Biography: science, technology & medicine

  • Gambling Man

    £12.99

    Japan’s Masayoshi Son has made and lost several fortunes, investing or controlling assets worth $1trn in the past two decades through his media-tech giant, SoftBank. He bankrolled Alibaba, China’s internet colossus, before the world had heard about it; plotted with Steve Jobs to turn the iPhone into a wonder product; and financed hundreds of tech start-ups, fuelling the biggest boom Silicon Valley has ever seen. This book takes you on Masa’s wild ride, from his birthplace in a Korean slum in post-war Japan to the modern-day temples of power.

  • The Big Hop

    £22.00

    Newfoundland, 1919. Buffeted by winds, an unwieldy aircraft – made mainly from wood and stiff linen – struggled to take off from the North American island’s rocky slopes. Cramped side by side in its open cockpit were two men, freezing cold and barely able to move but resolute. They had a dream: to be the first in human history to fly, non-stop, across the Atlantic Ocean. But there were three other teams competing against them, and as the waves raged a few miles below, memories of wartime crashes resurfaced. Mining letters, diaries and evocative unpublished photographs, David Rooney’s deeply researched account of the audacious contest shows how it was the airmen’s thrilling wartime experiences that ultimately led them to the ‘Big Hop’, and brought old friends together for one more daring adventure.

  • Everything is predictable

    £10.99

    Thomas Bayes was an eighteenth-century Presbyterian minister and amateur mathematician whose obscure life belied the profound impact of his work. Like most research into probability at the time, his theorem was mainly seen as relevant to games of chance, like dice and cards. But its implications soon became clear, affecting fields as diverse as medicine, law and artificial intelligence. Bayes’ theorem helps explain why highly accurate screening tests can lead to false positives, causing unnecessary anxiety for patients. A failure to account for it in court has put innocent people in jail. But its influence goes far beyond practical applications. Fusing biography, razor-sharp science communication and intellectual history, ‘Everything Is Predictable’ is a captivating tour of Bayes’ theorem and its impact on modern life.

  • The thinking machine

    £25.00

    This is a riveting investigative account of Nvidia, the tech company that has exploded in value for its artificial intelligence computing hardware, and Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s charismatic, uncompromising CEO.

  • Anaximander and the nature of science

    £10.99

    Carlo Rovelli restores Anaximander to his place in the history of science by carefully reconstructing his theories from what is known to us and examining them in their historical and philosophical contexts.

  • Elements of Marie Curie

    £22.00

    Dava Sobel, acclaimed and bestselling author of Longitude, chronicles the life and work of the most famous woman in the history of science and the untold story of the young women who trained in her laboratory.

    ‘A luminous and illuminating contribution to the cause’ Literary Review

  • Gambling man

    £30.00

    Japan’s Masayoshi Son has made and lost several fortunes, investing or controlling assets worth $1trn in the past two decades through his media-tech giant, SoftBank. He bankrolled Alibaba, China’s internet colossus, before the world had heard about it; plotted with Steve Jobs to turn the iPhone into a wonder product; and financed hundreds of tech start-ups, fuelling the biggest boom Silicon Valley has ever seen. This book takes you on Masa’s wild ride, from his birthplace in a Korean slum in post-war Japan to the modern-day temples of power.

  • Breaking Twitter

    £10.99

    A rollicking, character-driven narrative by bestselling author Ben Mezrich, Breaking Twitter pulls back the curtain on the biggest business story of our time.

  • The exceptions

    £12.99

    The story of how a group of determined, brilliant women used the power of the collective and the tools of science to inspire ongoing radical change.  It shows that real power is collective power and that speaking up and allying yourself with likeminded others is one of the key pathways to change.  This is a triumphant story – real progress has been made – and yet the problems persist. Kate Zernike tells us why.
     

  • Exploring the world

    £11.99

    Explorers and travellers have always been attracted by the lure of the unknown. By traversing and mapping our planet, they have played a vital role in mankind’s development. For almost two hundred years, the Royal Geographical Society has recognised their achievements by awarding its prestigious gold medals to those who have contributed most to our knowledge of the world. Taking us on a journey across mountains and deserts, oceans and seas, this book tells the stories of more than eighty of these extraordinary men and women. Some, such as David Livingstone, Scott of the Antarctic and Jacques-Yves Cousteau, are well known; whilst others, such as William Chandless and Ney Elias, are today less familiar. Some dreamed of being the first to sight a lake or a river; others sighted some of the world’s greatest natural features by chance.

  • Last Word’s Uncommon Women

    £18.99

    Last Word is the popular BBC Radio 4 series broadcast weekly, featuring the lives of several famous people who have recently died. More than standard obituaries, the lives are summarised with narration and include interviews with some of those who knew them. This compelling anthology brings together accounts of the remarkable lives of a selection of women who were particularly illuminating, inspiring or moving.

  • Elon Musk

    £28.00

    The astonishingly intimate story of Elon Musk, the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era – a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter. When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist. His father’s impact on his psyche would linger.

Nomad Books