25 July 2024
We may be past the longest day, but there are still plenty more summer evenings left for relaxing with a good book. From perfect reads for holidays abroad, to pocket-sized political manifestos, and our stalwart offering of authoritative history, Profile Books has all the best non-fiction recommendations this season. Check out our favourites below!
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Travelling to France this summer? Carolyn Boyd’s charming guide to French cuisine is a must-read. Spanning every region of France and divided into 200 separate vignettes, each entry blends history and travel, personal anecdote and recipes.
Impossible City by Simon Kuper
Simon Kuper’s guide to Paris is an unmissable accompaniment to this year’s Olympic Games. The bestselling author of Chums returns with an explorer’s tale of a naïf getting to understand a complex, glittering, beautiful and often cruel city. Now, with the Olympics in town, France is busy executing the ‘Grand Paris’ project: the most serious attempt yet to knit together the bejewelled city with its neglected suburbs.
Join thatcher Tom Allan on a journey of discovery and a reflection on what it means for a person or a building to belong in a place. On the Roof tells Tom’s personal story, leaving an office job in the city to find fulfilment among the Devon roofs, as well as the stories of six other people who share his trade. Travel around the thatched roofs of the Hebrides, Denmark, Japan and beyond in this beautifully illustrated book.
Tracks on the Ocean by Sara Caputo
In Tracks on the Ocean, prize-winning historian Sara Caputo charts a hidden history of the modern world through the tracks left on maps and the sea. Taking us from ancient Greek itineraries to twenty-first-century digital mapping, via the voyages of Drake and Cook, the decks of Napoleonic warships and the boiler rooms of ocean liners, Caputo reveals how marks on maps have changed the course of modernity.
The Green Ages by Annette Kehnel
Fishing quotas on Lake Constance. Common lands in the UK. The medieval answer to Depop in the middle of Frankfurt. Annette Kehnel’s astounding new book uncovers the sustainability initiatives of the Middle Ages and, in doing so, shows us how the past has the power to change our future.
An instant Sunday Times bestseller, Mary Beard returns in paperback with a sweeping account of the social and political world of the Roman emperors. Emperor of Rome goes directly to the heart of Roman (and our own) fantasies about what it was to be Roman, offering an account of Roman history as it has never been presented before.
Women are at the forefront of the fight for democratic rights, as well as being the most vulnerable when those rights disappear. Here, eleven extraordinary women – leaders, philosophers, historians, writers and activists – explore democracy’s power to uplift our societies. Between its ancient origins and its modern challenges, they share a vision for a better future – one we can build together.
What Does Israel Fear from Palestine? by Raja Shehadeh
When the state of Israel was formed in 1948, it precipitated the Nakba or ‘disaster’: the displacement of the Palestine nation, creating fracture-lines which continue to erupt in violent and tragic ways today. In his latest book, human rights lawyer and Palestine’s greatest living writer Raja Shehadeh reflects on the failures of Israel to treat Palestine and Palestinians as partners on the road to peace instead of genocide.
Your Right to Protest by Christian Weaver
In this handbook, campaigning lawyer Christian Weaver brings together everything you need to know when taking a stand. Whether you are marching on the streets or making your voice heard from your own front room, organising in your workplace or writing a letter to your MP, this essential guide equips you with your fundamental rights and the laws that protect you – as well as the ones you might plan to break.