Is flying dangerous? How much do the world's cows weigh? And what makes people happy? From Earth's nations and inhabitants, through the fuels and foods that energize them, to the transportation and inventions of our modern world - and how all of this affects the planet itself - in Numbers Don't Lie, Professor Vaclav Smil takes us on a fact-finding adventure, using surprising statistics and...

This landmark book uncovers for the first time in detail one of the greatest horrors of the twentieth century: the vast system of Soviet camps that were responsible for the deaths of countless millions.Gulag is the only major history in any language to draw together the mass of memoirs and writings on the Soviet camps that have been published in Russia and the West. Using these, as well as her...

The kingdom of fungi has survived all five major extinction events. They are the architects of the natural world, integral to all life. They sustain critical ecosystems, recycling nutrients and connecting plants across vast areas, and help to produce many staples of modern life, such as wine, chocolate, bread, detergent and penicillin. Today, in the face of urgent ecological, societal and...

A pioneer of artificial intelligence shows how the study of causality revolutionized science and the world. 'Correlation does not imply causation.' This mantra was invoked by scientists for decades in order to avoid taking positions as to whether one thing caused another, such as smoking and cancer and carbon dioxide and global warming. But today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution,...

For most people, quantum theory is a byword for mysterious, impenetrable science. And yet for many years it was equally baffling for scientists themselves. In this magisterial book, Manjit Kumar gives a dramatic and superbly-written history of this fundamental scientific revolution, and the divisive debate at its core. Quantum theory looks at the very building blocks of our world, the...

Learn how to think like a physicist from a Nobel laureate and "one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century" (New York Review of Books) with these six classic and beloved lessons It was Richard Feynman's outrageous and scintillating method of teaching that earned him legendary status among students and professors of physics. From 1961 to 1963, Feynman delivered a series of...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER\'Nerd royalty\' BEN GOLDACRE \'Totally brilliant\' TIM HARFORD \'Required reading across the world\' NEW YORK TIMES From the creator of the wildly popular xkcd.com, hilarious and informative answers to important questions you probably never thought to ask.Millions visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe\'s...

The bestselling category killer comes to paperback with a new chapter and a full publicity and marketing campaign THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Book of the Year: Waterstones, The Times, Sunday Times, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, iPaper and Bookshop.org 'A spirited, inspiring, brilliantly illustrated history of female artistic endeavour' Laura Freeman, The Times 'Will...

An explosive new vision of geopolitics from two trail-blazing political scientists Deep beneath our feet, vast and sprawling, lies one of the most sophisticated empires the world has ever known. At first glance, it might not look like much - it is made up of fibre optic cables and obscure payment systems. But according to prominent political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, the...

All of us have in our minds a cartoon image of what an autocratic state looks like, with a bad man at the top. But in the 21st century, that cartoon bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad guy, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, security services and professional propagandists. The members of these networks...

Allen Carr's Easyway method is a global phenomenon - a clinically proven and 100% drug-free treatment for nicotine addiction. First used as an incredibly successful stop-smoking method, this cutting-edge approach now addresses the fastest-growing nicotine delivery system in the world, vaping. The Easyway method tackles addiction from an entirely different angle. Rather than employing...

What leads to political turbulence and social breakdown? How do elites maintain their dominant position? And why do ruling classes sometimes suddenly lose their grip on power? For decades, complexity scientist Peter Turchin has been studying world history like no one else. Assembling vast databases mined from 10,000 years of human activity, and then developing new models, he has transformed...

Have good intentions, over-parenting and the decline in unsupervised play led to the emergence of modern identity politics and hypersensitivity? In this book, free speech campaigner Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt investigate a new cultural phenomenon of "safetyism", beginning on American college campuses in 2014 and spreading throughout academic institutions in the...

Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. Oba Yozo's attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed...

Hirohiko Araki is the author of one of the longest-running and most beloved manga of all time, the epic fan favorite JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. According to him, manga is the ultimate synthesis of all forms of art, and in this book he reveals the secrets behind how to make the magic happen using concrete examples from his own work. Read all about his "golden ratio" for drawing, the...

'Richard Dawkins is a thunderously gifted science writer.' Sunday Times Including conversations with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley and more, this is an essential guide to the most exciting ideas of our time and their proponents from our most brilliant science communicator. Books Do Furnish a Life is divided by theme, including celebrating nature, exploring humanity, and...

Microsoft President Brad Smith operates by a simple core belief: when your technology changes the world, you bear a responsibility to help address the world you have helped create. This might seem uncontroversial, but it flies in the face of a tech sector long obsessed with rapid growth and sometimes on disruption as an end in itself. While sweeping digital transformation holds great...

The issues raised in this study concern the contemporary specifics of the Polish territory as well as the historical context, especially legal provisions, economic changes and the political transformation which took place after the Second World War. All these issues are illustrated by numerous local examples from the Gdańsk agglomeration and the Pomerania region. However, the research presented...

A scintillating, encyclopaedic history, rich in detail from the arcane to the familiar...a veritable tour de force Richard Overy, New Statesman Transnational history at its finest ...social, political and cultural themes swirl together in one great canvas of immense detail and beauty Gerard DeGroot, The Times Dazzlingly erudite and entertaining Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times A masterpiece...

'Astonishing ... an amazing book ... absolutely chocker full of things that we need to know' Chris Evans THE TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER TLS, OBSERVER, SUNDAY TIMES, FT, GUARDIAN, DAILY MAIL AND EVENING STANDARD BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017 Sleep is one of the most important aspects of our life, health and longevity and yet it is increasingly neglected in twenty-first-century society, with...