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The Idiot Brain
0140.00 DHFrom the hugely popular Guardian science blogger, a surprising, funny and mind-bending examination of how and why the brain sabotages our behaviour.
Motion sickness. Nightmares. Forgetting people’s names. Why did I walk into this room??
For something supposedly so brilliant and evolutionarily advanced, the human brain is pretty messy, fallible and disorganised. In The Idiot Brain neuroscientist Dean Burnett celebrates the imperfections of the human brain in all their glory, and the impact of these quirks on our daily lives. Expertly researched and entertainingly written, this book is for anyone who has wondered why their brain seems to be sabotaging their life, and what on earth it is really up to.
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Innovators : How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
0139.00 DHFollowing his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovatorsis Walter Isaacson’s story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and a guide to how innovation really works.
What talents allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their disruptive ideas into realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail?
In his exciting saga, Isaacson begins with Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter, who pioneered computer programming in the 1840s. He then explores the fascinating personalities that created our current digital revolution, such as Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, J.C.R. Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee and Larry Page.
This is the story of how their minds worked and what made them so creative. It’s also a narrative of how their ability to collaborate and master the art of teamwork made them even more creative.
For an era that seeks to foster innovation, creativity and teamwork, this book shows how they actually happen.
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The Science of the Ocean: The Secrets of the Seas Revealed
0340.00 DHDive into this uniquely elegant visual exploration of the sea with this stunning guide to ocean life.
An informative and utterly beautiful introduction to marine life and the ocean environment, The Science of the Ocean book brings the riches of the underwater world onto the printed page.
Astounding photography reveals an abundance of life, from microscopic plankton to great whales, seaweed to starfish. Published in association with the Natural History Museum, the book explores every corner of the oceans, from coral reefs and mangrove swamps to deep ocean trenches.
Dive deep into the pages of this striking guide to oceans to further discover:
– Supporting artworks show how ocean processes work (including tsunamis and undersea volcanoes), and how marine organisms function, providing a deeper layer of reference.
– Features the rich diversity of plant and animal life in and around the oceans and shows how organisms have adapted to different conditions.
– Explains the biology, oceanography, geology, and climatology of the oceans in easy language and graphic detail.
– Galleries showcase diversity in the marine world, showing how life finds different solutions to similar challenges.
– Features on how the ocean and marine life have been depicted in art.
– Optional 80-page section consisting of a catalogue of major groups of sea life.Along the way, and with the help of clear, simple illustrations, it explains how life has adapted to the marine environment, revealing for example how a stonefish delivers its lethal venom and how a sponge sustains itself by sifting food from passing currents. It also examines the physical forces and processes that shape the oceans, from global circulation systems and tides to undersea volcanoes and tsunamis.
To most of us, the marine world is out of reach. But with the help of photography and the latest technology, The Science of the Ocean brings us up close to animals, plants, and other living things that inhabit a fantastic and almost incomprehensibly beautiful other dimension.
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The Four : The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google
0129.00 DHFor all that’s been written about the Four over the last two decades, no one has captured their power and staggering success as insightfully as Scott Galloway.
Instead of buying the myths these compa nies broadcast, Galloway asks fundamental questions. How did the Four infiltrate our lives so completely that they’re almost impossible to avoid (or boycott)? Why does the stock market forgive them for sins that would destroy other firms? And as they race to become the world’s first trillion-dollar company, can anyone chal lenge them?
In the same irreverent style that has made him one of the world’s most celebrated business professors, Galloway deconstructs the strategies of the Four that lurk beneath their shiny veneers. He shows how they manipulate the fundamental emotional needs that have driven us since our ancestors lived in caves, at a speed and scope others can’t match. And he reveals how you can apply the lessons of their ascent to your own business or career.
Whether you want to compete with them, do business with them, or simply live in the world they dominate, you need to understand the Four.
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A Life on Our Planet : My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future
0190.00 DHSee the world. Then make it better.
I am David Attenborough. At time of writing, I am 93 years old. I’ve had an extraordinary life. It’s only now that I appreciate how extraordinary.
As a young man, I felt I was out there in the wild, experiencing the untouched natural world – but it was an illusion. The tragedy of our time has been happening all around us, barely noticeable from day to day – the loss of our planet’s wild places, its biodiversity.
I have been witness to this decline. A Life on Our Planet contains my witness statement, and my vision for the future – the story of how we came to make this, our greatest mistake, and how, if we act now, we can yet put it right.
We have the opportunity to create the perfect home for ourselves and restore the wonderful world we inherited.
All we need is the will do so.
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Life 3.0 : Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
0129.00 DH‘This is the most important conversation of our time, and Tegmark’s thought-provoking book will help you join it’ Stephen Hawking
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER. DAILY TELEGRAPH AND THE TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR
SELECTED AS ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2018AI is the future – but what will that future look like? Will superhuman intelligence be our slave, or become our god?
Taking us to the heart of the latest thinking about AI, Max Tegmark, the MIT professor whose work has helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial, separates myths from reality, utopias from dystopias, to explore the next phase of our existence.
How can we grow our prosperity through automation, without leaving people lacking income or purpose? How can we ensure that future AI systems do what we want without crashing, malfunctioning or getting hacked? Should we fear an arms race in lethal autonomous weapons? Will AI help life flourish as never before, or will machines eventually outsmart us at all tasks, and even, perhaps, replace us altogether?
‘This is a rich and visionary book and everyone should read it’ The Times
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Power Play : Elon Musk, Tesla, and the Bet of the Century
0199.00 DHInside the outrageous, come-from-behind story of Elon Musk and Tesla’s bid to build the world’s greatest car and the race to drive the future.
Elon Musk is among the most controversial titans of Silicon Valley. To some he’s a genius and a visionary and to others he’s a mercurial huckster. Billions of dollars have been gained and lost on his tweets and his personal exploits are the stuff of tabloids. But for all his outrageous talk of mind-uploading and space travel, his most audacious vision is the one closest to the ground: the electric car.
When Tesla was founded in the 2000s, electric cars were novelties, trotted out and thrown on the scrap heap by carmakers for more than a century. But where most onlookers saw only failure, a small band of Silicon Valley engineers and entrepreneurs saw potential and they pitted themselves against the biggest, fiercest business rivals in the world, setting out to make a car that was quicker, sexier, smoother, cleaner than the competition.
Tesla would undergo a truly hellish fifteen years, beset by rivals, pressured by investors, hobbled by whistleblowers, buoyed by its loyal supporters. Musk himself would often prove Tesla’s worst enemy–his antics repeatedly taking the company he had funded himself to the brink of collapse. Was he an underdog, an antihero, a conman, or some combination of the three?
Wall Street Journal tech and auto reporter Tim Higgins had a front-row seat for the drama: the pileups, wrestling for control, meltdowns, and the unlikeliest outcome of all, success. A story of power, recklessness, struggle, and triumph, Power Play is an exhilarating look at how a team of eccentrics and innovators beat the odds… and changed the future.
