Thomas Nagel's Mortal Questions explores some fundamental issues concerning the meaning, nature and value of human life. Questions about our attitudes to death, sexual behaviour, social inequality, war and political power are shown to lead to more obviously philosophical problems about personal identity, consciousness, freedom and value.  Meer

Language - in its communicative and playful functions, its literary formations and its shifting meanings - is a perennially fascinating topic. C. S. Lewis's Studies in Words explores this fascination by taking a series of words and teasing out their connotations using examples from a vast range of English literature, recovering lost meanings and analysing their functions.  Meer

The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems.  Meer

Why do we read literature and how do we judge it? C. S. Lewis's classic An Experiment in Criticism springs from the conviction that literature exists for the joy of the reader and that books should be judged by the kind of reading they invite.  Meer

The Order of the Temple, founded in 1119 to protect pilgrims around Jerusalem, developed into one of the most influential corporations in the medieval world.  Meer

On 30 March 1282, as the bells of Palermo were ringing for Vespers, the Sicilian townsfolk, crying 'Death to the French', slaughtered the garrison and administration of their Angevin King.  Meer

In Morality Bernard Williams confronts the problems of writing moral philosophy and offers a stimulating alternative to more systematic accounts which seem nevertheless to have left all the important issues somewhere off the page.  Meer

In this book, Waldemar Heckel traces the rise and eventual fall of one of the most successful military commanders in history. In 325 BCE, Alexander and his conquering army prepared to return home, after overcoming everything in their path: armies, terrain, climate, all invariably hostile.  Meer

Entertaining and educational, Douwe Draaisma's Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older raises almost as many questions as it answers. Draaisma applies a blend of scholarship, poetic sensibility and keen observation in exploring the nature of autobiographical memory, covering subjects such as déjà-vu, near death experiences and the effect of severe trauma on memory recall, as well as human perceptions of time at different stages in life.  Meer

Malcolm Barber's classic The Trial of the Templars recounts the dramatic demise of this elite military force in the fourteenth century. Having fought against Islam in the crusades in the East for nearly two centuries, in October 1307 the members of this respected Order were arrested on the order of Philip IV, King of France and charged with serious heresies, including homosexuality and the denial of Christ.  Meer

Global climate change is one of the most important issues humanity faces today. This updated, second edition assesses the sensible, senseless and biased proposals for averting the potentially disastrous consequences of global warming, allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions on switching to more sustainable energy provision.  Meer

In the later decades of the twentieth century, Africa plunged into political chaos. States failed, governments became predators, and citizens took up arms.  Meer

State structures, international forces, and class relations: Theda Skocpol shows how all three combine to explain the origins and accomplishments of social-revolutionary transformations.  Meer

Isaac Newton was indisputably one of the greatest scientists in history. His achievements in mathematics and physics marked the culmination of the movement that brought modern science into being.  Meer

People of European descent form the bulk of the population in most of the temperate zones of the world - North America, Australia and New Zealand. The military successes of European imperialism are easy to explain; in many cases they were a matter of firearms against spears.  Meer

The Allegory of Love is a landmark study of a powerful and influential medieval conception. C. S. Lewis explores the sentiment called 'courtly love' and the allegorical method within which it developed in literature and thought, from its first flowering in eleventh-century Languedoc through to its transformation and gradual demise at the end of the sixteenth century.  Meer

Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger was one of the most distinguished scientists of the twentieth century; his lectures on the history and philosophy of science are legendary.  Meer

C. S. Lewis's Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature is a collection of fourteen fascinating essays, half of which were never published in Lewis's lifetime.  Meer

In this book, Cherry Lewis skilfully blends the history of gauging the age of the Earth with a biography of Arthur Holmes, a British geologist who was a pioneer of geochronology.  Meer

The notion that our society, its education system and its intellectual life, is characterised by a split between two cultures – the arts or humanities on one hand and the sciences on the other – has a long history.  Meer