Showing results by publisher "Wildfire" in Politics & Government

How the monarchs of England and Scotland met their deaths has been a wonderful mixture of violence, infections, overindulgence and occasional regicide. In Mortal Monarchs, medical historian Dr Suzie Edge examines 1,000 years of royal deaths to uncover the plots, accusations, rivalries and ever-present threat of poison that the kings and queens of old faced.

Born in a remote village in Kenya, Nice Leng'ete saw the young girls she grew up with receive the cut, the rite of passage into female adulthood in Masai culture. Every girl got the cut, and once you did, you'd be married off to a man triple your age. You might be his second or third wife. You'd have children in your teens. This is exactly what happened to Nice's sister. To resist the cut meant becoming an outcast in Masai culture.

An Australian millionaire's plan to mine the ocean floor. Nigerian garbage pickers risking their lives to salvage e-waste. A Bill Gates-backed entrepreneur harnessing AI to find metals in the Arctic. These people and millions more are part of the intensifying competition to find and extract the minerals essential for two crucial technologies: the internet and renewable energy. Beiser crisscrossed the world to talk to the people involved and report on the damage this race is inflicting, the ways it could get worse, and how we can minimize the damage.

A timely and unprecedented examination of how the modern Middle East unravelled and why it started with the pivotal year of 1979. 'What happened to us?' For decades, the question has haunted the Arab and Muslim world, heard across Iran and Syria, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and in the author's home country of Lebanon. Was it always so? When did the extremism, intolerance and bloodletting of today displace the region's cultural promise and diversity?

Born into the Waorani tribe of Ecuador's Amazon rainforest, Nemonte Nenquimo was taught about plant medicines, foraging, oral storytelling, and shamanism by her elders. Age 14, she left the forest for the first time to study with an evangelical missionary group in the city. Eventually, her ancestors began appearing in her dreams, pleading with her to return and embrace her own culture. She listened. Two decades later, Nemonte has emerged as one of the most forceful voices in climate-change activism.

Cleopatra: lover, seductress, and Egypt's greatest queen. A woman more myth than history, immortalized in poetry, drama, music, art, and film. She captivated Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, the two greatest Romans of the day, and died in a blaze of glory, with an asp clasped to her breast - or so the legend tells us. But the real-life story of the historical Cleopatra VII is even more compelling. She was the last of seven Cleopatras who ruled Egypt before it was subsumed into the Roman Empire. These extraordinary women keep a close grip on power in the wealthiest country of the ancient world.

From the so-called Arab Spring to Gezi Park in Turkey, from Ukraine's Euromaidan to student rebellions in Chile and Hong Kong, the 2010s was undoubtedly the era of mass protest. Over four years, Vincent Bevins travelled the world to interview 100s of people who took part, asking activists how the failure to leverage these movements into lasting change often allowed the far right to hijack power, and why protestors instead saw their countries change in all the wrong ways.

As they signed NATO into being after World War II, its founders fervently believed that only if the West's democracies banded permanently together could they avoid a catastrophic global atomic conflict. Over the 75 years since, the alliance has indeed avoided war with Russia, also becoming a major political, strategic and diplomatic player well beyond its borders. Deterring Armageddon takes the listener from backroom deals that led to NATO's creation, through the Cold War, the Balkans and Afghanistan to the current confrontation with the Kremlin following the invasion of Ukraine.

Around the world, millions of people are quietly caring for long-term unwell, elderly or disabled loved ones; one-in-eight people in the UK and a sixth of the total US population, with comparable proportions across the globe. For many, this is a full-time job, saving our economies billions each year. Yet when writer, activist and former policy advisor Emily Kenway found herself in the painful position of caring for her mother, she discovered that provision for people in her situation was, at best, hopelessly inadequate and, at worst, completely non-existent.

Po Bronson and Arvind Gupta, venture capitalists from Silicon Valley, take everyday news headlines and decode them, leading us on a journey through their unique and highly entertaining view of the world. Each chapter is prefaced with a real-world headline from today's chaotic news cycle: dying bees. Rogue planets. Beyond Meat. Glaciers melting. Bronson and Gupta decipher what's really going on behind these headlines, and why.

As a care-leaver who has experienced homelessness, award-winning investigative journalist Daniel Lavelle has spent his life navigating social services that are not fit for purpose and leave many vulnerable people slipping through the cracks. For though the right to adequate housing is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the reality is another, much grimmer, story.

The picture of classical antiquity most of us learned in school is framed in certain ways - glossing over misogyny while omitting the seeds of feminist resistance. Many of today's harmful practices, like school dress codes, exploitation of the environment and rape culture, have their roots in the ancient world. But in Antigone Rising, classicist Helen Morales reminds us that the myths have subversive power because they are told - and read - in different ways.

Tommy Jessop is a multi-award winning actor, theatre performer, and campaigner. Tommy has been at the vanguard of bringing awareness of the potential of people living with Down syndrome to the media, and to government. A Life Worth Living will be Tommy's story - from his journey into acting and campaigning while showing his unstoppable determination, charisma, and love for life.

Karl Lokko is the man who should be dead. A former gang leader, by the age of 16, he had been cut in the face, stabbed and shot at more times than he'd had birthday parties. In Bullets and Butterflies, Karl shares how he rejected the shocking violence in his past to become one of the most inspiring young voices in the country. Let Karl introduce you to the 'hidden alumni' and his vision for the future as he lays out his manifesto for change.