The Anti-Catastrophe League
£22.00A superbly written work of narrative non-fiction by an exciting new talent, The Anti-Catastrophe League is a brilliant study of the people and their teams who are trying to save the world.
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Going Nuclear
£25.00What if climate change isn’t an environmental challenge, but an energy challenge? In this visionary book, Dr Tim Gregory urges us to rethink the path to net zero. He argues that the solution to climate change lies not simply in replacing fossil fuels with renewables, but in fully embracing another energy source that emits zero carbon dioxide: nuclear power. Gregory dismantles the conventional wisdom that renewables are completely ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’, and exposes the limitations of wind and solar power, highlighting their unreliability and hidden fossil fuel dependency. He debunks myths surrounding nuclear waste and radiation, demonstrating that nuclear power is not only efficient, safe, and potent, but the most environmentally responsible way to harvest energy.
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Destroyer of Worlds
£25.00Henry Becquerel’s accidental discovery, in Paris in 1896, of a faint smudge on a photographic plate sparked a chain of discoveries which would unleash the atomic age. ‘Destroyer of Worlds’ is the story of how pursuit of this hidden source of nuclear power, which began innocently and collaboratively, was overwhelmed by the politics of the 1930s, and following devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki opened the way to a still more terrible possibility: a thermonuclear bomb, the so-called ‘backyard weapon’, that could destroy all life on earth – from anywhere.
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Empire of AI
£25.00When longtime AI expert and journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, it was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely market forces. But the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that it requires an unprecedented amount of proprietary resources: the ‘compute’ power of scarce high-end chips, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans on the ground ‘cleaning it up’ for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the need for energy and water underlying everything. In this book, Hao recounts the meteoric rise of OpenAI and shows us the sinister impact that this industry is having on society.
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The truth detective
£10.99How to navigate a world of deception and find the truth using the rules of poker.
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A Little History of Science
£10.99Emphasising surprising and personal stories of scientists both famous and unsung, ‘A Little History of Science’ traces the march of science through the centuries.
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Adaptable
£25.00Real diversity isn’t skin deep. Over the past 100,000 years, as humans expanded into every biome on the planet, our bodies and our cultures have been fine-tuned to our local environments. Our ability to adapt is at the heart of being human and the engine of our diversity. As an evolutionary anthropologist working with human populations around the globe, Herman Pontzer has conducted research that reveals the wonder of our biological diversity, documenting the connections between lifestyle, landscape, local adaptations and health. In this book, he takes us on a tour of the human body and the surprising ways in which it survives in an uncertain world – from the Andean groups who have developed increased lung capacity to the Sama divers who have larger spleens.
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The ideological brain
£22.00The human brain faces a set of dilemmas every day: how to achieve coherence from fragmented sensory inputs and how to attain connection with other people in an increasingly atomized and isolating world. Ideologies offer a shortcut, providing easy answers, scripts to follow, and a sense of shared identity. Whether our ideologies are far-right, far-left, nationalist, religious, or even progressive, they simplify our understanding and give us organizing frameworks through which to act and interact with others. But ideologies come at a cost: demanding conformity and suppressing individuality through rigid rules, repetitive rituals, and intolerance. Once ideologies grip our minds, they fundamentally transform us, making us less sensitive and adaptable. Drawing on her groundbreaking research, Dr Leor Zmigrod uncovers the hidden mechanisms driving our beliefs and behaviours.
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Mother animal
£16.99Offers a startling new vision of motherhood: wild, intimate, diverse; as contested and extraordinary as the world in which we live and the animals with which we share it.
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Your life is manufactured
£20.00We live in a manufactured world. Unless you are floating naked through space, you are right now in direct contact with multiple manufactured products. There exists a nearly invisible global system of manufacturing that enables virtually every aspect of our existence. The things we surround ourselves with – from everyday items like toilet roll and the clothing we wear to smartphones, bicycles and everything in between – take surprising and often mind-boggling journeys to reach us. Traversing mega-factory floors, engineering laboratories and seaports to distribution hubs, supermarkets and our own homes, Tim Minshall traces these journeys to reveal the hidden world of manufacturing.
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Open when…
£20.00Within this book are a series of Open When style letters from Dr Julie to help navigate the moments of overwhelm, confusion or self-doubt that we all face when life gets messy. Offering calm, clarity and a laser focus on the best way forward, each personal letter is followed by real-time tools that will help you re-frame the situation and decide on your next move. Every chapter covers a new scenario; universal problems that each of us will likely face at some point. So, whether you are experiencing stress, pressure to perform, dealing with difficult people, trying to fit in, making big decisions, arguments with your partner, or big emotions are that causing anxiety, ‘Open When…’ brings the words you need to hear to get back on the front foot, feeling ready to take on everything life throws your way.
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What if?
£25.00Fans of Randall Munroe ask him a lot of strange questions: How fast can you hit a speed bump, driving, and live? When (if ever) did the sun go down on the British Empire? When will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than living? How many humans would a T-Rex rampaging through New York need to eat a day? In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified military research memos, solves differential equations and consults nuclear reactor operators. His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, complemented by comics. In celebration of 10 years of unusual insight, Randall Munroe has revised his classic blockbuster to ask what if? x 10. Featuring brand-new 2-colour annotations and illustrations, this special anniversary edition will leave you feeling much smarter, whether you have a Nobel Prize or not.