Books by Mark Thompson

From the BESTSELLING author of DustLife can change in a split second, and so it does for twenty-eight-year-old photographer Finn Chambers. One careless decision at the Cimitero Acattolico in the eternal city of Rome, finds him falling head first onto Shelley' s tomb, to his death.He awakes to a beautiful afterlife surrounded by long-dead poets, artists and thinkers, including Shelley, Keats, Gramsci, Sanchez and the delightful Lady Mary von Haas, and these luminaries test Finn' s values and principles in a way they have never been tested before.Uncomfortable truths require honest assessment when the 21st century' s lust for celebrity, drugs, and fifteen minutes of fame, is questioned by others from centuries past but his new life finds much in common with his previous life, with love, art, sex, music, humour and irreverence, all experienced on this different and fascinating plane.For Finn Chambers there is life after death – and it' s a life worth living.

A former Harvard professor of decision science and game theory draws on those disciplines in this review of controversial strategic and tactical decisions of World War II. Allied leadership - although outstanding in many ways - sometimes botched what now is termed meta-decision making or deciding how to decide.

Discover strange and amazing facts about familiar objects in the night sky.

Rocket into space with these brilliant space science experiments

Rocket into space with these brilliant space science experiments

Set in small-town New Jersey in the 1960s, against the backdrop of the Vietnam war, Dust follows J.J Walsh and Tony 'El Greco' Papadakis through the dry heat of a formative summer.

Political rhetoric has become stale and the mistrust of politicians has made voters flock to populists who promise authenticity, honesty and truth instead of spin, evasiveness and lies.

Have you ever dreamt of being an astronaut, travelling through the universe on your very own space mission? What would it be like to tour the Solar System, visiting the Sun and the planets, taking in everything from moons to asteroid belts along the way?

From the origins of our Universe to the ever evolving techniques used to explore deep space, this title traces the journey of galactic discovery that has obsessed mankind for thousands of years.

An engaging and experimental biography of Danilo Kis (1935-89), the Yugoslav novelist, essayist, poet, and translator whose work generated storms of controversy in his homeland but today holds classic status.

In May 1915, Italy declared war on the Habsburg Empire, hoping to seize its 'lost' territories of Trieste and Tyrol. The result was one of the most hopeless and senseless modern wars - and one that inspired great cruelty and destruction. Nearly three-quarters of a million Italians - and half as many Austro-Hungarian troops - were killed. Most of the deaths occurred on the bare grey hills north of Trieste, and in the snows of the Dolomite Alps. Outsiders who witnessed these battles were awestruck by the difficulty of attacking on such terrain. General Luigi Cadorna, most ruthless of all the Great War commanders, restored the Roman practice of 'decimation', executing random members of units that retreated or rebelled. Italy sank into chaos and, eventually, fascism. Its liberal traditions did not recover for a quarter of a century - some would say they have never recovered. Mark Thompson relates this nearly incredible saga with great skill and pathos. Much more than a history of terrible violence, the book tells the whole story of the war: the nationalist frenzy that led up to it, the decisions that shaped it, the poetry it inspired, its haunting landscapes and political intrigues; the personalities of its statesmen and generals; and also the experience of ordinary soldiers - among them some of modern Italy's greatest writers. A work of epic scale, The White War does full justice to one of the most remarkable untold stories of the First World War.