Science Geography

Tim Marshall's global best seller Prisoners of Geography showed how every nation’s choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas and concrete. Since then, the geography hasn’t changed. But the world has. In this revelatory new book, Marshall explores 10 regions that are set to shape global politics in a new age of great-power rivalry: Australia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Greece, Turkey, the Sahel, Ethiopia, Spain and space.

Maps have a mysterious hold over us. Whether ancient, crumbling parchments or generated by Google, maps tell us things we want to know, not only about our current location or where we are going but about the world in general. And yet, when it comes to geo-politics, much of what we are told is generated by analysts and other experts who have neglected to refer to a map of the place in question.

Humans are heading up and out, and we’re taking our power struggles with us. Soon, what happens in space will shape human history as much the mountains, rivers and seas have on Earth. It’s no coincidence that Russia, China and the USA are leading the way. The next fifty years will change the face of global politics. In this gripping book, bestselling author Tim Marshall lays bare the new geopolitical realities to show how we got here and where we’re going.

After defeating the terrifying Necromuse and his mysterious orchestra, all Amelia Jones hopes for is a return to normal. But to her surprise, her class is sent to Europe for a month of study abroad. This seems like the perfect escape from all her problems, but not long after they land in Salzburg, Austria, danger haunts their steps. A street musician claims there is something wrong with Amelia’s magic, odd visions of the past appear around the city, and Amelia finds a strange message preserved in a museum—a message she fears was left by the Necromuse.

Published in 1951, The Sea Around Us is one of the most remarkably successful books ever written about the natural world. This classic work remains as fresh today as when it first appeared. Carson's writing teems with stunning, memorable images - the newly formed Earth cooling beneath an endlessly overcast sky, the centuries of nonstop rain that created the oceans, giant squids battling sperm whales hundreds of fathoms below the surface, and incredibly powerful tides moving 100 billion tons of water daily in the Bay of Fundy.

Chris Harman describes the shape and course of human history as a narrative of ordinary people forming and re-forming complex societies in pursuit of common human goals. Interacting with the forces of technological change as well as the impact of powerful individuals and revolutionary ideas, these societies have engendered events familiar to every schoolchild-from the empires of antiquity to the world wars of the 20th century. In a bravura conclusion, Chris Harman exposes the reductive complacency of contemporary capitalism.

In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes listeners on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii in Italy, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today.

In the tradition of Jared Diamond and Jacques Barzun, prize-winning historian Anthony Pagden presents a sweeping history of the long struggle between East and West, from the Greeks to the present day.

The relationship between East and West has always been one of turmoil. In this historical tour de force, a renowned historian leads us from the world of classical antiquity, through the Dark Ages, to the Crusades, Europe's resurgence, and the dominance of the Ottoman Empire, which almost shattered Europe entirely. Pagden travels from Napoleon in Egypt to Europe's carving up of the finally moribund Ottomans - creating the modern Middle East along the way - and on to the present struggles in Iraq.

How much do you know about farts? Did you know it would take just nine farts from every person on earth to power an atomic bomb? That fish farts nearly triggered a war against Russia? That women's farts smell worse than men's? Pfwoort! It's all in this book. Did you know that inhaling farts is healthy, yet people fart after death? That you can get a job as a professional fart smeller? That farting is illegal in Africa but polite in South America? Heard any ancient Babylonian fart jokes lately? Blorrrk! It's all in this book.

Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped the modern world. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, he highlights the broadest movements both literal and conceptual on every continent since the Ice Age, and examines societal advances such as writing, religion, government, and technology.

In Designs for the Pluriverse Arturo Escobar presents a new vision of design theory and practice aimed at channeling design's world-making capacity toward ways of being and doing t….

When Cinderella's stepmother prevents her from attending the Royal Ball, she gets some unexpected help. Here is the classic tale of a girl, her evil stepmother, and a pair of glass slippers that changes everything.

Border and Rule explores a number of seemingly disparate global geographies with shared logics of border rule that displace, immobilize, criminalize, exploit, and expel migrants and refugees. With her keen ability to connect the dots, Harsha Walia demonstrates how borders divide the international working class and consolidate imperial, capitalist, and racist nationalist rule.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson’s quest to find out everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. His challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. It's not so much about what we know, as about how we know what we know.

Freeman Dyson is a world-renowned astrophysicist who dreams of exploring the heavens and has designed a spaceship to take him there. His son, George, a brilliant high-school dropout, lives in a tree house and is designing a giant kayak to explore the icy coastal wilderness of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

People have been drawing lines on maps for as long as there have been maps to draw on. Sometimes rooted in physical geography, sometimes entirely arbitrary, these lines might often have looked very different if a war or treaty or the decisions of a handful of tired Europeans had gone a different way. By telling the stories of these borders, we can learn a lot about how political identities are shaped - and about human folly.

Through entertaining stories, surprising real-world examples and a cast of unforgettable characters, Mapmatics helps us to appreciate the mathematical methods and ideas behind maps. And, by illuminating how our world works, leaves us better equipped to understand and look after it.

We have never had so much information at our fingertips, and yet most of us simply don't understand how our world really works. Professor Vaclav Smil is not a pessimist or an optimist, he is a scientist, and this book is a much-needed reality check on topics ranging from food production and nutrition, through energy and the environment, to globalisation and the future. For example, the carbon footprint of meat is well known, but did you know that the equivalent of five tablespoons of diesel fuel goes into the production of each greenhouse-grown, medium-size, supermarket-bought tomato?

From Stoics to existentialists, in philosophy and literature, discussion of the philosophy of life—of love and death, of courage, fortitude and wisdom—challenges us all to think about what kinds of life are truly worth living. In this summation of a lifetime thinking and writing about this great question, A. C. Grayling explores with clarity and depth the ideas that each of us must use in answering it for ourselves.

Have you ever wondered how we got here? From hunting mammoths, to flying to the moon? It is because we are unstoppable. But what made us so? Well, we have the most amazing superpower: the ability to tell stories. Fairy tales have led us from imagining ghosts and spirits to being able to create money (yes, really!). And this has made us very powerful...but very deadly. Nothing stands in our way, and we always want more. So get ready for the most amazing story there ever was—the incredible true tale of the Unstoppables.