The question of what constitutes a 'good death' has been the central preoccupation of philosophers since ancient times. This book includes 190 philosopher's deaths that are bizarre, and tales of madness, murder, and pathos.

A high-school sex scandal jolts a group of teenage girls into a new awareness of their own potency and power. But when the local drama school decides to turn the scandal into a show, the real world and the world of the theatre are forced to meet, and soon the boundaries between private and public begin to dissolve.

Presents an account of Susan Sontag's final months, written by her son and drawing on previously unpublished letters and journals. This book writes about being by her side during that last year and at her death, and about the author's own contradictory emotions: his guilt for not consoling her enough.

Gives an account of the year in which the author struggled to come to terms with terminal lung cancer. This title sets darkly comic depictions of the medical team against joyful accounts of sunlit days with this beloved wife, Victoria.

A memoir about sharing domestic life with wild birds. It combines natural and cultural history with a personal story told with wit, lyricism and affection.

Diana Athill met Hakim Jamal when she edited his book, From the Dead Level: Malcolm X and Me, published by Andre Deutsch. Against all odds, they became friends, sometimes lovers.

Francoise, an Australian photographer, travels to Bhopal in India. There she meets a Tibetan refugee whose family died in the disaster, and a Scottish traveller battling addiction, who has found solace in Buddhism. This work features a collection of photographs that tell their stories of love struggle and transformation.

A personal journey into the Sahara and the racist assumptions of those writers who have gone before him. Taking as a metaphor the divers who cleaned out desert wells, Lindqvist drags to the surface the story of colonial slaughter and sexual exploitation which contaminate his boyhood idols.

Sofka Zinovieff had fallen in love with Greece as a student, but little suspected that years later she would return for good with an expatriate Greek husband and two young daughters. This book is a fresh, funny and inquiring account of her first year as an Athenian.

Reportage resists easy definition and comes in many forms - travel essay, narrative history, autobiography - but at its finest it reveals hidden truths about people and events that have shaped the world we know.

Uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. Although sixteenth-century Europeans began to view mass festivities as foreign and 'savage', the author shows that they were indigenous to the West, from the ancient Greek's worship of Dionysus to the medieval practices of Christianity as a 'danced religion'.

The Catholic Church is by far the largest Christian denomination and the largest organized body of any world religion. Well over a billion people - or over one-sixth of the world's population - belong to the Roman Catholic Church.

When he turned sixty-five, the playwright Simon Gray began to keep a diary: not a careful honing of the day's events with a view to posterity but an account of his thoughts as he had them, honestly, turbulently, digressively expressed.

When he turned sixty-five, the playwright Simon Gray began to keep a diary: not a careful honing of the day's events with a view to posterity but an account of his thoughts as he had them, honestly, turbulently, digressively expressed.

Hinduism is a much contested term used to describe the religious beliefs and practices of more than 800 million people, most of whom live in India. Yet Hinduism is a religion which lacks a set of core beliefs (there is no founder, no single scripture nor any central organisation).