Author: Steve

Dice World by Brian Clegg longlisted for the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books 2014

We’re thrilled to announce that Dice World: Science and Life in a Random Universe has been longlisted for the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books 2014, which celebrates outstanding popular science books from around the world.

In Dice World, acclaimed science writer Brian Clegg takes readers on an incredible trip around our random universe, uncovering the truths and lies behind probability and statistics, explaining how chaotic intervention is behind every great success in business, and demonstrating the possibilities quantum mechanics has given us for creating unbreakable ciphers and undergoing teleportation.

The judges said that Dice World provides ‘a fantastic look at the importance of randomness, full of interesting and philosophical ideas while still remaining open and accessible’.

The shortlist will be announced on 19 September 2014. The author of the winning book will receive £25,000 and £2,500 each is awarded to the authors of up to five shortlisted books.

Read an extract from Dice World here and find out more about the prize. Brian Clegg is also the author of Inflight Science, The Universe Inside You and newly published The Quantum Age. Follow Brian on Twitter @BrianClegg.

Published this November, a book of science haiku by Camden School for Girls!

We are incredibly excited to announce that this November we will be publishing Sciku: The Wonder of Science – in Haiku!, written entirely by students at Camden School for Girls.

The 400 haiku will cover science themes from gravity to photosynthesis, from Einstein’s E=mc² to Marie Curie’s discovery of radium, just like this example:

Gravity
An attractive force
Between all objects with mass
Just like you and me

Elizabeth Kitcatt, Headteacher of Camden School for Girls, says ‘This is such an exciting opportunity for the girls to work on an incredibly creative cross-curricular project. I know they’ll have fun rising to the challenge and it’s a fantastic way for them to contribute towards building the school’s next generation science labs’.

Simon Flynn, author of The Science Magpie and chemistry teacher at the school, says: ‘It’s wonderful to see the girls embracing the joy and wonder of science so enthusiastically and in such an inspirational way. Too many people still believe that girls don’t enjoy science and that science and literature don’t mix. It’s particularly pleasing to see the girls cheerfully engaged in actively disproving these two widely held misconceptions’.

All royalties from sales of the book will go towards modernising the school’s science laboratories.

Sciku will be published on 6th November and will be the perfect science gift this Christmas. It will be available everywhere books are sold and as an eBook.

View the announcement over on Book Brunch and read more about the book here. Follow Simon Flynn on Twitter @science_magpie.

From bestselling popular science author Brian Clegg, comes The Quantum Age

Brian Clegg’s new popular science masterpiece, The Quantum Age: How the Physics of the Very Small has Transformed Our Lives, available now, shows us all how quantum physics underpins everyday life.

The stone age, the iron age, the steam and electrical ages all saw the reach of humankind transformed by new technology. Now we are living in the quantum age, a revolution in everyday life led by our understanding of the very, very small.

Today, technologies based on quantum physics account for 30 per cent of US GDP, and yet quantum particles such as atoms, electrons and photons remain enigmatic, acting totally unlike the objects we experience directly. Weird quantum behaviour is also essential to nature. From the mechanism of the Sun to quantum biology in our eyesight, photosynthesis in plants and the ability of birds to navigate, quantum effects are key.

Quantum physics lies at the heart of every electronic device, every smartphone and laser, and now quantum superconductors have moved out of the lab to make levitating trains and MRI scanners possible, while soon superfast, ultra-secure quantum computers may be a reality.

Acclaimed popular science author Brian Clegg brings his trademark clarity and enthusiasm to a book that will give the world around you a new sense of wonder.

Check out the video below of Brian Clegg teaching quantum physics to Robert Peston and read a free extract from the book here!

The Quantum Age is available now from all good bookshops and as an eBook. Follow Brian Clegg on Twitter @brianclegg.

New Books Published In June: Harry’s Last Stand, The Quantum Age, Tales from the Turf & Introducing Lévi-Strauss: A Graphic Guide

Check out the new books we published this month!

Harry’s Last Stand is 91-year-old Yorkshireman and RAF veteran Harry Leslie Smith’s unique perspective on NHS cutbacks, benefits policy, political corruption, food poverty, the cost of education – and much more. Read an extract from Harry’s Last Stand on the NHS over at the Guardian.

In The Quantum Age, Brian Clegg, acclaimed popular science writer and author of Inflight Science, The Universe Inside You and Dice World, demonstrates how quantum physics underpins everyday life.

In Tales from the Turf, new in paperback, Robin Oakley shares 40 years’ worth of stories and anecdotes from his life as one of Britain’s best-known turf enthusiasts. Join him as he shares evocative personal stories of being there at racing legends’ key moments.

Add a new compact Graphic Guide to your collection this month – Introducing Lévi-Strauss, a guide to the work of the great French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009), tracing the development and influence of Lévi-Strauss’ thought, from his early work on the function of the incest taboo to initiate an exchange of women between groups, to his identification of a timeless “wild” or “primitive” mode of thinking – a pensée sauvage – behind the processes of human culture.

And don’t forget The Unknown Unknown, his specially commissioned for Independent Booksellers Week, about the most valuable thing about a really good bookshop. Available exclusively from independent bookshops from 28th June.

All books available in all good bookshops and as an eBook. Head over to @iconbooks to see how you can win our new titles!

Read an extract from Harry’s Last Stand in the Guardian

Harry’s Last Stand: How the world my generation built is falling down, and what we can do to save it by Harry Leslie Smith, published today, has been extracted in the Guardian.

Check out his powerful and moving article on the NHS below.

Post by The Guardian.

Harry Leslie Smith will be in conversation with Selina Todd at Blackwell’s Oxford on Monday 9th June at 7pm. Tickets £3 and can be purchased in store or by calling 01865 333 623. Go here to see more details.

Harry Leslie Smith stands up for the NHS. Tell the world what you stand up for over at harrylaststand.com and share it using #istandupfor.

Quantum by Manjit Kumar gets a new look!

We first published Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality by Manjit Kumar in 2008 and since then it has become one of the most highly acclaimed books on quantum theory and its history!

This month, Quantum receives a stunning new cover, printed in tactile supermatt (the soft, velvety paper you may have come across before!), designed by Mark Swan.

A thrilling narrative history of science’s most fundamental revolution, and the divisive debate between Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and the band of brilliant young men at its heart, Quantum reveals how an idea ignited the greatest intellectual debate of the 20th century.

‘Probably the most lucid and detailed intellectual history ever written of a body of theory that makes other scientific revolutions look limp-wristed by comparison’. Nicholas Lezard, Independent

If you have not yet picked up this essential read, you’ll soon be seeing the new cover in your nearest bookshop!

Quantum is available from all good bookshops and as an eBook. Read more about it here. Follow Manjit on Twitter at @imanjitkumar.

Join Mark Forsyth on his Independent Booksellers Week tour!

Mark Forsyth is going on tour for Independent Booksellers Week!

Join Mark Forsyth throughout Independent Booksellers Week 2014, where he will be talking about how a Christening present of an Oxford English Dictionary set the tone for a life immersed in the idiosyncrasies of words, and gave birth to his brilliant trio of books on the English language, The Etymologicon, The Horologicon and The Elements of Eloquence.

These being talks in bookshops – places that specialise in providing you with something you didn’t know you were looking for – he may also talk about something that you never knew you were interested in, which is precisely the subject of The Unknown Unknown: Bookshops and the Delight of Not Getting What You Wanted, his essay written specially for IBW this year.

The Unknown Unknown will available from independent bookshops from 28th June. And if that wasn’t enough, the paperback of The Elements of Eloquence will also be available – two months early – for IBW, exclusively for indies!

Visit iconbooks.com/events for more details about the tour and find out how to win a special leatherbound edition of The Elements of Eloquence plus National Book Tokens at iconbooks.com/theunknown. Follow Mark Forsyth on Twitter @inkyfool.

New for Autumn – Geoff Hurst’s Fifty Greatest Footballers of All Time

Sir Geoff Hurst (right) with Icon’s MD Philip Cotterell (left)

We’re delighted to announce that this autumn we will be publishing Geoff Hurst’s Fifty Greatest Footballers of All Time, by legendary 1966 England World Cup hero and hat-trick scorer Sir Geoff Hurst, in association with Timpson, the leading nationwide service retailer.

Sir Geoff’s choice of his Fifty Greatest players includes outstanding players from his own era alongside stars from the 1980s onwards. Fans of all ages will be keen to know if Franz Beckenbauer tops England’s heroic Bobby Moore? Or whether Messi managed to edge ahead of his countryman Maradona? Will Bale or Suarez have done enough to make the cut?

Far from being impartial, the list is a personal one for Sir Geoff, reflecting his own tastes. As he says in his introduction, ‘The majority are forwards. Ten of them are English. Five are team mates from the 1966 World Cup Final squad. But that leaves thirty five other players in all other positions and somehow, in some undefinable way, I have ranked them all … And these are all players for whom I would happily pay the price of a match ticket to go and watch. And it is a funny thing about “greatness” – which is what I think all these 50 have to varying degrees – and that is it is something which, when displayed in whatever walk of life, we can somehow all recognise.’

Geoff Hurst’s Fifty Greatest Footballers of All Time will be published on 6th November and will be available from all good bookshops as a £10 hardback and an eBook.

What do you stand up for? Join in with Harry’s Last Stand

@andrewfurlow’s stand

Harry’s Last Stand, published next month, is 91-year-old Yorkshireman, RAF veteran and ex-carpet salesman Harry Leslie Smith’s unique perspective on NHS cutbacks, benefits policy, political corruption, food poverty, the cost of education – and much more.

From the deprivation of 1930s Barnsley and the terror of war to the creation of our welfare state, Harry has experienced how a great civilisation can rise from the rubble. But at the end of his life, he fears how easily it is being eroded.

Harry stands up for the welfare state, affordable education and the NHS. But what do you stand up for? Head over to harryslaststand.com to create your own unique image in the style of Harry’s cover and tell the world what #istandupfor.

If you’d like us to feature your stand, tweet us @iconbooks and use the hashtag #istandupfor.

Head over to harryslaststand.com to read more about the book and watch Harry introduce the book. Follow him on Twitter @harryslaststand.

New Books Published in May: Lucky Planet, The Kitchen Magpie, Hess, Hitler & Churchill, Best Served Cold and New Practical Guides!

Check out our new books published this month!

Kicking off first we have David Waltham’s Lucky Planet. Science tells us that life elsewhere in the Universe is increasingly likely to be discovered. But in fact the Earth may be a very unusual planet – perhaps the only one like it in the entire visible Universe. David Waltham asks why, and comes up with some surprising and unconventional answers – watch him talk about the book.

The Kitchen Magpie is the latest addition in the Magpie miscellany series. Delving into forgotten corners of gastronomic history, James Steen reveals what Parmesan has to do with broken bones and why John Wayne kept a cow in a hotel. With much-loved cooks including Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood sharing passion and know-how, this mouth-watering miscellany will sate the appetite of every kitchen dweller, from the masterful expert to the earnest apprentice. Read a free extract.

New in paperback we have Peter Padfield’s Hess, Hitler & Churchill, A startling, revelatory history of Rudolf Hess’s 1941 flight to Scotland, containing new evidence of his aims, and of official British suppression of them, described as ‘grippingly readable’ by Sunday Telegraph. Best Served Cold is the dramatic story of the ups and downs of a born entrepreneur – Malcolm Walker, who was born in Yorkshire in 1946 and opened the first Iceland frozen food shop in 1970.

We have also added two brilliant books to our Practical Guide series of pocket-sized books on life-changing practices: Introducing Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and Introducing Confident Speaking.

All books available in all good bookshops and as an eBook. Head over to @iconbooks to see how you can win our new titles!

Kate Monro’s Losing It on Mail Online

Kate Monro’s Losing It: How We Popped Our Cherry Over the Last 80 Years was published in the US last month!

Losing It brings together an astonishing collection of stories. From the experiences of Edna, who lost her virginity on her wedding night in 1940 to Charlie, the young disabled punk rocker whose story most would envy and the young people from all over the world who have poured our their hearts via Kate’s blog, The Virginity Project, Kate reveals the poignant, funny, sometimes shocking and often surprising truth about other people’s most intimate sexual experiences.

Losing It was featured on Mail Online today:

Kate, from West London, says everyone who has had sex has a personal and intriguing story. She was intrigued about the cultural and historical differences and talked to men and women, of all ages, from all over the world

‘I once interviewed a woman of 101 who lost her virginity in the 1930s,’ Kate tells Mail Online.

‘She could absolutely be forgiven for not remembering the precise moment of her virginity loss because it was so long ago but one thing she was 100% certain about was this: it was before she got married.’

Head over to the Mail Online to read more about book and why Kate started The Virginity Project. Follow Kate on Twitter @katemonro2.

Earth Day with David Waltham’s Lucky Planet

Today is Earth Day, a worldwide campaign for environmental protection. We thought we’d celebrate by sharing this video by David Waltham, about his upcoming book Lucky Planet: Why Earth is Exceptional – and What that Means for Life in the Universe, published next month. In this pop-science masterpiece Waltham argues that life on Earth is, amazingly, a cosmic fluke. So shouldn’t we do all we can to protect it?

Science tells us that life elsewhere in the Universe is increasingly likely to be discovered. But in fact the Earth may be a very unusual planet – perhaps the only one like it in the entire visible Universe. In Lucky Planet David Waltham asks why, and comes up with some surprising and unconventional answers.

Recent geological, biological, and astronomical discoveries are bringing us closer to understanding whether we might be alone in the Universe, and this book uses these to question the conventional wisdom and suggest, instead, that the Earth may have had ‘four billion years of good weather’ purely by chance.

If Earth-like worlds don’t have natural stabilising mechanisms, then intelligent observers such as ourselves will only ever look out onto those rare planets where, like the Earth, all the bad things that could have happened to the climate have fortunately cancelled each other out. So before you prepare to meet the aliens, consider that we are probably alone…

Lucky Planet will be available from all good bookshops and as an eBook from 1st May. Follow @David_Waltham on Twitter and find out more about Earth Day here.

See Rupert Sheldrake at How the Light Gets In

Rupert Sheldrake, author of The Presence of the Past and New Science of Life, will be speaking at HowTheLightGetsIn, the world’s largest philosophy and music festival, this May.

Bringing together world-leading scientists, musicians, philosophers and politicians including Roger Penrose, Bernard-Henri Levy, Laurie Penny, Lawrence Krauss, Saskia Sassen, David Nutt, Lyse Doucet, Molotov Jukebox, Owen Jones, and Mr. Scruff for debates, talks, and wild parties, this year’s programme uncovers the new heresies that might become the truths of the future.

Rupert Sheldrake will join David Nutt and James Ladyman on 31st May to debate whether science is powerful rather than true, speak on laws as habits of nature and also debate our understanding of matter and mind. For more info head to howthelightgetsin.org.

A London Country Diary by Tim Bradford – The Launch Party!

We have a brilliant guest post today from Victoria Pavlova (@vickyvvp), who did some work experience with us recently, and during her time here, helped out at the launch party for Tim Bradford’s A London Country Diary earlier this month.

Reading Tim Bradford’s A London Country Diary is a very unfamiliar – though thoroughly enjoyable – experience for a non-Londoner. A chorus of confused seagulls is a universal experience, but things like the Blackstock Road music shop, or the particular brand of street foliage that grows in Stoke Newington – less so. That might be why the book’s launch at the Stoke Newington Bookshop worked so well. It’s the kind of high street indie where everyone is welcome – even a jittery little immigrant intern. But I digress.

As a first-time book launch attendee, I’d call the night a resounding success*. The night kicked off with a short introduction by Tim Bradford himself. Like all authors, Tim has his influences, which range from his old school sketchbook, to a gardening manual (hint: some have been more influential than others). After reading a couple of passages from A London Country Diary, he introduced us to the local wildlife and explained all the ways in which North London is like Narnia – all fascinating stuff. His relationship with North London might sound like a love-hate affair, but the love part always shines through.

Tim then passed the floor to Stewart Lee to read his introduction. Let’s just say that everyone loves a bit of fun at the author’s expense. “Where Sinclair sees the city pavements scarred by the claws of global capitalism, corporate greed and the ongoing annihilation of the individual, Bradford sees only weeds, slugs and foxes tugging at an abandoned pizza…,” Stewart read, sparking a wave of laughter.

The family affair feel of the evening was aided by the fact that afterwards, Tim called on those who spent years listening to him going on about the book – his brother, friends and fellow North London enthusiasts (Tim’s entourage if you will) – to read a few more choice passages. It was a good time. Afterwards, it was back to the routine for the crowd at the Stoke Newington Bookshop. For Tim and the lovely ladies at the bookshop however, the work was just starting – so many books to sell and sign… so little time.

*This post contains no paid advertising. Honest.

Find out more about A London Country Diary here and at londoncountrydiary.com, where you can also discover how to become an urban country diarist. Follow Tim Bradford @Urban_Country and view more photos from the launch on Facebook. A London Country Diary is available now from all good bookshops. Stoke Newington Bookshop is currently selling Tim Bradford’s wonderful map of North London for £2.99 or £1 with the book.

The Unknown Unknown: Bookshops and the Delight of Not Getting What You Wanted, by Mark Forsyth, exclusively for Independent Booksellers Week

We are excited to reveal that Mark Forsyth, author of the Sunday Times Number One bestseller and its successful follow-ups The Etymologicon, The Horologicon and The Elements of Eloquence, is the author of this year’s specially commissioned essay for IBW Bookseller Collectibles: The Unknown Unknown: Bookshops and the Delight of Not Getting What You Wanted.

IBW Booksellers Collectibles is a range of books provided exclusively for indies to sell during Independent Booksellers Week, which takes place 28th June–5th July. Mark Forsyth explores in this essay why Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy would never have met online, the pleasure of leafing through a dictionary, and why only a bookshop can give you what you never knew you were looking for.

Mark Forsyth, who will also be on tour throughout IBW, visiting a new bookshop each evening, said, ‘To be asked to write the pamphlet for Independent Booksellers Week is both a pleasure and an honour (two things that rarely coincide). I’ve spent so long snuffling around in bookshops, that it’s wonderful to be able to look back at my life and call it research. I firmly believe that the bookshop is alive and well with a long life ahead of it, and I intend to explain my reasoning’.

And if that wasn’t enough, we’ll also be publishing the paperback of The Elements of Eloquence early for IBW, exclusively for indies!

The Unknown Unknown will be available from 28th June at £1.99 from independent bookshops (UK and Ireland) and available everywhere else from September. Find out more about Independent Booksellers Week by visiting the website and following the hashtag #IBW2014 on Twitter and follow Mark Forsyth @inkyfool and inkyfool.com.

New Books Published in April: A London Country Diary, Sensation, Neymar, and Messi, Neymar, Ronaldo

We published four very different yesterday and we’re excited to share them with you!

Warm temperatures make us temporarily friendlier. The colour red causes us to perform poorly on tests. Heavy clipboards make the CVs clipped to them seem more impressive. Clean smells promote moral behaviour. In Sensation, leading psychologist Thalma Lobel takes us on a trip around the senses, revealing the amazing extent to which our external environment profoundly shapes our thoughts, emotions and decisions about everything from the people we like to the way we work.

For fifteen years, Tim Bradford has meandered round the quiet streets of his North London home, seeking out the ordinary and the extraordinary, the sublime and the ridiculous. A London Country Diary documents his wanderings – he attempts to rescue a deer in Clissold Park, talks to a magical old man in Holloway, breaks up a fight in Stoke Newington and has issues with foxes in Highbury. And that’s just the beginning. Head over to londoncountrydiary.com to find out more about the book and how to become an urban country diarist!

In Neymar: The Making of the World’s Greatest New Number 10, Luca Caioli, author of bestselling biographies of Messi and Ronaldo, reconstructs Neymar’s life and career through exclusive private access to his friends, his family, his coaches, his teammates, his advisors, his fans. And in Messi, Neymar, Ronaldo he asks: ‘Who is the greatest of them all?’. Comparing contrasting styles, stories, records and awards, he gives you everything you need to decide who comes out on top.

Browse our July – December 2014 catalogue!

We’re still only at the beginning of 2014, but it’s the time of year where we start to let everyone know about new and exciting books that we’re publishing from July (with one exception!) until the end of the year.

We are looking forward to publishing Harry’s Last Stand in June – 91-year-old Harry Leslie Smith’s unique perspective to bear on NHS cutbacks, political corruption, food poverty, the lack of dignity in old age, and much more. His Guardian article – ‘This year, I will wear a poppy for the last time’ – was shared almost 60,000 times on Facebook and started a huge debate.

We are also publishing Do You Still Think You’re Clever?, the highly-anticipated sequel to John Farndon’s bestselling book of Oxbridge questions. Luca Caioli, author of bestselling Messi and Ronaldo, tackles Suarez in his latest biography and US-based British football writer Ian Plenderleith looks at the North American Soccer League at its peak in the 1970s in Rock ‘n’ Roll Soccer. We also have some exciting paperbacks for you this autumn, including The Elements of Eloquence, The Antiques Magpie and You Are the Music as well as a new addition to the Magpie miscellany series – The Classics Magpie. Browse our catalogue below to read about these books and more!

If you would like a hard copy, just get in touch and we’ll be happy to send one out to you.

#ShakespeareWeek with Shakespeare on Toast & Introducing Shakespeare: A Graphic Guide

17th – 23rd March is the first Shakespeare Week and we thought we’d celebrate by featuring Shakespeare on Toast and Introducing Shakespeare: A Graphic Guide. Shakespeare Week is a ‘new national, annual celebration, to inspire primary school children and their families through creative and cultural learning experiences’ and although our books aren’t strictly aimed at children, both books provide the perfect introduction to the Bard.

Who’s afraid of William Shakespeare? Just about everyone. He wrote too much and what he did write is inaccessible and elitist. Right? Wrong. Shakespeare on Toast knocks the stuffing from the staid old myth of Shakespeare, revealing the man and his plays for what they really are: modern, thrilling and uplifting drama. Actor and author Ben Crystal brings the bright words and colourful characters of the world’s greatest hack writer brilliantly to life, handing over the key to Shakespeare’s plays, unlocking the so called difficult bits and, astonishingly, finding Shakespeare’s own voice amid the poetry.

Did you know?

Shakespeare’s absolute pre-eminence is simply unparalleled. His plays pack theatres and provide Hollywood with block-buster scripts; his works inspire mountains of scholarship and criticism every year. He has given us many of the very words we speak, and even some of the thoughts we think. Much more than a biography or a guide to his plays and sonnets, Introducing Shakespeare: A Graphic Guide is a tour through the world of Will and concludes that even after centuries, Shakespeare remains the battlefield on which our very comprehension of humanity is being fought out.

Did you know?

Find out more about Shakespeare Week at shakespeareweek.org.uk and follow us on Twitter @iconbooks as we’ll be giving away copies of both books!

Celebrating International Women’s Day: 10 Non-Fiction Books by Women

As it’s International Women’s Day, we wanted to celebrate by featuring some of our female authors. Women are often underrepresented as non-fiction authors and opinion-influences, but some of our most successful, exciting and innovative books are written by women, so here’s ten of our non-fiction books by women!

The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance by Nessa Carey – ‘a book that would have had Darwin swooning’ (Guardian) – traces the thrilling path this discipline has taken over the last twenty years.

You Are the Music: How Music Reveals What it Means to Be Human by Victoria Williamson, is a brilliant new work – just published this month – that will delight music lovers of every persuasion as music psychologist Victoria Williamson examines our relationship with music across the whole of a lifetime.

Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences by Cordelia Fine is a vehement attack on the pseudo-scientific claims about the differences between the sexes, recently shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Writing 2013 and described by the Huffington Post as ‘a pinnacle piece of feminist literature’.

A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives by Cordelia Fine, shows the science behind the amazing ways your brain tricks you in everyday life.

Pythagoras: His Lives and the Legacy of a Rational Universe by Kitty Ferguson – ‘a valuable and inspiring read’ (Independent) – is the story of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, whose insights transformed the ancient world and still inspire the realms of science, mathematics, philosophy and the arts.

The First 20 Minutes: The Surprising Science of How We Can Exercise Better, Train Smarter and Live Longer by Gretchen Reynolds – ‘the new fitness bible for the modern age’ (Dan Coyle, author of The Talent Code) – is an innovative guide to getting fit using cutting-edge science.

Introducing Feminism: A Graphic Guide by Cathia Jenainati is an invaluable reference book for anyone seeking the story of how feminism reconfigured the world for women and men alike.

Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World by Tina Rosenberg is a groundbreaking book that will change the way you look at the world – the story of a new kind of social revolution which has transformed the lives of millions.

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf is ‘an inspiring celebration of the science of reading’ (P.D. Smith, Guardian) examining how the elasticity of our brains helps and hinders humans in their attempts to learn to read, and to process the written language.

Sensation: The New Science of Physical Intelligence by Thalma Lobel, published next month, will change for ever the way you think about the psychological impact of the outside world. ‘Thalma Lobel’s research is among the most innovative in psychology’ (Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational).

What are your favourite non-fiction books written by women?

New Books Published in March: You Are the Music, Cracked, Introducing Walter Benjamin & 30-Second Brain

It’s publication day for Icon Books and this month we have four smart-thinking books to share with you!

Do babies remember music from the womb? Can classical music increase your child’s IQ? Is music good for productivity? You Are the Music is a brilliant new work from music psychologist Victoria Williamson that will delight music lovers of every persuasion. Enter to win one of 15 signed copies over at Caboodle, listen to Victoria speak on BBC Radio 4 about the role of music in human development, and read a free extract.

Why is psychiatry such big business? Why are so many psychiatric drugs prescribed – 47 million antidepressant prescriptions in the UK alone last year – and why, without solid scientific justification, has the number of mental disorders risen from 106 in 1952 to 374 today? Cracked, by psychological therapist James Davies,– available in paperback for the first time – reveals the true human cost of an industry that, in the name of helping others, has actually been helping itself.

Walter Benjamin is often considered the key modern philosopher and critic of modern art. Tracing his influence on modern aesthetics and cultural history, Introducing Walter Benjamin: A Graphic Guide highlights his commitment to political transformation of the arts as a means to bring about social change. Head over to introducingbooks.com to find out more about the series.

Are we all at the mercy of our brain chemistry? Do you think that the amygdala and the hippocampus are fantastical sea monsters? What can an MRI scan tell us? 30-Second Brain, edited by Anil Seth, is here to fill your mind with the science of exactly what’s happening inside your head. Using no more than two pages, 300 words and an illustration, this is the quickest way to understand the wiring and function of the most complex and intricate mechanism in the human body.

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