William Collins Land. How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World Winchester Simon

Точность - ключ ко всему. Это неотъемлемый, неоспоримый и существенный компонент нашего современного социального, коммерческого, научного, механического и интеллектуального ландшафта. Предметы, которые мы ценим в повседневной жизни – фотоаппарат, телефон, компьютер, велосипед, автомобиль, возможно, посудомоечная машина, – все это спортивные компоненты, которые точно сочетаются друг с другом и работают практически идеально. Мы также предполагаем, что чем точнее устройство, тем оно лучше. И все же, хотя мы живем жизнью, насыщенной точностью, мы, когда задумываемся об этом, не совсем уверены в том, что такое точность и что она означает. Как и когда она начала строить современный мир? • Рассказывая об умах и методах, изменивших современный мир, Винчестер исследует фундаментальные вопросы

There may be no insect with a worse reputation than the wasp, and none guarding so many undiscovered wonders • Where bees and ants have long been the darlings of the insect world, wasps are much older, cleverer and more diverse. They are the bee’s evolutionary ancestors – flying 100 million years earlier – and today they are just as essential for the survival of our environment. A bee, ecologist Professor Seirian Sumner argues, is just a wasp that has forgotten how to hunt • For readers of Entangled Life, Other Minds and The Gospel of Eels, this is a book to upturn your expectations about one overlooked animal and the wider architecture of our natural world • With endless surprises, this book might teach you about the wasps that spend their entire lives sealed inside a fig, about stinging wasps, about parasitic wasps, about wasps that turn cockroaches into living zombies, about how wasps taught us to make paper

Книга Кристины Лэмб "Прощай, Кабул. Из Афганистана в более опасный мир" рассказывает о том, как Запад превратил успех в поражение в самой продолжительной войне, которую вели Соединенные Штаты в своей истории и Великобритания со времен Столетней войны. Это история о мужчинах и женщинах с благими намерениями, отправляющихся в место, которого они совершенно не понимали. И как то, что когда-то было правильным поступком, превратилось в конфликт, из которого все хотели выйти. Это было фиаско, из-за которого Афганистан по-прежнему остается одной из беднейших и наиболее опасных стран на земле • Книга на английском языке • From the award-winning co-author of I Am Malala, this book asks just how the might of NATO, with 48 countries and 140,000 troops on the ground, failed to defeat a group of religious students and farmers? How did the West’s war in Afghanistan and across the Middle East go so wrong? • Farewell Kabul tells how the West turned success into defeat in the longest war fought by the United States in its history and by Britain since the Hundred Years War

For fans of Bad Blood and The Big Short, the story of how one reclusive trading prodigy manipulated Wall Street and amassed millions from his childhood bedroom - then short-circuited the global market • A real-life financial thriller, Flash Crash gives panoramic insight into our economic landscape - its weaknesses, its crooks and its exploitable loopholes - and uncovers the remarkable, behind-the-scenes narrative of a mystifying market crash, a globe-spanning investigation into international fraud, and the man - Navinder Singh Sarao - at the centre of it all • Depending on whom you ask, Sarao was a scourge, a symbol of a financial system run horribly amok, or a folk hero: an outsider who took on the tyranny of Wall Street and the high-frequency traders

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come • What if intelligent life on earth not only evolved on land, but also in the sea? • Other Minds is a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself – a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind’s fitful development over millennia, Other Minds explores the incredible evolutionary journey of the cephalopods. What kind of intelligence do they possess? And how did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? • Heralded as the ‘scuba-diving philosopher’ when Other Minds first published, Peter Godfrey-Smith explores the underwater world and the concept of sentience to trace the question of inner life back to its roots

What happens when vast population growth endangers the world's food supplies? Or our water? Our energy needs, climate, or environment? Or the planet's biodiversity? What happens if these all become critical at once? Just what is our future? • In End Game, world-renowned scientists Anthony Barnosky and Elizabeth Hadly explain the growing threats to humanity as the planet edges towards a resource war for remaining space, food, oil and water. And as they show, these wars are not the nightmares of a dystopian future but are already happening today. They explore the origins of Ebola in densely populated areas of south-eastern Guinea, witness raging fires in Yellowstone and Colorado and explain how drought-induced food shortages are already causing problems in the Sudan, Gaza Strip and Iraq

A profound, powerful and moving collection of 100 letters from around the world responding to the climate crisis, introduced by Emma Thompson and lovingly illustrated by CILIP award winner Jackie Morris • How can we begin to talk about what is happening to the world? How can we explain to our children, and to ourselves, what the future of our planet might look and feel like? • Letters to the Earthis the beginning of a new conversation. One that attempts to answer some of these questions by listening to the voices of parents and children; politicians and poets; songwriters and scientists. Gathering together over 100 letters written in response to the climate emergency, each entry begins to give language to the unspeakable, and shows how our collective power is present when we are ready to slow down and listen to each other

From the bestselling author of With the End in Mind, this is a book about the conversations that matter and how to have them better – more honestly, more confidently and without regret • A child coming out to their parent. A family losing someone to terminal illness. A friend noticing the first signs of someone’s dementia. A careers advisor and a teenager with radically different perspectives • There are moments when we must talk, listen and be there for one another. Why do we so often come away from those times feeling like we could have done more, or should have been braver in the face of discomfort? Why do we skirt the conversations that might matter most? • By bringing together stories with a lifetime’s experience working in medicine and the newest psychology, Mannix offers lessons for how we can better speak our mind and help when others need to

An essential read for anyone who has encountered a crisis of confidence • Where does self-confidence come from? How does it work? Why are some people more confident than others? On the surface, these seem like simple questions – but answers can feel hard to come by when we need them most • In this bestselling book, Charles Pepin brings to light the strange alchemy that is self-confidence. Pepin examines the role confidence plays in the lives of our most respected public figures including the likes of Madonna, Mozart, Frieda Kahlo, Martin Luther King and Serena Williams, and argues that above all, to live a life of confidence is to live a life of action • Drawing on the collective wisdom of philosophers, psychologists and the lives of people we encounter on a daily basis, Pepin invites us to probe the mystery and mastery of self-confidence

Starting from the ocean and from the forgotten histories of ocean-facing communities, this is a new history of the making of our world • After revolutions in America and France, a wave of tumult coursed the globe from 1790 to 1850. It was a moment of unprecedented change and violence especially for indigenous peoples. By 1850 vibrant public debate between colonised communities had exploded in port cities. Yet in the midst of all of this, Britain struck out by sea and established its supremacy over the Indian and Pacific Oceans, overtaking the French and Dutch as well as other rivals • Cambridge historian Sujit Sivasundaram brings together his work in far-flung archives across the world and the best new academic research in this remarkably creative book

Coal is the commodity that made Britain. Dirty and polluting though it is, this black rock has acted as a midwife to genius. It drove industry, religion, politics, empire and trade. It powered the industrial revolution, turned Britain into the first urban nation and is the industry that made almost all others possible • In this brilliant social history, Jeremy Paxman tells the story of coal mining in England, Scotland and Wales from Roman times, through the birth of steam power to war, nationalisation, pea-souper smogs, industrial strife and the picket lines of the Miner’s Strike • Written in the captivating style of his bestselling book The English, Paxman ranges widely across Britain to explore stories of engineers and inventors, entrepreneurs and industrialists – but whilst coal inevitably helped the rich become richer, the story told by Black Gold is first and foremost a history of the working miners – the men, women and often children who toiled in appalling conditions down in the mines; the villages that were thrown up around the pit-head

This book celebrates the Arctic, exploring the natural history that has so inspired generations • Early travellers to the Arctic brought back tales of amazing creatures and of the endurance required of visitors, the Arctic becoming a land of inspiration and imagination. Adventurers test themselves against it. Its wildlife still amazes – when film and television show Earth’s natural wonders it is always the polar regions that draw the biggest audiences. But today the Arctic is in retreat. Humanity’s relentless exploitation of the Earth’s resources in the pursuit of progress has, it seems, altered the climate and threatens the ice and ice-living organisms. It is a cliche that the loss of a species diminishes us, but it is true nonetheless. Even to people who have never seen a Polar Bear its loss will be immeasurable as the bear is iconic, both defining and reflecting the Arctic