Species evolve over time to become perfectly adapted to their environments, right?{::} Well, sometimes.Consider that an elephant will not grow a seventh set of teeth, even though wearing down the sixth will condemn it to starvation; that hosts of the European cuckoo seem unable to tell that the overgrown monster in their nest is not their own chick; and that whales are fully aquatic mammals who, millions of years after first abandoning the land, sti...

A NATURE BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE MAIL ON SUNDAY'Superb... A testament to just how beautiful and wonderful life on Earth is ' Times Literary Supplement'Fascinating' Guardian'Brilliant' Daily MailFrom scorching deserts to frozen seabeds, from the highest peaks of the Himalaya to the hadal depths of the ocea...

'An important, fascinating and frequently shocking read.' - BERNARDINE EVARISTO, author of Girl, Woman, OtherCovering a fascinating period of population growth, high infant mortality and deep social inequality, rapid medical advances and pseudoscientific quackery, Confinement is the untold history of pregnancy and childbirth in Victorian Britain.During the nineteenth century, having children was frequently viewed ...

**LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024**‘Unmissable’ Stephen Fry'A delight' Katherine Rundell‘Illuminating’ Susie Dent'Brilliant' Philippa Perry'Enthralling' Jeanette WintersonWhat do three murderers, Karl Marx's daughter and a vegetarian vicar have in common?They all helped create the Oxford English D...

*** A Financial Times Book of the Year * A Sunday Times and Mail on Sunday Summer Read *HOLD THE POWER AND GLORY OF ANCIENT ROME IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND.'Fantastic ... expert storytelling'** CONN IGGULDEN'Excellent' SUNDAY TIMES'Riveting and utterly original' MAIL ON SUNDAYA wild she-wolf tenderly nurses infant twins Romulus and Remus.Marcus Junius Brutu...

The Instant Sunday Times BestsellerLearn how to recognise and resist the daily attempts to control and manipulate your mind.There is a war on for your mind. You may not notice, but you are surrounded by manipulators: advertisers, politicians, big tech, even the humble waiter who asks, ‘Still or sparkling?’Free Your Mind is your field manual to surviving the information battlefield. In this indispensable book, Laura Dodsworth and Patrick Fagan draw ...

Some 66 million years ago, an asteroid some seven miles across slammed into the Earth, leaving a geologic wound over 50 miles in diameter. In the terrible mass extinction that followed, more than half of known species vanish seemingly overnight. But this worst single day in the history of life of Earth was as critical for us as it was for the dinosaurs, as it allowed for evolutionary opportunities that were closed for the previous 100 million years. In The Last Days of...

'Winston's daughters Diana, Sarah and Mary witnessed some of history's most defining moments … Now it's time for their stories to be heard.' – The Mail on SundayBright, attractive and well-connected, in any other family the Churchill sisters – Diana, Sarah, Marigold and Mary – would have shone. But they were not in any other family, they were Churchills and neither they nor anyone else could ever forget it.From their fathe...

One of the world's most celebrated cosmologists presents her breakthrough explanation of our origins in the multiverse.'Fascinating' ROGER PENROSE, Nobel laureate'What if our universe is but an infinitesimal fragment of reality? What would this "multiverse" be like? There is no better guide to the bizarre, and sometimes paradoxical, cosmic super-realm than Laura Mersini-Houghton' Paul Davies, author of What's Eating the...

Everyone knows the story of the codebreaker and computer science pioneer Alan Turing.Except …When Dermot Turing is asked about his famous uncle, people want to know more than the bullet points of his life. They want to know everything – was Alan Turing actually a codebreaker? What did he make of artificial intelligence? What is the significance of Alan Turing's trial, his suicide, the Royal Pardon, the £50 note and the film The...

This sweeping history of thirteenth century England examines how the successive reigns of two very different kings established the English way of life.In 1204, the great Angevin Empire was fragmenting under King John's rule. Unable to withstand France's invasion of Normandy, John also faced difficult relations with the papacy, and rising dissent among his barons. By the time John died in 1216, the failed Magna Carta gave way to civil conflict, and more than half of ...

'As heroes we were widely known – with keen spears we cut blood from bone.'In 2017, DNA tests revealed to the collective shock of many scholars that a Viking warrior in a high-status grave in Birka, Sweden, was actually a woman. The Real Valkyrie weaves together archaeology, history and literature to reinvent her life and times, showing that Viking women had more power and agency than historians have imagined.Nancy Marie Brown link...