Popular Science

In The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, Steven Pinker looks at how the relationship between words and thoughts can help us understand who we are....

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...

Randall Munroe is . . .'Nerd royalty' Ben Goldacre'Totally brilliant' Tim Harford'Laugh-out-loud funny' Bill Gates'Wonderful' Neil GaimanAN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERThe world's most entertaining and useless self-help guide,...

**A Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller**Out now: The bestselling book from the creator of the wildly popular science YouTube channel, Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell, a gorgeously illustrated...

Whether stargazing with the naked eye or observing deep space with the largest telescopes in the world, humans have a seemingly neverending fascination with the stars. Our ancestors saw patterns...

'A beautifully written meditation on mathematics: whimsical, thought-provoking and deep' ALEX BELLOS, author of Alex's Adventures in Numberland'Infinitely fascinating' THE TIMESOur universe has multiple origin stories, from religious creation myths...

Isaac Newton's influence on our world is immense. He formulated the theory of gravity, devised a radical new theory of light and created a calculus that would revolutionize mathematics. His...

The human brain is made up of 85 billion neurons, which are connected by over 100 trillion synapses. For more than a century, a diverse array of researchers searched for...

The epic, page-turning history of how a group of physicists toppled the Newtonian universe in the early decades of the twentieth century.Marie Curie, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin...

Shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book PrizeBias affects us all, every day of our lives. It shapes how we see each other, and how we are seen in turn....

Sometime in the future the intelligence of machines will exceed that of human brain power. So are we on the edge of an AI-pocalypse, with superintelligent devices superseding humanity, as...

Where did we come from? Where are we going?Homo sapiens is the most successful, the most widespread and the most influential species ever to walk the Earth. In the blink...

The ancient Greeks called it Gaia; the Romans Terra. We know it simply as Earth, the planet we call home. And what a planet it is.Formed around 4.6 billion years...

How did we get here? All cultures have a creation story, but a little over 150 years ago Charles Darwin introduced a revolutionary new one. We, and all living things,...

What is this strange mental world that seems so essential to being human? The conscious mind brings together sensations, perceptions, thoughts and memories to generate the seamless movie of a...

CAN YOU BOOST YOUR IQ? WHAT IF YOU COULDN'T FORGET ANYTHING? WHAT HAPPENS IN YOUR BRAIN WHEN YOU GET AN IDEA? COULD YOU BE A PSYCHOPATH? . . . NEW...

We all want to be healthier, stronger and live longer, but what really works? From stress to saturated fats, HIIT to HRT, veganism to vitamins, This Book Could Save Your...

Moons come, quite literally, in all shapes and sizes. Our Moon is just one of more than 200 moons in the Solar System that we've identified so far. Scientists have...

People have been inspired by the colourful shifting lights of the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis for thousands of years, with modern-day adventurers travelling to 'aurora hotspots' in the hope...

From a planet with a hexagonal storm to the home of the Solar System's largest volcano, our neighbouring bodies are unique and fascinating places. Where else would you find somewhere...

Ever wondered how it all began? How it will all end? And while we're waiting, what's been going on in the meantime? From the Big Bang to the Big Crunch,...

Space is far bigger than humanity can conceive. Although our ancestors visually examined the skies to make sense of the Universe, space exploration in its truest sense is just a...

An enthralling exploration of the star on our doorstep, charting the journey from ancient superstition to the deep scientific mysteries yet to be resolved. The Sun examines how we've come...

Black holes. What even are they? In brief, a black hole is a region of spacetime so curved by gravity that even light cannot escape it. They're peculiar objects -...

To some, science is simply a means to an end; to others it is an almost spiritual meditation on theoriesand formulae.The Curious World of Science embraces both views and much...

Essential Science aims to be the most detailed, accessible and authoritative book of its kind. Each of the 34 discoveries is broken down into seven essential elements to aid comprehension...

In The Keys to Kindness Claudia Hammond takes us on an eye-opening tour of kindness: what constitutes kindness (it's not what you think), effective strategies to build more of it...

What We See in the Stars Kelsey Oseid is a richly illustrated guide to the myths, histories, and science of the celestial bodies of our solar system, with stories and...

'Powerful... a clarion call for change', New Statesman'Poetic and philosophical at times, intimate and expansive at others', Daily TelegraphHow much light is too much light? The Darkness Manifesto urges us...

Quadratic equations, Pythagoras' theorem, imaginary numbers, and pi - you may remember studying these at school, but did anyone ever explain why? Never fear - bestselling science writer, and your...

A bold, provocative exploration of the tension between our evolutionary history and our modern woes - and what we can do about itWe are living through the most prosperous age...

'If you feel you are in a black hole, don't give up. There's a way out'What is inside a black hole?Is time travel possible?Throughout his extraordinary career, Stephen Hawking expanded...

'Brilliant. You won't find a clearer, more engaging guide to what we know (or would like to know) about the universe and how it is put together' Bill BrysonCelebrated physicist...

BBC R4 Book of the Week 'Brilliant' Guardian 'Fascinating and often delightful' The Times What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest...

'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...

The Song of the Cell is the vivid, thrilling and suspenseful story of the fundamental unit of life. It describes how scientists discovered cells, began to understand them, and are...

*A New York Times bestseller*'Using her expertise as a neuroscientist and her gifts as a storyteller, Lisa Genova explains the nuances of human memory' - Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of...

Bringing his cosmic perspective to civilization on Earth, Neil deGrasse Tyson, bestselling author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, shines new light on the crucial fault lines of our...

The tenth anniversary edition of the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest: the search for the solution of how to calculate longitude and the unlikely triumph of an...

Time travel is a familiar theme of science fiction, but is it really possible?Surprisingly, time travel is not forbidden by the laws of physics - and John Gribbin argues that...

'A beautifully written meditation on mathematics: whimsical, thought-provoking and deep' ALEX BELLOS, author of Alex's Adventures in NumberlandOur universe has multiple origin stories, from religious creation myths to the Big...

Having escaped domestic servitude in Germany by teaching herself to sing, and established a career in England, Caroline Herschel learned astronomy while helping her brother William, then Astronomer Royal.Soon making...