Showing results by publisher "Simon & Schuster Audio UK" in Science & Engineering

Mammals you never knew existed will enter your world. Birds hidden in treetops will shed their cloak of anonymity. With a single movement of your hand you can make reptiles appear before you. Butterflies you never saw before will bring joy to every sunny day. Creatures of the darkness will enter your consciousness. And as you take on new techniques and a little new equipment, you will discover new creatures and, with them, new areas of yourself that had gone dormant. Once put to use, they wake up and start working again. 

There are stories in all our discarded things: who made them, what they meant to a person before they were thrown away. In the end, it all ends up in the same place – the endless ingenuity of humanity in one filthy, fascinating mass. When we throw things ‘away’, what does that actually mean? Where does it go, and who deals with it when it gets there? In Wasteland, award-winning journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis takes us on an eye-opening journey through the global waste industry.

With the devastating effects of Covid-19 still rattling the foundations of our global civilization, we live in unprecedented times – or so we might think. But pandemics have been a constant presence throughout human history, as humans and disease live side by side. Over the centuries, our ability to react to these sweeping killers has evolved, most notably through the development of vaccines.

Beginning on August 17, 1942, American heavy bomber crews of the Eighth Air Force took off for combat in the hostile skies over occupied Europe. The final price was staggering. 4,300 B-17s and B-24s failed to return; nearly 28,000 men were taken prisoner or interned in a neutral country, and a further 26,000 made the ultimate sacrifice. Luck of the Draw is more than a war story. It’s the incredible, inspiring story of Frank Murphy, one of the few survivors from the 100th Bombardment Group, who cheated death for months in a German POW camp after being shot out of his B-17 Flying Fortress.

In The Irrational Ape, David Robert Grimes shows how we can be lured into making critical mistakes or drawing false conclusions, and how to avoid such errors. Given the power of modern science and the way that movements can unite to protest a cause via social media, we are in dangerous times. But fortunately, we can learn from our mistakes, and by critical thinking and scientific method we can discover how to apply these techniques to everything from deciding what insurance to buy to averting global disaster.

Self-confessed bad birdwatcher Simon Barnes thought he knew nothing about plants. He didn't object to them: trees are interesting, because birds perch in them; plants are useful as they create habitats and birds live in habitats. But while admiring the tenacity of some sea kale and yellow-horned poppy to thrive on an inhospitable shingle beach, he was struck by a truth - it all begins with plants. In this funny and inspiring book, Simon Barnes tells the story of a lifelong relationship with plants, and the realisation of the fact.

It all started with a Hob Nob. As Dr Matt Morgan, an intensive care consultant, examined a patient who had suffered a cardiac arrest after inhaling some biscuit crumbs, he saw a flock of birds fly past the window. They must inhale objects all the time when flying, how do they survive? he thought to himself. This began an investigation that spanned continents, species and millennia. For animal science has so much to teach us about human medicine. While some of the overlaps and parallels are obvious, there is so much more that we have learnt from the animal world. 

Nichol tells the remarkable tale of how the ejection seat was first conceived during the Second World War as countless lives were lost in accidents and in battle. In the wake of the war, that technological race to save aircrew lives using explosive seats continued at an incredible pace. Nichol tells the story of the brave men who risked their lives testing those early devices, and interviewed the first British pilot to eject back in 1949, when ejection, from pulling the handle to being under the parachute, took thirty seconds. Today, that figure is down to around one second.

Climate change is the defining issue of our time - we know, beyond reasonable doubt, what that science now tells us. Just as climate change is accelerating, so too must we - summoning up a greater sense of urgency, courage and shared endeavour than humankind has ever seen before. The Age of Climate Change is an age of superlatives, but Porritt is optimistic. He believes we have time to do what needs to be done, but only if we move now - and move together.

In the autumn of 2020, Simon Barnes should have been leading a safari in Zambia, but COVID restrictions meant his plans had to be put on hold. Instead, he embarked on the only voyage of discovery that was still open to him. He walked to a folding chair at the bottom of his garden, and sat down. His itinerary: to sit in that very same spot every day for a year and to see - and hear - what happened all around him. It would be a stationary garden safari; his year of sitting dangerously had begun.

In the wake of a traumatic lockdown, Nancy Campbell buys an old caravan and drives it into a strip of neglected woodland between a canal and railway. It is the first home she has ever owned. As summer begins, Nancy embraces the challenge of how to live well in a space in which possessions and emotions often threaten to tumble—clearing industrial junk from the soil to help wild beauty flourish. But when illness and uncertainty loom once more, it is this van anchored in the woods, and the unconventional friendships forged off -grid, that will bring her solace and hope.

In Icebound, Andrea Pitzer combines a movie-worthy tale of survival with a sweeping history of the period - a time of hope, adventure and seemingly unlimited scientific and geographic frontiers. At the story’s centre is William Barents, one of the 16th century’s greatest navigators, whose larger-than-life ambitions and obsessive quest to find a path through the deepest, most remote regions of the Arctic ended in both catastrophe and glory.

Mo Wilde made a quiet but radical pledge: to live only off free, foraged food for an entire year. In a world disconnected from its roots, eating wild food is both culinary and healing, social and political. Ultimately, it is an act of love and community. Using her expert knowledge of botany and mycology, Mo follows the seasons to find nutritious food from hundreds of species of plants, fungi and seaweeds, and in the process learns not just how to survive, but how to thrive. Nourishing her body and mind deepens her connection with the earth—a connection that we all hunger for.

We are living in a golden age for discoveries about the universe. Over the last few decades, space exploration has revealed that not only are there habitable environments within our solar system, but there are hundreds of millions of exoplanets within our galaxy that could support life. We are on the cusp of discoveries that will revolutionize our understanding of our place in creation. Yet a profound question remains to be answered: are we alone in the universe? We have never been closer to answering this question.

The Lightning Thread takes the listener on a journey of unexpected delight, personal pleasure and profound discovery. From angling with his father on a spating burn at the height of the Profumo Affair to knocking back mojitos while hunting for Permit, ‘the Robocop of the sea’, off the coast of Cuba. Much more than just another book about fishing, The Lightning Thread is an exploration of joy and a celebration of simple pleasures in a too complicated world. 

For almost all human history, we've been firmly rooted to the Earth. And sure, it's got some good things going for it: nice views, friendly inhabitants, good coffee. Air. But what if you want to get off? Whether you've got itchy feet and need a bit of a break or you're looking for a complete change of scene, this book has all the information you'll need to leave, with free expert advice from the men and woman who can actually make it happen.

Twelve Trees introduces us to a dozen species of trees that epitomize the challenges facing the planet, and the ways that scientists and others are working with a growing sense of urgency to save them. Scientists, ethnobotanists, indigenous peoples, and collectives of all kinds are studying trees and their workings, using a host of new tools, to learn how trees function individually and collectively, and why they do what they do.