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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

A. J. Liebling, born in Manhattan in 1904, joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1935 and contributed innumerable articles to the magazine throughout his lifetime, on subjects ranging from food to boxing and France to horse racing. As a war correspondent during the Second World War, he reported from France, England and Algeria, and participated in the Normandy landings. In later life he married the writer Jean Stafford, his third wife. He died in 1963.

A. J. Liebling

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Stephen Witt

** WINNER OF THE FT SCHRODERS BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025 ** 
**A SUNDAY TIMES, ECONOMIST AND FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025** 
 
AI tech giant Nvidia is the world's first $4-trillion company. It has shaped life as we know it. This is the inside story of the company that is inventing the future and its charismatic CEO Jensen Huang. 
 
In June 2024, Nvidia became the most valuable corporation on Earth. 
 
The Thinking Machine is the astonishing story of how a designer of videogame equipment conquered the market for AI hardware, and in the process reinvented the computer. It is the story of a determined entrepreneur who defied Wall Street to push his radical vision for computing, becoming one of the wealthiest men alive. And it’s the story of our awesome and terrifying AI future, as a new kind of microchip unlocks hyper-realistic avatars, autonomous robots, self-driving cars and new movies, art and books, generated on command.

The Thinking Machine

Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip

Sebastian Mallaby

Even in a tech world crowded with visionary leaders, Demis Hassabis is recognized as a special case. Born to working class, immigrant parents in North London, a chess prodigy by five and wizard coder in his teens, he turned down a seven-figure job offer from a video-game studio to study science at Cambridge. Long before the current obsession with AI, he founded the path-breaking company DeepMind in order to pursue a single, audacious goal: the dream of artificial superintelligence, which would solve humanity’s hardest problems, change life and work as we know it, and perhaps even unlock the deepest mysteries of the Universe. For his scientific achievements, he won a Nobel Prize in 2024, and his company, now Google DeepMind, is considered the tech giant’s engine room. 
 
For the past three years, Sebastian Mallaby has had unprecedented access to Hassabis and DeepMind, conducting hundreds of hours of interviews with him and his inner circle as well as detractors and rivals at other companies. The result is a revelation-packed portrait of a singular mind and a historic reckoning with the AI revolution, a shift potentially more significant than any since the dawn of complex thought 70,000 years ago. 
 
As Mallaby chronicles, DeepMind is locked in an arms race with Silicon Valley competitors to build artificial general intelligence, and thereby become the keeper of humanity’s future. Yet this is not a Silicon Valley story. Hassabis has remained in Britain, and unlike his rivals, his aims are not wealth and power but scientific enlightenment. Like them, however, he is haunted by the memory of Robert Oppenheimer, the creator of the atom bomb. He aims to control the technology, but the technology may ultimately control him – and humanity writ large.

The Infinity Machine

Demis Hassabis, DeepMind and the Quest for Superintelligence

Quinn Slobodian

Ben Tarnoff

Who on earth is Elon Musk and what is he doing? Is he a hero, a villain, or does he swing constantly between those two poles? According to the constant media gush driven by his every act and pronouncement, Musk is best understood in personal terms. This book argues differently. Rather than seeing Musk as an individual, it sees him as an avatar of something called Muskism: a playbook for our new postliberal age. 
 
It’s not that Musk himself holds a coherent set of beliefs; you could say his life is one long improvisation. And he’s certainly never used the word Muskism – just as, a century ago, Henry Ford never used Fordism to define his own postliberal modernity. In exploring the forces that have shaped Musk, from South Africa to Silicon Valley, Space X to DOGE, Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff outline the motifs and practices that have come to dominate our own crisis-ridden world. 
 
Muskism, they show, speaks the language of crisis and emergency to invoke a less human future: where humans are purged from the productive process and, through social media and video games, merged with the machine. This is a worldview in which the technocrat is king; which piggybacks on the state to achieve supremacy; and in which only a select few deserve salvation. If you enter, this book warns you, you will grind and you will live in the shadow of one man – but the rewards could be priceless and the alternative might be extinction.

Muskism

A Guide for the Perplexed

Gabriel Weston

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LIVE IN A BODY? 
 
For Gabriel Weston, there was always something missing from the anatomy she was taught at medical school. As she became a surgeon, a mother, and ultimately a patient, she found herself grappling with the gap between the body she understood as a doctor, and the reality of living in one. 
 
In this captivating exploration of our organs, a fuller and more human picture of our bodies emerges: more fragile, frightening and miraculous than we could ever have imagined.

Alive

An Alternative Anatomy

Maggie Aderin

'I'd toast the moon and look at the sky... I think it draws us to it; we wonder what lies beyond.' 
 
Maggie Aderin-Pocock’s destiny was always written in the stars. From the age of three, inspired by The Clangers, her dream was to go into space. Throughout a chaotic childhood, ricocheting between divorced parents and acrimonious custody battles, she attended thirteen schools in fourteen years – but while her environment regularly changed, her fascination with the Universe did not. It became enmeshed in her desire to succeed as a scientist even when her school careers advice was to become a nurse. 
 
Starchild is Maggie’s emotionally honest and revealing memoir, telling a story of education and prejudice, adversity and ambition, motherhood and the moon – all recounted in her characteristically warm and relatable style. From being the only Black woman on her physics course at Imperial College London, to her groundbreaking work on the James Webb and Gemini telescopes, to starting her own public speaking company and sharing the wonders of science with thousands of children every year, Maggie’s story will inspire you to never give up on your dreams.

Starchild

My Life Under the Night Sky

Bill Gates

Everyone is programmed a bit differently. Source Code tells the human, personal story of how Bill Gates became who he is today. Taking us back to his beginnings, Gates describes with candour his childhood in Seattle, the centrality of family – his close relationship with his card-playing grandmother and his demanding but caring parents – his struggles to fit in, his rebelliousness, his first deep friendships and the impact of losing his closest friend. 
 
We follow his extraordinary development as a restless teenager who discovered a love of coding and computing at the dawn of a new era, and see the earliest signs of the phenomenal business acumen that led him to drop out of Harvard at the age of 20 to devote all his energies to Microsoft. We also learn what distinguishes him from others in his line: from his first encounters with the three Steves – Jobs, Wozniak and Ballmer – to when Microsoft signed its first deal with Apple in the late 1970s and beyond, Gates never forgot his mother’s reminder that he was merely a steward of any wealth that he gained. 
 
This warm and inspiring book allows readers to understand Gates's energy and ambition – and to see how he sets himself in the world.

Source Code

My Beginnings

John Davidson

The funny and moving autobiography offering extraordinary insight into what it is like to live with a severe form of Tourette's Syndrome. From the award-winning Scottish campaigner. 
 
NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING ROBERT ARAMAYO AND MAXINE PEAKE. 
 
'An astonishing tale about an amazing man.' 
- JOJO MOYES, author of Me Before You and Someone Else's Shoes 
 
'Funny and heartfelt ... this skilfully told tale deserves praise for how it lets us non-sweary people see inside the ordinary, albeit anxious, mind of someone with Tourette syndrome.' THE TIMES 
 
Born in the 1970s on the Scottish Borders, John’s was ten when his tics first arrived, as if from nowhere. Previously a happy, popular, football-mad boy he was labelled disruptive, rude, and even mad. As his condition progressed, from blinks and jerks to involuntary rude and obscene shouting, John was bullied, rejected - alienated from his family and a society that had no idea what to make of him. 
 
Hospitalized and drugged for months, it was only an extraordinary and transformative friendship, and John’s dogged optimism, that turned his life around, making I Swear an inspirational story of triumph over adversity. 
 
Through John’s eyes, we see Tourette’s not just as a medical condition, but as a lens through which we can all better understand the importance of human connection. And how essential, as well as ultimately rewarding, it can be to keep going and never give up. 
 
'This superb book is an engaging and fascinating account of what it's like to live with Tourette's.' DAILY MAIL 
 
'Brave, shocking, funny and moving ... This is a really important book.'

I Swear

My Life with Tourette’s

Lionel Barber

Gambling Man is the biography of one of the world’s least known but most consequential investors. Japan’s Masayoshi Son has made and lost several fortunes, investing or controlling assets worth $1 trillion in the past two decades through his media-tech giant, SoftBank. He bankrolled Alibaba, China’s internet colossus, before the world had heard about it; plotted with Steve Jobs to turn the iPhone into a wonder product; and financed hundreds of tech start-ups, fuelling the biggest boom Silicon Valley has ever seen.This book takes you on Son’s wild ride, from his birthplace in a Korean slum in post-war Japan to the modern-day temples of power. It speeds through Donald Trump’s golden skyscraper in Manhattan, the royal palaces of Riyadh and the throne rooms of China’s Marxist rulers; all places where Son has deployed his unique blend of financial engineering and crazy risk-taking.Son’s story captures a 25 year-span of hyper-globalisation in which money, technologies and ideas flowed freely. From the launch of the microchip to the advent of artificial intelligence, he has ridden the technological wave which has created extraordinary wealth and economic change. His topsy-turvy business career is testimony to the power of optimism, daring to dream, ever in search of the Next Big Thing.As an ethnic Korean in Japan, Son has overcome adversity and discrimination to become Japan’s best-known businessman and empire-builder but he remains an elusive, intensely private figure. This book, by a former editor of the Financial Times, contains a wealth of new information and has had the co-operation of many of the key participants, including Son himself. Written with a verve appropriate to its subject, Gambling Man reveals the man behind the money, what drives him, why he matters, and what he plans for his next act.

Gambling Man

The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son

David Rooney

'David Rooney is an expert storyteller with a big heart, capturing not only the perils faced by the intrepid airmen who attempted the flight, but also their humanity' JOHN LANCASTER, author of The Great Air Race 
 
Newfoundland, 1919. Buffeted by winds, an unwieldy aircraft – made mainly from wood and stiff linen – struggled to take off from the North American island’s rocky slopes. Cramped side by side in its open cockpit were two men, freezing cold and barely able to move but resolute. They had a dream: to be the first in human history to fly, non-stop, across the Atlantic Ocean. But there were three other teams competing against them, and as the waves raged a few miles below, memories of wartime crashes resurfaced . . . 
 
It was just over six months since the ‘War to End all Wars’ had come to its close. Between them, the seven young aviators who would get off the ground for the transatlantic race had already defied death many times. Mining letters, diaries and evocative unpublished photographs, David Rooney’s deeply researched account of the audacious contest shows how it was the airmen’s thrilling wartime experiences that ultimately led them to the ‘Big Hop’, and brought old friends together for one more daring adventure. 
 
These Atlantic pioneers weren’t scientists or stoical upper-class officers. They were ordinary, working men, risking their lives in the name of progress. Unjustly forgotten by history, they nonetheless paved the way for the Earharts and Lindberghs who came after – and ushered in the age of global connection in which we live now. 
 
A non-stop flight across the Atlantic might seem routine today; almost a chore. But it is only possible because of those who went first.

The Big Hop

The First Non-stop Flight Across the Atlantic and Into the Future

Benji Waterhouse

‘This is honestly my dream book… Fascinating’ FERN BRADY 
 
‘Fearlessly honest, funny and uplifting’ JO BRAND 
 
‘Very funny and deeply sympathetic. Really excellent’ HENRY MARSH 
 
Most of the psychiatric cases in this book are Benji’s patients. Some of them are his family. One of them is him. 
 
Unlocking the doors to the psych ward, NHS psychiatrist Dr Benji Waterhouse provides a fly-on-the-padded-wall account of medicine’s most mysterious and controversial speciality. 
 
Why would anyone in their right mind choose to be a psychiatrist? Are the solutions to people’s messy lives really within medical school textbooks? And how can vulnerable patients receive the care they need when psychiatry lacks staff, hospital beds and any actual cures? 
 
This is an eye-opening medical memoir – from both sides of the doctor’s desk. The perfect read for fans of This Is Going to Hurt, Unnatural Causes and The Prison Doctor.

You Don't Have to Be Mad to Work Here

A Psychiatrist’s Life

Duncan Harding

A likeable young girl burns her family home to the ground 
 
A man has no memory of the night he killed his wife 
 
A teenager’s visions have murderous effect 
 
One question binds the cases of Dr Duncan Harding, Britain’s top forensic psychiatrist: Why? 
 
Growing up in a violent home, Harding became a doctor to be good and kind. His journey brought him to psychopaths, to the limits of his compassion and to the darkest corners of his own troubled past. 
 
But he’s never turned away nor given up hope. Mesmerising, insightful and redemptive, The Criminal Mind is his unforgettable story.

The Criminal Mind

Camilla Pang

A scientist’s journey from observation to discovery is anything but straightforward. It is littered with failure, unexpected diversions and joyous realisations. Science helps us to understand ourselves in a world where we often feel like strangers - but what we know about the world around us, what has already been explored and discovered, is only half of science's story. 
 
Dr Camilla Pang will look at some of the biggest mysteries facing science today and how some of the best cutting-edge scientists can illuminate our own approaches to observation, hypothesis, exploration, troubleshooting and discovery in our lives. 
 
Breakthrough explores the frontier between what we do and don’t know about the world: where knowledge meets mystery, complexity overwhelms certainty, and the vastness of our universe unspools the logic of science's established laws. 
 
The stability of science was originally a safety blanket for her survival with Autism; after becoming a scientist herself, Camilla quickly realises that it is the complete opposite. Scientific research, much like life - beset by new technology and ubiquitous information - is constantly changing. Part of its curse but also of its beauty. 
 
There's a scientist hidden inside all of us. Science's greatest gift to us is not formulae but enabling the urge to discover that makes us truly human.

Breakthrough

How to Think Like a Scientist, Learn to Fail and Embrace the Unknown

How to Think Like a Scientist, Learn How to Fail and Embrace the Unknown

Carlo Rovelli

Over two millennia ago, a Greek philosopher had a number of wondrous insights that paved the way to cosmology, physics, geography, meteorology and biology, setting in motion a new way of seeing the world. Anaximander's legacy includes the revolutionary idea that the earth floats in a void, that the world can be understood in natural rather than supernatural terms, that animals evolved, and that universal laws govern all phenomena. He introduced a new mode of rational thinking with an openness to uncertainty and to the progress of knowledge. 
 
In this elegant work, acclaimed physicist Carlo Rovelli brings to light the importance of Anaximander's overlooked legacy to modern science. He examines Anaximander as a scientist interested in shedding light on the deep nature of scientific thinking, which Rovelli locates in his rebellious ability to reimagine the world again and again. Anaximander celebrates the radical lack of certainty that defines the scientific quest for knowledge.

Anaximander

And the Nature of Science

Katalin Karikó

Katalin Karikó began life as a butcher’s daughter in communist Hungary. Raised in a one-room home of clay and straw with no running water, she saw potential everywhere: in the promise of a seed, in the alchemy of soap, in the scarlet of a carcass. 
 
Breaking Through is the extraordinary story of her courageous determination – first to become a scientist, and then to unlock an elusive molecule she believed could revolutionise medicine. Others disagreed, and for decades she endured demotions, discrimination and even threats of deportation. Yet Karikó persevered, ultimately making a world-shifting discovery: the mRNA vaccine technology that saved millions of lives and will transform healthcare forever.

Breaking Through

A Memoir

My Life In Science

Hadley Vlahos

‘Refreshingly forthright’ New York Times | ‘Extraordinary’ Laura Lynne Jackson | ‘Beautifully written’ Katy Butler | ‘Tender and transformative’ Christie Tate | ‘Meaningful and sublime’ Theresa Brown 
 
What can life’s final moments teach us about living well today? 
 
In this bestselling memoir, palliative care nurse Hadley Vlahos recounts the unforgettable tales of the hospice patients whose journeys of self-discovery inspired her sense of purpose and hope. From the elderly man seeing visions of his late daughter, to the young patient lamenting the time wasted fearing judgment, to the woman whose unwavering belief in her faith was shaken up by the prospect of dying. 
 
Each story teaches us to embrace life’s fleeting nature, and raises vital questions: How do we make peace with the end? How can we honour our late loved ones? And, above all, how can we make each day count? 
 
Compassionate and thought-provoking, The In-Between is a celebration of life’s great unknowns, and a comfort as we navigate what comes next. 
 
‘Heartfelt, gentle … refreshingly forthright’ New York Times 
 
‘Beautifully written … contains profound wisdom.’ Katy Butler, author of The Art of Dying Well 
 
‘Transformative … makes dying feel like a peaceful, dynamic, and nourishing event.’ Christie Tate, author of Group 
 
‘Offers gentle encouragement for all those who live under life’s running clock and for those who love them.’ Kirkus Reviews

The In-Between

Stories of Care and Connection in Life’s Final Moments

Unforgettable Encounters During Life's Final Moments

Kate Kitagawa

Timothy Revell

Mathematics shapes almost everything we do. But despite its reputation as the study of fundamental truths, the stories we have been told about it are wrong. In The Secret Lives of Numbers, historian Kate Kitagawa and journalist Timothy Revell introduce readers to the mathematical boundary-smashers who have been erased by history because of their race, gender or nationality. 
 
From the brilliant Arabic scholars of the ninth-century House of Wisdom, and the pioneering African American mathematicians of the twentieth century, to the 'lady computers' around the world who revolutionised our knowledge of the night sky, we meet these fascinating trailblazers and see how they contributed to our global knowledge today. 
 
This revisionist, completely accessible and radically inclusive history of mathematics is as entertaining as it is important.

The Secret Lives of Numbers

A Global History of Mathematics & Its Unsung Trailblazers

A Global History of Mathematics & its Unsung Trailblazers

Ashlee Vance

*An instant New York Times Bestseller* 
 
'One of the most exciting tales of our time... It's the next tech frontier, and Vance turns it into a thriller' Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs 
 
'Eloquent, expertly reported' Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store 
_______________ 
 
A momentous look at the private companies driving the revolutionary new space race, from the 3-million copy, New York Times bestselling author of Elon Musk 
 
In 2008, Elon Musk's SpaceX became the first private company to build a low-cost rocket that could reach orbit. Suddenly Silicon Valley, not NASA, was the epicentre of the new Space Age. 
 
Ashlee Vance follows four pioneering companies - Astra, Firefly, Planet Labs and Rocket Lab - as they race to control access to outer space. While the space tourism ambitions of billionaires such as Bezos and Branson make headlines, these under-the-radar companies are striving to monetise Earth's lower orbit; to connect, analyse and monitor everything on Earth. 
 
With unprecedented access to private company headquarters, labs and top-secret launch locations - from the US to New Zealand, Ukraine to India - Vance presents a gripping account of private jets, communes, gun-toting bodyguards, drugs, espionage investigations and multimillionaires guzzling booze as their fortunes disappear. 
 
This is the most pressing and controversial technology story of our time. Welcome to the new Wild West above the clouds.

When The Heavens Went On Sale

The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach

Giorgio Parisi

The world is shaped by complexity. In this enlightening book, Nobel Prize winner Giorgio Parisi guides us through his unorthodox yet exhilarating work to show us how. It all starts with investigating the principles of physics by observing the sophisticated flight patterns of starlings. Studying the movements of these birds, he has realized, proves an illuminating way into understanding complex systems of all kinds - collections of everything from atoms to planets to other animals like ourselves. 
 
Along the way, Parisi reflects on the lessons he's taken from a life in pursuit of scientific truth: the importance of serendipity to the discovery of new ideas, the surprising kinship between physics and other fields of study and the value of science to a thriving society. In so doing, he removes the practice of science from the confines of the laboratory and brings it into the real world. Complexity is all around us - from climate to finance to biology, it offers a unique way of finding order in chaos. 
 
Part elegant scientific treatise, part thrilling intellectual journey, In a Flight of Starlings is an invitation to find wonder in the world around us.

In a Flight of Starlings

The Wonder of Complex Systems

Tom Whipple

'Deeply researched and engagingly written' The Times 
'Has the pace and style of a well-crafted thriller' Mail on Sunday 
'Chock full of memorable characters and written with all the drama and pace of a Robert Harris thriller' Rowland White, author of Mosquito 
 
Summer 1939. War is coming. The British believe that, through ingenuity and scientific prowess, they alone have a war-winning weapon: radar. They are wrong. The Germans have it too. 
 
They believe that their unique maritime history means their pilots have no need of navigational aids. They are wrong. Most of the bombs the RAF will drop in the first years of the war land miles from their target. 
 
They also believe that the Germans, without the same naval tradition, will never be able to find targets at night. They are, again, wrong. 
 
In 1939 the Germans don't just have radar to spot planes entering their airspace, they have radio beams to guide their own planes into enemy airspace. 
 
This war will be fought on land and sea and in the air, but it will also be fought on the airwaves. It will be fought between scientists on both sides at the forefront of knowledge, and the agents and commandos they relied on to bolster that knowledge. Thanks to one young engineer, Reginald Jones, the British develop radar technology that went on to help the Allies win the war. 
 
Relying on first-hand accounts from Reginald Jones as well as papers recently released by the Admiralty, The Battle of the Beams fills a huge missing piece in the canon of World War II literature. It is a tale that combines history, science, derring do and dogged determination and will appeal as much to fans of World War II history as to those fascinated by the science behind the beams that changed our lives. 
 
The radio war of 1939-45 is one of the great scientific battles in history. This is the story of that war.

The Battle of the Beams

The secret science of radar that turned the tide of the Second World War

Luke O'Neill

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. This hugely accessible history of science reveals the human stories behind the biggest discoveries. 
 
For example, we meet Charles Darwin as he weighs up the pros and cons of marrying his cousin: 'constant companion' vs 'less money for books'. Tough call. 
 
To Boldly Go Where No Book Has Gone Before covers everything from space travel and evolution to alchemy and AI. Written by one of our leading scientists, this is an insider's account that celebrates the joy of science. It is filled with all the juicy bits that other histories leave out.

To Boldly Go Where No Book Has Gone Before

A Joyous Journey Through All of Science

Jim Down

In these stories, Dr Jim Down brings us to the very heart of the intensive care unit - the hospital section where the sickest patients are brought for emergency care. With honesty, humility and a streak of dark humour, Dr Down describes the quietly heroic work of doctors and nurses on the ICU, a place which sits at the cutting edge of medical technology, and where a split-second decision can make the difference between life and death. 
 
From headline-grabbing cases like that of Alexander Litvinenko, who was admitted to Down's ward after his poisoning by Russian agents, to the appalling aftermath of a train crash, and the daily struggle to simply find enough beds, Jim Down provides a unique insight into life on The Unit, and the critical medicine doctors and nurses perform there. 
 
Life in the Balance offers the first real glimpse of intensive care medicine; its immense challenges, its deleterious effects on doctors' mental health and also its enormous rewards. This profound work reframes the fragility of life and shows what it really means to care.

Life in the Balance

A Doctor’s Stories of Intensive Care

Henry Marsh

**BBC DOCUMENTARY CONFESSIONS OF A BRAIN SURGEON IS OUT NOW** 
 
From the No.1 bestselling author of Do No Harm, an entrancing and uplifting meditation on the gift of life. 
 
‘A book to treasure and reread’ Gavin Francis, author of Adventures in Human Being 
 
As a retired brain surgeon, Henry Marsh thought he understood illness, but even he was unprepared for the impact of his diagnosis of advanced cancer. 
 
In And Finally, he navigates the bewildering transition from doctor to patient. As the days pass, his mind turns to his career, to the people and places he has known, and to creative projects still to be completed. 
 
Yet he is also more entranced than ever by the mysteries of science and nature, by his love for his family, and – most of all – by what it is to be alive. 
 
* A Daily Telegraph, The Times and Financial Times Book of the Year * 
 
‘Magnificent’ Rachel Clarke 
 
‘Vividly wry and honest’ The Times 
 
‘I admire this book enormously’ Philip Pullman 
 
‘Enthralling’ Guardian

And Finally

A Neurosurgeon’s Reflections on Life

Matters of Life and Death, the Sunday Times bestseller from the author of DO NO HARM

Sophie Martin

&lsquo;A vital, heartfelt read for anyone navigating the rough seas of infertility and pregnancy loss&rsquo; &ndash; Leah Hazard, author of Hard PushedAn insightful, moving memoir, capturing life working as a midwife in a busy NHS hospital at the same time as dealing with experiences of infertility, IVF and loss. As a young married couple, Sophie Martin and her husband spent years trying to conceive. They went through several rounds of IVF, at great expense, and even travelled overseas for treatment, never quite knowing whether they would one day have a family. Alongside this, Sophie was working hard at a job she loved: looking after expectant mothers and newborn babies as a midwife in a busy hospital, where the patients&rsquo; daily new additions were a constant reminder of Sophie&rsquo;s own setbacks in pursuit of motherhood. The Infertile Midwife is a deeply personal, moving account of chasing something that you want so desperately. It also offers a much-needed look at how society treats infertility &ndash; from the language we use to the small talk we make &ndash; and the ways in which we can all do more to make things better for hopeful parents. With great warmth and honesty, Sophie shares her experiences of the bursts of hope and moments of great loss, but also the humour, love and joy that can be found in even the darkest places.

The Infertile Midwife

In Search of Motherhood - A Memoir

Alison Bashford

In his early twenties, poor, depressed, stranded in the Coral Sea on the HMS Rattlesnake, hopelessly in love with the young Englishwoman Henrietta Heathorn, Thomas Henry Huxley was a nobody. And yet together he and Henrietta would return to London and go on to found one of the great intellectual and scientific dynasties of their age. 
 
The Huxley family through four generations profoundly shaped how we all see ourselves, as individuals and as a species. They worked as scientists, novelists, mystics, film-makers, poets and above all, as public lecturers, educators and explainers. 
 
Their speciality was evolution in all its forms. But perhaps their greatest subject was themselves. Alison Bashford's engaging and original book interweaves the Huxleys' momentous public achievements with their private triumphs and tragedies. The result is the history of a family, but also a history of humanity grappling with its place in nature. This book shows how much we owe - for better or worse - to the unceasing curiosity, self-absorption and enthusiasms of a small, strange group of men and women.

An Intimate History of Evolution

The Story of the Huxley Family

Frank Close

In the summer of 1964, a reclusive young professor at the University of Edinburgh wrote two scientific papers which have come to change our understanding of the most fundamental building blocks of matter and the nature of the universe. Peter Higgs posited the existence an almost infinitely tiny particle - today known as the Higgs boson - which is the key to understanding why particles have mass, and but for which atoms and molecules could not exist. 
 
For nearly 50 years afterwards, some of the largest projects in experimental physics sought to demonstrate the physical existence of this boson. Sensationally, confirmation came in July 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. The following year Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. 
 
This revelatory book is 'not so much a biography of the man but of the boson named after him'. It brilliantly traces the course of much of twentieth-century physics from the inception of quantum field theory to the completion of the 'standard model' of particles and forces, and the pivotal role of Higgs's idea in this evolution. Drawing on conversations with Higgs over a decade (a figure generally as elusive as his particle) this is a superb study of a scientist and his era - and of how scientific knowledge advances.

Elusive

How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass

Pope Lonergan

Nominated for the Chortle Comedy Book Award 2023 
 
'Blisteringly well written, deeply humane and very funny' Daily Telegraph 
'Enough to make you die laughing' Daily Mail 
'Funny and moving' Daily Express 
 
Whether he's initiating a coup d'état against new regulations with the residents, or forging a bond with the 98-year old who once called him a fat slut, Pope Lonergan's work is infinitely varied. This no-holds-barred account shows what life inside a care home is really like, for both residents and carers. Featuring night-time drama, incontinence pads and the uniquely dark humour of one double-amputee Alzheimer's patient, here you can learn everything you ever wanted to know (and a few things you probably really didn't) about Britain's care system. 
 
This important memoir challenges us all to think differently about the value of our elderly, and also the carers who look after them.

I'll Die After Bingo

My unlikely life as a care home assistant

Melvyn Bragg

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 25 scientific pioneers who have shaped the development of science over 500 years 
 
'Exemplifies what Radio 4 is all about, and what makes it world class' The Guardian 
 
One of the bedrocks of Radio 4, In Our Time has entertained and fascinated millions of listeners since it was first broadcast in 1998. Each week, Melvyn Bragg and a panel of leading academics discuss the big ideas that form the intellectual agenda of our age, traversing an eclectic spectrum of topics from the alphabet to Absolute Zero. 
 
This specially curated collection introduces us to 25 of the best minds who have shaped the fields of science over the past five centuries. Beginning with an introductory episode, 'The Scientist', it encompasses pioneers such as mathematicians Blaise Pascal, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Ada Lovelace and Emmy Noether; astronomers Johannes Kepler and William and Caroline Herschel; chemists Rosalind Franklin and Dorothy Hodgkin; and physicists Ernest Rutherford and Paul Dirac. Among the other famous names featured are Michael Faraday, Louis Pasteur, Thomas Edison, Alan Turing and the Curies, as well as the great naturalist Charles Darwin, who is the subject of a 4-part special devoted to his life and work. 
 
Science students, In Our Time fans and lovers of learning will relish these captivating, wide-ranging discussions, giving us unparalleled insight into the remarkable individuals whose ideas and inventions have transformed our world. 
 
Production credits 
Presented by Melvyn Bragg 
Produced by Victoria Brignell, Thomas Morris, John Goudie and Simon Tillotson 
 
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on the following dates: 
 
The Scientist 24 October 2002 
Johannes Kepler 29 December 2016 
Pascal 19 September 2013 
Robert Boyle 12 June 2014 
Emilie du Châtelet 4 February 2021 
Lamarck and Natural Selection 26 December 2003 
William and Caroline Herschel 11 November 2021 
Pierre-Simon Laplace 8 April 2021 
John Dalton 27 October 2016 
Humboldt 28 September 2006 
Carl Friedrich Gauss 30 November 2017 
George and Robert Stephenson 12 April 2018 
Michael Faraday 24 December 2015 
Ada Lovelace 6 March 2008 
Maxwell 2 October 2003 
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin 5 January 2009 
Darwin: The Voyage of the Beagle 6 January 2009 
Darwin: On the Origin of Species 7 January 2009 
Darwin: Life After Origins 8 January 2009 
Louis Pasteur 18 May 2017 
Pitt-Rivers 28 February 2013 
Thomas Edison 9 December 2010 
Rutherford 19 February 2004 
Emmy Noether 24 January 2019 
The Curies 26 March 2015 
Alan Turing 15 October 2020 
Rosalind Franklin 22 February 2018 
Paul Dirac 5 March 2020 
Dorothy Hodgkin 3 October 2019 
 
© 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd.

In Our Time: 25 Pioneers in the History of Science

A BBC Radio 4 Collection

Averil Mansfield

'A great read. I am honoured to have worked with such a legend' David Nott 
'A role model for women' Independent 
'A wonderful read' Julian Fellowes 
'Remarkable' Lauren Laverne 
'Charming' Guardian 
 
We were occasionally expected to travel by ambulance to a serious case and would always have a kit of tools and drugs ready for emergency calls. On one occasion, we were responding to a man who had fallen into the hold of a grain ship and broken his leg. I was expected to go down a pole into the ship to administer analgaesia before he could be rescued. The 'audience' of shipworkers delighted in telling me that there were rats the size of dogs down in the grain. The other problem was that this was the era of the mini skirt, and you can imagine what that meant. Following the incident, I instituted the purchase of some 'Casualty Officers Emergency Dungarees' as an addition to the kit. 
 
Averil Mansfield established herself as a pioneer in every sense of the word when she qualified as a surgeon in the early 1970s. At the time just two per cent of her colleagues were female, and she was often met with surprise, bordering on disbelief and amusement, when telling people what she did. But time and again, Averil proved herself more than capable of the role which had been her greatest dream since the age of eight. After a formidable operating career in Liverpool and London, during which she made many enduring friendships, she went on to became the UK's first ever female professor of surgery. 
 
Life in Her Hands is the remarkable story of a truly trailblazing woman. Averil's account shines light on a medical and societal world that has changed beyond measure, but which - as she shows through her experiences - still has a long way to go for the women finding their place within it.

Life in Her Hands

The Inspiring Story of a Pioneering Female Surgeon

Charlotte Raven

Edward Wild

'Searingly honest and important' RACHEL CLARKE 
 
Honest, intelligent and unsentimental, Patient 1 is a startling self-portrait written with wit and vulnerability, and a unique testament to the power of hope in the face of illness. 
 
Charlotte Raven had never heard of Huntington's Disease when, in her mid-thirties, she discovered that her father was suffering from the illness. Life for her and her young family would never be the same again. 
 
Frank and fearless, this is her memoir of coming to terms with this inherited neurodegenerative disease and its impact on her body, mind and memory. It is at once an act of self-preservation and a kind of reckoning: with the illness, with the person she once was and with the person she is now. 
 
 In an afterword, Raven's doctor Ed Wild - one of the country's leading experts in Huntington's - explains how doctors and patients like Charlotte are working together in the hope of one day eliminating this disease altogether. 
 
'Insightful, frank and often moving...Raven writes with humour...and no small amount of courage' Guardian 
 
Shortlisted for the RSL Christopher Bland Prize 2022

Patient 1

Forgetting and Finding Myself

Paul Craddock

We think of transplant surgery as one of the medical wonders of the modern world, but it's a lot older than you think. As ancient as the pyramids, its history is even more surprising. In Spare Parts, cultural historian Paul Craddock takes us on a fascinating journey, from Indian surgeons regrafting lost noses in the sixth century BC, to seventeenth century blood transfusions between humans and dogs, to the French seamstress whose needlework paved the way for kidney transplants in the early 1900s. 
 
Expertly weaving together philosophy, science and cultural history, Spare Parts explores how transplant surgery has constantly tested the boundaries between human, animal and machine. It shows us that the history -- and future -- of transplant surgery is tied up with questions not only about who we are, but also what we are, and what we might become.

Spare Parts

An Unexpected History of Transplants

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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