Sam Harris reminds us that awakening does not depend on religious belief. With his usual probing clarity, Sam points out the rational methodology for exploring the nature of consciousness.

So entirely of this moment, so keenly in touch with the growing number ... who are willing to say that they do not find the succor they crave, or a truth that makes sense to them, in organized religion.

Sam Harris ranks as my favourite sceptic, bar none. In Waking Up he gives us a clear-headed, no-holds-barred look at the spiritual supermarket, calling out what amounts to junk food and showing us where real nutrition can be found. Anyone who realizes the value of a spiritual life will find much to savour here – and those who see no value in it will find much to reflect on.

Harris shows how our egos are illusions [and] how abandoning this illusion can wake us up to a richer life, more connected to everything around us.

Waking Up is an extraordinary book ... It will shake up your most fundamental beliefs about everyday experience, and it just might change your life.

As Brotton shows, for the last quarter of Elizabeth's reign, England was deeply engaged with the three great powers of the Islamic world: Persia, the Ottoman Empire and Morocco... Brotton is especially good of charting the doublethink involved in this effort... Where Brotton excels in his exploration of the ways that English dalliances in the Islamic world filtered into Elizabethan popular culture during the 1590s.

As Jerry Brotton explores in his well-researched new book, Elizabeth had always been keen on dealing with the east... this beautifully presented book shines an important light on a world of diplomatic intrigue and unexpected alliances-where mutual interest and trade trumped entrenched religious affiliation.

Jerry Brotton's sparkling new book sets out just how extensive and complex England's relationship with the Arab and Muslim world once was, and tentatively connects the threads of that engagement to our own times... It seems extraordinary that, in a time before mass travel, when most people died a stone's throw from where they were born, there were nevertheless those whose adventures led them to the edges of the known world - and to cultures so different from their own as to seem dreamlike. But Brotton's book is full of them... These individual stories form part of a rich tapestry of interaction that was ultimately directed by the geopolitics of the day... At a time when many see Islam as a recent and strange intruder, Brotton's excellent history is a reminder that a careful study of England's "island story" shows just how wrong they are.

This is a vivid, significant work of scholarship... Much of Brotton's narrative of Mediterranean arms dealing reads like an episode of le Carré's The Night Manager: spies, subterfuge and weapons of mass destruction... Cultural exchanges with Islam were part of the warp and weft of the Elizabethan English experience [and] Brotton, professor of Renaissance studies at Queen Mary University of London, reads Elizabethan playwrights with a sharp eye and a dry sense of Tudor irony... Brotton has set out to prove that Islam's relationship with Britain has for much of our history-and still can be-deeply integrated and mutually prosperous... As Brotton artfully and learnedly demonstrates-over the 300 pages of this impressive, enjoyable book-it's all in the detail.

There is no question that Jerry Brotton's exploration of "a much longer connection between England and the Islamic world" than is generally appreciated has currency. His canvas takes in places with "tragic resonance" for our age, among them Raqqa, Aleppo and Fallujah. But resisting the temptation to draw parallels between then and now, Brotton crafts a purely 16th-century narrative set on two geographical fronts.We follow pioneer embassies to Constantinople, Marrakesh and Qazvin (the former Persian capital) alongside the growing hold the Islamic world exerted on the English from the time of Henry VIII, a fascination that would find powerful expression in Elizabethan cuisine, fashion and theatre... there is much in these pages to delight and provoke... This Orient Isle is a richly resonant work which not only recasts our understanding of the Elizabethan era but also reveals Islam, crucially, as "part of the national story of England".

Jerry Brotton's fabulous new book [reveals] just how deep and entangled the roots of the Islamic and Christian faiths were in the early modern period.Brotton's view of Elizabethan England as an "Orient Isle" contests the idea of the nation existing in splendid or belligerent isolation from the Islamic world, a "sceptered isle... a fortress... against infection" as John of Gaunt puts it in Richard II...Brotton expertly demonstrates how the Islamic world was always much closer to the national poet's sense of a happy ending or tragic subjectivity than we might ever have thought. Brotton's Shakespeare is no liberal or post-colonial commentator avant la lettre (a figure who haunts much academic discussion about Shakespeare on race or religion). He is, instead, a brilliant artist enthralled by contemporary politico-religious uncertainties about England's place in Europe and the competing claims of Christianity and Islam. Brotton's own book is itself a timely intervention and a marvellous achievement.

A stunning, heart wrenching narrative... Everyone should read this in order to get to the heart of the tragedy of the Arab world and the distortion of Islam being perpetrated by ISIS. Beautifully written in the voice of a teenage girl, this book gives more of an understanding of what is happening than political treatises.

This powerful testimoney is ... as gripping as it is appalling

A compelling testament to the suffering of ordinary people caught up in violence far beyond their control – and to the particularly terrible price it exacts from women.

Starkly horrifying memoir.

Farida Khalaf won her small but significant battle. Its happy ending notwithstanding, it's difficult to focus on positivity – but then, perhaps that's why this remains a vital read.

A gut-wrenching and relentless experience...Farida's story needs to be told.

A powerful description of a world ripped apart... Farida tells a story that is testament to how toxic violence can be born of religion.

This is a mesmerising study of human cruelty and a brave depiction of the monsters that arise when reason sleeps.

It’s a shattering, brave, enraging book but also a stirring story of survival.

An unflinching account… This is one of those rare volumes that offers astonishing insights into the human spirit… A catalogue of horror is made bearable only by her extraordinary courage.

Although a harrowing story it is also an uplifting one as it is truly a triumph of the human spirit over terror.

This is a brave, harrowing but necessary book.

Farida's story needs to be told

Truly a triumph of the human spirit over terror

This is one of those rare volumes that offers astonishing insights into the human spirit

A compelling testament to the suffering of ordinary people caught up in violence far beyond their control

Mesmerising

Timely, excruciating and important.