Profile Books imprint: 206 books
Paraphernalia
The Curious Lives of Magical Things
Language: English
Release Date: June 9, 2011
From keys and handkerchiefs to sweets and rubber bands, the curious objects we surround ourselves with, though often seemingly mundane, have a magical quality.
Their surprising power to disturb, soothe, seduce or absorb give these quirky objects histories and meanings we rarely ponder. Yet...
Underground, Overground: A Passenger's History of the Tube
A Passenger's History of the Tube
Language: English
Release Date: May 3, 2012
Why is the Victoria Line so hot? What is an Electrical Multiple Unit? Is it really possible to ride from Kings Cross to Kings Cross on the Circle line? The London Underground is the oldest, most sprawling and illogical metropolitan transport system in the world, the result of a series of botch-jobs...
History Repeating
Why Populists Rise and Governments Fall
Language: English
Release Date: March 15, 2018
Most of the time, politics is boring. In most countries, the Average Joe rules. Extremists of the left and right can gnash their teeth but serious politicians know they desert the centre ground at their peril. It's the iron law of electoral politics.
That is, in normal times.
What about...
by Linda Colley
Language: English
Release Date: January 2, 2014
Language: English
Release Date: January 2, 2014
The United Kingdom; Great Britain; the British Isles; the Home Nations: such a wealth of different names implies uncertainty and contention - and an ability to invent and adjust. In a year that sees a Scottish referendum on independence, Linda Colley analyses some of the forces that have unified Britain...
Complaint
From Minor Moans to Principled Protests
Language: English
Release Date: July 23, 2010
Complaint can be a powerful political tool. Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King both used it to drive social change. So why do we moan about increasingly trivial things - like the weather or public transport? Do Brits complain less than Americans? Do men and women complain about different things?...
Iran: the Looming Crisis
Can the West live with Iran's nuclear threat?
Language: English
Release Date: November 4, 2010
In August 2002 the National Council of the Resistance in Iran (NCRI) revealed in Washington to a stunned world how advanced Iran's nuclear programme was. And in September 2009 US President Barack Obama exposed yet another clandestine nuclear site there, bringing the possibility of a nuclear arsenal...
A View From The Foothills
The Diaries of Chris Mullin
Language: English
Release Date: October 1, 2010
'It is said that failed politicians make the best diarists. In which case I am in with a chance.' Chris Mullin
Chris Mullin has been a Labour MP for twenty years, and despite his refusal to toe the party line - on issues like 90 days detention, for example - he has held several prominent posts....
Empires of Oil
Corporate Oil in Barbarian Worlds
Language: English
Release Date: August 6, 2010
We might think that the world's oil empires are invincible megaliths, dominated by American interests, but Duncan Clarke reveals the ways in which these empires will face huge challenges in the twenty-first century. Based on razor-sharp analysis of contemporary geopolitics and a deep knowledge of...
Sea Change
Alone Across the Atlantic in a Wooden Boat
Language: English
Release Date: August 2, 2018
Sea Change is Peter Nichols' first book, a biographical account of his own dramatic adventure. When his marriage ended, Nichols had to sell the only thing he and his wife owned - their boat. With only his sextant, his instincts as a seasoned sailor and his memories of a floundering marriage, he sets...
by Ian Stewart
Language: English
Release Date: March 7, 2013
Language: English
Release Date: March 7, 2013
There are some mathematical problems whose significance goes beyond the ordinary - like Fermat's Last Theorem or Goldbach's Conjecture - they are the enigmas which define mathematics. The Great Mathematical Problems explains why these problems exist, why they matter, what drives mathematicians to...
Counting Sheep
A Celebration of the Pastoral Heritage of Britain
Language: English
Release Date: April 3, 2014
Sheep are the thread that runs through the history of the English countryside. Our fortunes were once founded on sheep, and this book tells a story of wool and money and history, of merchants and farmers and shepherds, of English yeomen and how they got their freedom, and above all, of the soil. Sheep...
The War On Heresy
Faith and Power in Medieval Europe
Language: English
Release Date: March 15, 2012
The great war on heresy obsessed medieval Europe in the centuries after the first millennium. R. I. Moore's vivid narrative focuses on the motives and anxieties of those who declared and conducted the war: what were the beliefs and practices they saw as heretical? How might such beliefs have arisen?...
Jassim the Leader
Founder of Qatar
Language: English
Release Date: December 6, 2012
The Gulf state of Qatar tops the Forbes list of the world's richest countries. In 2010, the country had the world's highest GDP per capita, and its reserves of oil and natural gas are vast. It has been estimated that Qatar will invest more than $120 billion in the energy sector over the next ten years....
by Professor Mary Beard
Language: English
Release Date: April 5, 2012
Language: English
Release Date: April 5, 2012
Her central themes are the classics, universities and teaching - and much else besides. In this second collection following on from the success of It's a Don's Life, Beard ponders whether Gaddafi's home is Roman or not, we share her 'terror of humiliation' as she enters 'hairdresser country' and follow...