Book Club Day UK: Stories you love, people to meet, a day for book clubs.
What is Book Club Day UK?
Book Club Day UK is a time to share the joy of being part of a book club, to encourage new clubs to form and to help support existing book clubs with their next meeting so that even more people will discover how book clubs build stronger, more connected communities.
Yale University Press London is a global publisher and a subsidiary of Yale University in the USA. We are committed to championing the arts and humanities through publishing the highest quality scholarship for a broad audience.
Meet our bestselling Little Histories series
Following in the footsteps of E. H. Gombrich’s worldwide bestseller A Little History of the World, the books in our Little Histories series explore the history of the world’s most remarkable people, events and ideas.
For 2025 the series has been relaunched with a brand new look for both hardbacks and paperbacks, foregrounding each book’s gorgeous illustrations across the printed inside covers and tip-in pages. In their rainbow of fresh and joyous colours, we hope the books in the series will continue to entice readers young and old for the next twenty years and more.
A Little History of the World
‘A delight’ – Daily Telegraph
The world has existed for over 4 billion years, but humanity arrived much more recently. Here E. H. Gombrich brings to life the full story of human experience on Earth. He paints a colourful picture of remarkable people and events, from Confucius to Catherine the Great, from the invention of art to the destruction of the Berlin Wall.
It is both a guide to humanity’s achievements and an acute witness to its frailties. The product of a generous and humane sensibility, this is a timeless account of our shared history.
A Little History of Philosophy
‘The magic of Nigel Warburton’s book is its disarming accessibility’ Chris Brown, Time Out
This engaging Little History introduces the great thinkers in Western philosophy and explores their most compelling ideas about the universe and our place in it. Nigel Warburton guides us on a tour of the lives and work of thought-provoking philosophers – from the certainty of Descartes (‘I think, therefore I am’) to Hannah Arendt who examined crimes against humanity and taught us ‘the banality of evil’.
A Little History of Poetry
The Times and Sunday Times, ‘Best Books of 2020’
John Carey tells the stories behind the world’s greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly 4,000 years ago to those being written today. Carey looks at poets whose works shape our view of the world – such as Shakespeare, Whitman and Yeats – and more recent poets like Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, and Marianne Moore who have started to question what makes a poem ‘great’ in the first place.
A Little History of Economics
‘Clear and accessible’ – Laura Garmeson, Financial Times
Economics explains the world. For example, the fact that you’re holding this book in your hands puts you in a special position. To many people around the globe, spending money on a book and being able to read it would seem as likely as a trip to the moon. But why can some countries afford the buildings, books and teachers they need to educate their children – and others can’t? The word ‘economics’ might sound a bit dry, but it’s really about getting to the bottom of questions like these.
This is a lively, bestselling account of the history of economics, told through events from ancient to modern times and through the ideas of great thinkers in the field.
A Little History of Art
‘Mullins leaves readers with an expansive, no-regrets appreciation of art and the human story’ Meghan Cox Gurdon, Wall Street Journal
Art can help us see the world differently or understand our place in it a little more clearly. It can move us emotionally, even if sometimes we cannot explain why. It is powerful stuff.
Roaming from Japan and India to South America and the Middle East, Charlotte Mullins showcases a host of overlooked artists, and celebrates art’s crucial place in our collective culture.
A Little History of Science
‘In Mr Bynum’s telling, a little history goes a long way’_ Alan Hirshfeld, Wall Street Journal
Where did we come from? Is there a centre of the universe? And why did E=mc² change the world?
This Little History delves beneath the surface of the planet, charts the evolution of chemistry’s periodic table, and explores the physics that explain electricity, gravity, and the atoms that make up our bodies and everything around us.
A Little History of the United States
A New York Times Bestseller
The United States is one of the most powerful countries in the world. This is the remarkable story of how it came to be.
We meet key figures, including founding father Benjamin Franklin, the Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull, the abolitionist Harriet Tubman, and the civil rights activist Rosa Parks. This is a fast-paced, character-filled history that brings the great, diverse American saga to life.
A Little History of the Science
‘A valuable and accessible overview for general readers’ Margaret Boult, Health and History
Psychology is the science devoted to understanding human nature. Its practitioners have long sought to understand behaviour, feelings and thoughts. In her fascinating history, Nicky Hayes tells the story of psychology from its origins to the present day, from Pavlov and his dogs to Milgram and his famous electric shock experiments to the CIA’s secret mind-control projects.
A Little History of the Archaeology
‘Fantastic gifts for the young and curious’ – The Bookseller
Archaeology tells the story of our ancestors: how they lived, what they believed in and how their cultures developed over millennia. Brian Fagan introduces us to pharaohs’ tombs, Mayan ruins, the first colonial settlements at Jamestown, mysterious Stonehenge, and Pompeii – the city buried by volcanic ash in AD 79.
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