Freakonomics Goliath’s Curse
£25.00A new history of humanity told through the lens of collapse, from Neanderthals to AI, and what it means for our uncertain future.
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See inside the future
£10.99Futurologist Tom Cheesewright takes readers on a tour of our world, decades into the future. Eight scenes show you what wonders await in our cities, our landscapes, inside our own bodies and of course in the expanse of outer space. Lift the flaps to find out what new things we’ll be able to do, how new technology will work, and what changes we can expect about the way we live.
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A city on Mars
£10.99Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away – no climate change, no war, no Twitter – beckons, and settling the stars finally seems within our grasp. Or is it? Authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith set out to write the essential guide to a glorious future of space settlements, but after years of original research, and interviews with leading space scientists, engineers and legal experts, they aren’t so sure it’s a good idea. Space tech and space business are progressing fast, but we lack the deep knowledge needed to have space-kids, build space-farms and create space nations in a way that doesn’t spark conflict back home. In a world hurtling toward human expansion into space, ‘A City on Mars’ investigates whether the dream of new worlds won’t create a nightmare, both for settlers and the people they leave behind.
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The coming wave
£10.99We are about to cross a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon we will live surrounded by AIs. They will carry out complex tasks – operating businesses, producing unlimited digital content, running core government services and maintaining infrastructure. This will be a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. It represents nothing less than a step change in human capability. We are not prepared. As cofounder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the centre of this revolution, one poised to become the single greatest accelerant of progress in history. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies.
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On freedom
£25.00Timothy Snyder has been called ‘the leading interpreter of our dark times’. As a historian, he has given us startling reinterpretations of political collapse and mass killing. As a public intellectual, he has turned that knowledge toward counsel and prediction, working against authoritarians. His book ‘On Tyranny’ has inspired millions around the world to fight for freedom. Freedom is the great American commitment, but as Snyder argues, we have lost sight of what it means – and this is leading us into crisis. Too many of us look at freedom as the absence of state power: We think we’re free if we can do and say as we please, and protect ourselves from government overreach. But true freedom isn’t so much freedom from, as freedom to – the freedom to thrive, to take risks for futures we choose by working together. Freedom is the value that makes all other values possible.
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The new world on Mars
£10.99Within a few years, humans will be able to voyage to Mars. SpaceX is at the forefront of companies already building fleets of spaceships to make interplanetary travel as affordable as Old-World passage to America – to the then New World. We will settle the red planet, transforming its raw materials into resources and tackling the challenges that await us, creating a new frontier for humankind. Dr Robert Zubrin explains how populous Martian city-states will emerge, producing their own air, water, food, power and more.
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The singularity is near
£18.99A radical and optimistic view of the future course of human development from the bestselling author of How to Create a Mind and who Bill Gates calls ‘the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence.’
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Great Britain?
£20.00Things have not been going Great for Britain. Wages are flatlining, taxes are rising, and public services are collapsing. Our children can’t afford to buy a house and our neighbours are reliant on foodbanks. We are all yearning for a way out of the financial crises, generational wars and political dysfunction that dominate our lives. Most of all we want our – and Britain’s – future back. Torsten Bell offers both a clear-eyed diagnosis of the problems facing the country – a uniquely toxic combination of huge inequality and stagnant economic growth – and a hopeful, bold vision for the alternative. As he shows, the Britain of today contains the raw materials to build a better Britain tomorrow – an investment nation of good work and secure homes, and a society in which both burdens and prosperity are shared.
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The machine age
£25.00A sweeping history of and meditation on humanity’s relationship with machines, showing how we got here and what happens next.
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What we owe the future
£10.99Should our priorities change when we consider all the lives yet to come?
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