Science, Ideas & Big Questions Books

Human evolution in East Africa was driven by geological forces. Ancient Greece developed democracy because of its mountainous terrain.Voting behaviour in the United States today follows the bed of an ancient sea. Professor Lewis D…

Dava Sobel, acclaimed and bestselling author of Longitude, chronicles the life and work of the most famous woman in the history of science – and the untold story of the young women who trained in her laboratory. For decades Marie …

A beautiful, full colour book to accompany the 5 part BBC TV series telling the most important story of all, the deep history of our own planet. With the trademark dramatic storytelling techniques of The Planets and The Universe, …

In this fully revised and updated edition of the best-selling popular science book of the 21st century, Bill Bryson makes complex subjects clear and compelling for everyone with an interest in the world around them.NOW FULLY REVIS…

The mind-blowing story of how information networks – from the stone age to AI -have shaped our world from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Sapiens Stories brought us together. Books spread our ideas – and our mythologies.…

Why are we here? Do ghosts exist? Will we ever travel back in time? Are we being visited by extraterrestrials? Will we ever talk to animals? Are we being told the truth? Are mysterious creatures roaming the Earth? And why, when yo…

Where did we come from? How did it all begin? These are the biggest questions in the universe, and New Scientist has the answers...Introduction by Professor Stephen HawkingFrom what actually happened in the Big Bang to the acciden…

This is the periodic table as you’ve never seen it before. By presenting the elements in the order in which they were discovered, The Periodic Table also tells the story of chemistry.Now iconic, the table was invented in the 1800s…

From the 18th century vicar who was the first to look up at the night's sky and suggest there was something very dark and extraordinarily heavy that was moving the stars, to the first actual photograph of a black hole, 250 years l…

Can we resurrect dinosaurs? Is a Martian holiday good for your health? Can we build a time machine? (And more importantly, can it look like the DeLorean?)Answering these questions and more, Rick Edwards and Dr Michael Brooks delve…

From the creator of the wildly popular xkcd.com, hilarious and informative answers to important questions you probably never thought to ask. Millions visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. Fans ask him …

A delightful intellectual feast from the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, and AnaximanderOne of the world's most prominent physicists and fearless free spirit, Carlo Rovelli is also a master…

Now widely available in English for the first time, this is Carlo Rovelli's first book: the thrilling story of a little-known man who created one of the greatest intellectual revolutions Over two thousand years ago, one man change…

Newly observed anomalies could transform our understanding of the fundamentals of physics – and of the nature of reality. In this eye-opening account, CERN experimental physicist Harry Cliff takes the reader on a tour of a new uni…

This book offers a largely chronological illustrated guide to how the chemical elements were discovered over the past three millennia. It provides a view not just of how we came to understand what everything is made of but also of…

When Lulu Miller's relationship falls apart, she turns to an unlikely figure for guidance - the 19th-century naturalist, David Starr Jordan. Pouring over his diaries, Lulu discovers a man obsessed with nature's hidden order, devot…

Acclaimed as the most influential work on evolution written in the last hundred years, The Blind Watchmaker offers an inspiring and accessible introduction to one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time. A brillia…

What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter? In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished phi…

In a series of 50 accessible essays, Jo Baker introduces and explains all of the essential concepts, major discoveries and the very latest thinking in astrophysics. From heliocentrism to Newton's theory of optics, the theory of re…

Science is a serious business, right? Wrong. Scientists have been participants in the best reality show of all time, with all the highs, lows, bust-ups, and strange personalities of any show on telly today. From Luke O'Neill - the…

In this revelatory book, Dr Jonathan Kennedy argues that germs have shaped humanity at every stage, from the first success of Homo sapiens over the equally intelligent Neanderthals to the fall of Rome and the rise of Islam.How did…

A mind-bending, brain-expanding cornucopia of facts for curious minds from the bestselling author of Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? and Does Anything Eat Wasps? Own the room with this hilarious collection of fact-tastic myth-bus…

A user's guide to the future: from the algorithms in DNA to why time is like a cocktail glass, interstellar migrations, transhumanism, the fate of the galaxy, and the last black hole... Every second of our lives - whether we're lo…

How did life emerge? What are the smallest elements of matter? How are planets formed?Over the centuries, brilliant men and women have sought to develop theories to answer the most compelling questions about the world around us. T…

How did a piece of gold foil completely change our understanding of atoms? What part did a hot air balloon play in the discovery of cosmic rays? How did the experiments in the run-up to the Large Hadron Collider lead to the invent…

Internationally renowned theoretical physicist and bestselling author Lawrence Krauss offers provocative, revelatory answers to the biggest philosophical questions: Where did our universe come from? Why does anything exist? And ho…

Have you ever wondered if a severed head retains consciousness long enough to see what happened to it? Or whether your dog would run to fetch help, if you fell down a disused mineshaft? And what would happen if you were to give an…

Chemistry's most significant chart, the Periodic Table, and its 118 elements, is laid bare in this lively, accessible and compelling expose. The periodic table, created in the early 1860s by Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, marke…

From ambitious scientists rising above the clouds to analyse the air to war generals floating across enemy lines, Richard Holmes takes to the air in this heart-lifting history of pioneer balloonists. Falling Upwards asks why they …

From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations. Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jare…