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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

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Vaclav Smil

'There is no author whose books I look forward to more' Bill Gates 
 
‘There is perhaps no other academic who paints pictures with numbers like Smil’ Guardian 
 
Discover how speed shapes life on Earth, from grinding geological processes to the astonishing speed of light. In this wide-ranging ideas book, internationally bestselling author Vaclav Smil explores the connections between speed, nature, and human innovation. With surprising insights - like how erosion actually accelerates mountain growth - Smil debunks the myth that modern life is accelerating at an unprecedented rate. 
 
Combining compelling statistics with insightful analysis, Smil take readers on a captivating journey through the vast timescales of Earth’s history all the way down to the complexities of the present day. 
 
Smil explains how we measure speed and reveals its theoretical limits, offering a thought-provoking look at the forces defining our world. This eye-opening book encourages readers to see speed’s vital role in everything around us.

Speed

How it Explains the World

C. Thi Nguyen

Scoring systems are everywhere. Underpinning our daily lives – whether it’s the fit bits on our wrists, likes on social media, and even school rankings – they have become pervasive and increasingly dangerous, warping our desires and outsourcing our values to external institutions. Instead of encouraging us to be more playful, to take pleasure in the journey of striving towards a goal, institutions, corporations and bureaucracies weaponize scoring systems to impose their own interests. No matter what, we always seem to be playing by someone else’s rules. 
 
In The Score, philosopher C. Thi Nguyen shows us how this newly ‘gamified’ world has fundamentally captured our value systems, turning what might be moral or personal life choices into numerical data, and forcing us to prioritise what can be measured and monetized over what is truly meaningful to us. 
 
A life-long lover of online and board games himself, Nguyen argues that we should not stop playing games but rather take a step back and become more aware of their immersive and profound power, so that we might chart a way towards more creative and joyful lives. To start playing our own game.

The Score

How to Stop Playing Someone Else’s Game

Anil Ananthaswamy

Machine-learning systems are making life-altering decisions for us: approving mortgage loans, determining whether a tumour is cancerous, or deciding whether someone gets bail. They now influence discoveries in chemistry, biology and physics - the study of genomes, extra-solar planets, even the intricacies of quantum systems. 
 
We are living through a revolution in artificial intelligence that is not slowing down. This major shift is based on simple mathematics, some of which goes back centuries: linear algebra and calculus, the stuff of eighteenth-century mathematics. Indeed by the mid-1850s, a lot of the groundwork was all done. It took the development of computer science and the kindling of 1990s computer chips designed for video games to ignite the explosion of AI that we see all around us today. In this enlightening book, Anil Ananthaswamy explains the fundamental maths behind AI, which suggests that the basics of natural and artificial intelligence might follow the same mathematical rules. 
 
As Ananthaswamy resonantly concludes, to make the most of our most wondrous technologies we need to understand their profound limitations - the clues lie in the maths that makes AI possible.

Why Machines Learn

The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI

Nate Silver

In the bestselling The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver showed how forecasting would define the age of Big Data. Now, in this timely and riveting new book, Silver investigates "The River," or those whose mastery of risk allows them to shape—and dominate—so much of modern life. 
 
These professional risk takers—poker players and hedge fund managers, crypto true-believers and blue-chip art collectors—can teach us much about navigating the uncertainty of the 21st century. By embedding within these worlds, Silver offers insight into a range of issues that affect us all, from the frontiers of finance to the future of AI. 
 
The River has increasing amounts of wealth and power in our society, and understanding their mindset—including the flaws in their thinking—is key to understanding what drives technology and the global economy today. There are certain commonalities in this otherwise diverse group: high tolerance for risk; appreciation of uncertainty; affinity for numbers; skill at de-coupling; self-reliance and a distrust of the conventional wisdom. For the River, complexity is baked in, and the work is how to navigate it, without going beyond the pale. 
 
Taking us behind-the-scenes from casinos to venture capital firms to meetings of the effective altruism movement, On the Edge is a deeply-reported, all-access journey into a hidden world of powerbrokers and risk takers.

On the Edge

The Art of Risking Everything

Noah Giansiracusa

In today’s data-driven world, maths is a weapon wielded by banks, insurance companies, tech firms, and government agencies. These organizations use sophisticated algorithms to calculate odds, make predictions, uncover patterns, manage risk, and optimize actions. And they treat you as another number to crunch along the way. 
 
Robin Hood Maths explains the mathematical methods these companies and agencies use to manipulate and profit off of you. It’s easy to assume these algorithms are too complex to even understand, let alone use for yourself. But maths professor Noah Giansiracusa makes the compelling case that anyone can use these same methods, without any special training or advanced knowledge. He offers simple hacks and streamlined formulas for beating the number crunchers at their own game. 
 
With Professor Giansiracusa as your guide, you’ll learn how to use maths to rescue your credit score and make better investments, take control of your social media, and reclaim agency over the decisions you make every day. In a society designed to take from the poor and give to the rich, maths has the potential to be a powerful democratizing force. Robin Hood Maths gives you the tools you need to think for yourself, act in your own best interest, and thrive.

Robin Hood Maths

Take Control of the Algorithms That Run Your Life

Matt Parker

Explore the life-changing magic of trigonometry with Matt Parker, stand-up mathematician and No. 1 bestselling author of Humble Pi 
 
Why can no two people ever see the same rainbow? What happens when you pull a pop song apart into pure sine waves and play it back on a piano? Why does the wake behind a duck always form an angle of exactly 39 degrees? And what did mathematicians have to do with the great pig stampede of 2012? The answer to each of these questions can be found in the triangle. 
 
In Love Triangle, stand-up comedian, ex-maths teacher and Sunday Times number one bestselling author Matt Parker is on a mission to prove why we should all show a lot more love for triangles, along with the useful trigonometry and geometry they enable. To make his point, he uses triangles to create his own digital avatar, survive a harrowing motorcycle ride, cut a sandwich into three equal parts, and measure tall buildings while wearing silly shoes. But soon these hare-brained experiments begin to reveal a genuinely important truth: triangles are the hidden pattern beneath the surface of the contemporary world, used in everything from GPS to CGI via Spotify streaming, the play button and your best mate&rsquo;s triangle tattoo. 
 
Join Matt Parker as he demonstrates why there&rsquo;s more to triangles than Pythagoras and SOHCAHTOA. Triangles are everything and everything is triangles.

Love Triangle

The Life-changing Magic of Trigonometry

Kelly Clancy

We play games to learn about the world, to understand our minds and the minds of others, and to make predictions about the future. They're also a lot of fun. But what happens when we mistake games for reality? 
 
Playing With Reality explores the riveting history of games since the Enlightenment, weaving an unexpected path through military theory, biology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, cognitive psychology and the future of democracy. As neuroscientist and physicist Kelly Clancy shows us, games have been deeply intertwined with the arc of history. War games shaped the outcomes of real wars in nineteenth and twentieth-century Europe. Game theory warped our understanding of human behaviour and brought us to the brink of annihilation - yet still underlies basic assumptions in economics, politics and technology. We used games to teach computers how to learn for themselves, and now we are designing games that will determine the shape of society and future of democracy. 
 
Lucid, thought-provoking, and masterfully told, Playing With Reality makes the bold argument that the human fascination with games is the key to understanding our nature.

Playing with Reality

How Games Shape Our World

J. Doyne Farmer

We live in an age of increasing complexity, where accelerating technology and global interconnection hold more promise – and more peril – than any other time in human history. The fossil fuels that have powered global wealth creation now threaten to destroy the world they helped build. Automation and digitization promise prosperity for some, unemployment for others. Financial crises fuel growing inequality, polarization and the retreat of democracy. At heart, all these problems are rooted in the economy, yet the guidance provided by economic models has often failed. 
 
Many books have been written about Doyne Farmer and his work, but Making Sense of Chaos is the first in his own words. It presents a manifesto for how to do economics better. A tale of science and ideas, Farmer fuses his profound knowledge and expertise with stories from his life to explain how we can bring a scientific revolution to bear on the economic conundrums facing society. 
 
Using big data and ever more powerful computers, we are now able for the first time to apply complex systems science to economic activity, building realistic models of the global economy. The resulting simulations and the emergent behavior we observe form the cornerstone of the science of complexity economics, allowing us to test ideas and make significantly better economic predictions – to better address the hard problems facing the world.

Making Sense of Chaos

A Better Economics for a Better World

Carlo Rovelli

Over two millennia ago, a Greek philosopher had a number of wondrous insights that paved the way to cosmology, physics, geography, meteorology and biology, setting in motion a new way of seeing the world. Anaximander's legacy includes the revolutionary idea that the earth floats in a void, that the world can be understood in natural rather than supernatural terms, that animals evolved, and that universal laws govern all phenomena. He introduced a new mode of rational thinking with an openness to uncertainty and to the progress of knowledge. 
 
In this elegant work, acclaimed physicist Carlo Rovelli brings to light the importance of Anaximander's overlooked legacy to modern science. He examines Anaximander as a scientist interested in shedding light on the deep nature of scientific thinking, which Rovelli locates in his rebellious ability to reimagine the world again and again. Anaximander celebrates the radical lack of certainty that defines the scientific quest for knowledge.

Anaximander

And the Nature of Science

Kiko Llaneras

&lsquo;Kiko Llaneras is one of the most consistently interesting data journalists to have emerged in the last decade&rsquo; 
John Burn-Murdoch, Chief data reporter, Financial Times 
 
It&rsquo;s almost impossible to feel confident we&rsquo;ve made the right choice when we are constantly faced with conflicting data. From choosing the right school for our children to understanding major social and political events, making informed decisions can feel overwhelming. In a world overflowing with data, it is more important than ever to decipher what the numbers tell us. 
 
Drawing on years of work interpreting and explaining data about almost anything, renowned data journalist Kiko Llaneras offers practical tools and shortcuts to help you understand the numbers and make better decisions using a quantitative lens. Through a series of compelling examples, he reveals some of the surprising insights that a data-driven perspective can offer such as: 
<ul><li>What caused the Chernobyl disaster</li><li>How Barack Obama made decisions and slept so peacefully during his presidency</li><li>Why so many footballers are born in January</li></ul> 
An essential guide for decoding the complexities of our modern world, Think Clearly will transform the way you view and use data in every aspect of your life.

Think Clearly

Eight Simple Rules to Succeed in the Data Age

David Spiegelhalter

We live in a world where uncertainty is inevitable. How should we deal with what we don’t know? And what role do chance, luck and coincidence play in our lives? 
 
David Spiegelhalter has spent his career dissecting data in order to understand risks and assess the chances of what might happen in the future. In The Art of Uncertainty, he gives readers a window onto how we can all do this better. 
 
In engaging, crystal-clear prose, he takes us through the principles of probability, showing how it can help us think more analytically about everything from medical advice to pandemics and climate change forecasts, and explores how we can update our beliefs about the future in the face of constantly changing experience. Along the way, he explains why roughly 40% of football results come down to luck rather than talent, how the National Risk Register assesses near-term risks to the United Kingdom, and why we can be so confident that two properly shuffled packs of cards have never, ever been in the exact same order. 
 
Drawing on a wide range of captivating real-world examples, this is an essential guide to navigating uncertainty while also having the humility to admit what we do not know.

The Art of Uncertainty

How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck

GCHQ

GCHQ is a top-secret intelligence and security agency which recruits some of the very brightest minds. Over the years, their codebreakers have helped keep Britain safe, from the Bletchley Park breakthroughs of WWII to the modern-day threat of cyberattack. So it comes as no surprise that, even in their time off, the staff at GCHQ love a good puzzle. Whether they're recruiting new staff or challenging each other to the toughest Christmas quizzes and treasure hunts imaginable, puzzles are at the heart of what GCHQ does. Here in this book they open up their archives to share decades' worth of codes, puzzles and challenges for everyone to try.

The GCHQ Puzzle Book

Perfect for anyone who likes a good headscratcher

GCHQ are back with a new collection of head-scratching, mind-boggling and brain-bending puzzles that will leave readers pondering for hours. 
 
For those who found themselves occasionally stumped with the first book, there will be even more starter puzzles to get those brains warmed up. Puzzle aficionados, meanwhile, can test themselves to the limit with an 'Even Harder' section. 
 
In celebration of GCHQ's over 100-year legacy the puzzles will be structured around vignettes of its history direct from the archives. providing exclusive snapshots into the organisation that keeps up all safe, making it a book to treasure.

The GCHQ Puzzle Book II

Gareth Moore

From the riddles of the ancients to puzzles that perplex the greatest minds of today, The Penguin Book of Puzzles is a glorious compendium of conundrums from throughout history, together for the first time in one collection. 
 
These challenges will require all the reader's wits to solve, but range from the easy to the brain-bending and are suitable for novice and veteran puzzlers alike. There is something here to suit every taste, including popular puzzles such as crosswords and sudoku, but also some surprising and intriguing types of puzzles that have been unearthed from centuries gone by.

The Penguin Book of Puzzles

Kate Kitagawa

Timothy Revell

Mathematics shapes almost everything we do. But despite its reputation as the study of fundamental truths, the stories we have been told about it are wrong. In The Secret Lives of Numbers, historian Kate Kitagawa and journalist Timothy Revell introduce readers to the mathematical boundary-smashers who have been erased by history because of their race, gender or nationality. 
 
From the brilliant Arabic scholars of the ninth-century House of Wisdom, and the pioneering African American mathematicians of the twentieth century, to the 'lady computers' around the world who revolutionised our knowledge of the night sky, we meet these fascinating trailblazers and see how they contributed to our global knowledge today. 
 
This revisionist, completely accessible and radically inclusive history of mathematics is as entertaining as it is important.

The Secret Lives of Numbers

A Global History of Mathematics & Its Unsung Trailblazers

A Global History of Mathematics & its Unsung Trailblazers

Chip Heath

Karla Starr

Until very recently, most languages had no words for numbers greater than five &ndash; anything from six to infinity was known as 'lots'. Understanding numbers is essential in the modern world, but we simply aren&rsquo;t built to understand them. 
 
What does 5GB of storage actually mean? (Two months of commutes, without repeating a song.) What&rsquo;s the size of a nucleus compared to a cell? (Imagine a bee in a cathedral.) How much bigger is a billion than a million? (Well, a million seconds is twelve days. A billion seconds is&hellip;thirty-two years.) 
 
Drawing on years of research into making ideas stick, Chip Heath and Karla Starr outline six critical principles that will give anyone the tools to understand and communicate numbers with more transparency and meaning. Offering practical principles to help us imagine numbers at all scales, Making Numbers Count shows us how to transform them into concrete, vivid and meaningful messages so that we can make better decisions every day.

Making Numbers Count

The art and science of communicating numbers

David Sumpter

Beyond all the facts and figures, there is just one question at the heart of science: what is the best way to think about the world? Yet in our everyday lives, this is something we rarely consider. How often do we wonder about our own thinking and how it might impact the way we approach our daily decisions? How it might help or hinder our relationships, our careers, or even our health? 
 
Acclaimed mathematician David Sumpter has spent decades pondering what we could all learn from the attitudes and mindsets of scientists. Four Ways of Thinking is the result. Combining engaging personal experience with insightful analyses of everyday conundrums and life choices - from how to bicker less with our partners to the best way to pitch to an unreceptive audience - Sumpter shows there are four easily applied approaches to our problems: statistical, interactive, chaotic and complex. 
 
With warmth and wit - and a tiny bit of number crunching - he guides us through all four, revealing how these tried and tested ways of thinking can change our lives. Along the way, he tells the inspiring stories of the ground-breaking mathematicians, biologists and rocket scientists who first put them into practice and transformed the world.

Four Ways of Thinking

Statistical, Interactive, Chaotic and Complex

The New York Times bestselling author returns with a mind-opening exploration of how size defines life on Earth. 
 
Explaining the key processes shaping size in nature, society and technology, Smil busts myths around proportions - from bodies to paintings and the so-called golden ratio - tells us what Jonathan Swift got wrong in Gulliver's Travels - the giant Brobdingnagian's legs would buckle under their enormous weight - and dives headfirst into the most contentious issue in ergonomics: the size of aeroplane seats. 
 
It is no exaggeration to say this fascinating and wide-ranging tour de force will change the way you look at absolutely everything.

Size

How It Explains the World

Julian Barbour

What is time? The Janus Point offers a ground-breaking solution to one of the greatest mysteries in physics. 
 
For over a century, the greatest minds have sought to understand why time seems to flow in one direction, ever forward. In The Janus Point, Julian Barbour offers a radically new answer: it doesn't. 
 
At the heart of this book, Barbour provides a new vision of the Big Bang - the Janus Point - from which time flows in two directions, its currents driven by the expansion of the universe and the growth of order in the galaxies, planets and life itself. What emerges is not just a revolutionary new theory of time, but a hopeful argument about the destiny of our universe. 
 
'Both a work of literature and a masterpiece of scientific thought' Lee Smolin, author of The Trouble with Physics 
 
'Profound...original...accessible to anyone who has pondered the mysteries of space and time' Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal 
 
'Takes on fundamental questions, offering a new perspective on how the Universe started and where it may be headed' Science Magazine

The Janus Point

A New Theory of Time

Melvyn Bragg

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 25 pivotal concepts, theorists and developments that have advanced the science of mathematics 
 
'Might be the best radio programme ever' Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian 
 
In Our Time is a Radio 4 phenomenon, a knowledge juggernaut that has informed and entertained over 2 million listeners each week since its first broadcast in 1998. In its 25 years on air, it has covered an astonishing array of topics, from the Second Law of Thermodynamics to the Sistine Chapel. 
 
Beginning with three introductory episodes, this specially curated collection explores 25 of the most important individuals, ideas and discoveries that have transformed our understanding of mathematics over the past 5,000 years. We learn how Indian mathematics provided the foundations for much of our modern thinking, discover why Euclid's Elements is the most influential textbook ever written and hear of the epic feud between Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over who invented calculus. 
 
Plus, we are introduced to influential mathematicians including Pythagoras, Blaise Pascal, Emmy Noether and Alan Turing, as well as key concepts, problems and puzzles such as negative numbers, infinity, Fermat's Last Theorem, the Poincaré conjecture and P v NP. 
 
Enlightening, thought-provoking and inspiring, these wide-ranging discussions make abstruse ideas accessible and demystify mathematics, showing how it shaped our world and made us who we are. 
 
Production credits 
Presented by Melvyn Bragg 
Produced by Simon Tillotson, Thomas Morris and Natalia Fernandez 
 
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on the following dates: 
 
Part I: Context 
Mathematics 6 May 1999 
Mathematics and Platonism 11 January 2001 
Mathematics' Unintended Consequences 11 February 2010 
 
Part II: History of Mathematics 
Indian Mathematics 14 December 2006 
Euclid's Elements 28 April 2016 
Maths in the Early Islamic World 16 February 2017 
Renaissance Maths 2 June 2005 
Calculus 24 September 2009 
 
Part III: Influential Mathematicians 
Pythagoras 10 December 2009 
Archimedes 25 January 2007 
Blaise Pascal 19 September 2013 
Emilie du Châtelet 4 February 2021 
Carl Friedrich Gauss 30 November 2017 
Ada Lovelace 6 March 2008 
Emmy Noether 24 January 2019 
Alan Turing 15 October 2020 
 
Part IV: Key Concepts 
Zero 13 May 2004 
Prime Numbers 12 January 2006 
Negative Numbers 9 March 2006 
e 25 September 2014 
Pi 2 September 2004 
Imaginary Numbers 23 September 2010 
Infinity 23 October 2003 
 
Part V: Problems and Puzzles 
Zeno's Paradoxes 22 September 2016 
Fermat's Last Theorem 25 October 2012 
The Poincaré Conjecture 2 November 2006 
Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems 9 October 2008 
P v NP 5 November 2015 
 
© 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd.

In Our Time: 25 Theories and Thinkers in the History of Mathematics

A BBC Radio 4 Collection

Tony Padilla

For particularly brilliant theoretical physicists like James Clerk Maxwell, Paul Dirac or Albert Einstein, the search for mathematical truths - via ever more mind-boggling numbers - led to strange new understandings of reality. But what are these mysterious numbers that explain the universe? 
 
In Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them, leading theoretical physicist and YouTube star Antonio Padilla takes us on an irreverent cosmic tour of nine of the most extraordinary numbers in physics. These include Graham's number, which is so large that if you thought about it in the wrong way, your head would collapse into a singularity; TREE(3), whose finite value could never be reached before the universe reset itself; and 10^{-120}, which measures the desperately unlikely balance of energy the universe needs to exist. . . 
 
Leading us down the rabbit hole to the inner workings of reality, Padilla demonstrates how these unusual numbers are the key to unlocking such mind-bending phenomena as black holes, entropy and the problem of the cosmological constant, which shows that our two best ways of understanding the universe contradict one another. Combining cutting-edge science with an entertaining cosmic quest, Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them is an electrifying, head-twisting guide to the most fundamental truths of the universe.

Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them

A Journey to the Edge of Physics

Darrell Huff

In 1954, Darrell Huff decided enough was enough. Fed up with politicians, advertisers and journalists using statistics to sensationalise, inflate, confuse, oversimplify and - on occasion - downright lie, he decided to shed light on their ill-informed and sneaky ways. How to Lie with Statistics is the result - the definitive and hilarious primer in the ways statistics are used to deceive. 
 
With over one and half million copies sold around the world, it has delighted generations of readers with its cheeky takes on the ins and outs of samples, averages, errors, graphs and indexes. And in the modern world of big data and misinformation, Huff remains the perfect guide through the maze of facts and figures that are designed to make us believe anything.

How to Lie with Statistics

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

We have never had so much information at our fingertips and yet most of us don't know how the world really works. This book explains seven of the most fundamental realities governing our survival and prosperity. From energy and food production, through our material world and its globalization, to risks, our environment and its future, How the World Really Works offers a much-needed reality check - because before we can tackle problems effectively, we must understand the facts. 
 
 In this ambitious and thought-provoking book we see, for example, that globalization isn't inevitable and that our societies have been steadily increasing their dependence on fossil fuels, making their complete and rapid elimination unlikely. Drawing on the latest science and tackling sources of misinformation head on - from Yuval Noah Harari to Noam Chomsky - ultimately Smil answers the most profound question of our age: are we irrevocably doomed or is a brighter utopia ahead?

How the World Really Works

A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future

Steven Pinker

In the twenty-first century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that discovered vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, quack cures and conspiracy theorizing? 
 
 In Rationality, Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are simply an irrational species. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives and set the benchmarks for rationality itself. Instead, he explains, we think in ways that suit the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning we have built up over millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, and decision-making under uncertainty. These tools are not a standard part of our educational curricula, and have never been presented clearly and entertainingly in a single book - until now. 
 
 Rationality matters. It leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere, and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress. Brimming with insight and humour, Rationality will enlighten, inspire and empower.

Rationality

What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters

Ananyo Bhattacharya

The smartphones in our pockets and computers like brains. The vagaries of game theory and evolutionary biology. Nanotechnology and nuclear weapons. All bear the fingerprints of one remarkable man: John von Neumann. 
 
Born in Budapest at the turn of the century, von Neumann is one of the most influential scientists to have ever lived. His colleagues believed he had the fastest brain on the planet - bar none. He was instrumental in the Manhattan Project and helped formulate the bedrock of Cold War geopolitics and modern economic theory. He created the first ever programmable digital computer. He prophesied the potential of nanotechnology and, from his deathbed, expounded on the limits of brains and computers - and how they might be overcome. 
 
Taking us on an astonishing journey, Ananyo Bhattacharya explores how a combination of genius and unique historical circumstance allowed a single man to sweep through so many different fields of science, sparking revolutions wherever he went. Insightful and illuminating, The Man from the Future is a thrilling intellectual biography of the visionary thinker who shaped our century.

The Man from the Future

The Visionary Life of John von Neumann

Jordan Ellenberg

How should a democracy choose its representatives? How can you stop a pandemic from sweeping the world? How do computers learn to play chess? Can ancient Greek proportions predict the stock market? (Sorry, no.) What should your kids learn in school if they really want to learn to think? The answers to all these questions can be found in geometry. 
 
In Shape, Sunday Times-bestselling author Jordan Ellenberg reveals the geometry underneath some of the most important scientific, political, and philosophical problems we face, from the spread of coronavirus to rise of machine learning. The word 'geometry,' from the Greek, means 'measuring the world.' But geometry doesn't just measure the world - it explains it. Shape shows us how.

Shape

The Hidden Geometry of Absolutely Everything

Daniel Coyle

***OUT NOW - THE NEW BOOK FROM DAN COYLE: FLOURISH: THE ART OF BUILDING MEANING, JOY AND FULFILMENT*** 
 
What is great culture made of? How do you get more of it, or turn around a group that needs improving? In The Culture Playbook, Daniel Coyle delivers a field-tested guide for building strong, cohesive, high-performing groups. 
 
Coyle, author of the New York Times bestselling The Culture Code, has spent the last six years studying and consulting with some of the most successful groups on the planet - including Pixar, Navy SEALS Team 6 and others. Here, he distils his findings into 60 concise, actionable, scientifically proven tips for building safety, generating trust, and establishing purpose - plus a set of conversation-igniting exercises to help you assess and improve your current culture. 
 
The result is a book that will sharpen the skills of any leader and strengthen the cohesion of any team - because it demonstrates that great culture is not controlled by fate or luck; it's controlled by you. 
 
Praise for The Culture Code 
 
'A truly brilliant, mesmerising read that demystifies the magic of great groups. It blows all other books on culture right out of the water. Read it immediately.' Adam Grant, author of Originals 
 
'An essential book that unlocks the secrets of highly successful groups and provides readers with a toolkit for building a cohesive, innovative culture.' Business Insider

The Culture Playbook

60 Highly Effective Actions to Help Your Group Succeed

George Polya

How to Solve It offers something unique: a tried and tested set of strategies for overcoming any maths dilemma. Based on decades of analysis of the methods and rules of problem solving and invention, acclaimed mathematician George Pólya's approach brilliantly demonstrates how to create useful analogies, tackle problems from unusual angles and how to squeeze a little more information from the data. While maths can often seem nothing more than a process of dry deduction, Pólya wonderfully conveys the challenge and excitement at the heart of any problem, and lays out the blueprint for unpicking the riddles they pose. 
 
With more than a million copies sold around the world, How to Solve It has inspired generations of teachers and students to look afresh at maths - and continues to be the definitive guide to mathematical problem solving.

How to Solve It

A New Aspect of Mathematical Method

Milo Beckman

The only numbers in this book are the page numbers. 
 
Math Without Numbers is a vivid and wholly original guide to the three main branches of abstract math - topology, analysis, and algebra - which turn out to be surprisingly easy to grasp. Milo Beckerman upends the conventional approach to mathematics, inviting you to think creatively about shape and dimension, the infinite and infinitesimal, symmetries, proofs, and how these concepts all fit together. How many shapes are there? Is anything bigger than infinity? And can mathematics even be described as 'true'?

Math Without Numbers

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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