Showing titles in Science & Engineering

When an unexpected medical crisis sends Naomi Wolf on a deeply personal journey to tease out the intersections between sexuality and creativity, she discovers, much to her own astonishment, an increasing body of scientific evidence that suggests that the vagina is not merely flesh, but an intrinsic component of the female brain - and thus has a fundamental connection to female consciousness itself.

Think of a number between one and 10. No, hang on, let's make this interesting. Between zero and infinity. Even if you stick to the whole numbers, there are a lot to choose from - an infinite number in fact. Throw in decimal fractions, and infinity suddenly gets an awful lot bigger (is that even possible?). And then there are the negative numbers, the imaginary numbers, the irrational numbers like pi which never end. It literally never ends.

From the author of the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller The Female Brain, here is the eagerly awaited follow-up book that demystifies the puzzling male brain. Dr. Louann Brizendine, the founder of the first clinic in the country to study gender differences in brain, behavior, and...

In this landmark book of popular science, Daniel E. Lieberman—chair of the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a leader in the field—gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years, even as it shows how the increasing...

Former NASA astronaut Terry Virts offers an insider's guide to astronauting—a behind-the-scenes look at the training, basic rules, lessons, and procedures of space travel, including how to deal with a dead body in space, what it’s like to film an IMAX movie in orbit, what exactly to do when...

A “brilliant” (Chicago Review of Books), “elegantly written, and compelling” (National Review) new theory and call to action on animal rights, ethics, and law from the renowned philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum. Animals are in trouble all over the world. Whether through the cruelties of the...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of How to be Human: The Manual written and read by Ruby Wax with Ash Ranpura and Gelong Thubten. A three way encounter between a Monk, a neuroscientist and Ruby Wax sounds like the set up for a joke. Instead it's produced one of the most fascinating...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Most people think I save dogs, but really they saved me. Niall Harbison is a dog hero based in Thailand. He spends his days feeding, caring for and rescuing the many street dogs he comes across. With every rescue there’s a story. Like the sweet gentle McMuffin who...

Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability - at the level of literature, history, and politics - to grasp the scale and violence of climate change.

A few minutes before midnight on April 14, 1912, the "unsinkable" RMS Titanic, on her maiden voyage to New York, struck an iceberg. Less than three hours later she lay at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. While the world has remained fascinated by the tragedy, the most amazing drama of those fateful hours was not played out aboard the doomed liner. It took place on the decks of two other ships, one 58 miles distant from the sinking Titanic, the other barely 10 miles away.

Antarctica is the most alien place on the planet, the only part of the Earth where humans could never survive unaided. Out of our fascination with it have come many books, most of which focus on only one aspect of its unique strangeness. None has managed to capture the whole story - until now. Drawing on her broad travels across the continent, in Antarctica Gabrielle Walker weaves all the significant threads of life on the vast ice sheet into an intricate tapestry, illuminating what it really feels like to be there and why it draws so many different kinds of people.

For most of human history, we have led not just an earthly existence but a cosmic one. Celestial cycles drove every aspect of our daily lives. Our innate relationship with the stars shaped who we are - our religious beliefs, power structures, scientific advances and even our biology. But over the last few centuries we have separated ourselves from the universe that surrounds us. And that disconnect comes at a cost. In The Human Cosmos, Jo Marchant takes us on a tour through the history of humanity's relationship with the heavens.

206 bones. One heart. Two eyes. Ten fingers. You may think you know what makes up a human. But it turns out our bodies are full of surprises. What makes tears of joy different from tears of sadness? Why is a gut feeling so much smarter than you think? And why is 90% of you not even human? You...

Brought to you by Penguin. A raucous, behind-the-scenes account of the year Blur got back together There is nothing that can touch the sound made by a close-knit group of people who have been playing together for years and years and years, playing as though their lives depended on it. For many...

Follow the trails of hunters - the original storytellers - as they interpret signs, examine tracks, and chase and catch their prey (or fail to). Listeners can curl up with the best authentic hunting fiction and non-fiction, bringing the great Mount Kenya and the prairies of the American Bison into your living room. From Theodore Roosevelt and Gene Hill to Rick Bass and Charles Dickens, remember classic hunting tales and discover new stories of hunters’ luck, camaraderie, and use of smarts on the trail.

From the evolution of intelligent life, to the mysteries of consciousness; from the threat of the climate crisis to the search for dark matter, The world, the universe and us is your essential weekly dose of science and wonder in an uncertain world. Hosted by journalists Dr Rowan Hooper and Dr Penny Sarchet and joined each week by expert scientists in the field, the show draws on New Scientist’s unparalleled depth of reporting to put the stories that matter into context. Feed your curiosity with the podcast that will restore your sense of optimism and nourish your brain. For more visit ...

We feel that the present is everything; all we can know. Yet physics finds no universal ’now’. To explore what a moment really is, In Search of Now draws on state-of-the-art discoveries in neuroscience, psychology, cosmology and quantum physics, revealing a dynamic, creative process in which we all play a part.

A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week ‘A subject that could not be more important. A compact classic!’ Bill McKibben ‘I learned something new – and found something amazing – on every page’ Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx – whose...

Astronomers have successfully observed a great deal of the universe’s history, from recording the afterglow of the big bang to imaging thousands of galaxies, and even to visualising an actual black hole. There’s a lot for astronomers to be smug about. But when it comes to understanding how the universe began and grew up, we are literally in the dark ages. In effect, we are missing the first one billion years from the timeline of the universe.

The science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology. Leading the charge is psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose research overturns the long-standing belief that emotions are automatic, universal, and hardwired in different brain regions. Instead, Barrett shows, we construct each instance of emotion through a unique interplay of brain, body, and culture.