'Chaudhuri does a mighty job of showing how plastic came to take over our lives, and why we have repeatedly failed to curb it' FINANCIAL TIMES

'A must read' MICHAEL MOSS, AUTHOR OF SALT, SUGAR, FAT

'Eye-popping, engaging and rigorous' MIKE BERNERS-LEE, AUTHOR OF A CLIMATE OF TRUTH

Over the past seventy years, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Unilever and other consumer goods makers have harnessed single-use plastics to turbocharge their profits. They've poured billions of dollars into convincing us we need disposable diapers, cups, bags, bottles, shampoo in sachets and plastic-packaged ultra-processed foods.

We were never clamouring for any of these items, but this shift towards disposability has fundamentally transformed our daily habits. Think of toddlers kept in disposable diapers for far longer than their parents wore cloth, our obsession with bottled water and our insatiable appetite for convenient snacks and coffee. While at first we shaped plastics, somewhere along the way, plastics took over and began shaping us.

Like any addiction, our plastic habit has consequences. It is damaging our climate and biodiversity and we are only just starting to understand its effect on our own health. How did plastic take over our lives? And why have we been unable to rein it in? In investigating how we got here, Consumed arms us to make better decisions about where we go next. It is only by understanding this history that we will stop accepting the same failed solutions and demand better from the brands that got us hooked on plastic in the first place.

A Book of the Year for Audible, The Times, Financial Times, The New York Times, Time, Cosmopolitan, The Economist, Spectator and more

Shortlisted for the Westminster Book Awards 2025
Shortlisted for the Hatchards First Biography Prize 2025
Shortlisted for the Unwin Award 2026
Winner of the Blueprint Asia-Pacific Whistleblowing Prize 2025

‘How else to put this? Bloody hell’ – The Guardian
‘Devastating . . . Funny . . . Highly enjoyable’ – The Times
‘Jaw-dropping . . . A tell-all tome’ – Financial Times

Sarah Wynn-Williams joined Facebook believing the company could change things for the better. Instead, what she encountered over seven years was so shocking that Meta obtained a legal order to silence her.

Now you can read her award-winning story. Candid and entertaining, Wynn-Williams’ account pulls back the curtain on Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and the global elite. She exposes the true cost of Silicon Valley’s ambition, from outrageous schemes cooked up on private jets to the alarming consequences of Facebook’s aggressive pursuit of global dominance.

Careless People is an ordinary woman’s gripping and darkly funny memoir that will forever change how you view the technology that runs our lives – and the unchecked power of those who control it.

‘A Bridget Jones’s Diary-style tale of a young woman thrown into a series of improbable situations’ – The Times
‘Amazing: of all the books in all the world Mr Free Speech Zuckerberg wants to ban, it’s the one about him’ – Marina Hyde

Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee draw on a decade of research on policymaking and public opinion to show us how scandals can ignite a public with few political outlets for their discontent. Scandals don’t simply dominate news cycles: they can provoke us to demand better policy, spurring governments to adopt rules that protect us from massive corporations run amok.

Today it is giant companies, not governments, who run the world. They launch rockets into space, control satellite communication and develop era-defining AI technologies. But around the globe, these corporate titans are facing increasing public hostility.

Tech giants are seen as promoting misinformation, undermining democracy and violating our privacy. Big banks, reeling since the financial crisis of 2008, continue to be racked with major scandals. Drawing on real-life examples such as the powdered milk scandal that rocked France, the VW scandal in Germany, the Goldman Sachs scandal in the United States, Cambridge Analytica in Britain and Samsung in South Korea – the authors show that these scandals are not just symptoms of a careless corporate elite, they are opportunities for real political change.

Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee reveal how the shared anger of citizens can be channelled into a backlash that has the potential to reinvigorate our failing democracies. One corporate scandal at a time.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE SUMMER 2025
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‘A fierce and brilliant call to arms for anyone who has been wondering whether there’s more to life. (There is.) Bregman wants to change you, and he just might succeed. This is a wonderfully dangerous book’ TIM HARFORD

‘The rare read that might actually help you become a better person‘ ADAM GRANT
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THE ANTIDOTE TO APATHY FROM THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR AND 2025 BBC REITH LECTURER RUTGER BREGMAN

Every day we’re bombarded with methods, mantras and life hacks that promise us wellness and prosperity – while time and talent remain some of our most squandered resources. The average full-time worker will spend 80,000 hours at their job: are you making the most of them? Do you truly believe in what you do, day in, day out?

What if you want to do something more with your limited time on the planet?

Internationally bestselling author Rutger Bregman shows us that with moral ambition – the will to make the world a wildly better place – we can be both idealistic and successful, and change the world along the way. Uncovering the qualities that made the great change-makers of history so effective, he shows how we too can lend our talents to the biggest challenges of our time, from climate change to inequality to the next pandemic. With moral ambition, we can do more than be on the right side of history: we can make history itself.

This book won’t make your life easier, but it should make it more meaningful. The question is: what will you do with it?

As the 2025 BBC Reith Lecturer, Rutger Bregman will present ‘Moral Revolution’, a four part series:
-A Time of Monsters
-How To Start a Moral Revolution
-A Realist’s Utopia
-Zoom Out
Available to listen on BBC Four.

Palantir builds data integration software: its technology ingests vast quantities of information and quickly identifies patterns, trends and connections that might elude the human eye. Founded in 2003 to help the U.S. government in the war on terrorism – an early investor was the CIA – Palantir is now a $400 billion global colossus whose software is used by major intelligence services (including the Mossad), the U.S. military, the National Health Service in England, and corporate giants like Airbus and BP. From AI to counterterrorism to climate change to immigration to financial fraud to healthcare to the future of warfare, the company is at the nexus of the most critical issues of the twenty-first century.  

Its billionaire CEO, Alex Karp, is a distinctive figure on the global business scene. A biracial Jew who is also severely dyslexic, Karp has built Palantir into a tech giant despite having no background in either business or computer science. Instead, he’s a trained philosopher who has become known for his strongly held views on a range of issues and for his willingness to grapple with the moral and ethical implications of Palantir’s work. Those questions have taken on added urgency during the Trump era, which has also brought attention to the political activism of Karp’s close friend and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel.  

In The Philosopher in the Valley, journalist Michael Steinberger is the first to tell the story of Alex Karp and Palantir from the beginning. Steinberger offers new biographical details and a rich psychological portrait of the man leading one of the world’s most secretive companies. Full of revelations, this is an urgent and insightful book about technological power, the surveillance state and the future we all face.

‘Wildly, warmly and wonderfully readable and revealing’ Stephen Fry

‘A true masterpiece that leaves you hungry for more’ Jamie Oliver

Jeremy King has spent fifty years pioneering London’s dining scene, hosting everyone from Princess Diana and Mick Jagger to Andy Warhol and Laurence Olivier. He opened the city’s most iconic and era-defining restaurants, including Le Caprice in the 80s, The Ivy in the 90s, The Wolseley in the 2000s, and now Arlington, The Park and Simpson’s in the 2020s. In this wonderfully entertaining memoir, he describes his life in hospitality with insightful anecdotes and well-earned wisdom.

Owing to the curious intimacy between restaurateur and guest, Jeremy has witnessed countless heartbreaks, failures, challenges and celebrations. His advice has been sought widely over the years, and here he gives a series of valuable reflections on everything from the art of a quick ‘no thanks’ to trickier dispute resolution. Restaurants are microcosms of life, and the skills learnt in hospitality – such as communication, empathy and discipline – can be profoundly beneficial for everyone.

Jeremy talks of the alluring mystery of solo diners, misperceptions about which are the best tables and why you should always look a waiter in the eye. Alongside the secrets of his one-of-a-kind restaurants, he also shares memories of stand-out guests like Lucian Freud, Harold Pinter and Lauren Bacall.

Without Reservation is the ultimate tell-all of a singular career guided by integrity, egality and authenticity.

We’ve long been told that saving the planet means buying local, switching to LED bulbs, using less plastic and cycling more. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: no matter how much we cut down our individual carbon footprints, it won’t be enough to stop global warming.

It’s time to move past feelings of guilt, powerlessness and frustration. Instead of tweaking our lifestyle, we need to pull the levers that drive real change on a systemic level.

Enter the  climate handprint -  a bold, positive approach that helps you  cut far more CO? than you personally produce. Whether at home, at work, or in your community, you can use your resources, skills, time, money and influence to create impactful change.

• Introduce plant-based meals at your workplace canteen -  saving dozens of tonnes of CO? per year.
• Get your company to install solar panels -  saving hundreds of tonnes of CO? per year.
• Push your local energy supplier to switch to renewables -  saving thousands of tonnes of CO? per year.

By shifting from  carbon footprint frustration to climate handprint power, you’ll start making impactful changes and feeling better about your contribution to curbing the climate crisis.

Gabriel Baunach  reveals how to move beyond small personal changes and start making a  genuine impact -  with strategies that are effective, empowering, and full of hope.

‘A vital read for anyone building or regulating the next era of technology’ REID HOFFMAN

The global, open internet is fragmenting.

As democracies seek to rein in the power of Big Tech, as Silicon Valley pivots to an America-first agenda, as authoritarian regimes such as China and Russia segregate their populations from the rest of the internet, the most powerful tool ever created for bringing the world together risks being dismantled.

Taking us behind the scenes at Meta and his interactions with world leaders, Nick Clegg, Meta’s former President, Global Affairs, sets out where Big Tech has gone wrong, how Silicon Valley’s insularity has blinded it to its missteps, and the radical reforms of the global platforms that are now needed if they are to secure a long-term future.

But he also makes the case that many of the charges against them – including that their algorithms polarise, manipulate and harm – are vastly overstated or simply untrue. And while new laws that regulate these corporations are essential, imposing national borders on the internet cannot be the answer. That will fatally undermine its capacity for knowledge-sharing, collaboration, education, trade, medical and scientific research, and ultimately for the improvement and empowerment of billions of lives.

Radical, reasonable, deeply felt and disarmingly honest, How To Save the Internet sets out a blueprint for the global cooperation we need in order to reform Big Tech while preserving the fundamental openness of the internet on which our future so depends.

‘A gripping and timely book. Nick Clegg writes with clarity, authority and urgency’ PETER FRANKOPAN

‘Mr Timpson is a role model as an employer. Other businesses could learn from his approach.’ The Guardian

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The Happy Index: a tool designed to measure and enhance workplace satisfaction, boost morale and empower teams.

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James Timpson is renowned for leading with empathy and understanding, often by example. His acclaimed people-first approach to management empowers colleagues, putting measurable job satisfaction at the heart of corporate strategy.

The Happy Index invites readers into a world where employee happiness isn’t just a buzzword – it’s a powerful catalyst for success that should be at the core of any successful organisation. Drawing on his decades of experience leading one of Britain’s best-loved high-street brands, Timpson shares the secrets behind his unique approach to ‘upside-down’ management. His infectious passion for people shines through every page and in the very real measures he has introduced – from days off for birthdays to free-to-use luxury holiday homes. And with a workforce comprised of at least 10 per cent ex-offenders at any one time, Timpson shows the value of an imaginative approach to hiring, with a staff retention rate to be proud of.

From a leader who knows what it takes to build thriving organisations, The Happy Index gives companies, start-ups and leaders the tools they need to bring Timpson’s revolutionary approach to their working lives.