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News From Nowhere Radical & Community Bookshop

not-for-profit - a workers'co-op - committed to social justice | 96 Bold Street, Liverpool L1 4HY - 0151 708 7270

Recommended Non-Fiction titles for Yuletide 2021

The best of 2021 - over a hundred of our top non-fiction recommendations!

Most books can be ordered within 7-10 days, subject to availability. If you need a book urgently, or by a specific date, you can always contact us before ordering to ask how long it will take
People of the Lane: An Oral History: Living in and Around Lark Lane, 1880-2020 - by Kay Flavell - £19.99
"I started spontaneously collecting the oral histories of People of the Lane in Liverpool, England in 1980-81, when I fell in love with the place and its gutsy people. A labour of love! Life took me to California and 40 years passed! Since 2019 I've ... more

Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures - by Mark Fisher - £12.99
Edited and with an introduction by Matt Colquhoun, this collection of lecture notes and transcriptions reveals acclaimed writer and blogger Mark Fisher in his element - the classroom - outlining a project that Fisher's death left so bittersweetly unf ... more

This is Your Time - by Ruby Bridges - £8.99
On November 14, 1960, at the age of six, Ruby Bridges became the first black child to integrate an all-white school in New Orleans. Escorted by federal marshals past angry segregationist protesters, young Ruby attended William Frantz Elementary and e ... more

No Modernism Without Lesbians - by Diana Souhami - £9.99
The extraordinary story of how a singular group of women in a pivotal time and place - Paris, Between the Wars - fostered the birth of the Modernist movement.  Sylvia Beach, Bryher, Natalie Barney, and Gertrude Stein. A trailblazing publisher; a ... more

The Prosecutor - by Nazir Afzal - £9.99
The outsider who transformed our justice system.   Nazir Afzal knows a thing or two about justice. As a Chief Prosecutor, it was his job to make sure the most complex, violent and harrowing crimes made it to court, and that their perpetrators ... more

The Velvet Mafia: The Gay Men Who Ran the Swinging Sixties - by Darryl W. Bullock - £20.00
In the fifties and sixties, in the period leading up to the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality and the founding of the Gay Liberation movement, a group of gay men behind the scenes of rock'n'roll was changing pop, politics and society for goo ... more

Handstands In The Dark: A True Story of Growing Up and Survival - by Janey Godley - £9.99
Born in the tough East End of Glasgow and married into one of the city's most notorious criminal families, Janey Godley's young life was far from ordinary.  From the grim and far-from-swinging 60s, to the discos of the 70s, to the tidal wave of ... more

Klopp: My Liverpool Romance - by Anthony Quinn - £8.99
As featured in the Guardian's Biggest Books of Autumn 2020  In the first book by a British writer about this extraordinary football manager, lifelong Liverpool fan Anthony Quinn has crafted a uniquely revealing love-letter to Jurgen Klopp.  In e ... more

Diary of a Young Naturalist - by Dara McAnulty - £10.99
Diary of a Young Naturalist chronicles the turning of 15-year-old Dara McAnulty's world. From spring and through a year in his home patch in Northern Ireland, Dara spent the seasons writing. These vivid, evocative and moving diary entries about his c ... more

Forced Out: A Detective's Story of Prejudice and Resilience - by Kevin Maxwell - £9.99
Kevin Maxwell was a dream candidate for the police force – he had a long-held desire to serve his community, a strong moral compass and a clear aptitude for both the strategic and practical aspects of policing. And, as a gay black man from a workin ... more

The Gifts of Reading: Essays on the Joys of Reading, Giving and Receiving Books - by Various authors, Curated by Jennie Orchard - £9.99
With contributions by: William Boyd, Candice Carty-Williams, Imtiaz Dharker, Roddy Doyle, Pico Iyer, Robert Macfarlane, Andy Miller, Jackie Morris, Jan Morris, Sisonke Msimang, Dina Nayeri, Chigozie Obioma, Michael Ondaatje, David Pilling, Max Porter ... more

The Boy with the Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies - by Sathnam Sanghera - £10.99
"It's 1979, I'm three years old, and like all breakfast times during my youth it begins with Mum combing my hair, a ritual for which I have to sit down on the second-hand, floral-patterned settee, and lean forward, like I'm presenting myself for exec ... more

Black and British: A Forgotten History - by David Olusoga - £12.99
Winner of the 2017 PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize A Waterstones.com History Book of the Year Longlisted for the Orwell Prize Shortlisted for the inaugural Jhalak Prize   In Black and British, award-winning historian and broadcaster David Olusoga off ... more

Vegan JapanEasy: Classic & Modern Vegan Japanese Recipes to Cook at Home - by Tim Anderson - £24.00
Believe it or not, Japanese cuisine in general is actually quite vegan-friendly, and many dishes can be made vegan with just a simple substitution or two. You can enjoy the same big, bold, salty-sweet-spicy-rich-umami recipes of modern Japanese soul ... more

What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition - by Emma Dabiri - £7.99
An incisive - and deeply practical - essay from the acclaimed author of Don't Touch My Hair.  Stop the denial Abandon guilt Interrogate capitalism  When it comes to racial justice, how do we transform demonstrations of support into ... more

A History of Pictures: From the Cave to the Computer Screen - by David Hockney and Martin Gayford - £19.95
Informed and energized by a lifetime of painting, drawing and making images with cameras, David Hockney, in collaboration with the art critic Martin Gayford, explores how and why pictures have been made across the millennia. What makes marks on a fla ... more

My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies - by Resmaa Menakem - £9.99
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER  The consequences of racism can be found in our bodies - in skin and sinew, in bone and blood.  In this ground-breaking, inspiring work, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage, the physical consequences of dis ... more

12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next. - by Jeanette Winterson - £16.99
Twelve bytes. Twelve eye-opening, mind-expanding, funny and provocative essays on the implications of artificial intelligence for the way we live from Sunday Times-bestselling author Jeanette Winterson.   Drawing on her years of thinking abou ... more

Tastes of Honey: The Making of Shelagh Delaney and a Cultural Revolution - by Selina Todd - £9.99
The ground-breaking, firebrand playwright who changed our cultural and social landscape and put working-class lives centre stage.   On 27 May 1958, A Taste of Honey opened in a small fringe theatre in London. Written by a nineteen-year-old bus dri ... more

In Their Shoes: Navigating Non-Binary Life - by Jamie Windust - £12.99
Combining light-hearted anecdotes with their own hard-won wisdom, Jamie Windust explores everything from fashion, dating, relationships and family, through to mental health, work and future key debates.   From trying on clothes in secret to i ... more

The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War - by Giles Tremlett - £14.99
The first major history of the International Brigades: a tale of blood, ideals and tragedy in the fight against fascism.  The Spanish Civil War was the first armed battle in the fight against fascism, and a rallying cry for a generation. Over 3 ... more

The Chagos Betrayal: How Britain Robbed an Island and Made Its People Disappear - by Florian Grosset - £16.99
During the cold war, the US government sought to establish an overseas military presence in the Indian Ocean. This graphic novel is a shocking account of British complicity in the forced exodus of the Chagos Islanders from their homeland to make that ... more

Unsilencing Gaza: Reflections on Resistance - by Sara Roy - £19.99
Gaza, the centre of Palestinian nationalism and resistance to the occupation, is the linchpin of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the key to its resolution. Since 2005, Israel has deepened the isolation of the territory, severing it almost comple ... more

Funny You Should Ask... Your Questions Answered by the QI Elves - by QI Elves - £8.99
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ZOE BALL   The QI Elves are the brains behind the enduringly popular BBC TV panel show QI.  Every Wednesday the Elves appear on The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show where they answer the ponderings and wonderings of ... more

A Library of Misremembered Books: When We're Searching for a Book but Have Forgotten the Title - by Marina Luz - £9.99
How do you find a book when you can't recall the title... or the author? This homage to a common reader's dilemma is a gift the booklover in your life won't soon forget.   Readers know all too well the comedy and tragedy of forgetting the name of ... more

Thin Places - by Kerri ni Dochartaigh - £14.99
A breathtaking mix of memoir, nature writing and history: this is Kerri ni Dochartaigh's story of a wild Ireland, an invisible border, an old conflict and the healing power of the natural world.  Kerri ni Dochartaigh was born in Derry, on the ... more

More Than a Woman - by Caitlin Moran - £8.99
A decade ago, Caitlin Moran thought she had it all figured out.  Her instant bestseller How to Be a Woman was a game-changing take on feminism, the patriarchy, and the general 'hoo-ha' of becoming a woman. Back then, she firmly believed 'the diff ... more

Give Us Freedom: The Women who Revolutionised the Modern World - by Rosalind Miles - £10.99
'They will have to choose between giving us freedom or giving us death'  So said,in 1913, the brilliant orator and suffragette,Emmeline Pankhurst, just one of the inspiring women who won the vote for women. She remains a heroine for those det ... more

Broken Greek: A Story of Chip Shops and Pop Songs - by Pete Paphides - £9.99
*AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4 'BOOK OF THE WEEK'*  'Do you sometimes feel like the music you're hearing is explaining your life to you?'  When Pete's parents moved from Cyprus to Birmingham in the 1960s in the hope of a better life, they had no mon ... more

The Wisdom of Tea: Life Lessons from the Japanese Tea Ceremony - by Noriko Morishita - £8.99
For more than 25 years Noriko Morishita has studied and practised the intricate rules of the famous Japanese Tea Ceremony, trying to master its complexities in order to find inner peace.   In this vivid account of her experience of the univer ... more

The Language Lover's Puzzle Book - by Alex Bellos - £8.99
From the bestselling author of Alex’s Adventures in Numberland and Can You Solve My Problems? comes a fascinating, hugely entertaining collection of puzzles for crossword addicts and language-lovers of all stripes.   Can you decipher the cod ... more

Shame On Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging - by Tessa McWatt - £9.99
"This remarkable meditation on beautiful, human bodies formed by the violence of slavery and by colonial shame resists categorisation, even as it shows up the ways in which categories of race and identity are no more than empty methods of social cont ... more

Vesper Flights - by Helen Macdonald - £9.99
*A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER* *A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK*  Animals don't exist to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves.   From the bestselling author o ... more

Chauvo-Feminism: On Sex, Power and #MeToo - by Sam Mills - £7.99
The 2017 #MeToo movement was a flagship moment, a time which empowered women to share their stories of sexual harassment and abuse in a spirit of solidarity and in demand of change. But have some men simply changed tactics?   Acclaimed author ... more

Treasured Islands: The explorer's guide to over 200 of the most beautiful and intriguing islands... - by Peter Naldrett - £18.99
Islands represent adventure, mystery, wilderness and escapism. Surrounded by water, they're somewhere to run away to, to be marooned on, to find a paradise... The British Isles includes some 194 inhabited islands (out of a total of over 6,000), ra ... more

The Black History Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained - by DK, with a Foreword by David Olusoga - £19.99
Which were the most powerful African empires? Who were the pioneers of jazz? What sparked the Black Lives Matter movement?   This book answers these questions and many more, exploring the rich history of the peoples of Africa and the African diasp ... more

The Gran Tour: Travels With My Elders - by Ben Aitken - £9.99
FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE ACCLAIMED A CHIP SHOP IN POZNAN.   One millennial, six coach trips, one big generation gap. When Ben Aitken learnt that his gran had enjoyed a four-night holiday including four three-course dinners, four cooked breakfasts, ... more

Who Am I, Again? - by Lenny Henry - £9.99
***BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week***   Sir Lenny Henry is one of the country's best-loved comedians with a career spanning over forty years. Here he writes about his youth for the first time.  You might think you know Lenny Henry. Think a ... more

Football's Black Pioneers: The Stories of the First Black Players to Represent the 92 League Clubs - by Bill Hern and David Gleave - £16.00
A new perspective on the lives, careers and experiences of groundbreaking black footballers in England.  Ninety-two chapters tell the unique stories of the first black footballers to play for each of the English Football League clubs. Four years ... more

How to Argue With a Racist: History, Science, Race and Reality - by Adam Rutherford - £8.99
Race is real because we perceive it. Racism is real because we enact it. But the appeal to science to strengthen racist ideologies is on the rise – and increasingly part of the public discourse on politics, migration, education, sport and intellige ... more

The Seven Necessary Sins For Women And Girls - by Mona Eltahawy - £11.99
The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls identifies seven sins women and girls are socialised to avoid anger, attention, profanity, ambition, power, violence and lust.   With essays on each, Mona Eltahawy creates a stunning manifesto encourag ... more

Becoming - by Michelle Obama - £12.99
Now in paperback featuring a new introduction by Michelle Obama, a letter from the author to her younger self, and a book club guide with 20 discussion questions and a 5-question Q&A, an intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First La ... more

Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture - by Sudhir Hazareesingh - £10.99
The definitive modern biography of the great slave leader, military genius and revolutionary hero Toussaint Louverture.  The Haitian Revolution began in the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue with a slave revolt in August 1791, and culmina ... more

Why Rebel - by Jay Griffiths - £7.99
"If bravery itself could write, it would write like she does"(John Berger) Why rebel?  Because our footprint on the Earth has never mattered more than now. How we treat it, in the spirit of gift or of theft, has never been more impor ... more

Bird Therapy - by Joe Harkness - £9.99
A personal, passionate and practical guide to the mental health benefits of bird watching.  I broke down in 2013 and it nearly broke me. Shaking and hateful, I tried the things the doctor said I should. Yes - medication helped. Counselling was en ... more

Bowie's Books: The Hundred Literary Heroes Who Changed His Life - by John O'Connell - £9.99
'What is your idea of perfect happiness?' 'Reading.' 'What is the quality you most like in a man?' 'The ability to return books.'  Three years before he died, David Bowie made a list of the one hundred books that had transformed his life - a ... more

Sailor Song: The Shanties and Ballads of the High Seas - by Gerry Smyth, illustrated by Jonny Hannah - £14.99
From the earliest of voyages seafarers have sung, be they homeward bound or rolling in a merciless sea to an unknown horizon. The shouts and cries of these sailors’ shanties provided a musical rhythm to their work and such ‘concerted’ efforts i ... more

Paint Your Town Red: How Preston Took Back Control and Your Town Can Too - by Matthew Brown and Rhian E Jones - £10.99
Across the world, there is a growing recognition that a new kind of economy is needed: more democratic, less exploitative, less destructive of society and the planet.  Paint Your Town Red looks at how wealth can be generated and shared at a l ... more

All the Young Men: How One Woman Risked It All To Care For The Dying - by Ruth Coker Burks and Kevin Carr O'Leary - £8.99
'If I have one message with this book it's that we all have to care for one another. Today, not just in 1986. Life is about caring for each other, and I learned more about life from the dying than I ever learned from the living. It's in an elephant r ... more

One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time - by Craig Brown - £9.99
WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2020   A Spectator Book of the Year A Times Book of the Year A Telegraph Book of the Year A Sunday Times Book of the Year   From the award-winning author of Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Marga ... more

Renegade: Darcus Howe and the Fight for Civil Rights - by Robin Bunce and Paul Field - £12.99
Renegade examines the struggle for racial justice in the UK, through the lens of one of Britain's most influential, and controversial, journalists and campaigners.  Born in Trinidad during the dying days of colonialism, Howe became an uncompromis ... more

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