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A New Statesman Essential Non-Fiction Book of 2021

‘A devastatingly clear portrait of humanity’ Iain McGilchrist

What kind of creature is a human? If we don’t know what we are, how can we know how to act? In Being a Human Charles Foster sets out to understand what a human is, inhabiting the sensory worlds of humans at three pivotal moments in our history.

Foster begins his quest in a wood in Derbyshire with his son, shivering, starving and hunting, trying to find a way of experiencing the world that recognises the deep expanse of time when we understood ourselves as hunter-gatherers, indivisible from the non-human world, and when modern consciousness was first ignited. From there he travels to the Neolithic, when we tamed animals, plants and ourselves, to a way of being defined by walls, fences, farms, sky gods and slaughterhouses, and finally to the rarefied world of the Enlightenment, when we decided that the universe was a machine and we were soulless cogs within it.

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AUTHOR’S NOTE

Few of us have any idea what sort of creatures we are.

If we don’t know what we are, how can we know how we should act? How can we know what will really make us happy; what will make us thrive? This book is my attempt to find out what humans are.

It matters urgently to me because, despite what my children tell me, I am a human. I thought that if I knew where I came from, that might shed some light on what I am.

I can’t inhabit all human history. I can’t even inhabit my own. So I have tried to inhabit three pivotal times by immersing myself in the sensations, places and ideas that characterised them. It’s a prolonged thought experiment and non-thought experiment, set in woods, waves, moorlands, schools, abattoirs, wattle-and-daub huts, hospitals, rivers, cemeteries, caves, farms, kitchens, the bodies of crows, museums, beaches, laboratories, medieval dining halls, Basque eating-houses, fox-hunts, temples, deserted Middle Eastern cities and shamans’ caravans.

The first of those times is the early Upper Palaeolithic (from around 35,000–40,000 years ago), when ‘behavioural modernity’ appeared. This is a confusing label. As we will see, today’s humans behave (even if they don’t think or feel) in a dramatically different way from Upper Palaeolithic hunter–gatherers. Just what is meant by ‘behavioural modernity’, and where it evolved, are bitterly contentious, but the arguments don’t matter for my purposes.

Hunter–gatherers were – and the few that survive often are – wanderers, intimately, reverently and often ecstatically connected to lots of land and many species. They lived long and relatively disease-free lives, and there is little evidence of human–human violence. For most, settlement wasn’t an option, and even if it had been, it would have been unappealing. Why chew on rusk all your life when you can graze from a vast, succulent and ever-changing buffet?

It was unusual to own much more than a flint knife or a caribou-scrotum pouch. If you knew as much as humans then did about the transience of things, it was ridiculous to assert ownership: the world isn’t the sort of place that can be owned, and they (unlike us) thought that humans shouldn’t behave in a way inconsistent with the way the world is.

It was a time of leisure. You can’t hunt or gather all day and all night. And so, I think, it was a time of reflection, of story, of trying to make sense of things. The earliest human art, on the cave walls of southern Europe, is among the best there has ever been. It is also the most allusive and elusive.

To those who might suggest that this is romantic noble savagery, for the moment I’ll just say that I don’t see that the allegation ‘Romantic’ needs a defence. ‘Romantic’ isn’t a term of abuse. Quite the opposite. Romantics just take more data into account in construing the world than do their opponents.

‘Roy has a journalist’s unflinching eye, a poet’s talent for detail, and a radical sense of empathy … a stunning achievement.’
– Kiran Desai, Booker Prize-winning author of The Inheritance of Loss

‘If you read one book about India, read this one.’
– Geeta Anand, Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of The Cure

All of Mumbai’s memories and castaway possessions come to die at the Deonar garbage mountains. And among these vast, teetering piles of discarded things, a small, forgotten community lives and works. Scouring the dump for whatever can be resold or recycled, waste pickers also mark the familiar milestones of babies born, love found, illnesses suffered and recovered from. Like a mirror image, their stories are shaped by the influx of unwanted things from the world outside. But now, as Deonar’s toxic halo becomes undeniable, a change is coming. And as officials try to close it, the lives that the pickers have built on the Mountain seem more fragile than ever.

Saumya Roy spent more than eight years entangled with the Deonar mountains and their denizens, watching the lives and businesses of four families unfold in their shadow. Most of all she watched a teenager, Farzana Ali Shaikh, grow into a life that seemed as unlikely as the mountains, rising precipitously with the desires that had flickered and died in the city. This book is Farzana’s story.

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Read an extract below:

1

Farzana Ali Shaikh rummaged on a mountain clearing on a hot April afternoon. The sun warmed her head and made lurid colours swim in her eyes. The smell of rotting prawns wafted up from the mountain. She jabbed her long garbage fork to push aside translucent fish scales, crackling prawn shells, entrails and animal dung, and scooped up the broken glass jars that had just poured out on the clearing.

Smoke and heat rose up, as forklifts shovelled glass away. It blurred Farzana’s view of the trash strewn around her and brought up burning smells that mingled with the stench of decaying flesh. Scavenging birds swooped low beside her, searching for entrails. Farzana kept her eye on the glass and hacked her fork into the mess, keen to retrieve it. She didn’t usually work on the jhinga or prawn loop, as this mountain was known. It was made up of remains from the city’s municipal slaughterhouse and its vast port lands. That afternoon she and her younger sister, Farha, had chased a garbage truck winding up its unsteady slope.

Farzana worked quickly, shovelling glass jars, shards and saline bags that had fallen out of the truck into the large bag she dragged along. The truck had probably come from a hospital, and its contents would fetch good money. A straggly crowd built up around her, also eager for the glass. But, at seventeen, Farzana was tall, athletic and fearless. Her eyes were trained to spot plastic bottles, wire, glass, German Silver – a metal alloy often used to make appliances and machinery – or cloth scraps. She snapped up her pickings before others could get to them.

She looked up to make sure that Farha was picking close by. It must nearly be time for their father to arrive with lunch, she thought. She clanked her fork into the glass heap again and, this time, brought out a heavy blue plastic bag. Farzana thought it must be filled with smaller glass bottles, which usually fetched a good price. She squatted on the warm fly-filled slope, untied the string and gently upturned the bag, expecting delicate glass vials to pour down, clinking and glinting in the sun. Instead a single large glass jar plopped onto the clearing. As she bent low to see what was inside, she could make out arms, legs, toes and tiny bald heads swimming into each other within it. She squinted, looked again and screamed. A few friends gathered to examine the jar crammed with floating limbs. Farzana opened the lid and brought out a baby girl, a little bigger than her large, bony palm.

Instead of buying yet another tie for Father’s Day, why not book a steam train, plan a foraging walk, plunge into a trip through history, or embark on an adventure through the mind, all from the comfort of your sofa?

Our intern, Lydia Fried, put together a list of books that are sure to help you celebrate the father figure in your life this year.

Tell us what you’re gifting for Father’s Day – @ProfileBooks.

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Horizon-expanding tales of how translators altered the course of world events.

Would Hiroshima have been bombed if Japanese contained a phrase meaning ‘no comment’? Is it alright for missionaries to replace the Bible’s ‘white as snow’ with ‘white as fungus’ in places where snow never falls? Who, or what, is Kuzma’s mother, and why was Nikita Khrushchev so threateningly obsessed with her (or it)?

The course of diplomacy rarely runs smooth; without an invisible army of translators and interpreters, it’s hard to see how it could run at all. But though such go-betweens tend to be overlooked, even despised, the subtlest of them have achieved a remarkable degree of influence.

Join veteran translator Anna Aslanyan to explore hidden histories of cunning and ambition, heroism and incompetence. Meet the figures behind the notable events of history, from the Great Game to Brexit, and discover just how far a simple misunderstanding can go.

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FIELD WORK – Bella Bathurst

What does it take to make a living from the land in modern Britain?

For many of us, Britain is countryside – drystone walls, stiles, sheep on a distant hillside. But farmers themselves often remain a mystery: familiar but unpredictable, a secretive industry still visible from space. Who are these people who shape our countryside and put food on our tables? And what does it take to pull a life out of earth?

From fruit farmers to fallen stock operators, from grassy uplands to polytunnels, Bella Bathurst journeys through Britain to talk to those on the far side of the fence. As farmers find themselves torn between time-honoured methods and modern appetites, these shocking, raw, wise and funny accounts will open out a way of life now changing beyond recognition.

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THE GUN, THE SHIP, AND THE PEN – Linda Colley

Award-winning historian Linda Colley shows the dawn of the modern world – through the advance of written constitutions.

Starting not with the United States, but with the Corsican constitution of 1755, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen moves through every continent, disrupting accepted narratives. Both monarchs and radicals play a role, from Catherine the Great of Russia, with her remarkable Nakaz, to Sierra Leone’s James Africanus Horton, to Tunisia’s Khayr-al-Din, a creator of the first modern Islamic constitution. Throughout, Colley demonstrates how constitutions evolved in tandem with warfare, and how they have functioned to advance empire as well as promote nations, and worked to exclude as well as liberate.

Whether reinterpreting Japan’s momentous 1889 constitution, or exploring the significance of the first constitution to enfranchise all adult women on Pitcairn Island in the Pacific in 1838, this is one of the most original global histories in decades.

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THE IDEA OF THE BRAIN – Matthew Cobb

A monumental, sweeping journey from the ancient roots of neurology to the most astonishing recent research, which Henry Marsh (Admissions) called an ‘intellectual tour de force’

Shortlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize

This is the story of our quest to understand the most mysterious object in the universe: the human brain.

Today we tend to picture it as a computer. Earlier scientists thought about it in their own technological terms: as a telephone switchboard, or a clock, or all manner of fantastic mechanical or hydraulic devices. Could the right metaphor unlock the its deepest secrets once and for all?

Galloping through centuries of wild speculation and ingenious, sometimes macabre anatomical investigations, scientist and historian Matthew Cobb reveals how we came to our present state of knowledge. Our latest theories allow us to create artificial memories in the brain of a mouse, and to build AI programmes capable of extraordinary cognitive feats. A complete understanding seems within our grasp.

But to make that final breakthrough, we may need a radical new approach. At every step of our quest, Cobb shows that it was new ideas that brought illumination. Where, he asks, might the next one come from? What will it be?

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PARIS MATCH – John Von Sothen

How to become Parisian – a genuine, laugh-out-loud tale of French life.

In Brooklyn, John von Sothen fell in love with Anaïs, a French waitress. And then, one night in Paris, on the Pont Neuf, she agreed to marry him (“Bah, we can always get divorced!”). A couple of decades in, the two have become quatre, living in their beloved 10th arondissement with teenage kids who chat to their African neighbours in fluent Parisian slang, and John has even become kind of French himself. Well, he likes to think he has. The family still see him as an American innocent abroad.

Paris Match is one of those rare books that makes you laugh out loud, as von Sothen attempts to understand what makes the French tick. Why do they take such long holidays with friends who ration snacks and mock you for sleeping in; why do French men turn to him (an American!) for fashion tips; what really is the correct way to cut brie, and how do you tell if you’re being invited to a super-exclusive secret society of intellectuals or a weird sex club? John von Sothen has found most of the answers and in this delightful, witty book shares his experience, insights and humour into the fine art of becoming everyday French.

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A Guardian 2021 Non-fiction Highlight

AN EXTRA PAIR OF HANDS – THE BOOK TOUR

Salon LIVE Online: Kate Mosse interviewed by Sam Baker 

Date: Thursday 3 June 2021
Time: 8pm GMT
Location: Online event

Description: Join us online as we celebrate the launch of Kate Mosse’s touching memoir An Extra Pair of Hands. This heart-warming book shines a light on the joys and challenges of being a carer and shows how even the smallest act of caregiving is one of the greatest acts of love. Kate will be interviewed by journalist, broadcaster and editor Sam Baker.

Tickets: Free, available to book online.

Wellcome Collection: An Extra Pair of Hands with Kate Mosse and Rachel Clarke

Date: Tuesday 8 June 2021
Time: 7pm GMT
Location: Online event

Description: Join novelist Kate Mosse and palliative care doctor and writer Rachel Clarke in conversation about care, ageing and everyday acts of love. Kate will discuss her own experience of becoming a carer in middle age, first helping her mother to care for her father, and then supporting her mother through grief after her father’s death.

Tickets: Free, please register online. 

An Extra Pair of Hands: Chichester Festival Theatre launch

Date: Thursday 10th June
Time: 6pm GMT
Location: The Brasserie, Chichester Festival Theatre, Oaklands Park, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 6AP

Description: To celebrate her first non fiction book for a decade, Kate will be in conversation with the Chichester Observer’s Phil Hewitt. This is a special publication launch event as part of 2021 Carers’ Week UK.

Tickets: £5, available online or call the box office on 01243 781312

5×15: A Extra Pair of Hands

Date: Wednesday 30 June 2021
Time: 6.30pm GMT
Location: Online event via Zoom

Description: Join 5×15 for an open , honest and timely discussion with best-selling novelist Kate Mosse as she tells her personal story of finding herself as a carer in middle age: first, helping her mother look after her beloved father through Parkinson’s, then supporting her mother in widowhood, and finally as ‘an extra pair of hands’ for her 90-year-old mother-in-law. Kate will be in conversation with Rosie Boycott.

Tickets: Free. Please register online to access this event

We’re thrilled to announce that we’ll be publishing Spike – The Virus v. The People: The Inside Story by leading scientist and SAGE member Sir Jeremy Farrar. Co-authored with the FT’s Science columnist Anjana Ahuja, the book will tell, from the inside, how the epidemic unfolded and how the global scientific community and the world faced up to the unprecedented threat.

Jeremy Farrar, an expert in emerging infectious diseases, was one of the first people in the world to hear about a mysterious new respiratory virus in China – and to learn it could readily spread between people. Spike describes how the global scientific community mobilised an extraordinary and historic response to get tests, treatments and vaccines.

Spike will describe what it feels like as one of the key scientists at the sharp end of such a fast-moving situation, when complex decisions must be made quickly amid great uncertainty. It will also cast light on the UK government’s claim to be ‘following the science’ in its response to the virus.

Profile MD Andrew Franklin bought world rights from Peter Tallack at the Science Factory.  Profile will publish on 22 July 2021.

Jeremy Farrar says,’Covid-19 cast the world into turmoil. The breath-taking scientific advances; the challenge to world leaders to respond for the global good; addressing inequalities that hold back success against the virus; decisions, chances taken or lost to learn from mistakes and successes. All these shape how the world ultimately fares not just against Covid, but against all the major health challenges we face globally. I hope this book not only plays a part in a record of the Covid response, but also in making sure we learn lessons to ensure scientific progress saves and protects lives in as far-reaching and fair way as possible.’

Farrar will be donating his royalties from Spike to charity.

Sir Jeremy Farrar is Director of The Wellcome Trust and, as an expert on infectious disease, is a member of SAGE. He was one of the first people in the world to know about and alert the global community to COVID-19. A full bio can be found here.

Anjana Ahuja is the Financial Times science columnist and a freelance writer who has covered the coronavirus outbreak extensively since its onset in January 2020.  She holds a PhD from Imperial College London.

Ahoy, landlubbers!

Are you desperate to feel the sand between your toes? Keen to learn a sea shanty, or tie a bowline? Puzzled as to what the shipping forecast actually means?

Then this is the book for you. Stacked to the gunnels with interesting facts, practical advice and esoteric seaside lore, once you’ve read it, you’ll never feel like a landlubber again. So, dive on in to uncover the secrets of dead reckoning, the dark arts of crabbing and the charms of the morning star.

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Read an extract below.

THE ART AND SCIENCE OF SKIMMING STONES

THE STONE

A good skimmer blames his stones. Be ruthless. If the stones on offer aren’t up to scratch, don’t bother. But what is the right kind of stone?

1. Flat and smooth
2. As round as possible. Oval will do
3. Clean – no sand, seaweed or barnacles
4. About 1 cm thick, perhaps 2 cm if you’re strong or it’s windy
5. Heavier than you might think
6. Small enough to nestle between your index finger and the crook of your thumb, resting on your middle finger

THE STANCE

When you release the stone from your hand, it’s important that it’s close to the water. This ensures the shallow angle of first contact that is key to a good throw. You can achieve this simply by standing in the water, but then it’s hard to take a good step forwards as you throw, which is what helps you achieve distance. Good skimmers, therefore, often stay out of the water, but manage a good release height by taking a long, low stride as they throw. Either way, stand side-on to the direction you want the stone to travel.

THE ACTION

Stand on your back foot, coil yourself up – a bit like a baseball pitcher – and then uncoil, taking a big step forward onto your front foot and throwing all in one go.

THE RELEASE

The most important part. Your forearm should be parallel to the water with the elbow leading the wrist, the wrist leading the hand, and the hand leading the index finger. You’re aiming to whip or flick your wrist and hand on release, like a forehand frisbee throw.

Make sure your index finger stays in contact with the stone for as long as possible. This achieves two things. First, it gives the stone lots of spin, stabilising it as it flies through the air. Each time the stone skims, it loses some rotational energy, so the more spin, the truer it will fly, even after lots of bounces. Second, maximum stone-finger contact means more acceleration, similar to the effect achieved by a pelota
player’s xistera (a sort of long hooked glove) or by those plastic ball-throwers that make playing fetch extra fun for dogs.

This might sound counter-intuitive, but if you try too hard, if you put all your weight into it, the results are often strangely disappointing. Holding a bit back gets you a bit more.

FIRST CONTACT

If the stone makes contact with the water too close to you, the angle will be too steep. The stone will either disappear or rise sharply in an impressive first hop, followed by an unimpressive plop as it sinks.

If the stone makes contact too far away, the risk is that it starts to turn over in the air, makes poor contact with the water and doesn’t skim very far, if at all. In this case, the first skip sometimes jags at a perfect right angle before plopping into the water. If this happens it’s best to nod approvingly, giving the impression that’s what you meant to do all along.

In general, you want the stone to hit the water three to four metres in front of you. This distance, combined with the height at which you release the stone, determines the angle at which it enters the water. There’s been a surprising amount of scientific – and some less scientific – research into this, and the conclusion is that 20 degrees is best.

THE CONDITIONS

The ideal is no wind and flat water. If there’s a breeze, skim downwind. If there’s tide or current, throw with the flow. Of the two, wind (and the accompanying wavelets) has more impact.

CHILDREN

Just because skimming stones sounds simple, doesn’t mean it’s easy. Small children are rubbish at it. Don’t bother trying to teach them before the age of seven.

Having children in tow, however, needn’t diminish your skimming pleasure. Challenge them to find the perfect stone, allowing you to focus on the job in hand – skimming – while your minions scour the beach. Keep them interested by telling them how well their stones are doing. ‘Oh, I can never find any that good! Oh, that really was the best stone ever!’ When that starts to pall, fall back on the great stalwart:
who can make the biggest splash?

COMPETITIVE SKIMMING

Inevitably, there are stone-skimming championships. Some are won by distance. Some are won by number of bounces. Much as we endorse anyone’s dedication to their craft, we fear they’re missing the point of skimming entirely.

What would make a society drain its public swimming pools and fill them with concrete rather than opening them to everyone?

In The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, economics researcher Heather McGhee sets out across America to learn why white voters so often act against their own interests. Why do they block changes that would help them, and even destroy their own advantages, whenever people of colour also stand to benefit?

Their tragedy is that they believe they can’t win unless somebody else loses. But this is a lie. McGhee marshals overwhelming economic evidence, and a profound well of empathy, to reveal the surprising truth: even racists lose out under white supremacy.

Racism in the United States drained the pools and this is everybody’s problem. Here are five reasons why:

1. Racism caused the global financial crisis

It was the use of biased lending policies that laid the groundwork for the 2008 financial crisis. Predatory loan companies disproportionately targeted black communities in redlined areas, but the system only imploded in 2008 when white consumers fell victim to the same strategies. This had repercussions across the globe, many of which are still being felt today.

2. Racism has a negative impact on climate change

Black communities are significantly more polluted than those that are a majority white, due to housing policies that excluded black families from all but designated industrial ‘sacrifice zones.’  This has a global impact and there can be little prospect of tackling global climate change until America’s zero-sum delusions are defeated.

3. Racism in the US was caused by the legacy of British colonialism

The system that defines the United States came directly from imperial practices. It is a former British colony that has enshrined racism into law to preserve an economy built on the back of stolen labour and land. We must come to terms with our own legacy in order to move forward, recognising the negative effects of which we are capable of triggering.

4. Overcoming racism is a key step in tackling global division

In the face of an increasingly divided world, learning from the risks and limitations of a segregated society can help us to forward from Brexit, COVID-19 and more. A divided world cannot tackle issues that affect us all, so the more we can learn about overcoming division, the more we will all benefit.

5. Anti-racism must be a global effort

Racism exists in the UK as well and it hurts us all. In order to be anti-racist, we must learn the heartbreaking, liberating truth about what racism has cost all of us—and what we can do about it. This is a collective effort that can only be fully impactful when we tackle the issue together, all over the world. Only with an insight into the workings of prejudice can we achieve solidarity among all humans, ‘to piece together a new story of who we could be to one another.’

‘I’m thrilled that Profile is bringing The Sum of Us to UK readers. I hope that the book will explain what happened to the once-thriving American middle class and serve as a cautionary tale for other nations. While the political hymns in the US and the UK are in different keys, they sure do rhyme. A fairer, more inclusive and more prosperous economy is available to all of us if we reject zero-sum narratives and start aiming for a solidarity dividend.’ Heather McGhee

Order this instant New York Times bestseller, which is out in the UK now.

Follow Heather McGhee on Twitter: @hmcghee

Watch Heather McGhee’s TED Talk on how racism makes the economy worse, which has pulled in over 2 million views to date.

“That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.” – Jhumpa Lahiri

Spring is here and with the lovely weather, there also comes a promise of bookshops opening back up on 12th April across England and Wales, which we cannot wait for.

For many of us, our local and independent bookshops have been pivotal during the last year, in allowing us to keep reading and ordering – and selling – books. Books Are My Bag are leading the charge on social media with their #ChooseBookshops hashtag, which publishers and the Indie Alliance are helping support.

Here at Profile, we have been gearing up for the opening of bookshops and have asked our staff to share with us one of their favourite local or independent bookshops and share their love for it. We love their responses and are sharing them below and would love to hear from you all too, with your favourite bookshops that you’re looking forward to visit.

Anna-Marie Fitzgerald, Head of Publicity for Fiction & Commercial Non-Fiction: Daunts Books Cheapside and their wonderful team | Visit Daunts Books Cheapside Online

‘They are infinitely patient with my many requests and enquiries, have an expertly stocked children’s section and wonderfully curated front-of-store. Their treat-filled tables and shelves are full of enough surprises and distractions that I forget what I’ve gone in for!’

Daunt Books Twitter

Andrew Franklin, MD: Sevenoaks Bookshop run by the amazing Fleur Sinclair | Visit Sevenoaks Bookshop Online

‘It is already on the shortlist for regional bookshop of the year. Brilliant energy, tireless commitment to reading, especially for children and a spectacular range of events. And the most amazing thing of all: Fleur enlarged her bookshop during lockdown. This bookshop is all you would ever want an indie bookshop to be. Worth going to Sevenoaks just to visit it (and the new café she is opening).’

Sevenoaks Bookshop Twitter

Ali Nadal, Senior Production Controller: Scarthin Books | Visit Scarthin Books Online

‘The next time you are in the Peak District – make a detour to Scarthin Books in Cromford; it sells both new and second-hand books, has a fantastic music room, and to top it all off has a lovely cafe!’

Scarthin Books Twitter

Ed Lake, Publishing Director and Louisa Dunnigan, Head of Audio & Commissioning Editor: Stoke Newington Bookshop | Visit Stoke Newington Bookshop Online

‘I love its imaginative and tasteful choices, its passionate staff, its splendid kids section, and its unforced community atmosphere.’

‘Stoke Newington Bookshop has the most enticing window displays, and tables beautifully curated to make it impossible to leave without taking something home. The staff in the spaceship-like hub at the shops centre are always helpful and knowledgeable.’  

Stoke Newington Bookshop Twitter

Rebecca Gray, Publisher: Mr B’s Emporium | Visit Mr B’s Emporium Online

‘There’s so much to say about Mr B’s Emporium in Bath – it’s beautiful, imaginative and creatively run. They have fabulous booksellers on hand, an endless up-and-down-stairs of gorgeous rooms, a wonderful, surprising selection and all sorts of brilliant initiatives, from book clubs to a band. A bath in the window and a tree in the kids’ room. It’s a magical place.’

Mr B’s Emporium Twitter

Flora Willis, Head of Marketing: Burley Fisher | Visit Burley Fisher Bookshop Online

‘Burley Fisher sprang up on Kingsland Road just five years ago, quickly becoming an integral part of East London life. Starting out as a ground floor bookshop, with an incredible array of titles focussing on independent publishing and highly tempting boxes of second hand reads under the awning outside, there is now a downstairs space too, home to events and exhibitions. During lockdown they pioneered bicycle book deliveries and have thrived over the last year. No wonder they’ve just won Independent Bookshop of the Year for London.’ 

Burley Fisher Books Twitter

Claire Beaumont, Sales Director: Newham Bookshop | Visit Newham Bookshop Online 

‘Newham Bookshop – because Vivien is the best bookseller in the whole wide world, bringing the widest range of books to her community. A proper bookshop with teetering piles of books to tempt anyone who steps foot inside…or even just walks past!’

Newham Bookshop Twitter

Elizabeth Hitti, Marketing and Publicity Assistant: Libreria | Visit Libreria Online

‘I absolutely adore Librería! It was designed to look like the fictional Library of Babel, with mirrors that give it a sense of infinity and hidden nooks that offer the possibility for discovery on every shelf. Their no-phone policy and knowledgeable staff mean that interesting bookish conversations are guaranteed. They also have a unique method for curating and displaying their books, using categories such as ‘Utopia,’ ‘Enchantment for the Disenchanted,’ and ‘Wanderlust,’ instead of the traditional genres. If you’re looking to discover your next favourite read, this is the ideal space in which to start!’

Libreria Twitter

Jane Pickett, Senior Publicity Manager: City Books | Visit City Books Online 

‘One of the first things I did when I relocated from London to Hove was seek out my new local bookshop: City Books. The comfort of their superb selection of books (while mine were still in boxes!), combined with welcoming and enthusiastic staff helped to settle this stranger in a strange town.’

City Books Twitter

Miranda Jewess, Editorial Director, Viper Books: Sheen Bookshop | Visit Sheen Bookshop Online

‘I love that they have a disproportionately massive crime and thriller section (of course). They also have a really impressive children’s section, which they allow children to completely deconstruct with very good humour. They clearly know that the first step in learning to love books is to play with them as fun objects.’

Sheen Bookshop Twitter

Happy birthday to us! We are thrilled to be celebrating 25 years of top-notch independent publishing. Born on April Fool’s Day, in a tiny office in Marylebone, we have been dedicated to publishing the best non-fiction by incredible authors from around the world.

Since then, we have acquired over eight imprints among many other areas and can call ourselves one of the most admired independent publishers in the UK. We are home to incredible authors, powerful voices, bestselling books and a brilliant, dynamic workforce.

Our new editorial intern Georgia Poplett interviews Managing Director Andrew Franklin about the origins of Profile, 90s parcel deliveries, and independent publishing.

Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and sign up to our literary newsletter here.

Andrew Franklin and Stephen Brough, two of Profile’s founders

GP: Why did you want to start Profile?

AF: The idea of an independent publisher that would not be tied to any corporate agenda and free to publish what the publisher believed best was very attractive.  I had worked at Penguin (now Penguin Random House) for 11 years so I had learned a huge amount and felt it would be worth having a go.

GP: How did you go about setting up the company?

AF: When you are inside a huge company, there are specialists who do everything for you and you believe it would be impossible to do it on your own.  That turns out not to be true because there are brilliant freelancers and specialists out there to help people setting up companies.  Everyone was incredibly kind – literary agents, other publishers, bookshops and suppliers.  Some of the obvious things you have to do like opening a bank account, producing a business plan and raising capital seem daunting but actually it turns out to be less of a challenge than one might expect.  More people should do it.

GP: What was your first day in the office like?

AF: Our current offices are absolutely beautiful – wedged between the Norman church of St Bartholomew-the-Great and Smithfield meat market.  Our first office in Marylebone was very different.  It was on the sixth floor of a building with no lift.  In those days there was no email, so couriers used to deliver manuscripts all the time.  Each day was devoted to arguing between the three of us then working for the company about who would go down the six floors to answer the door and then drag ourselves up again with the manuscript, parcel or post.

GP: What was the first book you published and how did it do?

AF: We started at Profile publishing The Economist Books so within three months of setting up the company we had an Economist backlist that we took over from Penguin.  Some of those great stalwarts like The Pocket World In Figures and The Economist Style Guide are still in print 25 years later.  The first book with a Profile P in it was Amitai Etzioni’s New Golden Rule.  It wasn’t the best book that we have ever published and that has been long out of print.

GP: What do you hope to see in Profile’s future?

AF: We have always wanted to publish interesting and lively nonfiction.  We didn’t do a bad job 25 years ago but we are doing it so much better now.  Look at our backlist, look at our forthcoming titles: there are books here that really matter and that change the way people think.  And, with the acquisition of Serpent’s Tail from its founder in 2007 we added fiction and crime.  We have published some amazing novels and short stories.  In fact only last week  a Serpent’s Tail title won the Folio Prize.  Now Souvenir, acquired from the estate of its founder who ran the company for 61 years.  So we publish really good distinctive books.  The sort that corporates don’t see, don’t understand or won’t take the risk to publish.  I am immensely proud of our authors and books and hope that they, like us, can see continuity in our ambitions and ideals.

Follow @andrewprofile and @georgiapoplett

We are thrilled to announce that we have acquired former Demos president Heather McGhee’s The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, a deeply compassionate and meticulously argued investigation of the economic costs of racism.

It instantly made the New York Times bestseller list upon its US publication in mid-February and is currently at #2 in the NYT hardcover non-fiction chart. It’s been garnering rave press reviews and glowing praise across the board, from How to Be an Antiracist author Ibram X. Kendi (‘This is the book I’ve been waiting for’) and Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza (‘A must-read’), to Elizabeth Gilbert (‘A powerhouse of a book’) and George Saunders (‘Vital, urgent, stirring, beautifully written’).

Heather McGhee is an expert in economic and social policy. The former president of the inequality-focused think tank Demos, she has drafted US legislation, testified before Congress and appeared on numerous news discussion shows. She chairs the board of Color of Change, America’s largest online racial justice organization. Her TED Talk on how racism makes the economy worse has pulled in over 2 million views to date.

In The Sum of Us, McGhee sets out across America to learn why white voters so often act against their own interests. Why do they block changes that would help them, and even destroy their own advantages, whenever people of colour also stand to benefit? Their tragedy is that they believe they can’t win unless somebody else loses. But this is a lie, and McGhee marshals overwhelming economic evidence, and a profound well of empathy, to reveal the surprising truth: even racists lose out under white supremacy. As McGhee shows, it was racist lending policies that triggered the 2008 financial crisis, and there can be little prospect of tackling global climate change until its zero-sum delusions are defeated.

America’s racism is everybody’s problem. The Sum of Us is a heartbreaking, panoramic insight into the workings of prejudice – and a timely invitation to solidarity among all humans, ‘to piece together a new story of who we could be to one another’.

Follow @hcghee

Pre-order your copy at Waterstones or from your local indie bookseller.

We’re thrilled that Deirdre Mask’s fascinating and acclaimed The Address Book has been longlisted for the prestigious Jhalak Prize!

First awarded in March 2017, the Jhalak Prize and its new sister award Jhalak Children’s & YA Prize founded in 2020, seek to celebrate books by British/British resident BAME writers.

The prizes are unique in that they accept entries published in the UK by writers of colour. These include (and not limited to) fiction, non-fiction, short stories, graphic novels, poetry and all other genres. The Jhalak Children’s and YA Prize accepts books for children and teens and young adults including picture books, chapter books, graphic novels, poetry, non-fiction, and all other genres by writers of colour and aimed at young readers. The prizes are also open to self-published writers.

The Jhalak Prize was started in 2016 by authors Sunny Singh, Nikesh Shukla and Media Diversified, with support from The Authors’ Club and funds donated by an anonymous benefactor, the prize of £1000. The Jhalak Children’s & YA Prize was founded in 2020 with a matching amount of £1,000 for the winner. The two prizes exist to support and celebrate writers of colour in Britain.

See the full longlist

ABOUT THE BOOK

A TIME Magazine Must-Read Book of 2020

‘Deirdre Mask’s book was just up my Strasse, alley, avenue and boulevard.’ -Simon Garfield, author of Just My Type

‘Fascinating … intelligent but thoroughly accessible … full of surprises’ – Sunday Times

When most people think about street addresses they think of parcel deliveries, or visitors finding their way. But who numbered the first house, and where, and why? What can addresses tell us about who we are and how we live together?
Deirdre Mask looks at the fate of streets named after Martin Luther King, Jr., how ancient Romans found their way, and why Bobby Sands is memorialised in Tehran. She explores why it matters if, like millions of people today, you don’t have an address.
From cholera epidemics to tax hungry monarchs, Mask discovers the different ways street names are created, celebrated, and in some cases, banned. Full of eye-opening facts, fascinating people and hidden history, this book shows how addresses are about identity, class and race. But most of all they are about power: the power to name, to hide, to decide who counts, who doesn’t, and why.

‘A must read for urbanists and all those interested in cities and modern economic and social life.’ – Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class

Richard Mabey is one of our greatest nature writers. He is the author of some thirty books including the bestselling plant bible Flora Britannica, Food for Free, Turned Out Nice Again, Weeds: the Story of Outlaw Plants and Nature Cure which was shortlisted for the Whitbread, Ondaatje and Ackerley Awards. His biography, Gilbert White won the Whitbread Biography Award.

To celebrate Richard turning 80, we’ve collected his books below. Which will you pick up first?

GILBERT WHITE

Richard Mabey tells the enthralling story of Britain’s first ecologist.

When the pioneering naturalist Gilbert White (1720-93) wrote The Natural History of Selborne (1789), he created one of the greatest and most influential natural history works of all time, his detailed observations about birds and animals providing the cornerstones of modern ecology. In this award-winning biography, Richard Mabey tells the wonderful story of the clergyman – England’s first ecologist – whose inspirational naturalist’s handbook has become an English classic.

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WEEDS

A lively and lyrical cultural history of plants in the wrong place by one of Britain’s best and most admired writers

Ever since the first human settlements 10,000 years ago, weeds have dogged our footsteps. They are there as the punishment of ‘thorns and thistles’ in Genesis and , two millennia later, as a symbol of Flanders Field. They are civilisations’ familiars, invading farmland and building-sites, war-zones and flower-beds across the globe. Yet living so intimately with us, they have been a blessing too. Weeds were the first crops, the first medicines. Burdock was the inspiration for Velcro. Cow parsley has become the fashionable adornment of Spring weddings.

Weaving together the insights of botanists, gardeners, artists and poets with his own life-long fascination, Richard Mabey examines how we have tried to define them, explain their persistence, and draw moral lessons from them.

One persons weed is another’s wild beauty.

THE PERFUMIER AND THE STINKHORN

Inspiring meditations through the author’s rich store of memories

In these elegant, short essays, revered nature writer Richard Mabey attempts to marry a Romantic’s view of the natural world with that of the meticulous observations of the scientist. By Romanticism, he refers to the view that nature isn’t a machine to be dissected, but a community of which we, the observers, are inextricably part. And that our feelings about that community are a perfectly proper subject for reflection, because they shape our relationship with it. Scientists eschew such a subjective response, wanting to witness the natural world exactly, whatever feelings subsequently follow.

Our feelings are an extension of our senses – sight, taste, smell, touch and sound – and here, in a sextet of inspiring meditations, Mabey explores each sensory response in what it means to interact with nature. From birdsong to poetry, from Petri-dish to microscope, this is a joyful union of meandering thoughts and intimate memories.

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TURNED OUT NICE AGAIN

An exploration of our preoccupation with the weather, as heard on BBC Radio 3: Changing Climates.

THE CABARET OF PLANTS

A Mabey magnum opus: ‘Mabey’s finest, an eclectic world-roaming collection of stories … lacing colour, intimacy and emotional texture around the scaffold of hard facts.’ (Spectator)

‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,’ Elizabeth Barrett Browning famously wrote, shortly before defying her family by running away to Italy with Robert Browning. But behind the romance of her extraordinary life stands a thoroughly modern figure, who remains an electrifying study in self-invention.

Elizabeth was born in 1806, a time when women could neither attend university nor vote, and yet she achieved lasting literary fame. She remains Britain’s greatest woman poet, whose work has inspired writers from Emily Dickinson to George Eliot and Virginia Woolf.

This vividly written biography, the first full study for over thirty years, incorporates recent archival discoveries to reveal the woman herself: a literary giant and a high-profile activist for the abolition of slavery who believed herself to be of mixed heritage; and a writer who defied chronic illness and long-term disability to change the course of cultural history. It holds up a mirror to the woman, her art – and the art of biography itself.

Read on for some unusual facts about Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

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11 Remarkable things about Elizabeth Barrett Browning

1. She was the first woman to be nominated for Poet Laureate, 159 years before a woman was actually appointed.

2. For most of her adult life she lived with life-threatening respiratory disease. As a result she spent years at a time living in lockdown.

3. World famous in her lifetime, she wrote Aurora Leigh, the first woman’s künstlerroman, or portrait of how an artist develops.

4. For her poetry advocating the reunification of Italy, she was seen as a heroine of the Italian struggle and given a public funeral in Florence.

5. She also wrote verse excoriating child labour, slavery, and forced prostitution.

6. She married Robert Browning secretly at 40.

7. She believed herself to be BAME, though Robert called her ‘my little Portuguese’.

8. Her son Pen, who grew up to be an artist, was born when she was 43.

9. She loved ice-cream, coffee and chianti.

10. For a few years she dabbled in spiritualism, even though she felt it was so wrong she kept it hidden from her son.

11. She only lived at Wimpole Street for a little over five years. She actually lived longest at Hope End, near Ledbury in Herefordshire, her home for twenty-two years until she was twenty six, and Casa Guidi in Florence, her base on and off for the last fourteen years of her life.

‘Required reading’ – Susie Orbach
‘Truly pioneering’ – Eric Kandel
‘It changes everything’ – Brian Eno

How does the mind connect to the body? Why does it feel like something to be us? Solving the question of consciousness has been an eternal quest for science. Now at last, the man who discovered the brain mechanism for dreaming appears to have made a breakthrough.

The very idea that a solution is at hand may seem outrageous. Isn’t consciousness intangible, beyond the reach of science? Yet Mark Solms shows how previous failures of science have concealed its true nature. Stick to the medical facts, listen to the eerie testimony of hundreds of neurosurgery patients, and with the author, you’ll begin to understand the truth – and it might just lie in the most ancient part of the brain – or The Hidden Spring.

Through a combination of neuroscience, philosophy, psychology and the real, lived experiences of people, The Hidden Spring will forever alter how you understand your own experience. There is a secret buried in the brain’s ancient foundations. This book shows how, if we bring it into the light, we can finally fathom ourselves.

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A Q&A with Mark Solms and his editor, Ed Lake