Marozzi is an outstanding guide to the urban centres he expounds on, partly because of his deep understanding and love for the peoples and places he writes about. . . . The succession of delightful pen portraits of rulers, as well as writers, artists and scholars, makes for a riveting read. This is a fine book that helps recentre our understanding of the past by focusing on cities about which little is known in Europe, in spite of their enduring importance and the role they have played in history. It is a compelling and personal account by an author who knows, cares and has thought deeply about his subject matter. It is a new Hudud al-Alam, the famous 10th-century Persian geography book, for the 21st century - informing, revealing and delighting in some of the parts of the world that everyone should know about.

This impressively clever, careful, and often beautiful book is the best sort of journey. . . Our guide is never predictable, continually fascinating, and his elegant writing makes for a very comfortable ride.

Islamic Empires is a seemingly boundless trove of intellectual, architectural, and actual treasures ... Marozzi writes colourful, narrative history of the finest kind: pacey, crimson, and with all the references left until the end.

Deeply engaging and fascinating

It is refreshing to read a book on Islam by someone who combines profound erudition with emotional intelligence and empathy. . . . A continuously readable narrative . . . For each of the cities included there is a well-rounded chapter, with an illuminating history, a perceptive analysis of personalities and politics, and a fair-minded assessment of its intellectual, artistic and architectural achievements.

The approach is perfect [and] the balance between telling detail and telling story is spot on. With its fine drawing and mass of minute detail, reading the book is more like poring over the framed miniatures in a manuscript: here a Moghul lolls by a pool, there a Timurid rampages across the page. The prose, too, is beautifully paced, sprightly but never tiring. And the city portraits build up into a panorama of Islamic civilisation as full as any history, and far more entertaining.

Superbly crafted ... Marozzi knows the ground intimately [and] has constructed a brilliant narrative by stringing together a necklace of tales from 15 extraordinary cities.

Marozzi's expertly crafted narrative ... captures the rich, varied and often complex nature of Islamic civilization by offering glimpses of not just its leaders and their institutions, but also its cultural shifts through history,

A rich mix of historical detail, colourful description and first-hand insights. Marozzi's style mixes historical insight with the descriptive flow of a seasoned traveller.

Magnificence and ruination go hand in hand in this vivid tale.

In telling the stories of 15 of the great Islamic cities, from Mecca in the seventh century via Samarkand in the 14th to Doha in the 21st, [Marozzi] ... vividly recounts the dynasties that made them centres of art, commerce, science and spirituality.

This is a complex yet accessible book that manages, in a gentle way, to address the prejudiced misconceptions of our world.

Justin Marozzi has ridden camels across the Sahara, written illuminating accounts of Herodotus, Tamerlane and Baghdad and advised the governments of Somalia, Libya and Iraq. In Islamic Empires, comprising 15 pocket portraits of cities of the Muslimworld at a crunch point in their history, he gives us a vivid, candid and entertaining immersion into a complex subject

Marozzi is an accomplished and ambitious writer... Islamic Empires [is] a sweeping, vibrant and often irrepressible account of the cities most emblematic of Islam... the charm of this book lies in the fact that it is so obviously the adult sublimation of a boyhood passion for the lands and history of Islam... Like an erudite magpie, he gathers material from every available source-primary texts, both religious and historical, as well as a profusion of secondary ones-and weaves it all together with dexterity.

Islamic Empires encompasses a breathtaking panorama of human, religious, military and architectural activity and achievement, as well as destruction and decline...The author's achievement is to mix travel writing, history and journalism, and present it in prose that is at once flowing, engaging, enlightening and incisive. His ability to transport us on a magic carpet from the depths of the 7th century to the present day and everywhere in between, and to capture key moments and shifts in culture and politics, threatens to render other more conventional approaches obsolete.

This guy seems to perfectly embody the traits of a good christian. More people need to be as loving as he is...

Garrett spent several years travelling the world, going down into bunkers and talking to their owners and tenants. His book is an incredible record of that journey, and also functions as a philosophical or psychological disquisition about space, about freedom, about survival. Bunker is an incredible read and will surely sell in quite enormous numbers, assuming the human race remains intact and can still read.

Stephen Fry's Troy delivers on all its promise, and then some. In audio book form it is, for a Bronze Age tale, an unalloyed delight.

This podcast is perfectly named. Sam makes sense of important, difficult, and often controversial topics with deep preparation, sharp questions, and intellectual fearlessness. More, please!

There are precious few spaces in the media landscape where difficult, rigorous and respectful conversations can play out at substantial length, without agenda. Sam Harris created the model for such illuminating exchange, and the Making Sense podcast is a treasure trove of discussions with many of the most compelling and fascinating minds of our era.

Making Sense is a refuelling station for the mind, and I visit it regularly. As an interviewer, Sam is both rigorous and generous. His show is completely devoid of the cheap shots and tribal bickering that characterize so much of podcasting. Making Sense is joyful play of the mind, without a trace of the partisan cretinism that disfigures the vast majority of our discourse these days.

Making Sense is one of the most thought-provoking podcasts that I've come across. Sam Harris does an incredible job probing—and finding answers to—some of the most important questions of our times.

Whether the discussion is about artificial intelligence, the future capacities of knowledge, politics, philosophy, intuition, history (philosopher Thomas Metzinger shares experiences from post–World War II Germany that are hard to look away from), religion, reason, or the nature of consciousness, Harris grounds lofty discussions with concrete examples and his gift for analogy . . . free and open debate, in the best sense of the word . . . the book’s advantage over the podcast is that readers can linger as they need to and cherry-pick interviews at will. Recommended for anyone who wants to spend time with intelligent minds wrestling not with each other but with understanding.

One of the most eloquent and inspiring memoirs of recent years... A Dutiful Boy is real-life storytelling at its finest

Mohsin Zaidi...in a compassionate, compelling and humorous way, tells his story of seeking acceptance within the gay community, and within the Muslim community in which he grew up

A powerful portrayal of being able to live authentically despite all the odds

Zaidi's affecting memoir recounts his journey growing up in east London in a devout Muslim household. He has a secret, one he cannot share with anyone - he is gay. When he moves away to study at Oxford he finds, for the first time, the possibility of living his life authentically. The dissonance this causes in him - of finding a way to accept himself while knowing his family will not do the same - is so sensitively depicted. One of the most moving chapters includes him coming home to a witch doctor, who his family has summoned to "cure" him. This is an incredibly important read, full of hope.

A beautifully written book, a lovely story, life-affirming

Zaidi's account is raw, honest and at times quite painful to read. It's so vivid that it feels almost tangible, as though you're living the experiences of the author himself.

This heartfelt and honest book is beautifully written and full of hope

We're obsessed with Emily Maitlis in this house

Emily Maitlis is a particular hero of mine . . . I know I'm in for a treat with Airhead

Emily Maitlis is one of my favourite interviewers and I want to read her tales of interviewing people such as Donald Trump, Theresa May and Simon Cowell

A fascinating behind-the-scenes insight into modern television news

It's a brilliant, often funny, behind-the-scenes account of her working life, written by one of Britain's best television broadcasters. It proves she's far from an airhead!

She gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at some of the most engaging interviews she's conducted in recent years - with all the wrangling, arguing, pleading and last-minute script writing they involved. Insightful, funny and engrossing, we love it.