Comedian Robin Ince quickly abandoned science at school, bored by a fog of dull lessons and intimidated by the barrage of equations. But, twenty years later, he fell in love and he now presents one of the world's most popular science podcasts. Every year he meets hundreds of the world's greatest thinkers. In this erudite and witty book, Robin reveals why scientific wonder isn't just for the professionals. Filled with interviews featuring astronauts,...

Discover and understand the key ideas that underpin the core science of chemistry and learn about the great minds who uncovered them. Written in plain English, 'The Chemistry Book' is packed with short, pithy explanations of some of the most historic moments in science, from the birth of atomic theory to the discovery of polythene and the development of new vaccine technologies to combat COVID-19. Simple graphics, such as flowcharts and mind maps,...

The hare, a night creature and country-dweller, is a rare sight for most people. We know them only from legends and stories. They are shape-shifters, witches' familiars and symbols of fertility. They are arrogant, as in Aesop's 'The Hare and the Tortoise,' and absurd, as in Lewis Carroll's 'Mad March Hare.' In the absence of observed facts, speculation and fantasy have flourished. But real hares? What are they like? In 'The Private Life of the Hare,'...

Do you sometimes dream you can fly like a bird? Gliding effortlessly above the treetops, soaring and swooping, playing and dodging through the third dimension. Computer games, virtual reality headsets, and some drugs can lift our imagination and fly us through fabled, magical spaces. But it's not the real thing. No wonder some of the past's greatest minds, including Leonardo da Vinci's, have yearned for flying machines and struggled to design them....

In 1954, a young television presenter named David Attenborough was offered the opportunity of a lifetime - to travel the world finding rare and elusive animals for London Zoo's collection, and to film the expeditions for the BBC. Now 'the greatest living advocate of the global ecosystem' this is the story of the voyages that started it all. Staying with local tribes while trekking in search of giant anteaters in Guyana, Komodo dragons in Indonesia...

Echoing Sherlock Holmes' famous dictum, John Gribbin tells us: 'Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, is certainly possible, in the light of present scientific knowledge.' With that in mind, in his sequel to the hugely popular 'Six Impossible Things and Seven Pillars of Science', Gribbin turns his attention to some of the mind-bendingly improbable truths of science.

Accompanying a major 5-part BBC series presented by David Attenborough and produced by the team behind Planet Earth and Blue Planet, this volume is an exploration of the unique conditions that make life on Earth possible, and how our wildlife is perfectly adapted to its environment. There is no place like home. The conditions of Earth are not just good for life, they are perfect. Everything about our planet - its size, its distance from the Sun, its...

Bird migration remains perhaps the most singularly compelling natural phenomenon in the world. Nothing else combines its global sweep with its inherent ability to engender wonder and excitement. The past two decades have seen an explosion in our understanding of the almost unfathomable feats of endurance and complexity involved in bird migration - yet the science that informs these majestic journeys is still relatively in its infancy. Pulitzer Prize-shortlisted...

This book is crammed full of tales of how stuff really works. With the power of science, Rutherford and Fry show us how to bypass our monkey-brains, taking us on a journey from the origin of time and space, via planets, galaxies, evolution, the dinosaurs, all the way into our minds, and wrestling with some truly head-scratching questions that only science can answer.

Much more than just another field guide or a natural history of butterflies, this book explores the ways in which butterflies delight and inspire us all, naturalists and non-naturalists alike. In this uniquely eloquent and deeply personal book, naturalist Peter Marren explores the special place that butterflies hold in our hearts, in our cultural lives and in our imagination and recalls his own lifetime's obsession with these ephemeral creatures.