Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Joseph Delaney

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

James Rebanks

Some people's lives are entirely their own creations. James Rebanks' isn't. The first son of a shepherd, who was the first son of a shepherd himself, he and his family have lived and worked in and around the Lake District for generations. 
 
In evocative and lucid prose, James Rebanks takes us through a shepherd's year, offering a unique account of rural life and a fundamental connection with the land that most of us have lost.

The Shepherd's Life

A Tale of the Lake District

Anna May McHugh

'The embodiment of the spirit of rural Ireland' Irish Mirror 
 
Anna May McHugh's name is synonymous with 'the Ploughing' - the annual Championships of the National Ploughing Association. The event is the biggest outdoor agricultural show in Europe and Anna May is the driving force behind its spectacular growth. 
 
Anna May now tells her story. Her description of growing up as part of a large family in rural County Laois is an evocative and affectionate account of an Ireland that is now gone. But in her account of how she went from being a secretary of the Ploughing Association, her first job, to becoming - to her own amazement - its managing director twenty years later is a story of leadership and people skills that are very much of the twenty-first century. Anna May was truly ahead of her time. 
 
Still living in County Laois, close to where she grew up, and now in her eighties, Anna May still runs the multi-million euro operation from her home, alongside her daughter, Anna Marie. 
 
Queen of the Ploughing is a captivating read, full of warmth, lively stories and Anna May's sharp observations. And it's not just about Anna May's life, but is also a celebration of the best of Irish life over eight decades.

Queen of the Ploughing

Francis Bourgeois

The adventure filled memoir from the world's most beloved trainspotter, TikTok sensation Francis Bourgeois. 
 
'Francis is one of the kindest, most genuine people I've met in a long time. His passion and unadulterated happiness is inspiring. I can't wait for more magical adventures with him.' - Joe Jonas 
 
'A National Treasure Of The TikTok Age.' - Grazia 
 
'Thrashing builds and builds. I look down and pull up my sleeve: I've got goosebumps, making all the hairs on my arm stand on end. I'm absolutely buzzing.' 
 
From sleeping in a car to get a good shot of 73962 Dick Mabbutt to trainspotting with Niall Horan, Francis Bourgeois has been on one hell of a ride over the past year. Bringing joy to millions, his epic journeys have highlighted the importance of connecting with your passions. 
 
In The Trainspotter's Notebook, Francis shares his greatest trainspotting adventures and takes you with him across the fields and footbridges of Britain, passing through historic terminals and backwater stations in pursuit of tones, thrash and locomotive perfection. Told in his inimitable style, these hilarious and heart-warming tales take you behind the scenes of his most popular videos, and celebrate the places and people of the railway. 
 
Are you ready to depart? 
 
'Oh for goodness sake, I'm on the wrong platform!'

The Trainspotter's Notebook

Alex James

There is nothing that can touch the sound made by a close-knit group of people who have been playing together for years and years and years, playing as though their lives depended on it. For many years, all our lives did, and actually, I’d suddenly realised, they did still. 
 
One winter’s night, Alex James received an unexpected call. Blur had been invited to play their biggest gig ever: Wembley Stadium. The only trouble was, he and his bandmates hadn’t spoken to – or even shouted at – each other for years. And he now had five children, an out-of-control menagerie of cats, and a sprawling farm to run. 
 
This is the story of what happened next. Taking us behind the scenes of a raucous, rollercoaster year, Alex describes how the band made a surprise – and emotional – return, recording an acclaimed album and playing sold-out shows around the world, from Colchester to Colombia and beyond. Plus: how he went on a crash diet to fit back into his ‘Britpop Trousers,’ somehow organised an entire festival of his own, and tried to perfect the recipe for a giant Frazzle. 
 
Over the Rainbow is a heartfelt and hilarious account of what it feels like to be catapulted back into the limelight with one of the world’s biggest bands. It is a love letter to Blur, to friendship and to music. And it shows us all that, however old – or hungover – we might feel, nothing’s ever truly over: it’s always just the start of the next thing.

Over the Rainbow

Tales from an Unexpected Year

Jo Wheeler

While their husbands, brothers and sweethearts fought in Europe and their mothers, sisters and friends kept the home fires burning, for the first time, a group of remarkable women took to the skies. They weren't allowed into combat but risked their lives in bad weather and without radios to bring our boys the aircraft they so vitally needed. 
 
Employed by the Air Transport Auxiliary, these women were known as 'attagirls'. They proved that women too could master Spitfires, Mosquitoes and Hawker Hurricanes, forging a new path in aviation. 
 
The Hurricane Girls is the fascinating, moving and inspirational story of bravery, determination and remarkable women.

The Hurricane Girls

The inspirational true story of the women who dared to fly

One afternoon many years ago, James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island. She lived and worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild ducks and gathering their down. Hers was a centuries-old trade that had once made men and women rich, but had long been in decline. Still, somehow, she seemed to be hanging on. 
 
Back at home, Rebanks couldn’t stop thinking about the woman on the rocks. She was fierce and otherworldly – and yet strangely familiar. Years passed. Then, one day, he wrote her a letter, asking if he could return. Bring work clothes, she replied, and good boots, and come quickly: her health was failing. And so he travelled to the edge of the Arctic to witness her last season on the island. 
 
This is the story of that season. It is the story of a unique and ancient landscape, and of the woman who brought it back to life. It traces the pattern of her work from the rough, isolated toil of bitter winter, to the elation of the endless summer light, when the birds leave behind their precious down for gathering, like feathered gold. 
 
Slowly, Rebanks begins to understand that this woman and her world are not what he had previously thought. What began as a journey of escape becomes an extraordinary lesson in self-knowledge, forgiveness and how to make lasting change.

The Place of Tides

James Poskett

In this major retelling of the history of science from 1450 to the present day, James Poskett explodes the myth that science began in Europe. 
 
The blinkered Western gaze focusing on individual 'genius' - Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Einstein - was only one part of the story. The reality was an utterly global, non-linear pattern of cross-fertilization, competition, cooperation and outright conflict. Each rupture in history carved fresh channels for global exchange. 
 
Here, for the first time, Poskett celebrates how scientists from Africa, America, Asia and the Pacific were integral to this very human story. We meet Graman Kwasi, the African botanist who discovered a new cure for malaria; Hantaro Nagaoka, the Japanese scientist who first described the structure of the atom; and Zhao Zhongyao, the Chinese physicist who discovered antimatter.

Horizons

A Global History of Science

Tristram Hunt

Josiah Wedgwood, perhaps the greatest English potter who ever lived, epitomized the best of his age. From his kilns and workshops in Stoke-on-Trent, he revolutionized the production of ceramics in Georgian Britain by marrying technology with design, manufacturing efficiency and retail flair. He transformed the luxury markets not only of London, Liverpool, Bath and Dublin but of America and the world, and helping to usher in a mass consumer society. Tristram Hunt calls him 'the Steve Jobs of the eighteenth century'. 
 
But Wedgwood was radical in his mind and politics as well as in his designs. He campaigned for free trade and religious toleration, read pioneering papers to the Royal Society and was a member of the celebrated Lunar Society of Birmingham. Most significantly, he created the ceramic 'Emancipation Badge', depicting a slave in chains and inscribed 'Am I Not a Man and a Brother?' that became the symbol of the abolitionist movement. 
 
Tristram Hunt's hugely enjoyable new biography, strongly based on Wedgwood's notebooks, letters and the words of his contemporaries, brilliantly captures the energy and originality of Wedgwood and his extraordinary contribution to the transformation of eighteenth-century Britain.

The Radical Potter

Josiah Wedgwood and the Transformation of Britain

I am the luckiest man alive, because I get to live and work in the most beautiful place on earth: Matterdale in the English Lake District. 
 
When I was a child we didn't really go anywhere, except a week in the Isle of Man when I was about ten years old, and I never left Britain until I was twenty. 
 
Even now, years later, the best bit of any travelling is coming home. 
 
Bringing us into the world of shepherd's baking competitions, sheep shows and moments out on the fell watching the sheep run away home, James Rebanks interweaves thoughts and reflections on the art of shepherding with his photographs of the valley, people and animals that make up the daily life of the fells. A life lived by the three hundred surviving fell farming families, this is a book of photos and words filled with reverence and love.

The Illustrated Herdwick Shepherd

Jeremy Clarkson

Clarkson’s farm is the gift that keeps on giving, and now our hero has decided to bring his misunderstood entrepreneurial flair to bear on a new venture: a pub. Let the doors open on The Farmer’s Dog. 
 
All British produce, Hawkstone beer on tap, a private bar for farmers and a vintage tractor hanging from the ceiling. The perfect country pub. But as the Cotwolds’ newest publican quickly discovers, there’s a lot more to landlording than pulling pints. 
 
Just as well, then, that he still has Lisa, Kaleb, Cheerful Charlie and Gerald to help him through...

Diddly Squat: The Farmer's Dog

Arthur Parkinson

Most of us want a dog, or a cat, or a pony when we are young &ndash; but for Arthur Parkinson, it was always hens. Growing up in an ex-mining town in Nottinghamshire, the other kids in the playground called him 'Chicken Boy'. The quiet fulfilment of keeping hens became his sanctuary, a tonic for mental and physical health, a connection with his family and the natural world. Illustrated with Arthur's own characterful watercolours and photographs of his &lsquo;girls&rsquo;, Chicken Boy is a one-of-a-kind memoir of a life in nature.

Chicken Boy

My Life With Hens

Seb Falk

The Middle Ages were a time of wonder. They gave us the first universities, the first eyeglasses and the first mechanical clocks as medieval thinkers sought to understand the world around them, from the passing of the seasons to the stars in the sky. 
 
In this book, we walk the path of medieval science with a real-life guide, a fourteenth-century monk named John of Westwyk - inventor, astrologer, crusader - who was educated in England's grandest monastery and exiled to a clifftop priory. Following the traces of his life, we learn to see the natural world through Brother John's eyes: navigating by the stars, multiplying Roman numerals, curing disease and telling the time with an astrolabe. 
 
We travel the length and breadth of England, from Saint Albans to Tynemouth, and venture far beyond the shores of Britain. On our way, we encounter a remarkable cast of characters: the clock-building English abbot with leprosy, the French craftsman-turned-spy and the Persian polymath who founded the world's most advanced observatory. 
 
An enthralling story of the struggles and successes of an ordinary man and an extraordinary time, The Light Ages conjures up a vivid picture of the medieval world as we have never seen it before.

The Light Ages

A Medieval Journey of Discovery

Dave Eggers

Mokhtar grew up in San Francisco, one of seven siblings in a tiny apartment, raised by Yemeni immigrant parents. As a young man he learned of the true origins of coffee making - an ancient art born in Yemen, the secret stolen by European colonisers - and became determined to resurrect the ancient art of Yemeni coffee. 
 
Mokhtar dedicated himself to coffee, quickly becoming one of the world's leading experts, the first Arab in the world to qualify as a 'Q Grader'. But while visiting Yemen on a research trip, he was caught in the maelstrom of sudden civil war. The US Embassy closed its doors, and so Mokhtar embarked on a nail-biting adventure - to escape the country with his precious coffee samples intact. 
 
The Monk of Mokha is heart-pounding adventure story, a tale of underdog entrepreneurship and true passion, and a fascinating modern take on the great American dream.

The Monk of Mokha

Paul Tremelling

This is the story of what it takes to make it in fighter combat. In the cockpit or crew room, the pressure is relentless, the humour merciless. 
It's no place for the faint-hearted. 
 
Whether landing on a pitching aircraft carrier deck at midnight, or 
saving heroes under fire in Afghanistan, there is no room for self-doubt; only confidence and do-or-die hard truth. In return, Paul Tremelling and his comrades enjoyed levels of exhilaration unimaginable anywhere else. 
 
Combining visceral action with sharp intelligence, laced with acerbic humour, 
Harrier brings to life the hi-octane, unforgiving world of the fighter pilot. 
 
Strap in...

Harrier: How To Be a Fighter Pilot

Raynor Winn

Nature holds the answers for Raynor and her husband Moth. After walking 630 homeless miles along The Salt Path, living on the windswept and wild English coastline; the cliffs, the sky and the chalky earth now feel like their home. 
 
Moth has a terminal diagnosis, but against all medical odds, he seems revitalised in nature. Together on the wild coastal path, with their feet firmly rooted outdoors, they discover that anything is possible. 
 
Now life beyond the Salt Path awaits and they come back to four walls, but the sense of home is illusive and returning to normality is proving difficult - until an incredible gesture by someone who reads their story changes everything. 
 
A chance to breathe life back into a beautiful farmhouse nestled deep in the Cornish hills; rewilding the land and returning nature to its hedgerows, becomes their saving grace and their new path to follow. 
 
The Wild Silence is a story of hope triumphing over despair, of lifelong love prevailing over everything. It is a luminous account of the human spirit's instinctive connection to nature, and how vital it is for us all.

The Wild Silence

Mark Urban

In this gripping, authorised account, bestselling historian Mark Urban tells the story of the wartime creation and development of Britain's elite airborne infantry - who ranged from circus performers to solicitors, policemen to gravediggers, Christians and Jews to communists. 
 
Through the fates of six men - including recently widowed Geoffrey Pine-Coffin, who had to leave his little boy at home to head to the front, and Mike Lewis, whose photographs became iconic images of war - Urban vividly shows what it took to succeed in this new regiment. All six men would shed blood for their country in daring actions at D-Day, Arnhem and across the Second World War; two would not survive, and one would face disgrace. 
 
Based on deep archival research, British and German sources and new material from the men's families, Urban's unvarnished history is a compelling and moving depiction of the highs and lows of battle.

Red Devils

The Trailblazers of the Paras in World War Two

The Trailblazers of the Parachute Regiment in World War Two: An Authorized History

Hampton Sides

In July 1776, Captain James Cook began his third voyage in HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, in Hawaii, Cook was killed – stabbed by the indigenous population. 
 
What brought Cook to this end, so far from his reputation? Cook was renowned for humane leadership, dedication to science and respect for indigenous societies. 
 
Cook’s new voyage carried secret orders, and the Captain grew strange, delivering savage punishments and leading his ships into danger. The mission revealed the sharp edge of a colonial sword, leaving catastrophe in its wake. And, on the shores of Hawaii, Cook’s expedition finally tore itself apart…

The Wide Wide Sea

Robert Skidelsky

A sweeping history of and meditation on humanity's relationship with machines, showing how we got here and what happens next 
 
Faith in technological fixes for our problems is waning. Automation, which promised relief from toil, has reactivated the long-standing fear of job redundancy. Information technology, meant to liberate us from traditional authority, is placing unprecedented powers of surveillance and control in the hands of a purely secular Big Brother. And for the first time, artificial intelligence threatens anthropogenic disaster – disaster caused by our own activities. Scientists join imaginative writers in warning us of the fate of Icarus, whose wings melted because he flew too close to the sun. 
 
This book tells the story of our fractured relationship with machines from humanity’s first tools down to the present and into the future. It raises the crucial question of why some parts of the world developed a ‘machine civilisation’ and not others, and traces the interactions between capitalism and technology, and between science and religion, in the making of the modern world. 
 
Taking in the peaks of philosophy and triumphs of science, the foundation of economics and speculations of fiction, Robert Skidelsky embarks on a bold intellectual journey through the evolution of our understanding of technology and what this means for our lives and politics. ‘Unless we understand technology as a system of ideas rather than as a necessity,’ he writes, ‘we will be powerless to choose which technology is best suited to our needs and purposes.’

The Machine Age

An Idea, a History, a Warning

Rowland White

'Captivating' Daily Telegraph 
'Stunning' James Holland 
'Superb' Daily Express 
'Wonderful' John Nichol 
'Remarkable' RAF News 
_________________________________Built of lightweight wood, powered by two growling Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, impossibly aerodynamic, headspinningly fast and armed to the teeth, the de Havilland Mosquito was the war-winning wonder that should never have existed: the aircraft the RAF didn't think it wanted then couldn't do without. 
 
Flying on operations barely eighteen months after a single prototype was ordered off the drawing board, it was the answer to its pilots' prayers: a stunningly versatile warplane capable of leaving the Luftwaffe in its wake to attack when and where the enemy was least expecting it. 
 
Excelling as a spyplane, night-fighter and pathfinder for Bomber Command's heavies the Mossie's reputation was cemented by a series of daredevil bombing raids across occupied Europe, including on Berlin itself, where only surprise, speed and precision could ensure success. 
 
So when Churchill's top secret Special Operations Executive needed to destroy the Gestapo HQ in the centre of downtown Copenhagen to prevent a devastating Nazi last stand that might prolong the war for many months, there was only one machine for the job. 
 
This is the story of that legendary aircraft told through that one impossible mission. 
 
Like Rowland White's previous books, Mosquito is an unputdownable mix of utterly compelling storytelling, incredible human stories and fascinating technological detail, which sheds never-before-told light on a pivotal mission that helped bring the war to its bloody and brutal close. 
_________________________________ 
 
Praise for Mosquito 
 
’10/10' Helen Fry 
'Excellent ... provides thrilling accounts' The Past 
'A brilliant read' Army Rumour Service Book Club 
'A triumph' Damcasters podcast 
'A tremendous book ... can't recommend it more highly' We Have Ways podcast 
'An addictive, moving and tenaciously researched tale ... his best book to date' Flypast 
'Mosquito reads like a thriller... Unreservedly recommended' Aviation Historian 
'It's like the best adventure stories except this one is the real thing' Best of British 
'A fascinating insight into one of the aircraft's most dramatic episodes' History of War 
'White immerses the reader in the action from the first page ... a must read' Flight International 
'Thrilling... A multi-layered, painstakingly assembled narrative... an instant classic' Warships IF

Mosquito

The RAF's Legendary Wooden Wonder and its Most Extraordinary Mission

David Edgerton

The story of the strange mixture of romanticism, militarism and technology that has made planes so important to England, from the brilliant author of Britain's War Machine 
 
The history of England and the aeroplane is one tangled with myths - of 'the Few' and the Blitz, of boffins, flying machines, amateur inventors and muddling through. In England and the Aeroplane David Edgerton reverses received wisdom, showing that the aeroplane is a central and revealing aspect of an unfamiliar English nation: a warfare state dedicated to technology, industry, empire and military power. 
 
England had the strongest air force in the Great War, the largest industry in the world in the 1920s, outproduced Germany by 50% at the time of the Battle of Britain and was the third largest producers of aeroplanes well after this time. In a revelatory recounting of the story of aeronautical England, from its politics to its industry and culture, David Edgerton reconfigures some of the most important chapters of our history. 
 
Reviews: 
 
'A brilliant polemic' Guardian 
 
'Full of good stories ... an illuminating read' Spectator 
 
'A tour de force, after which the history of the aircraft industry will never be quite the same again' Business History 
 
'David Edgerton's sure-footed essay ... sees Britain from an unusual perspective ... His arguments provide sound backing for the idea that modern Britain is as much a warfare state as a welfare one' Economist 
 
About the author: 
 
David Edgerton is Hans Rausing Professor at Imperial College London, where he was the founding director of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. He is the author of a sequence of groundbreaking books on 20th century Britain: Science, Technology and the British Industrial 'Decline', 1870-1970; Warfare State: Britain, 1920-1970; and Britain's War Machine, published by Penguin. He is also the author of the iconoclastic and brilliant The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900.

England and the Aeroplane

Militarism, Modernity and Machines

THE NO. 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
Head back down to Clarkson Farm with the bestseller from our favourite welly-wearing wannabe farmer, Jeremy Clarkson 
___________ 
 
Enthusiastic trainee farmer Jeremy Clarkson made just £144 in his first year at Diddly Squat Farm. This year he's determined to do better. Not because he now knows what he's doing. But because he's fed up of getting stick from Kaleb. 
 
Yet farming continues to be a challenge. 
 
For instance . . . 
· Loading a grain trailer was more demanding than flying an Apache gunship? 
· Cows were more dangerous than motor-racing? 
· It's easier to get planning permission to build a nuclear plant than to turn a barn into a restaurant? 
 
Jeremy's always got a plan. Loads of them. Often cunning. 
 
Not always greeted with wild enthusiasm by Kaleb and Cheerful Charlie, however . . . 
___________ 
 
PRAISE FOR DIDDLY SQUAT 
 
'Clarkson has done more for farmers in one series than Countryfile achieved in 30 years' James Rebanks, author of A Shepherd's Life 
 
'Clarkson has showcased the passion, humour and personalities of the people who work throughout the year to grow the nation's food . . . and brought an understanding of many of the issues faced by farmers to the British public' National Farmers Union 
 
'A deserving Farming Champion of the Year' Farmers Weekly 
 
'I don't know anything about farming. It's like David Attenborough doing jet-skiing, or Nicholas Witchell saying, "I'm going to be a cage fighter'" Jeremy Clarkson 
 
Number 1 Sunday Times bestseller, October 2022

Diddly Squat: ‘Til The Cows Come Home

Frank Pope

The Hoi An, a wreck deep beneath the waves of the South China Sea. In her fifteenth-century hull a priceless treasure; on the waves above a team of treasure hunters racing against the clock to claim the fabulous cargo via dangerous saturation dives. But typhoons, pirates, gunships, mutiny, rival treasure hunters, storms and greed were to make this deep-sea dive one of the most dramatic and gruelling expeditions ever undertaken. Frank Pope was there and his gripping tale of this high-stakes folly will captivate anyone who loves undersea adventure.

Dragon Sea

Robert Penn

'Charming, important . . . a journey of discovery' Telegraph 
 
Over the course of a year, Robert Penn learns how to plant, harvest, thresh and mill his own wheat, in order to bake bread for his family. In returning to this pre-industrial practice, he tells the fascinating story of our relationship with bread: from the domestication of wheat in the Fertile Crescent at the dawn of civilization, to the rise of mass-produced loaves and the resurgence in homebaking today. 
 
Gathering knowledge and wisdom from experts around the world - farmers on the banks of the Nile, harvesters in the American Midwest and Parisian boulangers - Penn reconnects the joy of making and eating bread with a deep appreciation for the skill and patience required to cultivate its key ingredient. This book is a celebration of the millennia-old craft of breadmaking, and how it is woven into the story of humanity. 
 
'Compelling, vivid . . . Slow Rise will be welcomed by the new bread geeks' Spectator

Slow Rise

A Bread-Making Adventure

Jon Gertner

From its beginnings in the 1920s until its demise in the 1980s, Bell Labs-officially, the research and development wing of AT&amp;T-was the biggest, and arguably the best, laboratory for new ideas in the world. From the transistor to the laser, from digital communications to cellular telephony, it's hard to find an aspect of modern life that hasn't been touched by Bell Labs. 
 
In The Idea Factory, Jon Gertner traces the origins of some of the twentieth century's most important inventions and delivers a riveting and heretofore untold chapter of American history. At its heart this is a story about the life and work of a small group of brilliant and eccentric men-Mervin Kelly, Bill Shockley, Claude Shannon, John Pierce, and Bill Baker-who spent their careers at Bell Labs. 
 
Today, when the drive to invent has become a mantra, Bell Labs offers us a way to enrich our understanding of the challenges and solutions to technological innovation. Here, after all, was where the foundational ideas on the management of innovation were born.

The Idea Factory

Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation

Jacqueline Yallop

On her fortieth birthday Jacqueline Yallop built a pig sty in rural south-west France. She and her husband Ed had decided to turn their Aveyron cottage and garden into a small holding. They bought two pigs - Big and Little - to rear and slaughter. The locals were full of advice, and with just a small amount of plastic poles and metallic string and some new Wellington boots, they were off. 
 
They will cultivate the land. They will raise, then kill and eat their pigs. Or so they keep telling themselves. Because the reality is so very different from the romantic dreams of two stubborn English writers . . .

Big Pig, Little Pig

A Year on a Smallholding in South-West France

J E Gordon

In &quot;The New Science of Strong Materials&quot; the author made plain the secrets of materials science. In this volume he explains the importance and properties of different structures.

Structures

Or Why Things Don't Fall Down

Simon Baron-Cohen

'Celebrates human cognitive diversity, and is rich with empathy and psychological insight' Steven Pinker 
 
'Bold, intriguing, profound' Jay Elwes, Spectator 
 
Why can humans alone invent? In this book, psychologist and world renowned autism expert Simon Baron-Cohen puts forward a bold new theory: because we can identify patterns, specifically if-and-then patterns. Baron-Cohen argues that the genes for this unique ability overlap with the genes for autism and have driven human progress for 70,000 years. 
 
From the first musical instruments to the agricultural, industrial, and digital revolutions, Pattern Seekers links one of our greatest human strengths with a condition that is so often misunderstood and challenges us to think differently about those who think differently.

The Pattern Seekers

A New Theory of Human Invention

Serhii Plokhy

In 2011, a 43-foot-high tsunami crashed into a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. In the following days, explosions would rip buildings apart, three reactors would go into nuclear meltdown, and the surrounding area would be swamped in radioactive water. It is now considered one of the costliest nuclear disasters ever. But Fukushima was not the first, and it was not the worst. . . 
 
In Atoms and Ashes, acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy tells the tale of the six nuclear disasters that shook the world: Bikini Atoll, Kyshtym, Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Based on wide-ranging research and witness testimony, Plokhy traces the arc of each crisis, exploring in depth the confused decision-making on the ground and the panicked responses of governments to contain the crises and often cover up the scale of the catastrophe. 
 
As the world increasingly looks to renewable and alternative sources of energy, Plokhy lucidly argues that the atomic risk must be understood in explicit terms, but also that these calamities reveal a fundamental truth about our relationship with nuclear technology: that the thirst for power and energy has always trumped safety and the cost for future generations.

Atoms and Ashes

From Bikini Atoll to Fukushima

Wendell Berry

'He is unlike anybody else writing today ... After Donald Trump's election, we urgently need to rediscover the best of radical America. An essential part of that story is Wendell Berry. Few of us can live, or even aspire to, his kind of life. But nobody can risk ignoring him' Andrew Marr 
 
'Wendell Berry is the most important writer and thinker that you have (probably) never heard of. He is an American sage' James Rebanks 
 
Wendell Berry is 'something of an anachronism'. He began his life as the old times and the last of the old-time people were dying out, and continues to this day in the old ways: a team of work horses and a pencil are his preferred working tools. The writings gathered in The World-Ending Fire are the unique product of a life spent farming the fields of rural Kentucky with mules and horses, and of the rich, intimate knowledge of the land cultivated by this work. These are essays written in defiance of the false call to progress, and in defence of the local landscapes that provide our cultural heritage, our history, our home.

The World-Ending Fire

The Essential Wendell Berry

Christoph Keller

Most stories of disability follow a familiar pattern: Life Before Accident. Life After Accident. For Christoph Keller, it was different: his childhood diagnosis with a form of Spinal Muscular Atrophy only revealed what had been with him since birth. SMA III, the 'kindest one', allows those who have it to live a long life, and it progresses slowly. There is no cure. By the age of 25, he had to use a wheelchair some of the time. 'There were two of me: Walking Me. Rolling Me.' By 32, he could still walk into a restaurant with a cane or on somebody's arm. At 45, 'Rolling Me' took over altogether. 
 
Intimate, absurdist and winningly frank, Every Cripple a Superhero is at once a memoir of life with a progressive disorder, and a profound exploration of the challenges of loving, being loved, and living a public life - navigating restaurants, aeroplanes, museums and artists' retreats - in a world not designed for you. Threaded throughout are Keller's own photographs of the unexpected beauty found in puddle-filled 'curb cuts', the pavement ramps that, left to disintegrate, form part of the urban obstacle course. Those puddles become portals into a different, truer city; and, as they do, so this book - told with humour and immense grace - begins to uncover a truer world: one where the 'normal' is not normal, where disability is far more widespread than we might think, and where there always exist, just alongside our own, the lives of everyday superheroes.

Every Cripple a Superhero

biblio.categories.code

biblio.publicationStatus

biblio.brand

biblio.workEditions.format

biblio.ageRange

biblio.series.seriesName

biblio.imprint.description

biblio.type

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Best-Jane-Austen-quotes_Online-Desktop_Penguin

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

Search Results

The Fall of the West

Hunt the Villain

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Fight or Flight (Book 21)

The Mortons

Watch a trailer for The Spook's Blood

A photograph of Ben Barnes in character for Shadow and Bone Netflix series.

Interviews

Shadow and Bone’s Ben Barnes on tear-jerking books and what he’s reading

An image showing a selection of adventure stories for 9-12 year olds on a bright yellow background with orange doodles that include a hashtag, flag, danger sign and speech bubble

Children's reading lists

16 books for 9 to 12-year-olds that love adventures

An image of a selection of books for 9-12s on a blue background with a large splodge and striped print

24 must-read books for 9-12-year-olds

A picture of several different children's books on a pink to blue ombre background; each book has a bright yellow shadow

Showing results for: ‘joseph delaney’

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Series

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter