The Oxford Companion to Black British History is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the long and fascinating history of black people in the British Isles, from African auxiliaries stationed on Hadrian's Wall in the 2nd century AD, through John Edmonstone, who taught taxidermy to Charles Darwin, Mary Seacole, the 'Black Florence Nightingale', and Walter Tull, footballer and First World War officer, to our own day. It considers such key concepts as Emancipation and Reparations. It is also timely: the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority highlighted in their annual report of December 2005 the need to give more attention to the wider teaching of black history. OCBBH brings together a unique collection of articles which provides an overview of the black presence in Britain, and the rich and diverse contribution made to British society.

In 1919, in the midst of chaos and destruction, communists in Russia wrote a short programme to set out priorities and goals. Next year came The ABC of Communism, an extended popular guide to the Programme. A new Afterword poses critical questions: How realistic was the programme? How did critics view this programme? These three texts provide historical insights and critical perspectives; they explore and explain what communism was... or might be?

Every age has its utopias, from Plato's Republic to contemporary sci-fi visions. In this spellbinding anthology John Carey charts the course of every conceivable dream world - whether communist, fascist, anarchist, green, golden age, techno-fantastic or hermaphroditic - combining a broad historical sweep with lively variety. An experienced and imaginative anthologist, editor of The Faber Book of Reportage and The Faber Book of Science, Carey has gathered together a vast range of texts from Ancient Egypt to modern California, the authors of which, in different ways, attempt to describe a better world than our own.

Why are some parts of the world so rich and others so poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution - and the unprecedented economic growth that came with it - occur in eighteenth-century England, and not at some other time, or in some other place? Why didn't industrialization make the whole world rich - and why did it make large parts of the world even poorer? In A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark tackles these profound questions and suggests a new and provocative way in which culture--not exploitation, geography, or resources - explains the wealth, and the poverty, of nations. Countering the prevailing theory that the Industrial Revolution was sparked by the sudden development of stable political, legal, and economic institutions in seventeenth-century Europe, Clark shows that such institutions existed long before industrialization. He argues instead that these institutions gradually led to deep cultural changes by encouraging people to abandon hunter-gatherer instincts-violence, impatience, and economy of effort-and adopt economic habits-hard work, rationality, and education.