Kerry Shale

Trade explores the civilizing effect of buying and selling goods. In particular, the Indus Valley Civilization – on the borders of modern-day India and Pakistan – was seemingly created with the single purpose of encouraging the free flow of trade. The knock-on effects were massively beneficial - an increase in wealth, co-operation and trust.

War addresses the paradox that good comes from bad. The threat of destruction engenders a sense of fear, but also creates tighter bonds within a community, while driving an arms race of technological progress. This happened in the Zapotec civilization in Mexico, but also with the Teotihuacan civilization which overthrew the Zapotecs and emerged as the first superpower of the Americas.

As early humans spread out across the world, their toughest challenge was colonizing the Americas - because a huge ice sheet blocked the route. It has long been thought that the pioneers, known as Clovis people, arrived about 13,000 years ago, but an underwater discovery in Mexico suggests people arrived earlier than previously thought - and by boat, not on foot. How closely related were these First Americans to today's Native Americans? It's a controversial...

Around 200,000 years ago, a new species, Homo sapiens, appeared on the African landscape. While scientists have imagined eastern Africa as a real-life Garden of Eden, the latest research suggests humans evolved in many places across the continent at the same time. DNA from a 19th-century African-American slave is forcing geneticists to re-think the origins of our species. The theory is that our ancestors met, mated and hybridized with other human...

What happened when early humans ventured out of Africa and into Asia? Where did they go and whom did they meet along the way? The latest evidence suggests they left far earlier than previously thought and interbred with other types of ancient human - Homo erectus, Neanderthals and also the Denisovans, whose existence was established only five years ago when geneticists extracted DNA from a tiny fragment of finger bone. Because these ancient humans...

The Wall Street bombing of September 1920 is the most destruction and deadly terrorist attack ever committed on United States soil. Caught in the blast are war veteran Stratham younger, polic detective Jimmy Littlemore, and the beautiful but secretive Colette Rousseau. A mysterious trail of evidence, together with a series of inexplicable attacks on Colette and a secret buried deep in her past, leas the three on a journey from Paris to Prague, from...

Having lived as mobile foragers for 99 percent of our time on Earth, how and why did humans set out on the road to civilization? How did they create villages, towns, cities and states, and establish the blueprint for the modern world? Explore the seedbed civilizations of Mesoamerica, the Middle East, and the Indus Valley in this global story.

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon embark on another deliciously deadpan culinary road trip. This time around, the guys head to Spain to sample the best of the country's gastronomic offerings in between rounds of their hilariously off-the-cuff banter. Over plates of pintxos and paella, the pair exchange barbs and their patented celebrity impressions, as well as more serious reflections on what it means to settle into middle age.

Vikas Swarup's spectacular debut novel opens in a jail cell in Mumbai, India, where Ram Mohammad Thomas is being held after correctly answering all twelve questions on India's biggest quiz show, Who Will Win a Billion? It is hard to believe that a poor orphan who has never read a newspaper or gone to school could win such a contest. But through a series of exhilarating tales Ram explains to his lawyer how episodes in his life gave him the answer to...

It is 1953, a heat wave is sweeping across America and the Grossmans - Ben, Addie and their two children - are moving their lives from the political heart of Washington DC to suburban Long Island. Benny was a successful lawyer in the Department of Justice, but all that has come tumbling down. With the McCarthy era of paranoia, persecution, and propaganda at its height, his past has come back to haunt him, forcing him to pack up his family and leave...