Showing results by publisher "Fourth Estate" in Politics & Social Sciences

Part memoir, part commentary on masculinity, Raven Smith’s Men isn’t so much for men as about them. Raven has been trying to distil what it is about men that has kept him intrigued his whole life. It boils down to three things. Firstly, he loves them. Secondly, he can see how endlessly problematic they are. Thirdly, both these things converge in his own sense of self and his own masculinity.

In this unforgettable blend of memoir and cultural commentary, Otegha Uwagba explores her own complicated relationship with money and what her wide-ranging experiences say about the world around us.

Alan Garner is an exceptional lecturer and essayist. This rich collection of writings, spanning more than twenty years, explores an enviable range of scholarly interests: archaeology, myth, language, education, philosophy, the spiritual quest, mental health, literature, music and film. The book also serves as a poetic autobiography of one of England's best-loved but least public writers. He hears himself declared dead at the age of six; he draws on the deep vein of a rural working-class childhood in a family of craftsmen who instilled the passion for excellence and for innovation and humour.

In all animals, mating is a deal. But few creatures behave as if sex is a simple transaction. Many treat it with reverence, suspicion, angst and violence. In the case of the Black Grouse, the bird at the center of Matt Ridley’s investigation, the males dance and sing for hours a day, for several exhausting months, in an exhausting and sometimes deadly ritual called a ‘lek’. To prepare for the ordeal, they grow, preen and display fancy, twisted, bold-colored feathers.

In 1980s Britain, the line was that anything was possible if you worked hard enough, whether that be owning a home or going to university. Now, house prices are exorbitant and both student loans and childcare costs have skyrocketed. Combining her own experience and the stories of women she’s met over the last ten years whilst travelling around Britain as a journalist, Vicky Spratt’s crucial and remarkable book is a deep exploration of how the economic context of the last thirty years has shaped the lives of Millennials and Generation Z.

Tash Aw explores the panoramic cultural vitality of modern Asia through his own complicated family story of migration and adaptation, which is reflected in his own face. From a taxi ride in present-day Bangkok, to eating Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1980s Kuala Lumpur, Aw weaves together stories of insiders and outsiders, images from rural villages to megacity night clubs and voices in a dizzying variety of languages, dialects and slangs, to create an intricate and astoundingly vivid portrait of a place caught between the fast-approaching future and a past that won't let go.

Before they become mothers, women are repeatedly reminded that their biological clock is ticking. Once pregnant, a woman’s body becomes public property: she is patronised, panicked and forbidden from exercising her autonomy. In labour, women’s wishes are overridden, resulting in potentially life-changing injuries and trauma. When the baby comes home, women begin a life of pay cuts, lost job opportunities, heavier housework, unequal emotional loads and judgement from all sides.

Identifying the meaning of life and where we are heading preoccupies all of us at some stage or another. Who better to help us articulate this sense of direction than the most articulate people among us? Writers and thinkers, Ben Hutchinson suggests in this sparkling new book, help us reflect on purpose.

In this powerful and timely personal essay, best-selling author Otegha Uwagba reflects on racism, whiteness and the mental labour required of Black people to navigate relationships with white people. Presented as a record of Uwagba’s observations on this era-defining moment in history - that is, George Floyd’s brutal murder and the subsequent protests and scrutiny of institutional racism - Whites explores the colossal burden of whiteness, as told by someone who is in her own words, ‘a reluctant expert’.

Many of the artists that we encounter are completely unaware of the mathematics that bubble beneath their craft, while some consciously use it for inspiration. Our instincts might tell us that these two subjects are incompatible forces with nothing in common – mathematics being the realm of precise logic and art being the realm of emotion and aesthetics – but what if we’re wrong? Blueprints asks us to consider that mathematics and art may not be polar opposites after all.

Women, especially feminists and lesbians, have long been accused of hating men. Our instinct is to deny it at all costs. (After all, women have been burnt at the stake for admitting to less.) But what if mistrusting men, disliking men - and yes, maybe even hating men - is, in fact, a useful response to sexism? What if such a response offers a way out of oppression, a means of resistance? What if it even offers a path to joy, solidarity and sisterhood?

Cecelia Watson used to be obsessive about grammar rules. But then she began teaching. And that was when she realised that strict rules aren’t always the best way of teaching people how to make words say what they want them to; that they are even, sometimes, best ignored. One punctuation mark encapsulates this thorny issue more clearly than any other. The semicolon. Hated by Stephen King, Hemingway, Vonnegut and Orwell, and loved by Herman Melville, Henry James and Rebecca Solnit, it is the most divisive punctuation mark in the English language, and many are too scared to go near it.

‘If you care about the planet, and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world’s inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope.’ The honesty and realism of Jonathan Franzen’s writings on climate have been widely denounced and just as widely celebrated.

The essential companion to Slay in Your Lane [‘Seismic.’ (Sunday Times); ‘A cultural landmark.’ (Daily Telegraph)]. Slay in Your Lane: The Audio Journal is an empowering and practical toolkit for a generation of black British women inspired to find success in every area of their lives. We decided to create Slay in Your Lane: The Journal shortly after our book tour ended last year. After so many events, talking to thousands of women, we realised that the same questions were cropping up again and again.

Amrou knew they were gay when, aged 10, they first laid eyes on Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. It was love at first sight. Amrou’s parents weren’t so happy.... From that moment on, Amrou began searching in all the wrong places for ways to make their divided self whole again. Life as a Unicorn is a hilarious yet devastating story of a search for belonging, following the painful and surprising process of transforming from a god-fearing Muslim boy to a queer drag queen, strutting the stage in seven-inch heels and saying the things nobody else dares to....

From education to work to dating, this inspirational, honest and provocative book recognises and celebrates the strides black women have already made, while providing practical advice for those who want to do the same and forge a better, visible future. Illustrated with stories from best friends Elizabeth Uviebinené and Yomi Adegoke’s own lives, and using interviews with dozens of the most successful black women in Britain....