Rhetoric is what gives words power. It's nothing to be afraid of. It isn't the exclusive preserve of politicians: it's everywhere, from your argument with the insurance company to your plea to the waitress for a table near the window. It convicts criminals (and then frees them on appeal). It causes governments to rise and fall, best men to be shunned by brides, and people to march with steady purpose towards machine guns.In this highly entertaining (and persuasive) book, Sam Leith examines...

From Newton's Law of Gravity to the Black-Scholes model used by bankers to predict the markets, equations, are everywhere - and they are fundamental to everyday life. Seventeen Equations that Changed the World examines seventeen groundbreaking equations that have altered the course of human history. He explores how Pythagoras's Theorem led to GPS and SatNav; how logarithms are applied in architecture; why imaginary numbers were important in the development of the digital camera, and what i...

**The First Ever Maths Book to be a No.1 Bestseller**'Wonderful ... superb' Daily MailWhat makes a bridge wobble when it's not meant to? Billions of dollars mysteriously vanish into thin air? A building rock when its resonant frequency matches a gym class leaping to Snap's 1990 hit I've Got The Power? The answer is maths. Or, to be precise, what happens when maths goes wrong in the real world.As Matt Parker shows us...

*THE PHENOMENAL INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER – 3 MILLION COPIES SOLDThe iconic bestseller Prisoners of Geography, now fully updated with brand new content to reflect the changing global geopolitical landscape since it was first published in 2015'One of the best books about geopolitics you could imagine.' Evening StandardPrisoners of Geography is the book people need to underst...

'A brilliant, authoritative, surprising, captivating introduction to human genetics. You'll be spellbound' Brian CoxThis is a story about you.It is the history of who you are and how you came to be. It is unique to you, as it is to each of the 100 billion modern humans who have ever drawn breath. But it is also our collective story, because in every one of our genomes we each carry the history of our species - births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration...

Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? Why did the Japanese kill Godzilla with missiles made of cadmium (Cd, 48)? How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie Curie's reputation? And why did tellurium (Te, 52) lead to the most bizarre gold rush in history?The periodic table is one of our crowning scientific achievements, but it's also a treasure trove of passion, adventure, betrayal and obsession. The fascinating tales in The Disappearing Spoon follow carbon, neon, silicon, gold and ever...

BBC R4 Book of the Week ‘Brilliant’ Guardian ‘Fascinating and often delightful’ The TimesWhat if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter?In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself – a story...

The Quantum Universe brings together two authors on a brilliantly ambitious mission to show that everyone can understand the deepest questions of science.But just what is quantum physics? How does it help us understand the world? Where does it leave Newton and Einstein? And why, above all, can we be sure that the theory is good?The bizarre behaviour of the atoms and energy that make up the universe has led to some very woolly pronouncements on the nature of all int...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'If only chemistry had been like this at school' Matt Ridley, Prospect________________Elements. Everything in the universe is made of them, including you. And like you, the elements have personalities, attitudes, talents, shortcomings, stories rich with meaning.Here you'll meet iron that rains from the heavens. You'll learn how lead can tell your f...

'The physicist transforming how we see the universe' Financial Times'An utter joy' Adam RutherfordDo space and time truly exist? What is reality made of? Can we understand its deep texture? Scientist Carlo Rovelli has spent his whole life exploring these questions and pushing the boundaries of what we know. In this mind-expanding book, he shows how our understanding of reality has changed throughout centuries, from Democritus to lo...

THE NO.1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'A beautiful little book by a brilliant mind' DAILY TELEGRAPH'Effortlessly instructive, absorbing, up to the minute and - where it matters - witty' GUARDIANThe world-famous cosmologist and #1 bestselling author of A Brief History of Time leaves us with his final thoughts on the universe's biggest questions in this brilliant posthumous work.Is there a God?How did it all...

This book answers the most obvious, the most important, yet the most difficult question about human history: why history unfolded so differently on different continents. Geography and biogeography, not race, moulded the contrasting fates of Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, and aboriginal Australians.An ambitious synthesis of history, biology, ecology and linguistics, Guns, Germs and Steel is one of the most important and humane works of popular sc...