Icon Books

Icon Books is an independent British publisher founded in 1992—which makes 2022 their 30th anniversary. For 30 years, Icon books, UK have specialised in publishing intelligent, quality non-fiction for audiences across age groups.

The Icon Books publishing catalogue includes their Graphic Guide series alongside a list of other books in science, history, politics, sport, language, humour and more. Based primarily in north London, they publish books across all English-speaking markets of the world—and many non-English speaking ones too. Icon Books’ graphic guides are their most famous published works including the illustrated series and titles like the bestselling, ‘Why Do People Hate America?'.

A part of the Independent Alliance sales grouping in the UK and other markets, Icon books are also sold by leading distributors around the world, such as PGW in the USA, PGC in Canada, Allen & Unwin in Australasia, Jonathan Ball in South Africa and Penguin Random House in Singapore, Malaysia and India. Their translation rights sales are managed by the Marsh Agency in London.

As publishers of intellectual, non-fiction content, world-class graphic guides and illustrated series; Icon Books publishing have created the very popular Graphic Guide Introduction to Big Ideas 8 Books Collection Set. A set of 8 spectacular graphic guides; with each book in the set focused on one world-defining idea. Every book focuses on an idea that has either helped redefine the world as we know it or changed the course of world events.

From complicated socio-economic theories like Marxism and Capitalism to provocative concepts by philosophers and ideas around psychology and world economics; this set of graphic guides covers it all.

The Marmalade Diaries: The True Story of an Odd Couple by Ben Aitken Charming, touching and funny; this one by Icon books is perfect for millennial readers. When hunting for a room in London, Ben Aitken comes across a room for a great price in a lovely part of town. There had to be a catch. And there was. The catch was Winnie: an 85-year-old widow who doesn't suffer fools. Full of warmth, wit and candour, The Marmalade Diaries tells the story of an unlikely friendship during an unlikely time. Imagine an intergenerational version of Big Brother, but with only two contestants. One of the pair is a grieving and inflexible former aristocrat in her mid-eighties. The other a working-class millennial snowflake. What could possibly go wrong? What could possibly go right? Out of the most inauspicious of soils—and from the author of The Gran Tour—comes a book about grief, family, friendship, loneliness, life, love, lockdown and marmalade.

Queer: A Graphic History by Meg-John Barker Activist Meg-John Barker and cartoonist Jules Scheele; together illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTQ+ action in this ground-breaking nonfiction graphic novel. From identity politics and gender roles to privilege and exclusion, Queer explores how we came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do. How these ideas get tangled up with our culture and our understanding of biology, psychology and sexology; and how these views have been disputed and challenged. Along the way we look at key landmarks which shift our perspective of what's 'normal'—Alfred Kinsey's view of sexuality as a spectrum, Judith Butler's view of gendered behaviour as a performance, the play Wicked, or moments in Casino Royale when we're invited to view James Bond with the kind of desiring gaze usually directed at female bodies in mainstream media. Presented in a brilliantly engaging and witty writing style, this is a unique portrait of the universe of queer thinking.