General Books : Science

Australia's funniest mathematician returns in 2019 with more rollicking romps through the world of science, technology, numbers and all things nerdy. This terrific new fully illustrated title follows on from Adam's bestselling Big Book of Numbers (2014); World of Numbers (2015), Time Machine (2016), The Number Games (2017), and Top 100 (2018), and is packed full of fascinating facts, tantalising trivia, brainbusting number puzzles, and much much more.

Praise for Adam Spencer's Big Book of Numbers:

`If you find this book boring, you should be in a clinic!' John Cleese

`Funny yet with hidden depths, like its author. A brilliant introduction to the world of numbers.' Brian Cox

`Even the page numbers will start to look fascinating once you've read this book!' Amanda Keller

`Every bright young mind in Australia should read Adam Spencer's Big Book of Numbers - and we oldies would benefit, too.' Peter FitzSimons

ISBN: 9781925589924
Publication date: 01/11/2019
Price: $37.99
Author: Spencer, Adam
Format: Paperback

Australia's funniest mathematician is back in 2019 with a small format edition of 2018's bestseller. Which number terrifies Ogdokontaheptaphobes? Why would you watch the same clock for 14 years? And have you met the 23-million-digit prime? The answers to all of these questions - and much, much more - are in Adam Spencer's Top 100. Bursting at the seams with puzzles, quizzes, games, numerical trivia and fun, this is the ultimate book for maths nerds and anyone with an inquiring mind. Whether you're 8 or 80, strap your thinking cap on, grab a pencil and get ready to count down from 100 to 1 with Australia's favourite - and funniest - mathematician, Adam Spencer.

Praise for Adam Spencer

`The things Adam Spencer writes about should be taught in every school worldwide.' Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers

`Even the page numbers will start to look fascinating once you've read this book!' Amanda Keller

`Every bright young mind in Australia should read Adam Spencer's Big Book of Numbers - and we oldies would benefit, too.' Peter FitzSimons

ISBN: 9781922267023
Publication date: 01/03/2019
Price: $29.99
Author: Spencer, Adam
Format: Paperback

'Kindness and co-operation have played a crucial role in raising humans to the top of the evolutionary tree...We have thrived on the milk of human kindness.' - Observer

'There is a widely-held assumption that humans are hard-wired for relentless and ruthless competition...Frans de Waal sees nature differently - as a biological legacy in which empathy, not mere self-interest, is shared by humans, bonobos and animals.' - Ben Macintyre, The Times

Empathy holds us together. That we are hardwired to be altruistic is the result of thousands of years of evolutionary biology which has kept society from slipping into anarchy. But we are not alone: primates, elephants, even rodents are empathetic creatures too.

Social behaviours such as the herding instinct, bonding rituals, expressions of consolation and even conflict resolution demonstrate that animals are designed to feel for each other. From chimpanzees caring for mates that have been wounded by leopards, elephants reassuring youngsters in distress and dolphins preventing sick companions from drowning, with a wealth of anecdotes, scientific observations, wry humour and incisive intelligence, The Age of Empathy is essential reading for all who believe in the power of our connections to each other.

ISBN: 9781788164443
Publication date: 11/07/2019
Price: $24.99
Author: Waal, Frans De
Format: Paperback

New islands are being built at an unprecedented rate whether for tourism or territorial ambition, while many islands are disappearing because of rising sea levels or fragmenting due to shrinking ice. It is a strange planetary spectacle, an ever-changing map which even Google Earth struggles to keep pace with.

But it is also, Alastair Bonnett believes, a spectacle which is imprinting itself on our hopes and anxieties. From a 'crannog', an ancient artificial island in a Scottish loch, to the militarized artificial islands China is building in the South China Sea, he sets out to explore some of the world's newest, most fragile and beautiful islands to find out why they have such a hold on our imaginations.

ISBN: 9781786498106
Publication date: 07/05/2020
Price: $32.99
Author: Bonnett, Alastair
Format: Trade Paperback

A tenth anniversary edition of the iconic book about the wonderful world of maths

Sunday Times bestseller | Shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize

The world of maths can seem mind-boggling, irrelevant and, let's face it, boring. This groundbreaking book reclaims maths from the geeks. Mathematical ideas underpin just about everything in our lives: from the surprising geometry of the 50p piece to how probability can help you win in any casino. In search of weird and wonderful mathematical phenomena, Alex Bellos travels across the globe and meets the world's fastest mental calculators in Germany and a startlingly numerate chimpanzee in Japan. Packed with fascinating, eye-opening anecdotes, Alex's Adventures in Numberland is an exhilarating cocktail of history, reportage and mathematical proofs that will leave you awestruck.

This anniversary edition is fully revised and updated.

ISBN: 9781526623997
Publication date: 14/05/2020
Price: $24.99
Author: Bellos, Alex
Format: Paperback

Artificial intelligence is rapidly dominating every aspect of our modern lives influencing the news we consume, whether we get a mortgage, and even which friends wish us happy birthday. But as algorithms make ever more decisions on our behalf, how do we ensure they do what we want? And fairly?

This conundrum - dubbed 'The Control Problem' by experts - is the subject of this timely and important book. From the AI program which cheats at computer games to the sexist algorithm behind Google Translate, bestselling author Brian Christian explains how, as AI develops, we rapidly approach a collision between artificial intelligence and ethics. If we stand by, we face a future with unregulated algorithms that propagate our biases - and worse - violate our most sacred values. Urgent and fascinating, this is an accessible primer to the most important issue facing Al researchers today.

ISBN: 9781786494313
Publication date: 03/11/2020
Price: $32.99
Author: Christian, Brian
Format: Trade Paperback

The Anatomy Student's Self-Test Visual Dictionary is an all-in-one anatomy reference and study aid. Arranged by body system, it includes more than 400 full-color anatomical illustrations. Each body part labeled on the illustration is linked to a concise definition. A workbook at the back of the book features more than 100 black-and-white illustrations of parts of the muscular and skeletal systems, so that you can memorize the location of various muscles and bones by coloring in the illustrations. Also included are eight colored acetate sheets of major body systems which can be compared against illustrations in the book to better understand the relationships between the various systems.

ISBN: 9781740480765
Price: $39.99
Author: Ashwell, Ken
Format: Spiral Bound

Lawrence Weschler began spending time with Oliver Sacks in the early 1980s, when he set out to profile him for The New Yorker. Almost a decade earlier, Dr. Sacks had published his masterpiece Awakenings but the book had hardly been an immediate success, and the rumpled clinician was still largely unknown. Over the ensuing four years, the two men worked closely together until Sacks asked Weschler to abandon the profile, a request to which Weschler acceded. The two remained close friends, however, across the next thirty years and then, just as Sacks was dying, he urged Weschler to take up the project once again. This book is the result of that entreaty.

Weschler sets Sacks's brilliant table talk and extravagant personality in vivid relief. We see Sacks rowing and ranting and caring deeply; composing the essays that would form The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat; recalling his turbulent drug-fueled younger days; helping his patients and exhausting his friends; and waging intellectual war against a medical and scientific establishment that failed to address his greatest concern: the spontaneous specificity of the individual human soul. And all the while he is pouring out a stream of glorious, ribald, hilarious, and often profound conversation that establishes him as one of the great talkers of the age.

ISBN: 9781250619600
Publication date: 01/09/2020
Price: $37.99
Author: Weschler, Lawrence
Format: Paperback