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Peter Scott-Morgan

Peter, a brilliant scientist, is told that he will lose everything he loves. 
 
His husband. His family. His friends. His ability to travel the world. All will be gone. 
 
But Peter will not give up. He vows that this will not be the end and instead seeks a completely new beginning . . . 
 
Peter has Motor Neurone Disease, a condition universally considered by doctors to be terminal. It will destroy his nerve cells and he is told that within an average of two years, it will take his life too. 
 
But, face-to-face with death, he decides there is another way. Using his background in science and technology, he navigates a new path, one that will enable him not just to survive, but to thrive. 
 
This is the astonishing true story behind the primetime Channel 4 documentary, about Dr. Peter Scott-Morgan who will become the first person to combine his very humanity with artificial intelligence and robotics to become a full Cyborg. His discovery means that his terminal diagnosis is negotiable, something that will rewrite the future. And change the world. 
 
By embracing love, life and hope rather than fear, tragedy and despair he will become Peter 2.0.

Peter 2.0

The Human Cyborg

Dr Neil Roberts

Peter Redgrove

The work of the poet Peter Redgrove is one of the great unexplored treasures of late twentieth century literature. His prolific output presents an intriguing variety of personae: magician, scientist, lover, psychologist, joker, madman. It is only now, with the publication of his Collected Poems and this biography, that we can see how and why these personae developed - and discover the full depth and range of this visionary writer. 
 
Born into an apparently conventional middle-class family that was in reality deeply disturbed, the poet finally emerged: transforming himself from the neurotic, Oedipal young scientist, through a process of mental breakdown, insulin coma therapy, erotic revelation and the discovery of poetic companionship at Cambridge - and particularly his friendship and rivalry with Ted Hughes. 
 
Neil Roberts explores the inner story of this emergence, and Redgrove's later development through marriage, family life, the fellowship of the 'Group', alcoholic excess, infidelity and marital breakdown to his triumphant later partnership with Penelope Shuttle. We also discover, for the first time, some darker secrets: his fascination with Aleister Crowley, his damaged and damaging relationship with his father, and the lifelong sexual fetish which he called the 'Game'. Drawing on the poet's intimate journals and correspondence, and interviews with family, friends and colleagues, A Lucid Dreamer tells the exceptionally inward and revealing story of an astonishing creative life.

A Lucid Dreamer

The Life of Peter Redgrove

Julian Guthrie

Afterword by Professor Stephen Hawking 
 
"Reads like a thriller - and reveals many secrets... one of the great entrepreneurial stories of our time" (Washington Post) 
 
From the age of eight, when he watched Apollo 11 land on the Moon, Peter Diamandis's singular goal was to get to space. When he realized NASA was winding down manned space flight, he set out on one of the great entrepreneurial adventure stories of our time. If the government wouldn't send him to space, he would create a private space flight industry himself. 
 
 In the 1990s, this idea was the stuff of science fiction. Undaunted, Diamandis found inspiration in the golden age of aviation. He discovered that Charles Lindbergh made his transatlantic flight to win a $25,000 prize. The flight made Lindbergh the most famous man on earth and galvanized the airline industry. Why, Diamandis thought, couldn't the same be done for space flight? 
 
 The story of the bullet-shaped SpaceShipOne, and the other teams in the hunt for a $10 million prize is an extraordinary tale of making the impossible possible. In the end, as Diamandis dreamed, the result wasn't just a victory for one team; it was the foundation for a new industry.

How to Make a Spaceship

A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race and the Birth of Private Space Flight

Ashlee Vance

Elon Musk is an inspirational role model for young entrepreneurs, breaking boundaries and revolutionising the tech-world. He is also the real-life inspiration for the Iron Man series of films, starring Robert Downey Junior. From his humble beginnings in apartheid South Africa, he showed himself to be an exceptionally bright child, and overcame brutal bullying to become the world’s most exciting entrepreneur, founding PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla and Solar City. 
 
He has emerged as something of a superhero-like figure for today’s generation of children. He’s not only seen as an entrepreneur in the spirit of a Steve Jobs but as an inventor and bold thinker. He’s the guy offering children the possibility of a brighter, more exciting future and has come to symbolize innovation and optimism.

Elon Musk Young Readers’ Edition

Adam Phillips

D.W. Winnicott's remarkable books, including The Piggle, Home Is Where We Start From and The Child, Family and the Outside World (all published by Penguin) are still read, valued and argued with over thirty years after his death. Adam Phillips's short book, now issued with a new preface, is an elegant, thoughtful attempt to get to grips with a writer, paediatrician and psychiatrist whose work with children and mothers (and the wider implications their relationship has for all of us) continues to be profoundly relevant and fascinating.

Winnicott

Frank Close

In the summer of 1964, a reclusive young professor at the University of Edinburgh wrote two scientific papers which have come to change our understanding of the most fundamental building blocks of matter and the nature of the universe. Peter Higgs posited the existence an almost infinitely tiny particle - today known as the Higgs boson - which is the key to understanding why particles have mass, and but for which atoms and molecules could not exist. 
 
For nearly 50 years afterwards, some of the largest projects in experimental physics sought to demonstrate the physical existence of this boson. Sensationally, confirmation came in July 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. The following year Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. 
 
This revelatory book is 'not so much a biography of the man but of the boson named after him'. It brilliantly traces the course of much of twentieth-century physics from the inception of quantum field theory to the completion of the 'standard model' of particles and forces, and the pivotal role of Higgs's idea in this evolution. Drawing on conversations with Higgs over a decade (a figure generally as elusive as his particle) this is a superb study of a scientist and his era - and of how scientific knowledge advances.

Elusive

How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass

John Lewis-Stempel

Set in Glasgow in the 1930s, Young James Herriot is the fascinating story of Herriot’s formative years at veterinary college, recounting the tales behind his calling to work with animals and his early friendships. With no modern drugs, and a lot of trial-and-error, James sets about learning how to treat the local farm animals and the pets of city folk. 
 
Accompanied by a cast of eccentric professors and an ensemble of aspiring veterinarians, this book reveals a world now lost to us, showing how life in pre-war Britain changed an enthusiastic young student named Alf Wight into the man who would charm millions of readers the world over.

Young James Herriot

The Making of the World’s Most Famous Vet

David Bellamy

David Bellamy is a natural story teller whose memoir is packed full of funny anecdotes and observations. He depicts wonderfully a childhood of discovery and adventure growing up in Carshalton during the second world war.  Despite rationing and evacuation, these were happy days of tremendous freedom spent roaming the wonderland of the surrounding countryside searching for bugs, beetles and bits of old shrapnel which young Bellamy and his brother would smuggle home to  their father's shed for their firework-making sessions. His growing love of nature is interwoven with loving, often hilarious, portraits of the various characters he meets along the way.   From his days as a student in fifties London to his trial by fire lectureship at Durham University with a young wife and ever-growing family to support, Bellamy reveals his many great loves from sports cars to ballet.  He also writes of his more serious concerns, with his reputation for being outspoken and undeterred in the face of big enterprises and corporations revealed in his battles and campaigns.

A Natural Life

David Bellamy is a natural story teller whose memoir will be packed full of funny anecdotes and observations. It is the story of how a city boy, brought up in the middle of London, went for a trip into the countryside one day, an event which was to transform his life by setting in motion the amazing love of nature which would make famous this larger-than-life character. In his infectious style he illumines on, amongst other things, the fact that his father, the manager of a branch of Boots, had to grease his hair straight - because in those days managers of Boots weren't allowed to have curly hair! Then there was the time he and his brother discovered an exploded bomb, kept in the garden shed - and then accidentally blew off the front of the house with it. He reveals his secret passion is  ballet dancing - and how his mother only found out about it when she saw him on stage at the Fairfield Hall in Croydon.  His career as an academic, then author, broadcaster, consultant and television personality, spans 35 years and his main passion - campaigning for the environment - have led to many adventures including his being twice imprisoned in the Third World.

Jolly Green Giant

Robert M Sapolsky

Discover this remarkable account of twenty-one years in remote Kenya with a troop of Savannah baboons from the New York Times bestselling author of Behave. 
 
'One of the best scientist-writers of our time' Oliver Sacks 
 
Brooklyn-born Robert Sapolsky grew up wishing he could live in the primate diorama in the Museum of Natural History. At school he wrote fan letters to primatologists and even taught himself Swahili, all with the hope of one day joining his primate brethren in Africa. But when, at the age of twenty-one, Sapolky's dream finally comes true he discovers that the African bush bears little resemblance to the tranquillity of a museum. 
 
This is the story of the next twenty-one years as Sapolsky slowly infiltrates and befriends a troop of Savannah baboons. Alone in the middle of the Serengeti with no electricity, running water or telephone, and surviving countless scams, culinary atrocities and a surreal kidnapping, Sapolsky becomes ever more enamoured with his adopted baboon troop - unique and compelling characters in their own right - and he returns to them summer after summer, until tragedy finally prevails. 
 
 'A Primate's Memoir is the closest the baboon is likely to come - and it's plenty close enough - to having its own Iliad' New York Times Review of Books 
 
Exhilarating, hilarious and poignant, A Primate's Memoir is a uniquely honest window into the coming-of-age of one of our greatest scientific minds.

A Primate's Memoir

Love, Death and Baboons

Peter Ackroyd

Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the English genius, made his greatest contributions to original thought before the age of twenty-five, while at home in Lincolnshire escaping the great plague of 1665, a period of which he wrote: 'I was in the prime of age for invention.' 
 
Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, an MP, Master of the Mind and President of the Royal Society, Newton, the author of Principia, one of the most important books in the history of science, was fascinated by calculus, the planets and the 'laws of motion', and, in keeping with his age, blurred the borders between natural philosophy and speculation: he was as passionate about astrology as astronomy and dabbled in alchemy, while his religious faith was never undermined by his scientific reasoning. 
 
Peter Ackroyd brings this somewhat puritanical man to life and demonstrates the unique brilliance of his perceptions, which changed our world forever.

Brief Lives 3 - Newton

Richard Browning

**As seen on Top Gear** 
 
'Richard Browning is a real-life Tony Stark.' - Wired 
 
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For fans of Adrian Newey, Guy Martin and Chris Hadfield, in Taking on Gravity inventor Richard Browning tells the inspiring story behind his iconic jet suit, and shares his creative principles for generating true innovation. 
 
From Icarus to Iron Man, the dream of human flight has always inspired and challenged us. Now, with his pioneering jet suit, Richard Browning has redefined what is possible. 
 
Richard Browning's story is one of groundbreaking innovation. Building an aviation business from his garage, he has invented a whole new form of personal flight - a fantasy previously reserved for the pages of science fiction. His iconic jet suit has captured the imaginations of millions around the world, triggered ongoing developments in technology and engineering, and inspired a new generation of creative minds to pursue their dreams. 
 
In Taking on Gravity, Browning reveals the creative principles of his multimillion-pound company, Gravity Industries, and shows us how grass-roots innovation can disrupt established industries in exciting and unexpected ways. On this journey into the sky we'll experience what it's like to take flight, to test the limits of the human body, and to convert moonshot ideas into tangible results. 
 
The Gravity story is an inspiring example of human creativity and our ceaseless desire to push the boundaries of what is possible. Where we go next is up to you. 
 
READERS LOVE THE 'TAKING ON GRAVITY' STORY 
 
***** 'Tony Stark Lite' 
***** 'Must read for anyone looking for inspiration to continue pursuing their dream' 
***** 'Taking on Gravity by Richard Browning is equal parts inspiring, inquisitive, soulful and ultimately a fantastic read that I will return to again.'

Taking on Gravity

A Guide to Inventing the Impossible from the Man Who Learned to Fly

Tim Peake

The inspirational autobiography of Britain’s beloved astronaut Tim Peake, the #1 bestselling author of Hello, is this Planet Earth? and Ask an Astronaut 
 
As heard on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs 
__________________ 
'What surprised me was how entirely serene I felt. I was weightless, no forces exerting themselves on my body. To my left was the Space Station. Below me, gradually going into shadow, was the Earth. And over my right shoulder was the universe.' 
 
In fascinating and personal detail, and drawing on exclusive diaries and audio recordings from his mission, astronaut Tim Peake takes readers closer than ever before to experience what life in space is really like: the sights, the smells, the fear, the sacrifice, the exhilaration and the deep and abiding wonder of the view. 
 
Warm, inspiring and often funny, Tim also charts his surprising road to becoming an astronaut, from a shy and unassuming boy from Chichester who had a passion for flight, to a young British Army officer, Apache helicopter pilot, flight instructor and test pilot who served around the world. Tim's extensive eighteen-year career in the Army included the command of a platoon of soldiers in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, deployment in Bosnia, and operations in Afghanistan. 
 
Full of life lessons for readers of all ages, Limitless is the story of how ordinary can become extraordinary. 
__________________ 
'For someone who has literally been out of this world Tim's an incredibly down to earth guy and I think you'll be amazed at some of the things he has done ... it's so inspiring to know that even going into space didn't change him as much as being a parent did.' JOE WICKS 
 
'Tim is one of our nation's good guys - and his story is a testament to his courage, kindness and a never-give-up spirit.' BEAR GRYLLS 
 
'Full of courage, camaraderie and daring escapades, this reads like a Boys' Own adventure' MIRROR 
 
'A fantastic book' PIERS MORGAN 
 
'Fasten your seatbelt for an exhilarating read ... His accounts of blasting into orbit at 25 times the speed of sound and floating, weightless, around the space station are enthralling.' EXPRESS 
 
Bestseller in the UK, Sunday Times, October 2020

Limitless: The Autobiography

The bestselling story of Britain’s inspirational astronaut

John Douglas

Mark Olshaker

The bestselling true story and inspiration behind the hit Netflix show of how one underfunded FBI team became the first to explore the dark world of serial murderers. 
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'John Douglas knows more about serial killers than anybody in the world' - Jonathan Demme, director of The Silence of the Lambs 
 
John Douglas is a former FBI Special Agent and expert in criminal profiling and behavioural science. He made a career of looking evil in the eye - and understanding it. No wonder that he was the inspiration for Special Agent Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs, as well as the film's consultant on the reality of serial killers. 
 
Douglas invented and established the practice of criminal profiling, and submerged himself in the world of serial killers in a quest to understand why they killed, and to help prevent more innocent lives from being ended by future killers. 
 
As his serial crime unit developed from a derided two-bit operation in a dingy officer to one of the FBI's elite task forces, Douglas personally confronted the most terrible crimes of the age, including those of Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and the Atlanta child murderer. 
 
With the fierce page-turning power of a bestselling novel, yet terrifyingly true, Mindhunter is a true crime classic. 
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'John Douglas is the FBI's pioneer and master of investigative profiling.' - Patricia Cornwell 
 
'A cracker of a book' - Esquire

Mindhunter

Inside the FBI Elite Serial Crime Unit (Now A Netflix Series)

Cade Metz

'This colourful page-turner puts artificial intelligence into a human perspective . . . Metz explains this transformative technology and makes the quest thrilling.' Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs 
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This is the inside story of a small group of mavericks, eccentrics and geniuses who turned Artificial Intelligence from a fringe enthusiasm into a transformative technology. It's the story of how that technology became big business, creating vast fortunes and sparking intense rivalries. And it's the story of breakneck advances that will shape our lives for many decades to come - both for good and for ill. 
________________________________________________ 
 
'One day soon, when computers are safely driving our roads and speaking to us in complete sentences, we'll look back at Cade Metz's elegant, sweeping Genius Makers as their birth story - the Genesis for an age of sentient machines.' Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store and The Upstarts 
 
'A ringside seat at what may turn out to be the pivotal episode in human history . . . easy and fun to read . . . undeniably charming.' Forbes

Genius Makers

The Mavericks Who Brought A.I. to Google, Facebook, and the World

South African born Elon Musk is the renowned entrepreneur and innovator behind PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity. Musk wants to save our planet; he wants to send citizens into space, to form a colony on Mars; he wants to make money while doing these things; and he wants us all to know about it. He is the real-life inspiration for the Iron Man series of films starring Robert Downey Junior. 
 
The personal tale of Musk’s life comes with all the trappings one associates with a great, drama-filled story. He was a freakishly bright kid who was bullied brutally at school, and abused by his father. In the midst of these rough conditions, and the violence of apartheid South Africa, Musk still thrived academically and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he paid his own way through school by turning his house into a club and throwing massive parties. 
 
He started a pair of huge dot-com successes, including PayPal, which eBay acquired for $1.5 billion in 2002. Musk was forced out as CEO and so began his lost years in which he decided to go it alone and baffled friends by investing his fortune in rockets and electric cars. Meanwhile Musk’s marriage disintegrated as his technological obsessions took over his life ... 
 
Elon Musk is the Steve Jobs of the present and the future, and for the past twelve months, he has been shadowed by tech reporter, Ashlee Vance. Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of Spacex and Tesla is Shaping our Future is an important, exciting and intelligent account of the real-life Iron Man.

Elon Musk

How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future

David Attenborough

Collected together for the very first time, this is the complete Series 1 and 2 of Life Stories, written and presented by Sir David Attenborough. 
 
One of the nation's most popular presenters, Sir David examines 40 marvels of the natural world from his extraordinary and pioneering experiences. 
 
What was Sir David's first pet? Which animal would he most like to be? How did he track down a giant earthworm? Why does he respect rats? And what did he do when confronted by a ten-foot-long reptile? 
 
His enthusiasm is as infectious as ever, and conveys a unique fascination on topics as diverse as the sloth, monstrous flowers, the platypus, dragons, the fire salamander, the coelacanth, the dodo, bird's-nest soup and the large blue butterfly. So listen to these stories to find out the real reason why animals sing, the story behind a 150-million-year-old feather, and what it is about snakes that really unnerves Sir David. 
 
©2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

David Attenborough's Life Stories

The Complete Collection

Chandler Burr

In the tradition of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief and James Gleick's Genius, The Emperor of Scent tells the story of Luca Turin, an utterly unusual, stubborn scientist, his otherworldly gift for perfume, his brilliant, quixotic theory of how we smell, and his struggle to set before the world the secret of the most enigmatic of our senses.

The Emperor Of Scent

David Hall

In 2004, after felling his last chimney and retiring from steeplejacking, Fred took to the road on his beloved traction engine for the BBC series Made in Britain. Travelling the length and breadth of the country, the intention was to seek out the remarkable achievements of the craftsmen, engineers, inventors and industrial workers whose endeavour made engines like Fred's possible. It was a journey that took him to Britain's most iconic engineering marvels as well as less familiar sites: from the Forth Bridge and the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge to Europe's last deep-working iron ore mine in Cumbria and a local castings workshop in Bo'ness. 
 
This behind-the-scenes account of that ambitious journey is made all the more remarkable by Fred's heroic efforts to complete it while suffering from terminal cancer. It is not only a glorious testament to our nation's industrial achievements but also a story of the friendships, unfailing courage and determination of the nation's favourite steeplejack.

Fred Dibnah - Made in Britain

Les Pringle

This is a re-issue of Blue Nights and Long Nights ISBN 9780552158527. 
 
Card-playing corpses, unfaithful husbands and 'flying' ladies - life as an ambulance driver in the 1970s was certainly varied ... 
 
At the age of twenty-three, Les Pringle decided to escape from office life, broaden his horizons and become an ambulance driver. Little did he realize how broad those horizons would turn out to be. 
 
Filled with warmth and humour, Dial 999! takes us back to a time when lonely old ladies could call 999 and have a cup of tea waiting when the drivers turned up for a chat; when learning to drive the ambulance meant going out for one test drive and managing not to hit a pedestrian; and every day brought a glimpse into other people's lives. 
 
Gripping, poignant and darkly funny, Dial 999!is an affectionate, warm-hearted look at a world gone by.

Dial 999!

John Davidson

The funny and moving autobiography offering extraordinary insight into what it is like to live with a severe form of Tourette's Syndrome. From the award-winning Scottish campaigner. 
 
NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING ROBERT ARAMAYO AND MAXINE PEAKE. 
 
'An astonishing tale about an amazing man.' 
- JOJO MOYES, author of Me Before You and Someone Else's Shoes 
 
'Funny and heartfelt ... this skilfully told tale deserves praise for how it lets us non-sweary people see inside the ordinary, albeit anxious, mind of someone with Tourette syndrome.' THE TIMES 
 
Born in the 1970s on the Scottish Borders, John’s was ten when his tics first arrived, as if from nowhere. Previously a happy, popular, football-mad boy he was labelled disruptive, rude, and even mad. As his condition progressed, from blinks and jerks to involuntary rude and obscene shouting, John was bullied, rejected - alienated from his family and a society that had no idea what to make of him. 
 
Hospitalized and drugged for months, it was only an extraordinary and transformative friendship, and John’s dogged optimism, that turned his life around, making I Swear an inspirational story of triumph over adversity. 
 
Through John’s eyes, we see Tourette’s not just as a medical condition, but as a lens through which we can all better understand the importance of human connection. And how essential, as well as ultimately rewarding, it can be to keep going and never give up. 
 
'This superb book is an engaging and fascinating account of what it's like to live with Tourette's.' DAILY MAIL 
 
'Brave, shocking, funny and moving ... This is a really important book.'

I Swear

My Life with Tourette’s

Maggie Aderin-Pocock

'I'd toast the moon and look at the sky... I think it draws us to it; we wonder what lies beyond.' 
 
Maggie Aderin-Pocock’s destiny was always written in the stars. From the age of three, inspired by The Clangers, her dream was to go into space. Throughout a chaotic childhood, ricocheting between divorced parents and acrimonious custody battles, she attended thirteen schools in fourteen years – but while her environment regularly changed, her fascination with the Universe did not. It became enmeshed in her desire to succeed as a scientist even when her school careers advice was to become a nurse. 
 
Starchild is Maggie’s emotionally honest and revealing memoir, telling a story of education and prejudice, adversity and ambition, motherhood and the moon – all recounted in her characteristically warm and relatable style. From being the only Black woman on her physics course at Imperial College London, to her groundbreaking work on the James Webb and Gemini telescopes, to starting her own public speaking company and sharing the wonders of science with thousands of children every year, Maggie’s story will inspire you to never give up on your dreams.

Starchild

My Life Under the Night Sky

Pope Lonergan

Nominated for the Chortle Comedy Book Award 2023 
 
'Blisteringly well written, deeply humane and very funny' Daily Telegraph 
'Enough to make you die laughing' Daily Mail 
'Funny and moving' Daily Express 
 
Whether he's initiating a coup d'état against new regulations with the residents, or forging a bond with the 98-year old who once called him a fat slut, Pope Lonergan's work is infinitely varied. This no-holds-barred account shows what life inside a care home is really like, for both residents and carers. Featuring night-time drama, incontinence pads and the uniquely dark humour of one double-amputee Alzheimer's patient, here you can learn everything you ever wanted to know (and a few things you probably really didn't) about Britain's care system. 
 
This important memoir challenges us all to think differently about the value of our elderly, and also the carers who look after them.

I'll Die After Bingo

My unlikely life as a care home assistant

Ronald L Mallett

Bruce Henderson

Ron Mallett was just 10 when his father died suddenly. Devastated, he found solace in the science fiction of H.G. Wells, believing that if he could build a time machine, he could go back into the past, warn his father and perhaps save his life. 
Ronald Mallett is now a professor of theoretical physics. Remarkably, this working-class African American boy from the Bronx stuck with his vision, overcoming poverty and prejudice in the pursuit of his obsession. This is the story of his extraordinary journey of self- and scientific discovery. With simple language and elegant metaphor he lays out his theories and presents the reader with what is an actual blue print for a time machine.A dramatic and compelling memoir, it is also a brilliant introduction to a riveting but generally baffling subject, and a truly inspirational account of astonishing achievement.

The Time Traveller

One Man's Mission To Make Time Travel A Reality

Peter Raby

In 1858, aged thirty-five, weak with malaria, isolated in the remote Spice Islands, Alfred Russel Wallace wrote to Charles Darwin: he had, he said excitedly, worked out a theory of natural selection. Darwin was aghast - his work of decades was about to be scooped. Within a fortnight, his outline and Wallace's paper were presented jointly in London. A year later, with Wallace still at the opposite side of the world, On the Origin of Species was published. Wallace had none of Darwin's advantages or connections. Born in Usk, Gwent, in 1823, he left school at fourteen and in his mid-twenties spent four years in the Amazon collecting for museums and wealthy patrons, only to lose all his finds in a shipboard fire in mid-Atlantic. He vowed never to travel again. Yet two years later he was off to the East Indies, beginning an eight-year trek over thousands of miles; here he discovered countless unknown species and identified for the first time the point of divide between Asian and Australian fauna, 'Wallace's Line'. With vigour and sensitivity, Peter Raby reveals Wallace as a courageous and unconventional explorer. After his return, he plunged into a variety of controversies, staying vital and alert until his death at the age of 90, in 1913. Gentle, self-effacing, and remarkably free from the racism that blighted so many of his contemporaries, Wallace is one of the neglected giants of the history of science and ideas. This stirring biography - the first for many years - puts him at centre stage, where he belongs.

Alfred Russel Wallace

Ian Young

Ian Young spent a summer as a medical student in a provincial maternity unit in Algeria.  This book is taken from the diary he began on arrival, when he found himself the privileged witness of the insides not just of Kabyl women, but also some much-trumpeted ideology. The immediate villains are a couple of expatriate Bulgarian gynaecologists.  Dr Vasilev, at the closing stages of a career of fathomless incompetence, forms a bond of affection with the author and they spend many hours in the office over an old route map of Bulgaria, discussing mileages and motorcycles as Maternity drifts beneath them like an abandoned ship.  Dr Kostov packs a powerful bedside punch and saves his humanitarian feelings for the health of the Deutschmark.  The two form a macabre comic team as they take the reader through a series of medical nightmares.  But their lot is scarcely more enviable than that of their female victims: the foreign doctors are the unhappy executors, working in blood, excrement and death, of the most respected attitudes in Algeria. The Private Life of Islam is a ruthlessly clear-sighted view of a particular place at a particular time.  It is also a classic in the art of story-telling.'A real achievement, personal as well as literary.' David Pryce-Jones, The Times'A parable of the reality behind a vast amount of modern social and political fantasy, even in the most developed of countries.' David Holden, Sunday Times

The Private Life Of Islam

An Algerian Diary

Gabriel Weston

How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands? What is it like to cut into someone else's body? What is it like to stand by, powerless, while someone dies because of the incompetence of your seniors? How do you tell a beautiful young man who seems perfectly fit that he has only a few days left to live? 
 
Gabriel Weston worked as a surgeon in the big-city hospitals of the twenty-first century; a woman in a world dominated by Alpha males. Her world was one of disease, suffering and extraordinary pressure where a certain moral ambiguity and clinical detachment were necessary tools for survival. Startling and honest, her account combines a fierce sense of human dignity with compassion and insight, illuminating scenes of life and death the rest of us rarely glimpse. 
 
Direct Red won the 2010 PEN/ Ackerley Prize and was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2009.

Direct Red

A Surgeon's Story

Barbara K.Lipska

'Completely compelling and powerful, and hard to put down.' Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, prize-winning author of Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain 
 
- Who are we if our brain fails? 
- How do we think? 
- How do we feel? 
- How do we move, if we move at all? 
- What happens when we lose our mind? 
 
When renowned neuroscientist Barbara Lipska's melanoma spread to her brain it started to play tricks on her. The expert on mental illness - a specialist in how the brain operates - experienced what it is like to go mad. Analyzing the science of the mind and the biology of the brain alongisde Dr Lipska's own extraordinary story, this is a fascinating account of what happens when the brain goes awry. 
 
'Oliver Sacks-meets-When Breath Becomes Air ... Barbara Lipska's remarkable story illuminates the many mysteries of our fragile yet resilient brains.' Lisa Genova, bestselling author of Still Alice and Every Note Played

The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind

A Memoir of Madness and Recovery

Benji Waterhouse

‘This is honestly my dream book… Fascinating’ FERN BRADY 
 
‘Fearlessly honest, funny and uplifting’ JO BRAND 
 
‘Very funny and deeply sympathetic. Really excellent’ HENRY MARSH 
 
Most of the psychiatric cases in this book are Benji’s patients. Some of them are his family. One of them is him. 
 
Unlocking the doors to the psych ward, NHS psychiatrist Dr Benji Waterhouse provides a fly-on-the-padded-wall account of medicine’s most mysterious and controversial speciality. 
 
Why would anyone in their right mind choose to be a psychiatrist? Are the solutions to people’s messy lives really within medical school textbooks? And how can vulnerable patients receive the care they need when psychiatry lacks staff, hospital beds and any actual cures? 
 
This is an eye-opening medical memoir – from both sides of the doctor’s desk. The perfect read for fans of This Is Going to Hurt, Unnatural Causes and The Prison Doctor.

You Don't Have to Be Mad to Work Here

A Psychiatrist’s Life

*An instant New York Times Bestseller* 
 
'One of the most exciting tales of our time... It's the next tech frontier, and Vance turns it into a thriller' Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs 
 
'Eloquent, expertly reported' Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store 
_______________ 
 
A momentous look at the private companies driving the revolutionary new space race, from the 3-million copy, New York Times bestselling author of Elon Musk 
 
In 2008, Elon Musk's SpaceX became the first private company to build a low-cost rocket that could reach orbit. Suddenly Silicon Valley, not NASA, was the epicentre of the new Space Age. 
 
Ashlee Vance follows four pioneering companies - Astra, Firefly, Planet Labs and Rocket Lab - as they race to control access to outer space. While the space tourism ambitions of billionaires such as Bezos and Branson make headlines, these under-the-radar companies are striving to monetise Earth's lower orbit; to connect, analyse and monitor everything on Earth. 
 
With unprecedented access to private company headquarters, labs and top-secret launch locations - from the US to New Zealand, Ukraine to India - Vance presents a gripping account of private jets, communes, gun-toting bodyguards, drugs, espionage investigations and multimillionaires guzzling booze as their fortunes disappear. 
 
This is the most pressing and controversial technology story of our time. Welcome to the new Wild West above the clouds.

When The Heavens Went On Sale

The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach

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