Popular Science

A deadly secret lurks within our kitchens, medicine cabinets and gardens...Digitalis purpurea. The common foxglove. Vision blurs as blood pressure drops precipitously. The heartbeat slows until, finally, it stops.Atropa belladonna....

'Hugely readable and entertaining' JIM AL-KHALILI 'An accessible and crystal-clear portrait of this discipline's breadth, largely told through its history' PHIL BALL, PHYSICS WORLD Einstein's Fridge tells the story of...

More than meets the eye - the science of how we see and the secrets it reveals about how the brain works.Spotting a familiar face in a crowd is so...

Many societies have imagined going to live in space. What they want to do once they get up there - whether conquering the unknown, establishing space "colonies," privatising the moon's...

Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also...

Never before have we had so much information available to us about food and health. There's GAPS, paleo, detox, gluten-free, alkaline, the sugar conspiracy, clean eating... Unfortunately, a lot of...

Your brain is a collection of maps. That is no metaphor: scrawled across your brain's surfaces are actual schematic images of the sights, sounds, and actions that hold the key...

Why exactly is the Earth round?How is it that boomerangs can turn in mid-air?And why do cats always land on their feet?It's time to stop thinking in straight lines...'A wonderfully...

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE****A GUARDIAN SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR**'Riveting ... invites comparison to Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks'NatureThe epic and controversial story of a...

'Thrilling ... High-definition history: tight, thrilling and beautifully researched' SUNDAY TIMES 'This book is a triumph' DAN SNOW 9.07 a.m., April 12, 1961. A top-secret rocket site in the USSR....

The only book that tells the whole story of the internet from its origins in the 1940s to the advent of the worldwide web at the dawn of the 21st...

During the nineteenth century, the provision of medical care underwent a radical transformation. In 1800, the body was still understood in terms of humours and fluids, and treatment was provided...

During the nineteenth century medicine underwent a radical transformation. In 1800, the body was still understood in terms of humors and fluids, and a wide range of individuals provided medical...

'Fascinating, magisterially researched, and brilliantly written.' Steve Silberman, author of NeurotribesThirty-two days underground. No heat. No sunlight.4 June 1938. Nathaniel Kleitman and his research student make their way down the...

What does it really mean to be human? How do we actually differ from apes? All your questions answered in this definitive visual guide to being Human. From biology to...

The third edition of this highly acclaimed text provides a comprehensive overview of urological nursing written by an outstanding team of nurse specialists and educators. It has been extensively revised...

'A powerful manifesto for the strength of "we" thinking' MARCUS DU SAUTOY'A treasure of a book' ROWAN WILLIAMS'Timely and engaging' IAN RANKIN'Genius' BETTANY HUGHESIn the history of humanity, almost everything...

'A truly fascinating - if unnerving - read'The Telegraph'Acute, mind-opening, highly accessible - this book doesn't just explain how our lives might pan out, it helps us live better'Bettany Hughes'A...

In 1995 two Swiss astronomers discovered a planet circling a star other than our Sun. This changed our perception of the Universe forever, proving that Earth and the other celestial...

'From your brain to your fingertips, you emerge from her book entertained and with a deeper understanding of yourself' Richard Dawkins'A masterful account of why our bodies are the way...

'Salman Khan has long been on the cutting edge of education, and in Brave New Words, he shows us what's next. The book is a timely master class for anyone...

Discover the wonders of the Universe with this indispensable guide. The Night Sky is chock full of information explaining what, when and how to observe space and understanding the night...

Science is full of surprises: the peculiar peepshow beginnings of baby incubators; the unexpected positive fallout from the H-bomb; the dinosaurs that caused sonic booms; the irrational nature of the...

Spanning ten historic years, from the discovery of nuclear fission in 1939 to 'Joe-1', the first Soviet atomic bomb test in August 1949, Atomic is the first fully realised popular...

For decades, 98 per cent of our DNA was written off as 'junk' on the grounds that it did not code for proteins.From rare genetic diseases to Down's Syndrome, from...

The stone age, the iron age, the steam and electrical ages all saw the reach of humankind transformed by new technology. Now we are living in the quantum age, a...

This is the story of light and the people who were determined to unlock the secrets of one of the greatest puzzles of the Universe.Acclaimed science writer Brian Clegg recounts...

It's an astonishing fact that capturing all the energy in just one hour's worth of sunlight would enable us to meet the planet's food and energy needs for an entire...

The perfect companion to any flight - a guide to the science on view from your window seat. There are few times when science is so immediate as when you're...

In 2006, an eccentric Russian mathematician named Grigori Perelman solved one of the world's greatest intellectual puzzles. The Poincare conjecture is an extremely complex topological problem that had eluded the...

In The Glass Cage, Pulitzer Prize nominee and bestselling author Nicholas Carr shows how the most important decisions of our lives are now being made by machines and the radical...

There was a time when curiosity was condemned. To be curious was to delve into matters that didn't concern you - after all, the original sin stemmed from a desire...

From bestselling author and British astronaut Tim Peake, an inspirational human history of space travel, from the Apollo missions to our future forays to Mars. The Right Stuff for a...

'Bored and Brilliant is full of easy steps to make each day more effective' Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of HabitIt's time to move 'doing nothing' to the top...

These SIX NOT-SO-EASY PIECES are drawn from Feynman's celebrated introductory course of lectures on physics. They delve into the most revolutionary discovery of twentieth-century physics: Einstein's theory of relativity. 'In...

You don't have to be an eccentric obsessive to be a scientist, but it helps...In The Mad Science Book, Reto Schneider tells the extraordinary tales of 100 of the more...

A highly contentious, very readable and totally up-to-the-minute investigation of women's natural relationship with modern technology, an association which, Plant argues, will trigger a new sexual revolution. Zeros and Ones...

This is a comprehensive biography of the sun, written by leading BBC journalist David Whitehouse. Since man first became conscious he has sought to understand the nature of the sun;...

One of the world's greatest mathematicians explains his revolutionary hypothesis about the enigma at the heart of maths: omega. 'Chaitin comes across as a kind of mathematical Richard Feynman, intuitive...

The iPod is a harbinger of a revolution in product design: innovation that targets customer emotion, self-image, and fantasy, not just product function. Read the hidden stories behind BodyMedia's SenseWear...