vibrant tapestry of remarkable lives that transformed the world and ultimately took us to the Moon.

‘[An] insightful analysis of 19th-century futurism ... Morus’s account is as much a cautionary tale as a flagwaving celebration.’ New Statesman

IWAN RHYS MORUS is professor of history at Aberystwyth University. He has published widely on the history of science, with titles including Michael Faraday and the Electrical Century (Icon, 2017), Nikola Tesla and the Electrical Future (Icon, 2019) and the Oxford Illustrated History of Science. He lives in Aberystwyth, Wales.

Wise Gals

The Spies Who Built the CIA and Changed the Future of Espionage

NATHALIA HOLT

** BBC RADIO 4’S BOOK OF THE WEEK

23 JAN - 27 JAN 2023 **

The never-before-told story of a small cadre of influential female spies in the precarious early days of the CIA - women who helped create the template for cutting-edge espionage (and blazed new paths for equality in the workplace).

Meticulously researched and beautifully told, Holt uses firsthand interviews with past and present officials and declassified government documents to uncover the stories of these four inspirational women. Wise Gals sheds a light on the untold history of the women whose daring foreign intrigues, domestic persistence, and fighting spirit have been and continue to be instrumental to the world’s security.

‘As much le Carré as it is Hidden Figures.’

Amaryllis Fox

‘A sweeping epic of a book [which] rescues five remarkable women from obscurity and finally gives them their rightful place in world history ... A book you won’t regret reading. Five women you won’t forget.’

Kate Moore

NATHALIA HOLT is the New York Times bestselling author of The Queens of Animation and Rise of the Rocket Girls. Her work features in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Popular Science and Time. She lives in California.

Territory: World

Translation rights: Icon Books/Marsh Agency

Corrections in Ink

Dispatches from an American Prison

KERI BLAKINGER

’A raw, fast-paced portrait of one woman’s descent into a mental abyss’

Irish Independent

Keri Blakinger had always lived at full throttle. On a cold December day, she is arrested with a Tupperware container full of heroin. Shortly afterwards, she is convicted and sent to prison.

Forced to confront her addiction, Keri finally manages to break free of it, and finds herself in a place unlike anything she has experienced before: a world built on senseless brutality, but whose inhabitants, her fellow inmates, will change her life forever.

Written in luminous prose, with searing honesty and flashes of dark humour, Corrections in Ink shines a light on a broken prison system, and the cruelty and kindness Blakinger experienced there. It is a radical call for justice, and a testament to the power of finding one’s voice.

‘A groundbreaking debut from an extraordinary writer ... a testament to where a woman can go after rock-bottom’

PIPER KERMAN, New York Times bestselling author of ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK

KERI BLAKINGER is a staff writer for the LA Times and for the Marshall Project; her work has appeared in VICE, the Washington Post Magazine, and on NBC News and the BBC. Corrections in Ink is her first book.

All books: UK £8.99 • USA $12.95 • 168 x 118mm paperback 176 pages with black and white illustrations throughout

GRAPHIC GUIDES

Our Introducing Graphic Guide series are the internationally-recognised graphic novel-style guides to complex ideas and thinkers. Whatever you’re an aficionado of, there’s bound to be a Graphic Guide that’ll be of interst for you.

GRAPHIC GUIDES

TOTE BAGS, BOOKMARKS , STICKERS ALSO AVAILABLE! OTHER MATERIAL TBC .

LARGE-FORMAT GRAPHIC NOVEL-STYLE GUIDES: INCLUDING THE LATEST IN THE SERIES CLASS: A GRAPHIC HISTORY

GRAPHIC GUIDES

Icon’s Practical Guide series features smart, quick-to-read and easy-to-use books designed to help readers live a more fulfilling life. It features expert authors from diverse fields, such as psychology, business and counselling, to distil theory and experience into real-world insights, exercises and practices that can instantly be put to use – from living mindfully to negotiating, increasing self-confidence or leading teams.

All titles: 168 x 115mm • £7.99 • 224 pages

Territory: World

PRACTICAL GUIDES

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BACKLIST • HISTORY & CURRENT

BACKLIST • THE 30-SECOND SERIES

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ISBN 978-1-83773-126-8