'A dazzling, funny and elegantly angry demolition of our preconceptions about female behaviour and sex in the animal kingdom ... Bitch is a blast. I read it, my jaw sagging in astonishment, jotting down favourite parts to send to friends and reading out snippets gleefully...' Observer
'A book that is tearing down the stereotypes and the biases. Absolutely fascinating.' BBC R4 Woman's Hour
'From the heir to Attenborough. 5*' - Telegraph
'Glorious ... A bold and gripping takedown of the sexist mythology baked into biology ... Full of marvellous surprises. Guardian
'Colourful, committed and deeply informed.' Sunday Times
'Gloriously original' Daily Mirror
A 'sparkling attack on scientific sexism' Nature
'Humorous, absorbing, sometimes shocking (for a variety of reasons), and bound to be a conversation starter' BBC Wildlife
'Brilliant ... Cooke is a superb science writer' TLS
'Zoologist Lucy Cooke's hilarious and enlightening book reclaims evolutionary biology for females of all species.' New Statesman
'Introduces us to a marvelous zoetrope of animals.' The Atlantic
'[An] effervescent expose ... [A] playful, enlightening tour of the vanguard of evolutionary biology.' Scientific American
Selected for the Telegraph's 'best books for summer 2022' and as one of the Guardian's '50 hottest new books for a great escape'.
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What does it mean to be female? Mother, carer, the weaker sex? Think again.
In the last few decades a revolution has been brewing in zoology and evolutionary biology. Lucy Cooke introduces us to a riotous cast of animals, and the scientists studying them, that are redefining the female of the species.
Meet the female lemurs of Madagascar, our ancient primate cousins that dominate the males of their species physically and politically.
Or female albatross couples, hooking up together to raise their chicks in Hawaii.
Or the meerkat mothers of the Kalahari Desert - the most murderous mammals on the planet.
The bitches in BITCH overturn outdated binary expectations of bodies, brains, biology and behaviour. Lucy Cooke's brilliant new book will change how you think - about sex, sexual identity and sexuality in animals and also the very forces that shape evolution.
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Praise for Lucy's previous book THE UNEXPECTED TRUTH ABOUT ANIMALS
'Endlessly fascinating' - Bill Bryson
'I cannot remember when I enjoyed a non-fiction book so much' - Daily Express
'A joy from beginning to end' - Guardian
'Best science pick: deeply researched, sassily written' - Nature
AN INSTANT #2 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Humanity has transformed the Earth: Frankopan transforms our understanding of history' Financial Times 'Vast, learned and timely work' The Sunday Times _______________ From the international bestselling author of The Silk Roads comes a major history of how a changing climate has dramatically shaped the development-and demise-of civilisations across time. A 2023 HIGHLIGHT FOR: BBC NEWS * SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE * FINANCIAL TIMES * NEW EUROPEAN * GUARDIAN * NEW STATESMAN * THE TIMES * THE WEEK * WATERSTONES * BLACKWELL'S _______________ When we think about history, we rarely pay much attention to the most destructive floods, the worst winters, the most devastating droughts or the ways that ecosystems have changed over time. In The Earth Transformed, Peter Frankopan, one of the world's leading historians, shows that the natural environment is a crucial, if not the defining, factor in global history - and not just of humankind. Volcanic eruptions, solar activities, atmospheric, oceanic and other shifts, as well as anthropogenic behaviour, are fundamental parts of the past and the present. In this magnificent and groundbreaking book, we learn about the origins of our species: about the development of religion and language and their relationships with the environment; about how the desire to centralise agricultural surplus formed the origins of the bureaucratic state; about how growing demands for harvests resulted in the increased shipment of enslaved peoples; about how efforts to understand and manipulate the weather have a long and deep history. All provide lessons of profound importance as we face a precarious future of rapid global warming. Taking us from the Big Bang to the present day and beyond, The Earth Transformed forces us to reckon with humankind's continuing efforts to make sense of the natural world. ----------------------- 'This is epic, gripping, original history that leaps off the page. I wanted to buy everyone I know a copy' Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireland 'All Historians aiming to tell a narrative face the problem of when exactly to start it. Only Peter Frankopan would go back 2.5 billion years to the Great Oxidation Event' Tom Holland
Tackling some of the most common scientific myths still believed today, Brian Clegg blows these widely held misconceptions about the workings of our world out of the water in this engaging and entertaining book.
Anil Seth's radical new theory of consciousness challenges our understanding of perception and reality, doing for brain science what Dawkins did for evolutionary biology. 'A brilliant beast of a book.
'Required reading for everyone' Adam Rutherford
Medicine, education, psychology, economics - wherever it really matters, we look to science for guidance.
Bringing his cosmic perspective to civilization on Earth, Neil deGrasse Tyson, bestselling author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, shines new light on the crucial fault lines of our time-war, politics, religion, truth, beauty, gender, race, and tribalism-in a way that stimulates a deeper sense of unity for us all.
A spirited volume on the great adventures of science throughout history, for curious readers of all ages
The smash-hit Sunday Times bestseller that will transform your understanding of our planet and life itself.
'Dazzling, vibrant, vision-changing' Robert Macfarlane
Winner of the Wainwright Prize for Conservation Writing 2021
The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them.
A NEW SCIENTIST BOOK OF THE YEAR
'A true hero' Greta Thunberg
A legendary conservationist. A lifetime spent fighting for nature. An indispensable message of hope.
In a world that seems so troubled, how do we hold on to hope?
Looking at the headlines?the worsening climate crisis, loss of biodiversity, political upheaval?it can be hard to feel optimistic. And yet hope has never been more desperately needed.
In this urgent book, Jane Goodall, the world's most famous living naturalist, and Douglas Abrams, the bestselling co-author of The Book of Joy, explore through intimate and thought-provoking dialogue one of the most sought after and least understood elements of human nature: hope. In The Book of Hope, Jane focuses on her "Four Reasons for Hope": The Amazing Human Intellect, The Resilience of Nature, The Power of Young People, and The Indomitable Human Spirit.
Filled with inspiring stories and original photographs, The Book of Hope is a rare and intimate look not only at the nature of hope but also into the heart and mind of a woman who revolutionized how we view the world and has spent a lifetime fighting for our future.
There is still hope, and this book will help guide us to it.
From the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, the story of the mammals, our own kind, from their earliest development and their co-existence with the great lizards to their emergence out of the shadows to dominance of the recent history of our planet.
From the creator of the wildly popular xkcd.com, and the Sunday Times bestseller What If?, even more hilarious and informative answers to important questions you probably never thought to ask.
The world-famous cosmologist and #1 bestselling author of A Brief History of Time leaves us with his final thoughts on the universe's biggest questions in this brilliant posthumous work.
There's never been a more exciting time to learn about space. As new rockets are launched and fresh discoveries are made, humanity's urge to explore and understand keeps evolving. This concise guide explains everything you need to know from the Big Bang and the formation of galaxies to the moon landings and the future of space travel.
'A book of wonders' Bee Wilson, Sunday Times Books of the Year
Winner of the Wainwright Prize 2022 - Eating to Extinction is an astonishing journey through the past, present and future of food, showing why reclaiming a diverse food culture is vital.
'Saladino inspires us to believe that turning the tide is still possible' Yotam Ottolenghi
From a tiny crimson pear in the west of England to an exploding corn in Mexico, there are thousands of foods that are at risk of being lost for ever. Dan Saladino spans the globe to uncover their stories, meeting the pioneering farmers, scientists, cooks, food producers and indigenous communities who are defending food traditions and fighting for change.
Eating to Extinction is about so much more than preserving the past. It is about the crisis facing our planet today, and why reclaiming a diverse food culture is vital for our future.
* With a new preface by the author *
Winner of multiple awards, including the Fortnum & Mason Food Book Award and the Guild of Food Writers Food Book Award.
'I love this book... I wish the whole world could read it' Raymond Blanc
'A brilliant read' Tim Spector
'Wonderful, mind-broadening... a journey to alternative realities as extraordinary as any you'll find in science fiction' The Times, Book of the Week
'Magnificent' Guardian
Enter a new dimension - the world as it is truly perceived by other animals.
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving only a tiny sliver of an immense world. This book welcomes us into previously unfathomable dimensions - the world as it is truly perceived by other animals.
We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth's magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and humans that wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile's scaly face is as sensitive as a lover's fingertips, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision.
We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries which lie unsolved.
Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the threads of scent, waves of electromagnetism and pulses of pressure that surround us. Because in order to understand our world we don't need to travel to other places; we need to see through other eyes.
'A stunning achievement - steeped in science but suffused with magic'
Siddhartha Mukherjee, author The Emperor of All Maladies
'Magnificent - an unbelievably immersive and mind-blowing account of how other animals experience our world'
Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees and The Inner Life of Animals
'A delightful sensory experience: to see the world through the touch-vision of a scallop, to taste through the feet of a mosquito and hear through the feet of an elephant'
Gaia Vince, author of Transcendence
THE PHENOMENAL INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY BOOK PRIZE
'Who would have thought something as simple as changing the way we breathe could be so revolutionary for our health, from snoring to allergies to immunity? A fascinating book, full of dazzling revelations' Dr Rangan Chatterjee
There is nothing more essential to our health and wellbeing than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat 25,000 times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. In Breath, journalist James Nestor travels the world to discover the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.
Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can:
- jump-start athletic performance
- rejuvenate internal organs
- halt snoring, allergies, asthma and autoimmune disease, and even straighten scoliotic spines
None of this should be possible, and yet it is. Drawing on thousands of years of ancient wisdom and cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head.
You will never breathe the same again.
'A terrific book - essential reading for everyone seeking to make sense of Artificial Intelligence' Professor Sir Adrian Smith, Director and Chief Executive of the Alan Turing Institute
In this myth-busting guide to AI past and present, one of the world's leading researchers shows why our fears for the future are misplaced.
The ultimate dream of AI is to build machines that are like us: conscious and self-aware. While this remains a remote possibility, rapid progress in AI is already transforming our world. Yet the public debate is still largely centred on unlikely prospects, from sentient machines to dystopian robot takeovers.
In this lively and clear-headed guide, Michael Wooldridge challenges the prevailing narrative, revealing how the hype distracts us from both the more immediate risks that this technology poses - from algorithmic bias to fake news - and the true life-changing potential of the field. The Road to Conscious Machines elucidates the discoveries of AI's greatest pioneers from Alan Turing to Demis Hassabis, and what today's researchers actually think and do.
'Nobody understands the past, the present, the promise and the peril of this new technology better than Michael Wooldridge. The definitive account' Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist
'Effortlessly readable. The perfect guide to the history and future of AI' Tom Chivers, author of The AI Does Not Hate You
#1 Bestseller in both hardback and paperback: SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 ROYAL SOCIETY INSIGHT INVESTMENT SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE
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'A directory of wonders.' - The Guardian
'Jaw-dropping.' - The Times
'Classic, wry, gleeful Bryson...an entertaining and absolutely fact-rammed book.' - The Sunday Times
'It is a feat of narrative skill to bake so many facts into an entertaining and nutritious book.' - The Daily Telegraph
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'We spend our whole lives in one body and yet most of us have practically no idea how it works and what goes on inside it. The idea of the book is simply to try to understand the extraordinary contraption that is us.'
Bill Bryson sets off to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up.
A wonderful successor to A Short History of Nearly Everything, this new book is an instant classic. It will have you marvelling at the form you occupy, and celebrating the genius of your existence, time and time again.
'What I learned is that we are infinitely more complex and wondrous, and often more mysterious, than I had ever suspected. There really is no story more amazing than the story of us.' Bill Bryson
'My favourite author has done it again. Numbers Don't Lie is by far his most accessible book to date, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is curious about the world. I unabashedly recommend this book to anyone who loves learning' Bill Gates
Is flying dangerous? How much do the world's cows weigh? And what makes people happy?
From Earth's nations and inhabitants, through the fuels and foods that energize them, to the transportation and inventions of our modern world - and how all of this affects the planet itself - in Numbers Don't Lie, Professor Vaclav Smil takes us on a fact-finding adventure, using surprising statistics and illuminating graphs to challenge lazy thinking. Smil is on a mission to make facts matter, because after all, numbers may not lie, but which truth do they convey?
'Smil's title says it all: to understand the world, you need to follow the trendlines, not the headlines. This is a compelling, fascinating, and most important, realistic portrait of the world and where it's going' Steven Pinker
'The best book to read to better understand our world. It should be on every bookshelf!' Linda Yueh
'There is perhaps no other academic who paints pictures with numbers like Smil' Guardian
Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of over forty books on topics including energy, environmental and population change, food production and nutrition, technical innovation, risk assessment and public policy. No other living scientist has had more books (on a wide variety of topics) reviewed in Nature. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, in 2010 he was named by Foreign Policy as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers. This is his first book for a more general readership.
The instant Sunday Times bestseller -- a beautiful story of rebellion and science
'Popular science has rarely been so good' Prospect
'A triumph. . . We are left in a world that is not disenchanted by science, but even more magical' Financial Times
In June 1925, twenty-three-year-old Werner Heisenberg, suffering from hay fever, had retreated to the treeless, wind-battered island of Helgoland in the North Sea in order to think. Walking all night, by dawn he had wrestled with an idea that would transform the whole of science and our very conception of the world.
In Helgoland Carlo Rovelli tells the story of the birth of quantum physics and its bright young founders who were to become some of the most famous Nobel winners in science. It is a celebration of youthful rebellion and intellectual revolution. An invitation to a magical place.
Here Rovelli illuminates competing interpretations of this science and offers his own original view, describing the world we touch as a fabric woven by relations. Where we, as every other thing around us, exist in our interactions with one another, in a never-ending game of mirrors.
A dazzling work from a celebrated scientist and master storyteller, Helgoland transports us to dizzying heights, reminding us of the many pleasures of the life of the mind.
Translated by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell
Chosen as a Book of the Year by The Times, Financial Times, Sunday Times, Guardian and Prospect
Was there a beginning of time? Could time run backwards? Is the universe infinite or does it have boundaries? This book examines these questions. It begins by reviewing the great theories of the cosmos from Newton to Einstein, before delving into the secrets which still lie at the heart of space and time, from the Big Bang to black holes.