Sciences

An astonishing new scientific discovery called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the adult human brain is fixed and unchanging. It is, instead, able to change its own structure and function, even into old age. Psychiatrist and researcher Norman Doidge travelled around the US to meet the brilliant s... read more

This book accompanies the landmark television series Kingdom of Plants 3D: With David Attenborough. In the last 500 million years, plants have undertaken an epic journey that has not only spanned the ages but has altered the very make-up of the planet. It was a journey that began in a dark and barren world, and has culminated... read more

Ben Goldacre's wise and witty bestseller, shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, lifts the lid on quack doctors, flaky statistics, scaremongering journalists and evil pharmaceutical corporations. Since 2003 Dr Ben Goldacre has been exposing dodgy medical data in his popular Guardian column. In this eye-opening book he take... read more

Barbara Arrowsmith-Young was born with severe learning disabilities that caused teachers to label her slow, stubborn - or worse. As a child, she read and wrote everything backward, struggled to process concepts in language, continually got lost, and was physically uncoordinated. She could make no sense of an analogue clock. B... read more

Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran is internationally renowned for uncovering answers to the deep and quirky questions of human nature that few scientists have dared to address.
His bold insights about the brain are matched only by the stunning simplicity of his experiments -- using such low-tech tools as cotton swabs... read more

Become the master of your world Presents 20 key concepts, or keys, to aid critical thinking Authored by one of the world's most eminent psychologists - and founder of the Flynn Effect Looks at topics such as Race and IQ, "good" science and the current world economic crisis Written in a clear and lucid style, illustrated with many examples

Science is about discovery, a journey towards knowledge. With authors as diverse as Galileo and Lewis Carroll, the extracts featured in this anthology span centuries and continents; they include startling revelations that changed the way we think and tackle more prosaic questions such as why the sea is salty; they consider th... read more

Internationally renowned theoretical physicist and bestselling author Lawrence Krauss offers provocative, revelatory answers to the biggest philosophical questions: Where did our universe come from? Why does anything exist? And how is it all going to end? 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' is the question atheists ... read more

While Washington, London and Canberra fiddle, the planet burns. It has become painfully clear that the big democracies won't take the hard decisions to halt climate change. Climate scientists now expect the worst, and they're considering a response which sounds like science fiction: climate engineering. This means large-scale... read more

What is it that separates Sherlock Holmes from his long-suffering friend and side-kick Dr John Watson? What makes Holmes such a superior detective, able to piece together clues and solve problems that seem elementary to Watson only in hindsight? And can we - most of us Watsons ourselves - ever harness a bit of Holmes' extraor... read more

What is it like to be a swift, flying at over one hundred kilometres an hour? Or a kiwi, plodding flightlessly among the humid undergrowth in the pitch dark of a New Zealand night? And what is going on inside the head of a nightingale as it sings, and how does its brain improvise? Bird Sense addresses questions like these and... read more

The universe is a mind-boggling place, full of things seemingly too big and too small to understand. How can we visualise the minuscule world of the atom and the vastness of our galaxy? How can we grasp a billionth of a second and a billion years? Or the freezing point of Helium and the heat generated by the blast of an atomi... read more

What came before the big bang? How do cells talk to each other? Why do cats purr?
Explore the wonders of science through the eyes of artists. A science book like no other, The Where, the Why and the How turns loose 75 of today's hottest artists onto life's vast questions. From how we got here to where we are going, myst... read more

Taking a uniquely cheeky approach, acclaimed writer Lone Frank swabs up her DNA to provide this first, intensely intimate account of the new science of personal genomics. She tests the limits of genetic fortune-telling, from opting for pre-emptive breast cancer surgery to picking a child's schooling based on promising DNA 'sn... read more

"The Comet Sweeper" is the incredible story of Britain's first female professional scientist, Caroline Herschel - a true Enlightenment celebrity whose rediscovery is long overdue. Such was Herschel's reputation that a congratulatory letter in 1790 from the director of the Paris Observatory was simply addressed to 'Mlle Caroli... read more

Esther Woolfson has been fascinated by corvids, the bird group that includes crows, rooks, magpies and ravens, since her daughter rescued a fledgling rook sixteen years ago. That rook - named Chicken - has lived with the family ever since. Other birds have also taken their place in the household - a magpie, starling, parrot a... read more

'Six degrees of separation' is a cliche, as is 'it's a small world', both cliches of the language and cliches of everyone's experience. We all live in tightly bonded social networks, yet linked to vast numbers of other people more closely than we sometimes think. Only in recent years, however, have scientists begun to apply i... read more

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Daniel Kahneman, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his seminal work in psychology challenging the rational model of judgment and decision making, is one of the world's most important thinkers. His ideas have had a profound impact on many fields - including business, medicine, and politics - but until now, ... read more

Sequel to the international bestseller "Freakonomics", Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's "Superfreakonomics" is an irresistible look at the counterintuitive science of everyday life. The Freakquel is here. In "Superfreakonomics" Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner look deeper, question harder and uncover even more hidden truths... read more