Penguin We Belong to Gaia Lovelock James

James Lovelock's bestselling The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth is Fighting Back - and How we can Still Save Humanity is a dire warning against the unchecked growth of civilization • 'Despite all our efforts to retreat sustainably, we may be unable to prevent a global decline into a chaotic world ruled by brutal warlords on a devastated Earth...' • For thousands of years, humans have exploited the planet without counting the cost. Now Gaia, the living Earth, is fighting back. As the polar icecaps shrink and the global temperature rises, we approach the point of no return. Sustainable development, Lovelock argues, is no longer possible, and the only open to us may be a 'sustainable retreat'. This is the one book you must read to find out what is happening, how bad it will get - and how we can survive

The comic autobiography of 2014 • A comedian's autobiography? • I wonder if he's ever used humour to deflect from his insecurities? • To avoid being bullied? • Is there heartache behind the humour? • I wonder if he's a manic-depressive? • Tears of a clown? • Yes, all of that • Discover the hilarious life-story of one of Britain's best-loved comedians in Kevin Bridges' brilliant memoir • 'First of all, I have never written a book before, you probably haven't either, so there we have it; a connection is established between reader and writer . . .' • Aged just 17, Kevin Bridges walked on stage for the first time in a Glasgow comedy club and brought the house down. He only had a five-minute set but in that short time he discovered that he really could earn a living from making people laugh

'We, the black and the white, deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation' • James Baldwin's impassioned plea to 'end the racial nightmare' in America was a bestseller when it appeared in 1963, galvanising a nation and giving voice to the emerging civil rights movement. Told in the form of two intensely personal 'letters', The Fire Next Time is at once a powerful evocation of Baldwin's early life in Harlem and an excoriating condemnation of the terrible legacy of racial injustice

'To tell the story of a country or a continent is surely a great and complex undertaking; but the story of a quiet, unnoticed place where there are few people, fewer memories and almost no reliable records - a place such as Glen Conach - may actually be harder to piece together. The hazier everything becomes, the more whatever facts there are become entangled with myth and legend. . .' • Deep in the mountains of north-east Scotland lies Glen Conach, a place of secrets and memories, fable and history. In particular, it holds the stories of three different eras, separated by centuries yet linked by location, by an ancient manuscript and by echoes that travel across time • In ancient Pictland, the Christian hermit Conach contemplates God and nature, performs miracles and prepares himself for sacrifice

'Is it really worth it to die, to be dead, just to prove to everybody that you're not a coward?' • On Guadalcanal in the south Pacific, the soldiers of C Company are about to enter the war. The men know they face their baptism of fire. But none know if they will be one of 'the lucky ones' to make it safely off the island. From Captain Stein, who feels like a father to his troops, and 'Mad' Sergeant Welsh, condemning all nations while swigging gin from his canteen, to Private Bell, who just wants to get home to his wife, they will discover the line that divides sanity from madness, and life from death • A scathing critique of heroism, The Thin Red Line is among the greatest masterpieces of war writing

'Are you ready to be reborn?' • The search for a missing journalist is called off as a body is found at the scene of a carefully staged murder • In a sealed chamber, deep in the heart of Gilmerton Cove, a mysterious network of caves and passages sprawling beneath Edinburgh, the victim has undergone a macabre ritual of purification • Inspector Tony McLean knew the dead man, and can't shake off the suspicion that there is far more to this case than meets the eye. The baffling lack of forensics at the crime scene seems impossible. But it is not the only thing about this case that McLean will find beyond belief • Teamed with the most unlikely and unwelcome of allies, he must track down a killer driven by the darkest compulsions, who will answer only to a higher power

In A Rough Ride to the Future, James Lovelock - the great scientific visionary of our age - presents a radical vision of humanity's future as the thinking brain of our Earth-system • James Lovelock, who has been hailed as 'the man who conceived the first wholly new way of looking at life on earth since Charles Darwin' (Independent) and 'the most profound scientific thinker of our time' (Literary Review) continues, in his 95th year, to be the great scientific visionary of our age. This book introduces two new Lovelockian ideas. The first is that three hundred years ago, when Thomas Newcomen invented the steam engine, he was unknowingly beginning what Lovelock calls 'accelerated evolution', a process which is bringing about change on our planet roughly a million times faster than Darwinian evolution

The world expert in multisensory perception on the remarkable ways we can use our senses to lead richer lives • How can the furniture in your home affect your wellbeing? What colour clothing will help you play sport better? And what simple trick will calm you after a tense day at work? • In this revelatory book, pioneering and entertaining Oxford professor Charles Spence shows how our senses change how we think and feel, and how by 'hacking' them we can reduce stress, become more productive and be happier • We like to think of ourselves as rational beings, and yet it's the scent of expensive face cream that removes wrinkles (temporarily), a room actually feels warmer if you use a warmer paint colour, and the noise of the crowd really does affect the referee's decision

They spend their days - and too many of their nights - at work. Away from friends and family, they share a stretch of stained carpet with a group of strangers they call colleagues • There's Chris, clinging to his ergonomic chair; Lynn, the boss, whose breast cancer everyone pretends not to talk about; Carl, secretly taking someone else's medication; Marcia, whose hair is stuck in the eighties; and Benny, who's just - well, just Benny. Amidst the boredom, redundancies, water cooler moments, meetings, flirtations and pure rage, life is happening, to their great surprise, all around them • Then We Came to the End is about sitting all morning next to someone you cross the road to avoid at lunch. It's the story of your life and mine

The creator of the Gaia hypothesis and the greatest environmental thinker of our time has produced an astounding new theory about the future of life on Earth. James Lovelock argues that the anthropocene - the age in which humans acquired planetary-scale technologies - is, after three centuries, coming to an end. A new age - the novacene - has already begun • New beings will emerge from existing artificial intelligence systems. They will think 10,000 times faster than we do and will regard us as we now regard plants. The cruel, violent machine takeover imagined by sci-fi writers will not happen: these hyper-intelligent beings will be as dependent on the health of the planet as we are. They will need the planetary cooling system of Gaia to defend from the increasing heat of the sun

We Are All Made of Glue is the wickedly funny third novel from bestselling author Marina Lewycka • Georgie Sinclair's life is coming unstuck. Her husband's left her. Her son's obsessed with the End of the World. And now her elderly neighbour Mrs Shapiro has decided they are related • Or so the hospital informs her when Mrs Shapiro has an accident and names Georgie next of kin. This, however, is not a case of a quick ward visit: Mrs Shapiro has a large rickety house full of stinky cats that needs looking after and that a pair of estate agents seem intent on swindling from her. Plus there are the 'Uselesses' trying to repair it (uselessly). Then there's social worker who wants to put her in a nursing home. Not to mention some letters that point to a mysterious, painful past

'We are mistaken when we say that 'It isn't the same for them as it would be for us', and that people bred in the slums can imagine nothing but the slums. For what I saw on her face was not the ignorant suffering of an animal • A searing account of George Orwell's observations of working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the 1930s, The Road to Wigan Pier is a brilliant and bitter polemic that has lost none of its political impact over time. His graphically unforgettable descriptions of social injustice, cramped slum housing, dangerous mining conditions, squalor, hunger and growing unemployment are written with unblinking honesty, fury and great humanity. It crystallized the ideas that would be found in Orwell's later works and novels, and remains a powerful portrait of poverty, injustice and class divisions in Britain