Ninety years after the First World War, police in a Victorian country town uncovered, inside a velvet-lined display cabinet, the mummified head of a Turkish soldier. The macabre discovery launched the author on a quest to understand the nature of deadly violence. This book takes us up close to the ways society kills.

Film star. Icon. Agitator. Martyr. Paul Robeson was a twentieth-century icon; the most famous African-American of his time. The son of a former slave, he found worldwide fame as a performer, travelling from Hollywood to the West End, and even to communist Russia. A champion of social justice and equality, he would go on to lose everything for the sake of his principles. Here, Jeff Sparrow traces Robeson’s remarkable life. Part travelogue, part biography, this is a story of political ardour, heritage, and trauma — a luminous portrait of a man and an urgent reflection on the...