Abilio Estévez

Abir Mukherjee is the bestselling author of the award-winning Wyndham &amp; Banerjee series of crime novels set in 1920s India and the British Book Awards Crime Thriller of the Year 2025 Hunted. His books have been translated into sixteen languages and won various awards including the CWA Dagger for best Historical Novel, the Prix du Polar Européen, and the Wilbur Smith Award for Adventure Writing. 
 
 
He also co-hosts the popular Red Hot Chilli Writers podcast which takes a wry look at the world of books, writing, and the creative arts, tackling everything from bestsellers to pop culture. Abir grew up in Scotland and now lives in Surrey with his wife and two sons. 
 
 
Website: abirmukherjee.com Twitter, Threads &amp; Instagram: @radiomukhers Facebook: AuthorAbir

Abir Mukherjee

Abolqasem Ferdowsi

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham L. Newman is a professor at the School of Foreign Service and Government Department at Georgetown University. He is a 2022-2023 Berlin Prize winner and his work has been published in leading outlets like The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, Nature, Science, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Harvard Business Review, and Politico.

Abraham Newman

Abraham Verghese

Absolut Vodka

Ad Putter

Ada Moncrieff is the author of Murder Most Festive, Murder at the Theatre Royale and Murder at Maybridge Castle. She lives and works in London.

Ada Moncrieff

Adam Aleksic is a linguist and content creator posting educational videos as the “Etymology Nerd” to an audience of over two million. As a linguistics student at Harvard College, he founded and served as president of the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society. He’s discussed online language on NPR, repeatedly contributed to The Washington Post, and his work has been mentioned in The New York Times, The Economist, and The Guardian. He’s lectured on language and social media at Stanford, Yale, Georgetown, and other top universities, including a TEDx talk at the University of Pennsylvania. Adam is based in New York City, where he spends a lot of time scrolling TikTok for “research.”

Adam Aleksic

Adam Alter is an Associate Professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, and holds an affiliated appointment within the Psychology Department. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel and Behave and has written for The New York Times, New Yorker, Atlantic, Wired, Popular Science and numerous other publications.

Adam Alter

Professor Adam Balen is lead clinician at one of the UK's largest and most successful IVF units at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. In recognition of his research on fertility and related conditions, he holds a DSc (the highest academic degree in medicine) from the University of Leeds. Adam is internationally renowned, holding roles with the World Health Organisation (WHO), the International Federation of Gyneacology and Obstetrics (FIGO) and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gyneacologists (RCOG). He runs both NHS and private fertility clinics so he understands the issues that arise from both sides and he works closely with fertility patient support organisations across the UK. Adam regularly features in the media on all aspects of reproductive health and lectures widely throughout the world.

Adam Balen

Adam Baron

Adam Bornstein

Adam Brookes grew up in the UK and was a journalist with BBC News for many years. As a foreign correspondent he was based in Indonesia, China and the United States. Along the way he reported from many other countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea. He lives in Washington DC.

Adam Brookes

Adam Buxton

Adam Christopher is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Shadow of the Sith and Stranger Things: Darkness on the Edge of Town. He has also written official tie-in novels for the hit CBS television show Elementary and the award-winning Dishonored video game franchise. Co-creator of the twenty-first-century incarnation of Archie Comics superhero The Shield, Adam has also written for the universes of Doctor Who and World of Warcraft, and is a contributor to the internationally bestselling Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View anniversary anthology series and the all-ages Star Wars Adventures comic. Adam’s original novels include Made to Kill and The Burning Dark, among many others, and his debut novel Empire State was both a SciFi Now and Financial Times book of the year.

Adam Christopher

Adam Foulds's most recent books are In the Wolf’s Mouth, The Quickening Maze, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Encore Award and the European Union Prize for Literature, and The Broken Word, which won the Costa Poetry Award and the Somerset Maugham Award. He has recently been awarded the E.M. Forster Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and named as one of Granta’s ‘Best of Young British Novelists’.

Adam Foulds

Dr Adam Fox is a highly qualified and respected allergy specialist and consultant paediatric allergist and clinical lead for Allergy at Guy's &amp; St Thomas' Hospitals. The Times recently named him as one of Britain's top 100 children’s doctors. 
 
www.allergyfreebabyandtoddler.com

Adam Fox

Adam Frost

Adam Galinsky is currently the Morris and Alice Kaplan Professor of Ethics and Decision in Management at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He received his PhD from Princeton University in Social Psychology and his B.A. from Harvard University.

Adam Galinsky

Adam Glasser

Adam Goodfellow

Adam Goodwin

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at Wharton, where he has been the top-rated professor for seven straight years. His books have sold millions of copies, his TED talks have been viewed more than 30 million times, and he hosts the hit podcast Re:Thinking. His pioneering research on motivation and meaning has enabled people to reach their aspirations and exceed others' expectations. His viral piece on languishing was the most-read New York Times article of 2021 and the most-saved article across platforms. He has been recognized as one of the world's ten most influential management thinkers and Fortune's 40 Under 40, and has received distinguished scientific achievement awards from the American Psychological Association and the National Science Foundation. Grant received his B.A. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, and he is a former Junior Olympic springboard diver. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and their three children.

Adam Grant

Adam and Charlotte met in Zanzibar while working with Voluntary Services Overseas. Upon their return to the UK, Charlotte completed an MA at Oxford Brookes and started her career in publishing. Adam in the meantime became writer-in-residence at the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre before co-founding Storytelling Schools, an international organisation dedicated to training teachers in oracy, literacy and creativity. Adam and Charlotte's first book together was the best-selling and award-winning Spaghetti with the Yeti. Since then, Adam and Charlotte have continued to follow their passion for creating engaging books that inspire interaction and creativity in young readers.

Adam Guillain

ADAM HAMDY is a bestselling author and screenwriter. His most recent novel, The Other Side of Night, was an NPR best book of 2022 and a New York Times best thriller of the year, and has been described as ingenious and deeply moving. He is the author of the Scott Pearce series of modern spy thrillers, Black 13, Red Wolves and White Fire, and the Pendulum trilogy. Keep up to date with his latest books and news at www.adamhamdy.com.

Adam Hamdy

Adam Hart-Davis

Adam Haslett is the author of the story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here and the novels Imagine Me Gone and Union Atlantic. He has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and his books have been translated into over thirty languages. His journalism on culture and politics has appeared in The Financial Times, Esquire, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, The Nation, and The Atlantic, among others. He lives in New York City.

Adam Haslett

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David Cannadine

To live in Victorian Britain was to experience an astonishing series of changes, of a kind for which there was simply no precedent in the human experience. There were revolutions in transport, communication, work; cities grew vast; scientific ideas made the intellectual landscape unrecognizable. This was an exhilarating time, but also a horrifying one. 
 
David Cannadine has created a bold, fascinating new interpretation of Victorian Britain. This was a country which saw itself at the summit of the world. And yet it was a society also convulsed by doubt, fear and introspection. Repeatedly, politicians and writers felt themselves to be staring into the abyss and what is seen as an era of irritating self-belief was in practice obsessed by a sense of its own fragility, whether as a great power or as a moral force. Victorious Century catches the relish and humour of the age, but also the dilemmas of a kind with which we remain familiar today.

Victorious Century

The United Kingdom, 1800–1906

Jo Wheeler

While their husbands, brothers and sweethearts fought in Europe and their mothers, sisters and friends kept the home fires burning, for the first time, a group of remarkable women took to the skies. They weren't allowed into combat but risked their lives in bad weather and without radios to bring our boys the aircraft they so vitally needed. 
 
Employed by the Air Transport Auxiliary, these women were known as 'attagirls'. They proved that women too could master Spitfires, Mosquitoes and Hawker Hurricanes, forging a new path in aviation. 
 
The Hurricane Girls is the fascinating, moving and inspirational story of bravery, determination and remarkable women.

The Hurricane Girls

The inspirational true story of the women who dared to fly

Charles Spence

Why do we consume 35% more food when eating with one more person, and 75% more when with three? Why are 27% of drinks bought on aeroplanes tomato juice? How are chefs and companies planning to transform our dining experiences, and what can we learn from their cutting-edge insights to make memorable meals at home? 
 
These are just some of the ingredients of Gastrophysics, in which the pioneering Oxford professor Charles Spence shows how our senses link up in the most extraordinary ways, and reveals the importance of all the 'off-the-plate' elements of a meal: the weight of cutlery, the placing on the plate, the background music and much more. Whether dining alone or at a dinner party, on a plane or in front of the TV, he reveals how to understand what we're tasting and influence what others experience. Mealtimes will genuinely never be the same again.

Gastrophysics

The New Science of Eating

Qing Li

Shinrin = Forest 
Yoku = Bathing 
 
Shinrin-Yoku or forest bathing is the practice of spending time in the forest for better health, happiness and a sense of calm. A pillar of Japanese culture for decades, Shinrin-Yoku is a way to reconnect with nature, from walking mindfully in the woods, to a break in your local park, to walking barefoot on your lawn. 
 
Forest Medicine expert, Dr Qing Li's research has proven that spending time around trees (even filling your home with house plants and vaporising essential tree oils) can reduce blood pressure, lower stress, boost energy, boost immune system and even help you to lose weight. Along with his years of ground-breaking research, anecdotes on the life-changing power of trees, Dr Li provides here the practical ways for you to try Shinrin-Yoku for yourself.

Shinrin-Yoku

The Art and Science of Forest Bathing

Carlos Magdalena

Carlos Magdalena of Kew Gardens is not your average botanical horticulturist. He's a man on a mission to save the world's most endangered plants from destruction and thieves hunting for wealthy collectors. He is a plant messiah. 
 
From the planet's tiniest waterlily - the Nymphaea thermarum - to Huarango trees with roots over 50 metres long, Carlos has a miraculous ability to bring breathtakingly beautiful plants back from the brink of extinction. He has travelled to the most remote and dangerous parts of the world - from the mountains of Peru to isolated Indian Ocean islands to the deepest Australian outback - in search of the rarest exotic species. Then, back in the Tropical Nursery at Kew, he uses pioneering, left-field techniques to help them grow. 
 
Now he's here to spread the gospel. The Plant Messiah is the inspirational story of a man who has devoted - and risked - his life to save incredible species, all in the name of making this Earth a greener and happier place. Amen to that.

The Plant Messiah

Adventures in Search of the World’s Rarest Species

Wendell Berry

'He is unlike anybody else writing today ... After Donald Trump's election, we urgently need to rediscover the best of radical America. An essential part of that story is Wendell Berry. Few of us can live, or even aspire to, his kind of life. But nobody can risk ignoring him' Andrew Marr 
 
'Wendell Berry is the most important writer and thinker that you have (probably) never heard of. He is an American sage' James Rebanks 
 
Wendell Berry is 'something of an anachronism'. He began his life as the old times and the last of the old-time people were dying out, and continues to this day in the old ways: a team of work horses and a pencil are his preferred working tools. The writings gathered in The World-Ending Fire are the unique product of a life spent farming the fields of rural Kentucky with mules and horses, and of the rich, intimate knowledge of the land cultivated by this work. These are essays written in defiance of the false call to progress, and in defence of the local landscapes that provide our cultural heritage, our history, our home.

The World-Ending Fire

The Essential Wendell Berry

Peter Wadhams

'Astonishing ... beautiful, compelling and terrifying' Observer 
 
'Wadhams' writing sparkles ... a lyrical sense of wonder at the natural world ... essential reading ... may be the best reader-friendly account of the greenhouse effect available to date' John Burnside, New Statesman 
 
Ice is beautiful and complex. It regulates our planet's temperature. And it is vanishing - fast. Peter Wadhams, the world's leading expert on sea ice, draws on his lifetime's research in the Arctic region to illuminate what is happening, what it means for the future, and what can be done. 
 
'This most experienced and rational scientist states what so many other researchers privately fear but cannot publicly say' John Vidal, Guardian 
 
'Wadhams brings huge expertise to his subject - and he is an excellent writer' Martin Rees 
 
'Utterly extraordinary' Jonathon Porritt

A Farewell to Ice

A Report from the Arctic

Anna May McHugh

'The embodiment of the spirit of rural Ireland' Irish Mirror 
 
Anna May McHugh's name is synonymous with 'the Ploughing' - the annual Championships of the National Ploughing Association. The event is the biggest outdoor agricultural show in Europe and Anna May is the driving force behind its spectacular growth. 
 
Anna May now tells her story. Her description of growing up as part of a large family in rural County Laois is an evocative and affectionate account of an Ireland that is now gone. But in her account of how she went from being a secretary of the Ploughing Association, her first job, to becoming - to her own amazement - its managing director twenty years later is a story of leadership and people skills that are very much of the twenty-first century. Anna May was truly ahead of her time. 
 
Still living in County Laois, close to where she grew up, and now in her eighties, Anna May still runs the multi-million euro operation from her home, alongside her daughter, Anna Marie. 
 
Queen of the Ploughing is a captivating read, full of warmth, lively stories and Anna May's sharp observations. And it's not just about Anna May's life, but is also a celebration of the best of Irish life over eight decades.

Queen of the Ploughing

Roald Dahl

In war are we at our heroic best or our cowardly worst? Featuring the autobiographical stories from Roald Dahl's time as a fighter pilot in the Second World War as well as seven other tales of conflict and strife, Dahl reveals the human side of our darkest days. 
 
Among other stories, you'll read about the pilot shot down in the Libyan desert, the fighter plane lost in mysterious thick cloud and the soldier who returns from war but has been mysteriously changed by it. 
 
Roald Dahl reveals even more about the darker side of human nature in seven other centenary editions: Lust, Madness, Cruelty, Deception, Trickery, Innocence and Fear.

Brian Cox

Jeff Forshaw

We dare to imagine a time before the Big Bang, when the entire Universe was compressed into a space smaller than an atom. And now, as Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw show, we can do more than imagine: we can understand. Over the centuries, the human urge to discover has unlocked an incredible amount of knowledge. What it reveals to us is breathtaking. 
 
Universal takes us on an epic journey of scientific exploration and, in doing so, reveals how we can all understand some of the most fundamental questions about our Earth, Sun, Solar System and the star-filled galaxies beyond. Some of these questions - How big is our solar system? How fast is space expanding? - can be answered from your back garden; the answers to others - How big is the Universe? What is it made of? - draw on the astonishing information now being gathered at the frontiers of the known universe. Science reveals a deeper beauty, connects us to our world, and to our Universe; and, by understanding the groundbreaking work of others, reaches out into the unknown. What's more, as Universal shows us, if we dare to imagine, we can all do it.

Universal

A Journey Through the Cosmos

Adam Lashinsky

Uber is one of the most fascinating and controversial businesses in the world, both beloved for its elegant ride-hailing concept and heady growth, and condemned for CEO Travis Kalanick's ruthless pursuit of success at all cost. 
 
In Wild Ride, Adam Lashinsky, veteran Fortune writer and author of Inside Apple, traces the story of Uber's meteoric rise: from its murky origins to its plans for expansion into radically different industries. The company has already poached entire departments from top research universities in a push to build the first self-driving car and possibly replace the very drivers it's worked so hard to recruit. 
 
With access to current and former employees, as well as CEO Travis Kalanick, this book will be the first to unlock Uber's vault. It's a story that start-up founders, business executives, tech-savvy readers, and drivers and riders will find riveting.

Wild Ride

Inside Uber's Quest for World Domination

Pete Brown

An orchard is not a field.  It's not a forest or a copse.  It couldn't occur naturally; it's definitely cultivated.  But an orchard doesn't override the natural order: it enhances it, dresses it up. It demonstrates that man and nature together can - just occasionally - create something more beautiful and (literally) more fruitful than either could alone. The vivid brightness of the laden trees, studded with jewels, stirs some deep race memory and makes the heart leap.  Here is bounty, and excitement.

The Apple Orchard

The Story of Our Most English Fruit

Eric Partridge

Passion-killers: Airwomen's service knickers, whether twilights (the lighter, summer-weight variety) or black-outs (the navy-blue winter-weights). A wise directive has purposely made them as unromantic in colour and in design as a wise directive could imagine. 
 
Thanks to the work of Eric Partridge in 1945, the hilarious slang of the Royal Air Force during the first two World Wars has been preserved for generations to come. While some phrases like 'chocks away!' have lasted to this day, others deserve to be rediscovered. The Dictionary of RAF Slang is a funny and fascinating insight into the lives of our RAF heroes, in a time gone by.

A Dictionary of RAF Slang

John Wyndham

For British pilot Dale Curtance, the Keuntz Prize - to be awarded to the first person to take a spaceship to another planet and back - is the ultimate challenge. Not only has he to build a ship to survive the journey, assemble a top-notch crew and choose a destination, he's also got to beat the Russians and Americans. 
 
Soon the GLORIA MUNDI blasts off from Salisbury Plain, bound for Mars. There's only one problem - a stowaway called Joan. Not only does her presence wreck calculations and threaten the mission, but her tale suggests that Mars may be a more dangerous destination than they ever expected.

Stowaway to Mars

James Rebanks

Some people's lives are entirely their own creations. James Rebanks' isn't. The first son of a shepherd, who was the first son of a shepherd himself, he and his family have lived and worked in and around the Lake District for generations. 
 
In evocative and lucid prose, James Rebanks takes us through a shepherd's year, offering a unique account of rural life and a fundamental connection with the land that most of us have lost.

The Shepherd's Life

A Tale of the Lake District

Tim Flannery

A timely intervention on climate change from the author of the hugely influential The Weather Makers. 
 
The tools required to avoid a climate disaster already exist. Between emissions cuts and emerging technologies, we can do it. Here Professor Tim Flannery introduces us to the innovative new solutions being developed around the world, which work with the Earth's systems to combat climate change - and could safeguard our future. 
 
'An important voice in the debate on global warming' Josh Glancy, Sunday Times 
 
'Balances the difficult business of raising alarm about the dangers ahead with proposals for the types of action we need to take now to head off catastrophe tomorrow' Robin McKie, Guardian 
 
'If you're not already addicted to Tim Flannery's writing, discover him now' Jared Diamond 
 
'Thoughtful, candid and - yes - ultimately upbeat, Atmosphere of Hope could not be more timely. It is just the book the world needs right now' Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction

Atmosphere of Hope

Solutions to the Climate Crisis

Steven Johnson

From Steven Johnson, the bestselling author of Where Good Ideas Come From, comes How We Got to Now, the companion book to his six-part BBC One television series exploring the power and the legacy of great ideas. 
 
How did photography bring about social reform? What connects refrigeration to Hollywood? And how did our battle against dirt help create smartphones? In this story of ingenious breakthroughs and unsung heroes, Steven Johnson explores the essential innovations that changed the world and how we live in it. 
 
'A new Steven Johnson book is something not to be missed. The author has become the leading writer on how inventions happen' Daniel Finkelstein, The Times, Books of the Year 
 
'Graceful and compelling ... you'll find yourself exhilarated' The New York Times Book Review 
 
'Readable, entertaining, and a challenge to any jaded sensibility that has become inured to the everyday miracles all around us' Peter Forbes, Guardian'This nimble history of invention . . .is a many-layered delight' Nature

How We Got to Now

Six Innovations that Made the Modern World

Alexander Monro

The Paper Trail tells the story of how a simple Chinese product has for two millennia allowed knowledge, ideas and religions to spread at an unprecedented rate around the world. Alexander Monro traces this groundbreaking invention's voyage, beginning with the Buddhist translators responsible for its spread across China and Japan, and follows it westward along the Silk Road, where it eventually became the surface of the Quran. Once paper reached Europe, it became indispensable to the scholars who manufactured the Renaissance and Reformation from their desks. As Monro uncovers, paper created a world in which free thinking could flourish, and brought disciplines from science to music into a new age.

The Paper Trail

An Unexpected History of a Revolutionary Invention

William Gibson

Though primarily known as a novelist, over thirty years William Gibson has also built up a reputation as one of our most entertaining and insightful critics of contemporary culture. He is widely credited with having described the internet and cyberspace before any such things existed. 
 
Distrust that Particular Flavor brings together for the first time his writings on a wide variety of contemporary subjects: the differing cultures of Japan and Singapore; music and the movies; what's wrong with the internet; the interactive relationship between writers and readers; and many others. Also included in the book is a fascinating autobiographical sketch: his upbringing in the South, the early death of his parents and his escape into books; and the move to Canada to avoid the draft.

Distrust that Particular Flavor

Paul Kennedy

In January 1943 Churchill and Roosevelt met in Casablanca to review the Allies' war aims. To achieve unconditional surrender they had to overcome some formidable hurdles, from winning air command to 'hopping' across the Pacific islands. Eighteen months later, they had done what seemed impossible. 
 
Here Paul Kennedy reveals the role of the problem-solvers and middle-men who made it happen - like Major-General Perry Hobart, who invented the 'funny tanks' which flattened the D-Day beaches; or Captain 'Johnny' Walker, who worked out how to sink U-boats with a 'creeping barrage'. This book shows the conflict in an entirely new light.

Engineers of Victory

The Problem Solvers who Turned the Tide in the Second World War

Mark Miodownik

A unique and inspiring exploration of human creativity from one of the UK's best-known scientists 
 
Everything is made of something... 
 
From the everyday objects in our homes to the most extraordinary new materials that will shape our future, Stuff Matters reveals the inner workings of the man-made world, and the miracles of craft, design, engineering and ingenuity that surround us every day. 
 
From the tea-cup to the jet engine, the silicon chip to the paper clip, from the ancient technologies of fabrics and ceramic to today's self-healing metals and bionic implants, this is a book to inspire amazement and delight at mankind's creativity. 
 
Mark Miodownik is Professor of Materials and Society at UCL, scientist-in-residence on Dara O Briain's Science Club (BBC2) and presenter of several documentaries, including The Genius of Invention (BBC2). In 2010, he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, broadcast on BBC4. He is Director of the UCL Institute of Making, which is home to a materials library containing some of the most wondrous matter on earth, and has collaborated to make interactive events with many museums, such as Tate Modern, the Hayward Gallery and Wellcome Collection. In 2014 Stuff Matters won the Royal Society Winton Prize.

Stuff Matters

The Strange Stories of the Marvellous Materials that Shape Our Man-made World

Adam Rutherford

Two extraordinary books in one, Creation tells the entire, spellbinding story of life. 
 
The Origin of Life is a gripping, four-billion-year detective story that uses the latest science to explain what life is and where it first came from, offering answers to the very grandest of questions before arriving at a thrilling solution. This same science has led to a technological revolution: the ability to create entirely new life forms within the lab, known as synthetic biology. The Future of Life introduces these remarkable innovations, explains how they work, and presents a powerful argument for their benefit to humankind.

Creation

The Origin of Life / The Future of Life

Jon Gertner

From its beginnings in the 1920s until its demise in the 1980s, Bell Labs-officially, the research and development wing of AT&amp;T-was the biggest, and arguably the best, laboratory for new ideas in the world. From the transistor to the laser, from digital communications to cellular telephony, it's hard to find an aspect of modern life that hasn't been touched by Bell Labs. 
 
In The Idea Factory, Jon Gertner traces the origins of some of the twentieth century's most important inventions and delivers a riveting and heretofore untold chapter of American history. At its heart this is a story about the life and work of a small group of brilliant and eccentric men-Mervin Kelly, Bill Shockley, Claude Shannon, John Pierce, and Bill Baker-who spent their careers at Bell Labs. 
 
Today, when the drive to invent has become a mantra, Bell Labs offers us a way to enrich our understanding of the challenges and solutions to technological innovation. Here, after all, was where the foundational ideas on the management of innovation were born.

The Idea Factory

Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation

David Edgerton

The story of the strange mixture of romanticism, militarism and technology that has made planes so important to England, from the brilliant author of Britain's War Machine 
 
The history of England and the aeroplane is one tangled with myths - of 'the Few' and the Blitz, of boffins, flying machines, amateur inventors and muddling through. In England and the Aeroplane David Edgerton reverses received wisdom, showing that the aeroplane is a central and revealing aspect of an unfamiliar English nation: a warfare state dedicated to technology, industry, empire and military power. 
 
England had the strongest air force in the Great War, the largest industry in the world in the 1920s, outproduced Germany by 50% at the time of the Battle of Britain and was the third largest producers of aeroplanes well after this time. In a revelatory recounting of the story of aeronautical England, from its politics to its industry and culture, David Edgerton reconfigures some of the most important chapters of our history. 
 
Reviews: 
 
'A brilliant polemic' Guardian 
 
'Full of good stories ... an illuminating read' Spectator 
 
'A tour de force, after which the history of the aircraft industry will never be quite the same again' Business History 
 
'David Edgerton's sure-footed essay ... sees Britain from an unusual perspective ... His arguments provide sound backing for the idea that modern Britain is as much a warfare state as a welfare one' Economist 
 
About the author: 
 
David Edgerton is Hans Rausing Professor at Imperial College London, where he was the founding director of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. He is the author of a sequence of groundbreaking books on 20th century Britain: Science, Technology and the British Industrial 'Decline', 1870-1970; Warfare State: Britain, 1920-1970; and Britain's War Machine, published by Penguin. He is also the author of the iconoclastic and brilliant The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900.

England and the Aeroplane

Militarism, Modernity and Machines

George Dyson

George Dyson's fascinating account of the early years of computers: Turing's Cathedral is the story behind how the PC, ipod, smartphone and almost every aspect of modern life came into being. 
 
In 1945 a small group of brilliant engineers and mathematicians gathered at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, determined to build a computer that would make Alan Turing's theory of a 'universal machine' reality. Led by the polymath émigré John von Neumann, they created the numerical framework that underpins almost all modern computing - and ensured that the world would never be the same again. 
 
George Dyson is a historian of technology whose interests include the development (and redevelopment) of the Aleut kayak. He is the author of Baidarka; Project Orion; and Darwin Among the Machines. 
 
'Unusual, wonderful, visionary' Francis Spufford, Guardian 
 
'Fascinating . . . the story Dyson tells is intensely human . . . a gripping account of ideas and inventionFascinating . . . the story Dyson tells is intensely human . . . a gripping account of ideas and invention' Jenny Uglow 
 
'Glorious . . . as much a story of the personalities involved as of the discoveries they made, and you do not need any knowledge of computers or mathematics to enjoy the ride . . . a ripping yarn' John Gribbin, Literary Review

Turing's Cathedral

The Origins of the Digital Universe

What connects the "miracle on the Hudson" to the planning of the French railway system, or the mysterious outbreak of strange smells in downtown Manhattan to the invention of the Internet? With his characteristic flair for multidisciplinary storytelling, Steven Johnson shows in Future Perfect that what lies behind these and many other fascinating human stories is the concept of networked thinking. 
 
Exploring a new vision of progress, Johnson argues that networked thinking holds the key to an incredible range of human achievements, and can transform everything from local government to drug research to arts funding and education. Future Perfect paints a compelling portrait of a new model of political change that is already on the rise, and shows that despite Western political systems hopelessly gridlocked by old ideas, change for the better can happen, and that new solutions are on the horizon.

Future Perfect

The Case For Progress In A Networked Age

Michio Kaku

The international bestselling author of Physics of the Impossible gives us a stunning and provocative vision of the future 
 
Based on interviews with over three hundred of the world's top scientists, who are already inventing the future in their labs, Kaku-in a lucid and engaging fashion-presents the revolutionary developments in medi­cine, computers, quantum physics, and space travel that will forever change our way of life and alter the course of civilization itself. 
His astonishing revelations include: 
 
 The Internet will be in your contact lens. It will recog­nize people's faces, display their biographies, and even translate their words into subtitles. 
 
 You will control computers and appliances via tiny sen­sors that pick up your brain scans. You will be able to rearrange the shape of objects. 
 
 Sensors in your clothing, bathroom, and appliances will monitor your vitals, and nanobots will scan your DNA and cells for signs of danger, allowing life expectancy to increase dramatically. 
 
 Radically new spaceships, using laser propulsion, may replace the expensive chemical rockets of today. You may be able to take an elevator hundreds of miles into space by simply pushing the "up" button. 
 
Like Physics of the Impossible and Visions before it, Physics of the Future is an exhilarating, wondrous ride through the next one hundred years of breathtaking scientific revolution. 
 
Internationally acclaimed physicist Dr Michio Kaku holds the Henry Semat Chair in Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York. He is also an international bestselling author, his books including Hyperspace and Parallel Worlds, and a distinguished writer, having featured in Time, the Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times and the New Scientist to name but a few. Dr Kaku also hosts his own radio show, 'Science Fantastic', and recently presented the BBC's popular series 'Time'.

Physics of the Future

How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

W. Brian Arthur

In The Nature of Technology, ground-breaking economist W. Brian Arthur explores the extraordinary way in which the technology that surrounds us and allows us to live our modern lives has actually been developed. Rather than coming from a series of one-off inventions, almost all the technology we use today comes from previous developments: these technologies are not being created, but are instead evolving. 
 
With fascinating examples, from laser printers to powerplants, Arthur reveals how our own problem-solving skills and creative vision can evolve alongside these technologies, and how this understanding can even improve our understanding of the wider world.

The Nature of Technology

What It Is and How It Evolves

William Langewiesche

On January 15, 2009, a US Airways Airbus A320 had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport in New York, when a flock of Canada geese collided with it, destroying both of its engines. Over the next three minutes, the plane's pilot Chelsey "Sully" Sullenberger, managed to glide to a safe landing in the Hudson River. It was an instant media sensation, the "The Miracle on the Hudson", and Captain Sully was the hero. But, how much of the success of this dramatic landing can actually be credited to the genius of the pilot? To what extent is the "Miracle on the Hudson" the result of extraordinary - but not widely known, and in some cases quite controversial - advances in aviation and computer technology over the last twenty years? 
 
 
From the testing laboratories where engineers struggle to build a jet engine that can systematically resist bird attacks, through the creation of the A320 in France, to the political and social forces that have sought to minimize the impact of the revolutionary fly-by-wire technology, William Langewiesche assembles the untold stories necessary to truly understand "The Miracle on the Hudson", and makes us question our assumptions about human beings in modern aviation.

Fly By Wire

The Geese, The Glide, The 'Miracle' on the Hudson

Frank Pope

The Hoi An, a wreck deep beneath the waves of the South China Sea. In her fifteenth-century hull a priceless treasure; on the waves above a team of treasure hunters racing against the clock to claim the fabulous cargo via dangerous saturation dives. But typhoons, pirates, gunships, mutiny, rival treasure hunters, storms and greed were to make this deep-sea dive one of the most dramatic and gruelling expeditions ever undertaken. Frank Pope was there and his gripping tale of this high-stakes folly will captivate anyone who loves undersea adventure.

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Tim and Biscuit, two unlikely friends, always seem to get themselves into difficult situations. From their first meeting in Cliffhanger, where bookish Tim is forced to endure an activities camp, to Buried Alive, where a quiet camping holiday turns out to be full of surprises, there is never a dull moment with these two around.Jaqueline Wilson’s hilarious duo of books catalogues their escapades, triumphs and failures, with a good helping of snacks along the way!

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