Counting: Humans, History and the Infinite Lives of Numbers
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO COUNT? WHY ARE HUMANS THE ONLY SPECIES ON EARTH THAT CAN DO IT? WHERE DID COUNTING COME FROM? HOW HAS IT SHAPED SOCIETIES ALONG THE WAY? AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?
Anthropology
Influence: Understand it, Use it, Resist it
One of the government’s former behavioural scientists reveals how you can do what you want, whilst everybody tries to influence you into doing what they want.
Painted People: 5,000 Years of Tattooed History from Sailors and Socialites to Mummies and Kings
In 1881, a writer in the Saturday Review called tattooing ‘an art without a history’. ‘No-one’, it went on, ‘has made it the business of his life to study the development of tattooing.’
Until now.
The Sloth Lemur’s Song: Madagascar from the Deep Past to the Uncertain Present
‘Full of wonder and forensic intelligence’ Isabella Tree, author of Wilding
A moving account of Madagascar told by a researcher who has spent over fifty years investigating the mysteries of this remarkable island.
Jews Don’t Count: Unabridged edition
How identity politics failed one particular identity.
‘a must read and if you think YOU don’t need to read it, that’s just the clue to know you do.’ SARAH SILVERMAN
‘a masterpiece.’STEPHEN FRY
5 Appetites: Eat Like the Animals for a Naturally Healthy Diet
A New Scientist Best Book of 2020
How is it that a baboon and a blob of slime mould instinctively know what to eat for optimal health, balancing their protein, fat and carb intake in perfect proportions?
Sea People: In Search of the Ancient Navigators of the Pacific
Winner of the 2020 Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award for nonfiction and the 2019 NSW Premier’s History Awards for general history
‘Wonderfully researched and beautifully written’ Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan
‘Succeeds in conjuring a lost world’ Dava Sobel, author of Longitude
The Mysterious World of the Human Genome
How could a relatively simple chemical code give rise to the complexity of a human being? How could our human genome have evolved? And how does it actually work?
Collins New Naturalist Library – Inheritance and Natural History (Collins New Naturalist Library, Book 61)
Ever wondered why primroses have three sorts of flowers; or about pesticide resistance in rats and mice, mosquitoes and green-fly; antibiotic resistance in disease organisms – all are examples of genetical adjustment, explained in this book.
The Irish Are Coming
In the follow-up to his bestselling JFK in Ireland, the Emerald Isle’s favourite son delves into his country’s past to celebrate the Irish people who through their skills and endeavours helped make the British Isles Great.
Collins New Naturalist Library – The Natural History of Wales (Collins New Naturalist Library, Book 66)
This book is an attempt to survey the natural history of the whole of Wales. It therefore covers such areas as Snowdonia and the Brecon Beacons as well as the spectacularly beautiful Pembrokeshire coast and the less well-known but no less interesting areas of mid-Wales.