PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

Jean-Marc Jancovici

Christophe Blain

THE #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 
*A Financial Times Most Anticipated Book of 2024* 
 
“Can a graphic novel save the planet? Perhaps.” – Elizabeth Kolbert 
 
Is this the end of the world? Perhaps not. 
 
In this eye-opening, hopeful and hugely entertaining bestseller, a climate expert takes a leading graphic novelist on a journey to understand the profound changes that our planet is undergoing. The scientist, Jean-Marc Jancovici, walks us through just about everything: from the innermost workings of our minds to toothbrushes, office jobs, and oil; ancient history and modern geopolitics; economics and ecology; the unfolding climate crisis and its consequences for us all. As he describes the world we live in - a world whose future is deeply uncertain - the artist, Christophe Blain, listens and draws. 
 
Coming face to face with global warming, the unlikely duo - along with Mother Nature, Pop Eye and Jiminy Cricket, among others - create a picture of what the solution to our predicament actually looks like. Yes, we have a fossil-fuel problem, but simply switching to renewable energy won’t fix it. We can and must rethink everything: our energy supply, our economies and our whole world. They leave us with an inspiring vision of the future in which food, education, housing, transport and communities - in other words, all of us - work together and, with a few technological fixes, succeed in creating a world without end. 
 
“Masterful and unforgettable... A testament to the power of the graphic novel" - Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis 
 
“READ. THIS. BOOK.”- Eliza Griswold, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist 
 
 
Over 1 million copies sold since publication, The Guardian, October 2024

World Without End

Luke Edward Hall

Seán Hewitt

For centuries, evidence of queer love in the ancient world was ignored or suppressed. Even today, only a few, famous narratives are widely known - yet there's a rich literary tradition of Greek and Roman love that extends far beyond this handful of stories. Here, the poet Seán Hewitt and painter Luke Edward Hall collect together, for the first time, forty of the most exhilarating queer tales in the classical canon and bring them newly to life. A ground-breaking anthology that changes the way we see the ancient world - and invites us to reflect on the puritanism of our own - 300,000 Kisses is a riotous celebration of desire in all its forms.

300,000 Kisses

Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

Coralie Bickford-Smith

One autumn evening, a young squirrel spots an acorn glinting on the forest floor. 
 
Eager to protect her treasure from watchful eyes and hungry mouths, she buries it deep in the heart of the forest. 
 
But when she returns after the icy winter, her acorn is nowhere to be found. Where could it be? 
 
An enchanting fable about growth, new life and finding hope in unexpected places.

The Squirrel and the Lost Treasure

John Yorke

To command narrative is to control a sometimes frightening power. What is it that turbocharges some tales, and how is it possible to harness that potency? 
 
John Yorke’s groundbreaking bestseller, Into the Woods, revolutionised our understanding of story structure. This new book delves deeper into how to put that structure to work in the world. Trip to the Moon takes us on a journey not just through drama and fiction but through politics, religion and non-western narrative. Through these terrains, Yorke seeks out the role of story in all our lives, examining how to utilise its lessons to create life-changing tales – and, in a world aflame with conspiracy theories, to guard ourselves against their darker purpose too. 
 
Revealing the artful symmetry and underlying principles that connect Summer beach reads to Classical Chinese poetry, superhero flicks to Russian arthouse, and classical rhetoric to state propaganda, Yorke makes dazzling connections that show how stories have the power to transfigure the chaos of our existence into a new equilibrium, and make the world anew.

Trip to the Moon

Understanding the True Power Of Story

Edward Ross

Golden Axe. The Sims. Half Life. Mega Drive. SNES. Like many teenagers around the world, Edward Ross grew up on a steady diet of video games and fascinating gadgets. As he continued to obsess over video games while drawing comic books, he started wondering what it was that made them more than just a pastime. Why do we play? 
 
This gorgeously illustrated book takes us deep into the history of video games, from the early prototypes created in the late 1940s through the growth of the medium in the 1970s and into the modern era, in which games are a crucial part of mainstream culture. Exploring politics, history and personal stories, and moving seamlessly from the greatest hits to engrossing indie games, Gamish is a love letter to an obsession that has gripped more than two billion people around the world.

Gamish

A Graphic History of Gaming

Meera Lee Patel

Meera Lee Patel's first guided journal, Start Where You Are, inspired thousands of readers through a rare combination of stunning watercolour art and thoughtful, empowering prompts and quotations. 
 
Made Out of Stars will pick up the journey once more, encouraging readers to recognize and embrace what makes them truly special. A booster shot of self-care when you need it most, this beautiful, intimate book will be a touchstone for anyone looking to better understand themselves so they can clear out the noise and be who they are.

Made Out of Stars

A Journal for Self-Realization

Andy Saunders

When we think of the history of space exploration, we can’t help but think of the Apollo missions and Neil Armstrong’s one giant leap. But what about the small steps that enabled NASA to reach for the Moon? 
 
Astronauts working on the earliest space missions, from Project Mercury to the Gemini missions of the mid-1960s, answered fundamental questions about the possibilities of long-duration space travel, paving the way for the Apollo missions and, ultimately, the Moon landings. They also took the first, and still some of the finest, images of Earth ever captured on film. 
 
Now, the bestselling author of Apollo Remastered, Andy Saunders has restored images from these first missions to show them in unprecedented detail and tell their full story, filled with dramatic life or death moments, mischievous pranks and astonishing triumphs. This stunning visual odyssey brings to life the pivotal, intimate moments of early space travel, unveiling the raw beauty and profound challenges faced by the pioneering astronauts pushing the boundaries of human achievement. Gemini and Mercury Remastered is a striking tribute to the visionaries who dared to dream beyond our world and a testament to the enduring power of exploration.

Gemini and Mercury Remastered

Nora Krug

Immediately following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Nora Krug connected with two anonymous subjects - 'K.', a Ukrainian journalist, and 'D.', a Russian artist - and began what would become a year of correspondence. Deeply moved by the rawness of their responses, she felt that through the personal accounts of these individuals who, directly and indirectly, experienced the war firsthand, she might be able to communicate something of the war and its human impact. Over the course of the next twelve months she communicated with each of them individually via phone chat, condensing their sometimes fluid, sometimes fragmentary answers into a consistent narrative and then created illustrations to go with each entry. The personal accounts contained in this book chronicle the first year of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in an intimate, epistolary format. 
 
Diaries of War explores the personal, the political, conflict, family and daily life under war with immense skill, compassion and moving thoughtfulness. Through these two individuals we see the granular effects of war on two lives, but they are emblematic of millions. Diaries of War is a harrowing record of a heart-wrenching historical event that has devastated the world and continues to alter countless lives.

Diaries of War

Two Visual Accounts from Ukraine and Russia

Matthew Rice

Matthew Rice is a long-time observer and illustrator of cities, buildings and all those who inhabit them, with an uncanny ability to express the energy of a place through a few lines of ink and splashes of paint. In the first book in this new sketchbook series, he explored the glittering canals of Venice: now he turns his attention to Rome, the Eternal City. 
 
Rome is a place where the ancient, the baroque and the modern clash, and this tension runs through Matthew's paintings. In this guide, he makes sly juxtapositions of people and animals against the backdrop of the city's architectural and artistic wonders, its ruins and its ristoranti. Matthew's ability to notice detail, his sense of light and dark, his expert's knowledge of architecture and how it creates an atmosphere allows him to present Rome, in these pages, in its all its living, breathing splendour. 
 
Following the same landscape format as Matthew's real-life sketchbooks, Rome: A Sketchbook will combine enchanting watercolour illustrations with an informed, personal and witty text, and promises to delight all visitors to Rome, armchair or actual.

Rome

A Sketchbook

Susan Ogilvy

Susan Ogilvy started painting bird nests almost by accident. One day, while tidying up her garden after a storm, she found a chaffinch nest - a strange, sodden lump on the grass under a fir tree. She carried it inside and placed it on a newspaper; over the next few hours, as the water drained out of it, the sodden lump blossomed into a mossy jewel. She was amazed, and dropped everything to make a painting of the nest at exact life size. 
 
This was the start of an obsession; Ogilvy has since painted more than fifty bird nests from life, each time marvelling at its ingenious construction. Every species of bird has its own vernacular, but sources its materials - most commonly twigs, roots, grasses, reeds, leaves, moss, lichen, hair, feathers and cobwebs, less usually, mattress stuffing and string - according to local availability. Ogilvy would, of course, never disturb nesting birds; instead she relies upon serendipity, which is why all her nests have either been abandoned after fulfilling their purpose, or displaced by strong winds. 
 
Although Nests showcases the specimens she has found near her homes in Somerset and on the Isle of Arran, its subject matter is by no means only British, since these same birds can be found all over Europe, Scandinavia and as far afield as Russia, Turkey and North Africa. This wondrous book is all the more special for its rarity. Few modern books exist specifically on the subject of bird nests; the most recent among the author's reference works was published in 1932. Exquisitely designed and packaged, Nests will be an essential addition to the libraries of all nature lovers.

Nests

Elizabeth-Jane Burnett

A moving tale of resistance and renewal, from the acclaimed author of Twelve Words for Moss 
 
Two friends, Kenjo and Leah, swoosh through the lush forests at the edge of the village in Kenya that they call home. Imitating hornbills and lying on the mossy boulders that line the river, the young girls are watched over by a canopy of ancient trees, whose roots reach into the past, present and future. 
 
But this glittering countryside is quickly becoming a haunting. As the armed rebellion against the British colonial regime intensifies, the forest is subsumed in the terrible conflict, disturbing the profound balance of life it nourishes and knowledge it preserves. Forced from their homes, the friends are separated, their lives forever twisted and buckled by the violent rupture. 
 
This tale of courage, survival and restoration captures the healing – and destructive – power of time, and unearths the hidden traces it leaves behind.

Splendour

A Novel

Heike Faller

Valerio Vidali

5: You learn that boys and girls fall in love. Incredible! 
13: When will your parents learn? Not in front of your friends. 
36: A dream came true, but it feels different than you thought. 
45: Do you like yourself as you are? 
75: You learn to unlearn things. Can you still do a somersault? 
86: Everything can be different in every moment. 
 
How does our perception of the world change in the course of a lifetime? When Heike Faller's niece was born she began to wonder what we learn in life, and how we can talk about what we have learnt with those we love. And so she began to ask everyone she met, what did you learn in life? Out of the answers of children's writers and refugees, teenagers and artists, mothers and friends, came 99 lessons: that those who have had a difficult time appreciate the good moments more. That those who have had it easy find it harder getting old. That a lot of getting old is about accepting boundaries. And of course, as one 94 year old said to her, 'sometimes I feel like that little girl I once was, and I wonder if I have learned anything at all.' 
 
A bestseller in Germany, Hundred is a book given by children to grandparents and the other way around, for christenings and Mother's days, significant birthdays and times of celebration. With every age beautifully illustrated by Valerio Vidali, Hundred cannot simply be read because, like life itself, it must be experienced. 
 
'Now this is a truly wonderful book, about life, love, age, about all of us. I gave it to look at to a 7 year old who sat with her 75 year old grandmother, and both were intent, deeply engaged, the one full of questions, the other searching still for answers. A remarkable and important book!' - Michael Morpurgo

Hundred: What You Learn in a Lifetime

Sarah Urist Green

A few years ago, curator Sarah Urist Green left her office in the basement of an art museum to travel around visiting a diverse range of artists, asking them to share prompts that relate to their own ways of working. The result is You Are an Artist, an invitation to invent imaginary friends, measure your cultural history, become someone else but mostly, become a truer version of yourself. Your challenge is to filter these assignments through the lens of your own experience and to have fun along the way. 
 
You don't have to know how to draw, paint or take a picture. This book is about expressing who you are through art, regardless of age or experience. The only materials you'll need are what you already have to hand or can source for free. 
 
You Are an Artist brings together more than 50 assignments gathered from some of the most innovative creators working today, including Sonya Clark, Michelle Grabner, The Guerrilla Girls, Fritz Haeg, Pablo Helguera, Nina Katchadourian, Toyin Ojih Odutola, J. Morgan Puett, Dread Scott, Alec Soth, Gillian Wearing, and many others.

You Are an Artist

James Read

James Read is on a mission to smuggle bacteria into our kitchens. In Of Cabbages & Kimchi, he takes the ten greatest 'living' ferments - fermented foods that are neither cooked nor pasteurized - and places them under the microscope, before cooking with them in all their delicious versatility. 
 
From the fiery funk of kimchi to the velvet tang of kefir, James describes the microbial process, then shares his recipes for recreating these wonders in your own kitchen - no specialist equipment required. Alongside his recipes, James investigates the extraordinary cultural and historic backgrounds of fermented foods, exploring how the microbes that bring them to life have developed alongside our culinary evolution. 
 
Featuring over fifty recipes - including Mushroom and Sauerkraut Pierogi, Chilled Radish Noodle Soup and Green Chilli Fermented Salsa - and packed to the brim with Marija Tiurina's gastro-surrealist watercolour illustrations, Of Cabbages and Kimchi will help you create, understand and appreciate fermentation's bubbling magic.

Of Cabbages and Kimchi

A Practical Guide to the World of Fermented Food

In The Zoo of the New, poets Don Paterson and Nick Laird have cast a fresh eye over more than five centuries of verse, from the English language and beyond. They have looked for those poems which see most clearly, which speak most vividly, and which have meant the most to them as readers and writers. Above all, they have sought poetry that retains, in one way or another, a powerful timelessness: words with the thrilling capacity to make the time and place in which they were written, however distant and however foreign they may be, feel utterly here and now in the twenty-first century. 
 
This book stretches as far back as Sappho and as far forward as the recent award-winning work of Denise Riley, taking in poets as varied as Thomas Wyatt, Sylvia Plath, William Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, Frank O'Hara and Gwendolyn Brooks along the way. Teeming with old favourites and surprising discoveries, this lovingly selected compendium is sure to win lifelong readers.

The Zoo of the New

A Book of Exceptional Poems from Sappho to Paul Muldoon

Paul Kingsnorth

In Against the Machine, “furiously gifted” (The Washington Post) novelist, poet, and essayist Paul Kingsnorth presents a wholly original—and terrifying—account of the technological-cultural matrix enveloping all of us. With insight into the spiritual and economic roots of techno-capitalism, Kingsnorth reveals how the Machine, in the name of progress, has choked Western civilization, is destroying the Earth itself, and is reshaping us in its image. From the First Industrial Revolution to the rise of artificial intelligence, he shows how the hollowing out of humanity has been a long game—and how your very soul is at stake. 
 
It takes effort to remain truly human in the age of the Machine. Here Kingsnorth reminds us what humanity requires: a healthy suspicion of entrenched power; connection to land, nature and heritage; and a deep attention to matters of the spirit. Prophetic and poetic, Against the Machine is a spiritual manual for dissidents in the technological age.

Against the Machine

On the Unmaking of Humanity

Richard Ogilvy

Our trees are among our greatest national treasures, and yet today many people have forgotten their names, their identifying features and the stories we used to tell about them. In Overleaf, the botanical painter Susan Ogilvy and the forester Richard Ogilvy reacquaint us with the trees of the British Isles through careful study of their leaves. From the water-loving alder to the long-lived yew, Susan paints every tree's leaf or needle in exquisite, jewel-like detail, at exactly life size, while Richard explores their natural history, the landscapes they inhabit and the ways we use their timber, leaves, flowers and fruit in craft, industry, food and medicine. As vivid and true to life as a book of freshly picked and pressed leaves, Overleaf will delight and inform tree-spotting beginners and seasoned naturalists alike.

Overleaf

An Album of British Trees

Helena Attlee

For centuries, Mount Etna has sent lava to engulf the towns and villages, terraced fields, orchards, vineyards, and citrus groves that nestle across its slopes. But still it remains home to a quarter of Sicily’s population. Why? Because Etna has always rewarded her people after every eruption with a landscape of unparalleled fertility, richness and drama. 
 
In this extraordinary new book, Helena Attlee combines travel writing with history, mythology, geology, gastronomy and horticulture to tell a unique story of life in the shadow of Sicily’s most dangerous and alluring landmark. Venturing through lava-strewn fields and pistachio groves patrolled by armed guards; past dusky, basalt-built farmyards, and caves once used to store snow, Attlee gathers tales of the artists, writers, farmers, and scientists who have for centuries been drawn to this unpredictable landscape: from the early Roman, Arabic and Norman settlers, Romantic poets and Victorian geologists, to the local families who live and work there today. It is at once a compelling account of Sicily’s rich and varied past, and a powerful meditation on humanity’s ever-changing relationship with landscape.

The Fire in the Mountain

Sicily, Etna and Her People

Elma van Vliet

Grandad, Tell Me contains all the questions you always wanted to ask your grandfather. What was your first job and how did you get it? Can you recall the first time you fell in love? What are the best decisions you made in your life? - and many, many more. 
 
From the favourite flavours and mundane chores of his childhood to the hopes and dreams he holds today, these prompts will piece together a deeply personal keepsake, one that reminds us what is really important in life: the people we love and the stories we share with one another.

Grandad, Tell Me

Paul Wood

The Rebel Tree. The Climber’s Lime. The Ecclesiastical Pear. 
 
In Tree Hunting, Paul Wood seeks out the best individual trees – the most charismatic, quirky or downright spectacular – that grow in Britain and Ireland's towns, cities and villages (and, in one case, from the crack in a church steeple). From a stumpy sycamore in Shetland, contorted by wind and hard weather, to the shining jewel in Brighton’s unlikely treasure trove of elms, Paul travels on a quest from north to south rooting out the legends and tall tales behind these marvellous specimens. As he delves into this rich ecosystem, he reveals how trees are inextricably bound to the story of our towns and cities: they have always meant a great deal to those that live near them, and they continue to shape the fabric of urban life in deep, and often surprising ways. 
 
Including sumptuous maps, grid references and charming travel notes so you can plan adventures of your own, Tree Hunting will help you unlock the secrets of Britain and Ireland's urban forests.

Tree Hunting

1,000 Trees to Find in Britain and Ireland’s Towns and Cities

The original give and get back journal – over 5 million copies sold worldwide 
 
This journal is a very special gift for your mum that she gives back to you, full of memories. 
It’s a chance to ask her the questions you'd always wondered about, and plenty you hadn't. Questions like: 
 
- Did you have a favourite toy when you were a little girl? 
- What did you want to be when you grew up? 
- What is one of the most special things you've achieved in life? 
Mum can write or put photographs or anything she wishes in its pages, transforming it into a lasting chronicle of her dreams and stories. Then she gives it back to you, so you can treasure her memories forever.

Mum, Tell Me Your Story

The original give & get back book

The Friends of Attention

We all feel it: something is seriously wrong. Our attention—that essential ability to give our minds and senses to the world—is being trapped, gutted, and sold out from under us by an industry of immense technological and financial power. The heedless exploitation of this vital capacity by a handful of tech companies is harming us all, reducing our very selfhood to that which can be quantified, bought, and sold—and shaking the foundations of our democracy. 
 
To push back against this 'human fracking,”'we need more than individual willpower or isolated efforts. We need a movement of collective resistance. Such a movement is beginning to bloom, and in this radical, first-of-its-kind guide, The Friends of Attention show us how to join the fight. We meet welders, nurses, poets, and surfers, all of whom are engaged in attentional practices. We learn to seek out sanctuaries—theatres and museums, houses of worship, dance parties—where together we can take refuge from the frackers. Drawing on a rich legacy of critical intellectuals and the creative wisdom of diverse traditions, Attensity! takes our apocalyptic present, turns it on its head, and reveals new vistas of human flourishing.

Showing results for: ‘Albert Camus’

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Series

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter