Books published by publisher Scribe UK

History has portrayed Australia’s First Peoples, the Aboriginals, as hunter-gatherers who lived on an empty, uncultivated land. History is wrong. In this seminal book, Bruce Pascoe uncovers evidence that long before the arrival of white men, Aboriginal people across the continent were building dams and wells; planting, irrigating, and harvesting seeds, and then preserving the surplus and storing it in houses, sheds, or secure vessels; and creating elaborate cemeteries and manipulating the landscape. All of these behaviours were inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag, which turns out to have been a convenient lie that worked to justify dispossession. Using compelling evidence from the records and diaries of early Australian explorers and colonists, he reveals that Aboriginal systems of food production and land management have been blatantly understated in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia’s past is required — for the benefit of us all. Dark Emu, a bestseller in Australia, won both the Book of the Year Award and the Indigenous Writer’s Prize in the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards.

Ever wonder what your therapist is really thinking? Now you can find out ... Meet Lori Gottlieb, an insightful and compassionate therapist whose clients present with all kinds of problems. There's the struggling new parents; the older woman who feels she has nothing to live for; the self-destructive young alcoholic; and the terminally ill 35-year-old newlywed. And there's John, a narcissistic television producer, who frankly just seems to be a bit of a jerk. Over the course of a year, they all make progress. But Gottlieb is not just a therapist she's also a patient who's on a journey of her own. Interspersed with the stories of her clients are her own therapy sessions, as Gottlieb goes in search of the hidden roots of a devastating and life-changing event. Personal, revealing, funny, and wise, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone opens a rare window onto a world that is most often bound by secrecy, offering an illuminating tour of a profoundly private process.

A revelatory and original contribution to our understanding of the role of religion in society and politics. India’s leading public intellectual, Shashi Tharoor, lays out Hinduism's origins and its key philosophical concepts, major texts and everyday Hindu beliefs and practices, from worship to pilgrimage to caste. He is unsparing in his criticism of extremism and unequivocal in his belief that what makes India a distinctive nation with a unique culture will be imperiled if Hindu “fundamentalists”―the proponents of “Hindutva," or politicized Hinduism―seize the high ground. In his view, it is precisely because Hindus form the majority that India has survived as a plural, secular democracy. A book that will be read and debated now and in the future, Why I Am a Hindu, written in Tharoor's captivating prose, is a profound re-examination of Hinduism, one of the world's oldest and greatest religious traditions.

The world consumes over 300 million tonnes of plastic each year. But when did we start using plastic? And why? Where does all the plastic waste go? Journey through the life cycle of plastic – how plastics are produced and recycled, the many uses of plastics throughout the last century, how our plastic use and pollution has spiralled out of control, and what we can do about it.

Something smells good at 10 Pomegranate Street! Delicious, actually! In each apartment, someone is preparing a special dish to share with their neighbours. Mr Singh is making coconut dahl with his daughter while Maria mashes some avocados for her guacamole. Will everything be ready on time? Written and magnificently illustrated by Felicita Sala, this glorious celebration of community is filled with recipes from all over the world and simple instructions perfect for young chefs. Lunch at 10 Pomegranate Street is a visual feast to share and delight in.

The true story of the little-known mental-health pioneer who revolutionised how we see the defining problem of our era: anxiety. Panic, depression, sorrow, guilt, disgrace, obsession, sleeplessness, low confidence, loneliness, agoraphobia … Dr Claire Weekes knew how to treat them, but was dismissed as underqualified and overly populist by the psychiatric establishment. In a radical move, she had gone directly to the people. Her international bestseller Self Help for Your Nerves, first published in 1962 and still in print, helped tens of millions of people to overcome all of these, and continues to do so. Weekes pioneered an anxiety treatment that is now at the cutting edge of modern psychotherapies. Her early explanation of fear, and its effect on the nervous system, is state of the art. Psychologists use her method, neuroscientists study the interaction between different fear circuits in the brain, and many psychiatrists are revisiting the mind–body connection that was the hallmark of her unique work. Face, accept, float, let time pass: hers was the invisible hand that rewrote the therapeutic manual. This understanding of the biology of fear could not be more contemporary — ‘acceptance’ is the treatment du jour, and all mental-health professionals explain the phenomenon of fear in the same way she did so many years ago. However, most of them are unaware of the debt they have to a woman whose work has found such a huge public audience. This book is the first to tell that story, and to tell Weekes’ own remarkable tale, of how a mistaken diagnosis of tuberculosis led to heart palpitations, beginning her fascinating journey to a practical treatment for anxiety that put power back in the hands of the individual.

China and the United States are heading toward a war neither wants. The reason is Thucydides’s Trap, a deadly pattern of structural stress that results when a rising power challenges a ruling one. This phenomenon is as old as history itself. About the Peloponnesian War that devastated ancient Greece, the historian Thucydides explained: ‘It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.’ Over the past 500 years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times. War broke out in twelve of them. Today, as an unstoppable China approaches an immovable America, and both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump promise to make their countries ‘great again’, the seventeenth case looks grim. Unless China is willing to scale back its ambitions or Washington can accept becoming number two in the Pacific, a trade conflict, cyberattack, or accident at sea could soon escalate into all-out war. In Destined for War, the eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison explains why Thucydides’s Trap is the best lens for understanding U.S.-China relations in the twenty-first century. Through uncanny historical parallels and war scenarios, he shows how close we are to the unthinkable. Yet, stressing that war is not inevitable, Allison also reveals how clashing powers have kept the peace in the past — and what painful steps the United States and China must take to avoid disaster today.

Contradicts the conventional wisdom that native peoples were primitive hunter-gatherers History has portrayed Australia’s First Peoples, the Aboriginals, as hunter-gatherers who lived on an empty, uncultivated land. History is wrong. In this seminal book, Bruce Pascoe uncovers evidence that long before the arrival of white men, Aboriginal people across the continent were building dams and wells; planting, irrigating, and harvesting seeds, and then preserving the surplus and storing it in houses, sheds, or secure vessels; and creating elaborate cemeteries and manipulating the landscape. All of these behaviors were inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag, which turns out have been a convenient lie that worked to justify dispossession. Using compelling evidence from the records and diaries of early Australian explorers and colonists, he reveals that Aboriginal systems of food production and land management have been blatantly understated in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia’s past is required―for the benefit of all Australians. Dark Emu, a bestseller in Australia, won both the Book of the Year Award and the Indigenous Writer’s Prize in the 2016 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards.

?‘Harrowing, riveting, profoundly moving, and beautifully written… this book is stunning’ Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven ~*~The eagerly awaited new novel from the author of The Age of Miracles~*~Imagine a world where sleep could trap you, for days, for weeks, for months… Karen Thompson Walker's second novel tells the mesmerising story of a town transformed by a mystery illness that locks people in perpetual sleep and triggers extraordinary, life-altering dreams.One night in an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a first-year student stumbles into her room and falls asleep. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. When a second girl falls asleep, and then a third, panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. A young couple tries to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. Two sisters turn to each other for comfort as their survivalist father prepares for disaster.Written in luminous prose, The Dreamers is a breathtaking and beautiful novel, startling and provocative, about the possibilities contained within a human life if only we are awakened to them.‘This beautiful and devastating novel has a dream-like quality of its own’ Red ‘Lyrical and beguiling… a deeply immersive novel about a community in peril… and the choices we make when our lives, and those of our loved ones, are in danger’ The Observer ‘A modern Midsummer Night’s Dream… Walker paints a haunting canvas exploring time, memory, consciousness, and youth’ Marisha Pessl, author of Night Film ‘Frighteningly powerful, beautiful, and uncanny… a love story and also a horror story’ Karen Russell, author of Vampires in the Lemon Grove ‘This is a profound novel, and a deeply moving one… she takes a terrifying situation and reveals it as a thing of beauty’ Robin Black, author of Life Drawing ‘Lovely, lyrical and scary… a mesmerising read’ Psychologies magazine ‘A thought-provoking and profound story’ Cosmopolitan ‘A slow-building, philosophical and unique novel… at once a thought-provoking character study and a subtle science fiction tale’ CultureflyPraise for The Age of Miracles: ‘A beautifully observed coming-of-age tale… nimble, delicate and emotionally sophisticated’ Observer ‘Hauntingly believable… an impressive and quietly terrifying book’ Sunday Times'A stunner from the first page… I loved this novel and can't wait to see what this remarkable writer will do next' Justin Cronin 'What a remarkable, beautifully wrought novel' Curtis Sittenfeld

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2016 GOODREADS CHOICE AWARDS, BEST NONFICTION A LITHUB BOOK OF THE DECADE Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against ‘big government’ led to the rise of a broad-based conservative movement. But as Jane Mayer shows in this powerful, meticulously reported history, a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views also played a key role by bankrolling a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system. Jane Mayer spent five years conducting hundreds of interviews-including with several sources within the network-and scoured public records, private papers, and court proceedings in reporting this book. In a taut and utterly convincing narrative, she traces the byzantine trail of the billions of dollars spent by the network and provides vivid portraits of the colourful figures behind the new American oligarchy. Dark Money is a book that must be read by anyone who cares about the future of American democracy. PRAISE FOR JANE MAYER ‘Indispensable.’ The Guardian ‘Persuasive, timely and necessary.’ The New York Times

What’s the one thing a parent can do to make the most difference in the long run? The research is clear: show up! Now the bestselling authors of The Whole-Brain Child and No-Drama Discipline explain what this means over the course of childhood. One of the very best scientific predictors for how any child turns out — in terms of happiness, academic success, leadership skills, and meaningful relationships — is whether at least one adult in their life has consistently shown up for them. In an age of scheduling demands and digital distractions, showing up for your child might sound like a tall order. But as Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson reassuringly explain, it doesn’t take a lot of time, energy, or money. Instead, showing up means offering a quality of presence. And it’s simple to provide once you understand the four building blocks of a child’s healthy development. Every child needs to feel what Siegel and Bryson call the Four S’s: safe, seen, soothed, and secure. Based on the latest brain and attachment research, The Power of Showing Up shares stories, scripts, simple strategies, illustrations, and tips for honouring the Four S’s effectively in all kinds of situations: when our kids are struggling or when they’re enjoying success; when we’re consoling, disciplining, or arguing with them; and even when we’re apologising for the times we haven’t shown up for them. Demonstrating that mistakes and missteps are repairable, this book is a powerful guide to cultivating your child’s healthy emotional landscape.