{"title":"Top Picks: Nov","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"illuminati-the-history-of-a-conspiracy-theory-by-michael-taylor","title":"Illuminati: The History of a Conspiracy Theory by Michael Taylor","description":"\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDATE OF RELEASE: 5 NOV 2026\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"productInfo\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"productContentWrap\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"productContent\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"description\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"productDescription\"\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003eThe first proper history of the world’s most notorious secret society and its bizarre and dangerous afterlife. On 1 May 1776 a radical young professor named Adam Weishaupt founded a secret society whose aim was to infiltrate and overturn the system of world power from within. Intellectuals, judges, politicians and poets joined, united by Enlightenment ideals and liberal attitudes towards politics and religion. They called themselves the Order of the Illuminati.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWithin a decade the Order, with its bizarre ciphers and melodramatic rituals, was gone. Outed and banned by the authorities, its leaders were prosecuted and exiled; its effects had been minimal. Yet to this day millions of people worldwide maintain that its collapse was a sham and that for 250 years this shadowy cabal of self-appointed power brokers, whose members now include Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Bill Gates and Taylor Swift, has been manipulating world events – starting wars, swaying elections, setting interest rates and creating celebrities.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThis is the first complete history of the brief, troubled life of the Illuminati and the conspiracy theory they spawned, from which all others have since derived. From the birth of the theory in the revolutionary war and terror of the 1790s, through the great upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and into the present, it shows how at moments of spectacular transformation, fear and perceived betrayal, people – including even George Washington and Winston Churchill – have turned to the theory for explanation or advantage. Associated first with freemasonry, later with communism, the conspiracy became entwined with antisemitism and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the 1920s, gained momentum through the rise of America’s Christian Right and even infused the counterculture of the 1960s and 70s, before finding new leases of life in the paranoid thinking of 9\/11 Truthers, QAnon, vaccine sceptics and the Manosphere.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFor centuries, the Illuminati have maintained a deep and unsettling hold on the public imagination. Michael Taylor’s meticulously sourced and gripping account of this story exposes and explains the power of conspiracist thinking as never before.\u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"productDescription\"\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"productDescription\"\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eHardback | Publication: 5 Nov 2026, Vintage\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cbr\u003eISBN: 9781847928382\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eExtent: 464 pages\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"David's Bookshop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57164856525182,"sku":null,"price":22.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0753\/0892\/5225\/files\/9781847928382.jpg?v=1785154969"},{"product_id":"sylvia-plath-on-writing-by-sylvia-plath","title":"Sylvia Plath on Writing by Sylvia Plath","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDATE OF RELEASE: 5 NOV 2026\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA vivid, incisive and inspiring collection of thoughts and advice on the craft of writing that will be gold dust to writers and to readers alikeSelected with a foreword by Maura DooleySylvia Plath always knew that she wanted to be a writer and she always wrote. This unique gathering of excerpts from her journals, letters, poems and prose offers razor-sharp, inspiring, amusing and painful insights into what it means to commit to a writing life. Plath wants, above all, to be truthful and exact, whether unlocking a childhood memory, exulting in new landscapes and lives or squaring up to marriage and motherhood.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eShe doesn't think poems 'should be all that chaste; and reaches past decorum and convention to capture her subject exactly with an astonishing image or phrase. This is a book for writers as much as for readers, and for anyone wanting to understand how a commitment to craft, to precision and technique, to looking hard and seeing clearly, is what lays the foundations for work such as Plath's with all its radical genius and enduring emotional power.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cem\u003eHardback | Publication: 5 Nov 2026, Faber \u0026amp; Faber \u003cbr\u003eISBN: 9780571400836\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eExtent: 176 pages\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"David's Bookshop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57754473038206,"sku":null,"price":10.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0753\/0892\/5225\/files\/9780571400836.jpg?v=1785162269"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.davids-bookshops.co.uk\/collections\/top-picks-nov.oembed","provider":"David's Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}