Popular Science

"Smart, delightful . . . a splendidly entertaining education in ethics, activism, and science." -The New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice) An impassioned defense of intellectual freedom and a...

A thrilling journey through the recent discoveries in astronomy that point to our cosmic significanceIn The Copernicus Complex, the renowned astrophysicist and author Caleb Scharf takes us on a cosmic...

'LOEB IS AN ASTRONOMICAL SHERLOCK HOLMES' Washington Post'A JOY IN CONJECTURE AND AN OMNIVOROUS SPIRIT OF INQUIRY. . . CARL SAGAN WOULD HAVE LIKED THIS BOOK' The Times In 2017,...

From the bestselling author of Everything Bad is Good for You, Steven Johnson's The Invention of Air tells the incredible story of scientist and radical Joseph Priestley, who invented soda...

A revolutionary, science-based look at the ways nature can improve our lives that will do for the natural world what Tim Spector's Food for Life did for food.Fifteen years ago,...

Can we make a human being? The question has been asked for many centuries, and has produced recipes ranging from the clay golem of Jewish legend to the mass-produced test-tube...

If memories of learning algebra bring you out in a cold sweat and thoughts of quadratic equations cause you feelings of fear and dread, I Used to Know That: Maths...

A lively and highly readable account of the origins, invention and discovery of just about everything on the planet, the truly global coverage of The First of Everything ranges from...

'Face to Face is not just a brilliant introduction to one of the most exacting areas of modern medicine, it's a humbling glimpse of humans at their best.' Sunday TimesSo...

What would that universe be like if human beings were not here to observe it? Would there be still be numbers, or scientific laws? Would the universe even be vast,...

In Collapse, Jared Diamond investigates the fate of past human societies, and the lessons for our own future. What happened to the people who built the ruined temples of Angkor...

'A mind-altering and exhilarating read' Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk 'Of all the popular books on the search for life that are now being published, this one...

'A delight. Popular science doesn't come much better than this' IndependentEverything you might want to know about infinity - in history and all the way to today's cutting-edge science.Infinity is...

The aim of this book is to explain, carefully but not technically, the differences between advanced, research-level mathematics, and the sort of mathematics we learn at school. The most fundamental...

At a moment of great discovery, one Big Idea can change the world...Marie Curie had one of the finest scientific minds of the twentieth century, overturning established ideas in both...

In the bestselling Affluenza, leading psychologist Oliver James toured the minds of the middle classes in search of an answer to the question: Is it possible to be successful and...

The discovery of the Higgs boson made headlines around the world. Two scientists, Peter Higgs and Francois Englert, whose theories predicted its existence, shared a Nobel Prize. The discovery was...

Lab Girl is a book about work and about love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren's remarkable stories:...

A USA Today bestsellerThe dramatic, larger-than-life true story behind the founding of Oculus, its quest for virtual reality, and its founder's contentious battle for political freedom against Facebook, from the...

Weighing in from the cutting-edge frontiers of science, today's most forward-thinking minds explore the rise of "machines that think." Stephen Hawking recently made headlines by noting, "The development of full...

**Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2023**A NEW YORK TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, ECONOMIST, MAIL ON SUNDAY and GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEARFrom the dawn of life itself, every being that...

What makes a winner? Why do some succeed both in life and in business, and others fail? The 'winner effect' is a term used in biology to describe how an...

By power of thought alone, Albert Einstein gave us a fresh conception of the universe. He showed us that space and time are elastic - shrinking or expanding, speeding up...

The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research on such areas as public health, environmental science, and issues affecting quality of life. Our scientists have produced landmark...

Financial Times Book of the Year Telegraph Top 50 Books of the Year Guardian Book of the Year New Statesman Book of the Year 'Roundly debunks racism's core lie -...

April 13, 1970. Astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert are hurtling towards the moon in the Apollo 13 spacecraft, when an explosion rocks the ship. The cockpit grows...

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction and A New York Times Notable Book of 2018. Our understanding of the 'tree of life', with powerful implications for human genetics,...

Edited and introduced by Bill Bryson, with contributions from Richard Dawkins, Margaret Atwood, Richard Holmes, Martin Rees, Richard Fortey, Steve Jones, James Gleick and Neal Stephenson amongst others, this beautiful,...

August, 1755. Newcastle, on the north bank of the Tyne. In the fields, men and women are getting the harvest in. Sunlight, or rain. Scudding clouds and backbreaking labour. Three...

A virologist's insight into how viruses evolve and why global epidemics are inevitable In 1993 a previously healthy young man was drowning in the middle of a desert, in fluids...

An enchanting biography of the most resonant - and most necessary - chemical element on Earth. Carbon. It is the building block of every cell that makes up every living...

Will a computer ever compose a symphony, write a prize-winning novel, or paint a masterpiece? And if so, would we be able to tell the difference? As humans, we have...

The Infinite Monkey Cage, the legendary BBC Radio 4 programme, brings you this irreverent celebration of scientific marvels. Join us on a hectic leap through the grand and bizarre ideas...

The Infinite Monkey Cage, the legendary BBC Radio 4 programme, brings you this irreverent celebration of scientific marvels. Join us on a hectic leap through the grand and bizarre ideas...

The Infinite Monkey Cage, the legendary BBC Radio 4 programme, brings you this irreverent celebration of scientific marvels. Join us on a hectic leap through the grand and bizarre ideas...

We are on the cusp of a major revolution in psychiatric medicine and neuroscience. After fifty years of prohibition, criminalisation and fear, science is finally showing us that psychedelics are...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2018 Bestselling author Simon Winchester writes a magnificent history of the pioneering engineers who developed precision machinery to allow us to see...

Ever since Jurassic Park we thought we knew how dinosaurs lived their lives. In this remarkable new book, Brian J. Ford reveals that dinosaurs were, in fact, profoundly different from...

Shortlisted for the BSHS Hughes Prize What if Isaac Newton had never lived? Robert Hooke and Edmond Halley, whose place in history has been overshadowed by the giant figure of...

* Where do our thoughts come from? * How can we manipulate our dreams? * What is the role of the unconscious? * How do we make choices and trust...

Sunday Times Bestseller How did life on Earth begin? What is the nature of space and time? What are the chances that we will discover life on other worlds? Think...

After the huge national and international success of LONGITUDE and GALILEO'S DAUGHTER, Dava Sobel tells the human story of the nine planets of our solar system. This groundbreaking new work...

'No other person who has flown in space has captured the experience so vividly' - New York Times Book Review In July 1969, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins...

Everything you ever wanted to know about the human body - and some things you'd rather not...A wonderfully entertaining yet authoritative treasure trove of facts about our anatomy - it...