Showing results by publisher "Hodder & Stoughton" in Science & Engineering

Challenging what you know and think about your own body and how it defends you against all sorts of maladies and how it might also eventually be your own downfall, Immune is a vital and remarkably fun crash course in what is arguably, and increasingly, the most important system in the body.

Since 2006, Twitter has grown from 100 obsessive users to more than 500 million today - over 32 million of those in the UK alone. But how did such a radical transformation happen in just five years, and what does it mean for business, politics and the internet?

Ever since we first started discovering dinosaurs in the early 1800s, our obsession for uncovering everything about these creatures has been insatiable. Each generation has made huge strides in trying to better our understanding of these animals, and in the past 20 years, we have made more discoveries than in the previous 200. There have been extraordinary advances in palaeontological methods, and ever more dinosaur fossils promise a landslide of new data and huge leaps forward in our understanding of these incredible animals.

From the humble garden lawnmower to the ear-splitting electric guitar, James May returns with a typically wacky account of what makes these great machines work, one piece at a time. Reassembly is merely a form of therapy; something that stimulates a part of my brain that is left wanting in my daily life. When I rebuild a bicycle, I reorder my head. So might you....

​Hopeful, accessible, winsome, and deeply wise, The Road to Wisdom leads us beyond current animosities to surer footing. Here is the moral, philosophical, and scientific framework with which to address the problems of our time - on the world stage, but also in our daily lives.

The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is your guide through this maze of modern life. It covers essential critical thinking skills as well as giving insight into how your brain works and how to avoid common pitfalls in thinking. They discuss the difference between science and pseudoscience, how to recognise common science news tropes, how to discuss conspiracy theories with that crazy colleague of yours and how to apply all of this to everyday life. As fascinating as it is entertaining, this enthralling audiobook is your essential guide to our increasingly confusing world.

In Carbolics the UK's favourite petrol head (after Clarkson and Hammond) James May answers these questions and more. Across 80 essays, James gives his quirky, entertaining take on cars, motorbikes, trucks—and explains why the bicycle might just be the best invention of all.

What if human intelligence is actually more of a liability than a gift? After all, the animal kingdom, in all its diversity, gets by just fine without it. At first glance, human history is full of remarkable feats of intelligence, yet human exceptionalism can be a double-edged sword. With our unique cognitive prowess comes severe consequences, including existential angst, violence, discrimination and the creation of a world teetering towards climate catastrophe. What if human exceptionalism is more of a curse than a blessing?

We have the impression that the solar system is perfectly regular like a clock or a planetarium instrument. On a short time scale it is. But seen in a longer perspective, the planets and their satellites have exciting lives, full of events - for example, did you know that Saturn's moon, Titan, boasts lakes which contain liquid methane surrounded by soaring hills and valleys, exactly as the earth did before life evolved on our fragile planet?

An energy expert shows why hydrogen can fight climate change and become the fuel of the future. That may sound too good to be true, but as energy expert Marco Alverà explains, if we're going to heal the climate, we need to start thinking big. This audiobook is the blueprint for how to get us there. This is a guidebook for how to save the world and whether you are a policy maker, a business person, an activist, or simply curious, the message is this: there is hope, for us and our planet. The best part about hydrogen is that when you burn it, the only by-product is water.

Timepieces are one of humanity's most ingenious innovations. Their invention was more significant for human culture than the printing press, or even the wheel. They have travelled the world with us, from the depths of the oceans to the summit of Everest, and even to the Moon. They regulate our daily lives and have sculpted the social and economic development of society in surprising and dramatic ways.

This book comes at a critical time. Thirty years ago, Africa was home to a million elephants; today the figure stands at less than half that. Meanwhile in the span of a lifetime, the human population has more than doubled. In Levison Wood's The Last Giants, he explores the rapid decline of one of the world's favourite animals. Filled with stories from his own time spent travelling with elephants in Africa, the book is a passionate wake-up call for this endangered species we take for granted.

A dog's guide to life - how to be a kinder, compassionate, more mindful and wiser human. Anyone who has ever fallen hopelessly in love with a dog will know dogs have the capacity to love us back unconditionally, welcome us home with unbridled excitement, forgive us endlessly for our impatience, comfort us when we're feeling low - and then play games with wholehearted contentment, bringing endless joy to our lives.

Four-and-a-half billion years ago, Planet Earth was formed from a vast spinning nebula of cosmic dust, the detritus left over from the birth of the sun. Within the next 100 years, human life on swathes of the Earth's surface will end in a haze of heat, drought, and, again, dust. Dust is a legacy of 20th-century progress and a profound threat to life in the 21st century. And yet dust is something we hardly ever consider--it is so small and so mundane as to be beyond the threshold of thought. Jay Owen's Dust sparks curiosity and corrects that oversight.

Life After Doom is a sober analysis of how things stand in relation to climate breakdown, and a deeply insightful exploration of the challenge of living well, maintaining resilience and growing in wisdom and love in the face of nations, ecosystems, economies, religions, and other institutions in disarray.

In our deluge of information, it's getting harder and harder to distinguish the revelatory from the contradictory. How do we make health decisions in the face of conflicting medical advice? How can we navigate the next uncomfortable discussion with family members, who follow completely different experts on climate? In Third Millennium Thinking, a physicist, a psychologist, and a philosopher introduce listeners to the tools and frameworks that scientists use to keep from fooling themselves, to understand the world, and to make decisions.

One of the most inspiring women of our age, Mary Robinson has spent her life in pursuit of a fairer world. Now, for the first time, she reveals what lies behind the vision, strength and determination that has helped her to achieve so much for human rights around the globe. She describes the upbringing which gave her strong sense of values and how, as her personal convictions grew, she came into painful conflict with her parents.

Leading neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow draws vividly from everyday life and other experts in their field to show the extraordinary potential as well as dangers which come with being able to predict our likely futures - and looking at how we can alter what's in store for us. Lucid, illuminating, awe-inspiring, The Science of Fate revolutionises our understanding of who we are - and empowers us to help shape a better future for ourselves and the wider world.

In Vaxxers, we hear directly from Professor Gilbert and her colleague, Dr Catherine Green, as they reveal the inside story of making the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and the cutting-edge science and sheer hard work behind it. This is their story of fighting a pandemic as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Sarah and Cath share the heart-stopping moments in the eye of the storm, they separate fact from fiction, they explain how they made a safe vaccine in record time with the eyes of the world watching and they give us hope for the future.

In Incredible Journeys, award-winning author David Barrie takes us on a tour of the cutting-edge science of animal navigation, where breakthroughs are allowing scientists to unravel, for the first time, how animals as various as butterflies, birds, crustaceans, fish, reptiles and even people find their way. Weaving interviews with leading experts on animal behaviour with the groundbreaking discoveries of Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientists, Barrie shines a light on the astounding skills of animals of every stripe.