New Wednesday Paperbacks

Alexis de Tocqueville, Hugh Brogan (Profile Books)
A biography of Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), who wrote incisively on the nature of liberty and democracy and is now known as the prophet of democracy.



Science of Islam: A History, Ehsan Masood (Icon Books)
From Musa al-Khwarizmi who developed algebra in 9th-centry Baghdad to al-Jazari, a 13th-century Turkish engineer whose achievements include the crank, an account of the Islamic scientific revolution between 700 and 1400.



Kingmakers, Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac (W.W. Norton & Company)
The story of how the modern Middle East came to be, told through the lives of the Britons and Americans who shaped it, some of whom are famous (Lawrence of Arabia and Gertrude Bell) and others who have been largely forgotten (Sir Mark Sykes and A. T. Wilson).



Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women, Jenny Hartley (Methuen)
The story of Urania Cottage, which Charles Dickens founded in Shepherd’s Bush, in 1847, as a hostel for destitute young women in London in an attempt to rehabilitate the residents and prepare them for a normal life as domestic servants in Britain’s expanding colonies.