Coming Soon

SKUNK WORKS is the true story, told for the first time, of America's most secret and successful aerospace operation. As recounted by Ben Rich, the operation's brilliant boss for nearly two decades, the story of Lockheed's legendary Skunk Works is a high-stakes drama of Cold War confrontations and Gulf War air combat, of extraordinary feats of engineering and human achievement against fantastic odds.

The world is currently closer to superpower conflict than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. World War III is a real possibility, and with 12,000 warheads in the arsenals of more than half a dozen countries, we are standing on a nuclear knife edge. Despite receiving very little attention, nuclear war is a far greater threat to humanity's immediate survival than climate change. While climate heating threatens humanity over many decades, nuclear war could destroy civilisation in just a few hours.

On the 200th birthday of the world’s first passenger-carrying railway, Nige Tassell sets out to ride Britain’s railway network all the way to its lesser-travelled-to corners, its seldom-visited outposts. From Wick to Penzance and many points in between, he stays on until the end of the line. He is the last man sitting. The sixteen final destinations he visits offer sixteen different stories. So grab yourself a window seat for an odyssey that tells us much about Britain today. All aboard, all aboard.

Marc Márquez is the apex predator of the MotoGP world: arguably the greatest motorcycle racer who ever lived, he is an eight-time world champion. He is the man who dethroned Valentino Rossi, and who changed the sport of MotoGP forever. Told by bestselling author Stuart Barker, with the insight of rivals, team members, pundits, managers and many close to his story, experience in this book that rare thing: pure sporting theatre and white-knuckle speed twinned with real human drama. Everything or Nothing is the Márquez story told like never before.

The Python-Based Laboratory: A Hands-On Guide for Scientists and Engineers provides a learn-by-doing approach to acquiring the Python programming skills needed to implement computer-controlled experimental work.

A defense technology expert and military leader reveals the future of robotic warfare, and illuminates the path to navigate the approaching storm of global change.

Until recently, infrastructure was the backbone of organizations' operating software they developed in-house. But now that cloud vendors run the computers, companies can finally bring the benefits of agile custom-centricity to their own developers. Adding product management to infrastructure organizations is now all the rage. But how's that possible when infrastructure is still the operational layer of the company?

Our world is shifting away from hydrocarbons and fossil fuels to renewable forms of power that rely more than ever on batteries. As demand for these products has grown, so has the need for minerals that are used in their production, in particular cobalt, a metallic element that is overwhelmingly mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, site of the world’s largest cobalt reserves.

Mat Watson knows everything there is to know about cars. In his 25-year career as a motor journalist, he has driven and tested every vehicle under the sun, from engineering marvels such as the Bugatti Chiron and Ferrari F50, to the grand-touring stalwarts of highways and motorways the world over – to absolute crapheaps which should never have made it out of the factory gates. He has crawled into hundreds of boots, peered under thousands of bonnets, kicked tens of thousands of tyres, and has perfected a nose for what makes a beautiful, brilliant and, sometimes truly atrocious, car.

Throughout history, when threatened by wildfires our only defense was to pray for rain and run—until aircraft changed the way we fight fires. Beginning with the Canadian "H-Boats" in 1924, aircraft have become indispensable in detecting and extinguishing wildfires. Fire Eaters tells the incredible stories of the Ontario Provincial Air Service, the first government aerial fire suppression organization in history; one of its pilots, Carl Crossley, who invented the water scoop-up and drop-off system; and the Canadair CL-215, the first purpose-built water bomber.

An iconic piece of design and style–and a gold standard in motorcycle engineering–the Triumph has roved through the twentieth century, making its mark in hearts and minds. Founded in Coventry in1885, Triumph Engineering had humble beginnings, importing bicycles and sewing machines. Little did anyone know that in the coming years the company would birth an historic series of motorcycles that have lit up the arenas of racing, popular culture and even warfare for well over a century.

In 2001, thieves parked a box truck in front of an aging tycoon’s factory, cut the phone lines, and used an overhead crane to lift out their prize: a 1938 Talbot-Lago T150-C SS Teardrop coupe—“the most beautiful car in the world” and one of only two in existence—then they disappeared into the night. The tycoon died. The trail went cold. End of story. Until it wasn’t.

In The Nuclear Age, acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy paints an intricate picture of a world governed by fear. From the first artificial splitting of the atom in 1917 and the race to create the first atomic bomb in World War II, through the fraught arms race of the Cold War, to the imperialism, neo-colonial motivation and wars being waged today, the threat posed by nuclear weapons is as pertinent as ever.

Through historical records, revealing interviews, and unflinching statistics, Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon, hosts of the podcast The War on Cars, and former host Aaron Naparstek unpack the scale of damage that cars cause, the forces that have created our current crisis and are invested in perpetuating it, and the way that the fight for better transportation is deeply linked to the fight for a more equitable and just society.

Visual Friendlies, Tally Target: Surges continues the story of the role of forward air controllers (JTACs) and Close Air Support (CAS), picking up in 2006 and continuing through 2013. This volume covers the evolution of Joint Fires through the colloquial "second phase" of the War on Terror—the "surges" of Iraq in 2007 and Afghanistan in 2010–2011. Vol. II recounts the evolution of air power during the rising counterinsurgencies, as well as the psychology and mental makeup of these exclusive tribes.

On May 28, 1914, the RMS Empress of Ireland began her 192nd trip across the Atlantic from Quebec City, Canada, en route to Liverpool, England, carrying 1,056 passengers and a crew of 423. In the early hours of May 29, fog descended on the St. Lawrence River, and the ocean liner was rammed by the Storstad, a Norwegian coal ship. In the fourteen minutes it took for the Empress of Ireland to sink, there was time to launch only four of the forty lifeboats, and rather than women and children first, it was everyone for themselves.

The battle for NASCAR dominance was never more pronounced than when Richard Petty and David Pearson met on the track. In 551 head-to-head races between 1960 and 1986, they finished one-two an astounding 63 times (Pearson won 33, Petty 30). Each showdown attracted more media attention and new fans, helping the sport to evolve evermore rapidly.

Newfoundland, 1919. Buffeted by winds, an unwieldy aircraft – made mainly from wood and stiff linen – struggled to take off from the North American island’s rocky slopes. Cramped side by side in its open cockpit were two men, freezing cold and barely able to move but resolute. They had a dream: to be the first in human history to fly, non-stop, across the Atlantic Ocean. But there were three other teams competing against them, and as the waves raged a few miles below, memories of wartime crashes resurfaced . . .

Global technological trends come and go. In this book, Mehran Gul maps the recent waves of technological advancement up until the current moment, as the model shifts from a system where many products are designed in the United States and assembled in China, to one where billion-dollar companies are springing up in places like China, Korea, Singapore, India and continental Europe, and innovation becomes a far more global game.

Lifeboat at the End of the World is an astonishing lyrical and literary book about the experience of being a lifeboat volunteer, migration, the sea, Dungeness and more. Rather than offering a political opinion, Dominic Gregory writes about the reality of the RNLI, of saving lives. He details the smells of the station, the emotions when the call to ‘a shout’ comes, how they are trained, the ethos of the service, and what it’s really like to sail out in the middle of the night.