Reaktion Books - Böcker

In this book Lars Svendsen embarks on a profound exploration of the nature of hope, asking what exactly hope is and how it differs from related phenomena such as wishful thinking. He argues that hope is rooted in the ability to shape one's own fut...

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For a sparsely populated region on the edge of Europe, Scandinavia has attracted an unusual degree of interest during the twentieth century. The successes and failures of the famous 'Scandinavian' or 'Nordic' model in politics and policy continue ...

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In this robust new account of the Vikings, Tom Shippey explores their mindset, and in particular their fascination with scenes of heroic death. The book recounts many of the great bravura scenes of Old Norse literature, including the Fall of the H...

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Now in paperback, this book describes ten women over the past three hundred years who have found walking essential to their sense of themselves, as people and as writers. Wanderers traces their footsteps, from eighteenth-century parson's daughter ...

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One of Financial Times's Best Books of 2025: Classical and Pop Music Maurice Ravel is one of the twentieth century's most intriguing and contradictory composers. This timely new biography - published for the 150th anniversary of his birth - descri...

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'What is history?' From Thucydides to Toynbee, historians and non-historians alike have wondered how to answer this question. A New Philosophy of History reflects on developments over the last two decades in historical writing, not least the renew...

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As recently as the dawn of the Space Age, the solar system was still largely unknown. The first probes to the Moon, Venus and Mars ushered in a golden age of planetary science, transforming planets from distant mysteries into vividly realized worl...

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Elvis, Eddie, Chuck, Gene, Buddy and Little Richard were the original rockers. Dylan, The Beatles, The Stones and The Who formed rock's second coming. As the 1960s turned into the 1970s, the crucial question was: who would lead rock 'n' roll's thi...

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The Yardbirds were trailblazers in the rapid development of pop music in Britain between 1963 and 1968. With members including Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, they helped to set the basic template of what has been known ever since as rock ...

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In this highly original and innovative study of Nicolas Poussin, one of seventeenth-century Europe's greatest artists, Oskar Bätschmann presents a series of connected studies that offer new ways of interpreting the work and ideas of this brilliant...

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Erasmus of Rotterdam came from an obscure background and through remarkable perseverance, skill, and vision became a powerful intellectual figure in Europe in the early sixteenth century. He was known for his vigorous opposition to war, intoleranc...

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Trolls are everywhere. They lurk on the internet; they fill the pages of popular fantasy literature; they are hunted in Norwegian film. They are the homeless in California; they are comforting or threatening characters in children's books; they ar...

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'The owls are not what they seem.' From ancient Babylon to Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat and the grandiloquent, absent-minded Wol from Winnie the Pooh to David Lynch's Twin Peaks, owls have woven themselves into the fabric of human cultur...

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The Etruscans were a powerful and influential civilization in ancient Italy. But despite their prominence, they are often misrepresented as mysterious - a strange, unknowable people whose language and culture have largely vanished. Lucy Shipley's ...

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Few composers have enjoyed such critical acclaim - or longevity - as Jean Sibelius, who died in 1957 aged 91. Always more than simply a Finnish national figure, an 'apparition from the woods' as he ironically described himself, Sibelius lived thro...

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Everyone knows the characters described by Freud in his case histories: 'Dora', the 'Rat Man', the 'Wolf Man'. But what do we know of the people, the lives behind these famous pseudonyms: Ida Bauer, Ernst Lanzer, Sergius Pankejeff? Do we know the ...

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Loneliness is a difficult subject to address, because it has such negative connotations. But the truth is that wherever there are people, there is loneliness: everyone is lonely at some point in their lives. You can be lonely in a crowd or at home...

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One of Financial Times's Best Books of 2025: History On 14 December 1825 a group of young Russian army officers led 3,000 troops to Senate Square in St Petersburg, aiming to force the Senate to adopt a liberal constitution and transform the Russia...

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Bronze Age Crete stands as one the most extensively explored parts of the world archaeologically, yet the island maintains an air of labyrinthian mystery. This book offers an authoritative introduction to the world of the Minoans, the first 'moder...

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A sweeping journey through the ebbs and flows of Pakistan's history, from the ancient Indus Valley Civilization to contemporary times, this book not only uncovers the influences from Turkey, Persia, Arabia and Britain that have shaped this South A...

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What is it about ruins that is so alluring, so puzzling, that they can hold us in endless wonder over the half-erased story they tell? This elegant book explores the captivating hold these remains and broken pieces - from architecture to art and l...

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The twentieth-century architect Mies van der Rohe once declared that 'Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together'. In "Travels in the History of Architecture", renowned architectural writer Robert Harbison looks close...

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Rudolf II: The Life and Legend of the Mad Emperor offers a fresh perspective on the Habsburg ruler, shedding new light on a reign often coloured by myths of madness. Contrary to popular belief, Rudolf was not a passive recluse but an engaged monar...

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Great Economic Thinkers presents an accessible introduction to the lives and works of the most influential economists of modern times: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Alfred Marshall, Joseph Schumpeter, John Maynard Keynes,...

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Eyewitnessing evaluates the place of images among other kinds of historical evidence. By reviewing the many varieties of images by region, period and medium, and looking at the pragmatic uses of images (e.g. the Bayeux Tapestry, an engraving of a ...

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Ornette Coleman's career encompassed the glory years of jazz and the American avant-garde. Born in segregated Fort Worth, Texas, during the Great Depression, the African American composer and musician was the zeitgeist incarnate. Steeped in the Te...

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This book explores the sea and its meanings from ancient myths to contemporary geopolitics, from Atlantis to the Mediterranean migrant crisis. Richard Hamblyn traces a cultural and geographical journey from estuary to abyss, beginning with the top...

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'There is more history in a bowl of pasta than in the Colosseum', writes Andreas Viestad in Dinner in Rome. From the table of a classic Roman restaurant, Viestad takes us on a fascinating culinary exploration of The Eternal City, and global civili...

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Our nearest celestial neighbour, the Moon, has always been the most conspicuous feature in our night sky. It has compelled observers since the dawn of humankind, and all have tried to make sense in their own ways of the puzzles it poses and the qu...

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Galileo, Leonardo, Newton, Tesla - all revered him. As an engineer, Archimedes of Syracuse almost single-handedly held off the world's most powerful army. In an era of abacuses and sundials, he designed geared calculating devices that accurately m...

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