Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, unco...

Do you eat too much sugar? What proportion of your country are immigrants? What does it cost to raise a child? How much tax do the rich pay? Are we more ignorant than we used to be? Take a minute to answer these questions. No matter how educated you are, this book suggests you are likely to be very wrong indeed. Informed by exclusive research a...

This National Book Award winner by Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough shows how sickly "Teedie" becomes the robust, energetic Teddy Roosevelt. Born in 1858, Teddy finds his priviledged Manhattan family isn't immune to pain and sorrow. Potts disease disables his older sister, and epilepsy haunts his brother. Crippled by deadly asthma, Teddy soon...

One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent—but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Now, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of conte...

Crippled is a damning indictment of a safety net gone wrong, and a passionate demand for an end to austerity measures hitting those most in need. In austerity Britain, disabled people have become the favourite target. From social care to the benefits system, politicians and media alike have made the case that Britain's 12 million disabled people ar...

Brought to you by Penguin. 'I've inherited a love of a writing and a talent for the visual arts from my mother, as well as her long and tapered fingers; I've also inherited a tendency for madness' Esmé Weijun Wang was officially diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in 2013, although the hallucinations and psychotic episodes had started ye...

In this collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award-winning writer and longtime activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centers the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all. Car...

One of the most influential disability rights activists in US history tells her personal story of fighting for the right to receive an education, have a job, and just be human.A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn’t built for all of us and of one woman’s activism—from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to insid...

All cultures are different, and have different ways of thinking. In How the World Thinks, Julian Baggini travels the globe to provide a hugely wide-ranging map of human thought. He shows us how distinct branches of philosophy flowered simultaneously in China, India and Ancient Greece, growing from local myths and stories - and how contemporary cult...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik, read by Daniel Weyman. A unique and inspiring exploration of human creativity from one of the UK's best-known scientists Everything is made of something... From the everyday objects in our homes to the most extraordinary new materials that will shape our future, Stuff Matter...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Leadership written and read by Doris Kearns Goodwin, with additional narration from Beau Bridges, David Morse, Jay O. Sanders and Richard Thomas. Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the leader make the times or do the times make t...

By the time Henry Kissinger was made secretary of state in 1973, he had become, according to a Gallup poll, the most admired person in America and one of the most unlikely celebrities ever to capture the world's imagination. Yet Kissinger was also reviled by large segments of the American public, ranging from liberal intellectuals to conservative a...

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are?Simply, no. None of these...

A Recorded Books Audio Original production of songs and stories performed by Dolly herself, Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics goes beyond the glitz, glamour, and rhinestones to the warmth, heart, and soul of a treasured pop-culture icon. In this exclusive audio performance, the ten-time Grammy Award–winning artist weaves her words w...

'The menopause is a weird one, as a woman you know that the likelihood of it happening to you is pretty inevitable, but no-one really tells you what to expect.' So says Jenny Eclair, who, with her trademark humour, will share her experience of what can be a difficult time for many women, from the emotional side of life - missing the woman you were,...

At the age of 17, after a childhood in an fostered family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. He learned that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and Ethiopian. And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth. Here Sissay reco...

Nothing in life works without facts. A society that isn't sure what's true can't function. Without facts there can be no government or law. Science is ignored. Trust evaporates. People everywhere feel ever more alienated from - and mistrustful of - news and those who make it. We no longer seem to know who or what to believe. We are living through a...

How can a blind person learn to see with her tongue or a deaf person learn to hear with his skin? What does a baby born without a nose tell us about our sensory machinery? Might we someday control a robot with our thoughts? And what does any of this have to do with why we dream? The answers to these questions are not right in front of our eyes; the...

What is it like to be a refugee? It is a question few in the West give much thought to, and yet to be a refugee - or an immigrant - is to grapple with your place in the world, attempting to reconcile the life you have known with the unfamiliar. With this comes the weight of the expectations (and fears and resentment) of those born in the host count...

In 1975, a gangly black 16-year-old from Dudley, decked out in floppy bow tie and Frank Spencer beret, appeared on our TV screens for the first time. So began the transformation from apprentice factory worker to future national treasure of Sir Lenny Henry. In his long-awaited autobiography, Lenny tells the extraordinary story of his early years an...

Shaun Bythell owns The Bookshop, Wigtown - Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop. In these wry and hilarious diaries, Shaun provides an inside look at the trials and tribulations of life in the book trade, from struggles with eccentric customers to wrangles with his own staff. He takes us with him on buying trips to old estates and auction house...