‘Excellent and beyond timely.’ A. C. Grayling

Scientific advances and new technologies are letting others manipulate our minds more easily than ever before. Now, those tasked with protecting our minds are finally preparing to fight back. As we speak, the United Nations is seeking to pin down a concrete right to free thought and enshrine it in international law alongside life, education and protest.

But what is thought? And what makes it free? And how can it best be protected? Freethinking  explores what an effective right to freedom of thought would look like, and asks how we might build a culture of free thought, and whether that’s even what we want.

In an uncertain and rapidly evolving world, Freethinking shows that there are solutions to the forces buffeting our minds.

‘Michael Mansfield is the greatest civil liberties lawyer this country has ever produced’ – Baroness HELENA KENNEDY of the Shaws KC

‘Michael Mansfield has given power to the voiceless, the innocents … For this, he too is a hero’ – JOHN PILGER

‘Michael Mansfield combines rare humanity with a brilliant understanding of the law’ – JON SNOW

‘A book of great importance … Mr Mansfield’s thoughtful reflections demand our attention’ – KEN LOACH

‘An impressive and inspiring read’ – DUNCAN CAMPBELL

‘I want this book to inspire people, give them a blueprint for fighting their own battles, and challenge the status quo. To see that together, we are always stronger. To understand that those who stand in the way of change cannot do so forever.’ Michael Mansfield, KC

Barrister Michael Mansfield, KC, has spent his career fighting injustice, persecution and corruption. And be it the Birmingham Six, Bloody Sunday, Stephen Lawrence, the Marchioness, Hillsborough or Grenfell, he has come to learn one thing – that people power is unstoppable.

Time and again he has witnessed governments, police forces, legal institutions and the establishment, try to block change and maintain the status quo in order to protect their interests. But almost every time he has seen that passion, perseverance, collectivity and courage create a powerful momentum which is increasingly difficult to stop.

In this short but powerful book, the veteran barrister draws upon his 50 years of fighting for justice and revisits his most important cases and clients, proving without doubt that when people get together they can make lasting and positive change.

The power is in the people – not the people in power.

Maria Ressa has spent decades speaking truth to power. But her work tracking disinformation networks seeded by her own government, spreading lies to its own citizens laced with anger and hate, has landed her in trouble with the most powerful man in the country: President Duterte.

Now, hounded by the state, she has multiple arrest warrants against her name, and a potential 100+ years behind bars to prepare for – while she stands trial for speaking the truth.

How to Stand Up to a Dictator is the story of how democracy dies by a thousand cuts, and how an invisible atom bomb has exploded online that is killing our freedoms. It maps a network of disinformation – a heinous web of cause and effect – that has netted the globe: from Duterte’s drug wars, to America’s Capitol Hill, to Britain’s Brexit, to Russian and Chinese cyber-warfare, to Facebook and Silicon Valley, to our own clicks and our own votes.

Told from the frontline of the digital war, this is Maria Ressa’s urgent cry for us to wake up and hold the line, before it is too late.

Praise for Maria Ressa:
Winner of the UNESCO Press Freedom Award 2021
‘A personal hero of mine … she’s an important warning for the rest of us’
Hillary Clinton
‘Maria Ressa is 5ft 2in, but she stands taller than most in her pursuit of the truth’
Amal Clooney
‘Maria is a key voice … she is so incredible in so many ways’
Carole Cadwalladr

From one of South Africa’s foremost nonfiction writers, a deeply researched, shattering new account of Nelson Mandela’s relationship with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Drawing on never-before-seen material, Steinberg reveals the fractures and stubborn bonds at the heart of a volatile and groundbreaking union, a very modern political marriage that played out on the world stage.

One of the most celebrated political leaders of the twentieth century, Nelson Mandela has been written about by many biographers and historians. But in one crucial area, his life remains largely untold: his marriage to Winnie. During his years in prison, Nelson grew ever more in love with an idealised version of his wife, courting her in his letters as if they were young lovers frozen in time. But Winnie, every bit his political equal, found herself increasingly estranged from her jailed husband ‘ s politics. Behind his back, she was trying to orchestrate an armed seizure of power, a path he feared would lead to an endless civil war.

Jonny Steinberg tells the tale of this unique marriage – its longings, its obsessions, its deceits – turning the course of South African history into a page-turning political biography. Winnie & Nelson is a modern epic in which trauma doesn’t just affect the couple at its centre, but an entire nation. It is also a Shakespearean drama in which bonds of love and commitment mingle with timeless questions of revolution, such as whether to seek retribution or a negotiated peace. Told with power and tender emotional insight, Steinberg reveals how far these forever entwined leaders would go for one another, and also, where they drew the line. For in the end both knew theirs was not simply a marriage, but a contest to decide how apartheid should be fought.

Hailed as the “first freedom,” free speech is the bedrock of democracy. But it is a challenging principle, subject to erosion in times of upheaval. Today, in democracies and authoritarian states around the world, it is on the retreat.
In Free Speech, Jacob Mchangama traces the riveting legal, political, and cultural history of this idea. Through captivating stories of free speech’s many defenders – from the ancient Athenian orator Demosthenes and the ninth-century freethinker al-Razi, to Mary Wollstonecraft, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and modern-day digital activists – Mchangama demonstrates how the free exchange of ideas underlies all intellectual achievement and has enabled the advancement of both freedom and equality worldwide. Yet the desire to restrict speech is also a constant, and he explores how even its champions can be led down this path when the rise of new and contrarian voices challenge power and privilege of all kinds.

Meticulously researched, deeply humane and provocative, Free Speech challenges us all to recognise how much we have gained from this principle – and how much we stand to lose without it.

‘One of the greatest writers of our age’ Neil Gaiman

Across a wide variety of subjects, Rushdie delves into the nature of storytelling as a deeply human need and what emerges is a love letter to literature itself. Throughout, he shares his personal encounters, on the page and in person, with storytellers from Shakespeare to Toni Morrison and revels in the creative lines that can join art and life. Rushdie considers, too, the nature of truth and looks afresh at migration, multiculturalism and censorship.

‘Essential reading… Powerful’ Financial Times

‘Rushdie is vital, expansive, the critic as storyteller, championing his subjects with gusto’ TLS

WINNER OF IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE

‘The most important work of contemporary reporting I have ever read’ SALLY ROONEY

The treatment of refugees has become one of the most devastating human rights disasters in our history. In this book, award-winning journalist Sally Hayden unfolds a staggering investigation into the migrant crisis across North Africa.

This book follows the experiences of refugees, telling a range of shocking and eye-opening human stories. But it also surveys the bigger picture: the negligence of NGOs and corruption within the United Nations. The economics of the twenty-first-century slave trade and the EU’s bankrolling of Libyan militias. The trials of people smugglers, the frustrations of aid workers, the loopholes refugees seek out and the role of social media in crowdfunding ransoms. Who was accountable for the abuse? Where were the people finding solutions? Why wasn’t it being widely reported?

At its heart, this is a book about people who have made unimaginable choices, risking everything to survive in a system that wants them to be silent and disappear.

*THE GLOBAL MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER – NOW REVISED AND UPDATED*

In HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST Ibram X. Kendi, one of the world’s most influential scholars on racism, demolishes the idea of a post-racial society, punctures the myths and taboos that cloud our understanding of racism and presents a radically new approach to tackling it.

He shows how everyone is, at times, complicit in maintaining the structure of racism though we rarely realise it, and gives us the tools to identify and change those behaviours.

Uncompromising but essential, HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST sparked a new conversation about being antiracist around the world, showing that until we become part of the solution, we can only be part of the problem.

‘Transformative and revolutionary’ ROBIN DIANGELO, author of White Fragility
‘So vital’ IJEOMA OLUO, author of So You Want to Talk About Race
‘It feels like a light switch being flicked on’ OWEN JONES