'A sparkling tour through the stories of the symbols we know so well' - Tim Marshall Starting with flags that we know, this captivating history explains the origins and hidden meanings of flags, taking a chatty but always entertaining path through this universal subject. Each chapter starts with a well-known flag and shows how that flag led to a number of other flags - so, for example, how the French tricolor led to the red, white and green tricolor of Italy, and then to a host of other tricolors in different parts of the world. Many of the over 200 colour illustrations feature alternative versions of existing flags - the flags that might have been - such as the red Canadian maple leaf between two bands of blue, representing the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This entertaining and very likeable history of flags was written by Ukrainian businessman and ex-cabinet minister Dmytro Dubilet and first published in Ukrainian six months before the start of the Ukrainian-Russian war.

To stripe a surface serves to distinguish it, to point it out, to oppose it or associate it with another surface, and thus to classify it, to keep an eye on it, to verify it, even to censor it. Throughout the ages, the stripe has made its mark in mysterious ways. From prisoners' uniforms to tailored suits, a street sign to a set of sheets, Pablo Picasso to Saint Joseph, stripes have always made a bold statement. But the boundary that separates the good stripe from the bad is often blurred. Why, for instance, were stripes associated with the devil during the Middle Ages? How did stripes come to symbolize freedom and unity after the American and French revolutions? When did the stripe become a standard in men's fashion? "In the stripe," writes author Michel Pastoureau, "there is something that resists enclosure within systems." So before putting on that necktie or waving your country's flag, look to The Devil's Cloth for a colorful history of the stripe in all its variety, controversy, and connotation.