Category: New Books

Win copies of You Are the Music by Victoria Williamson, out next month

Victoria Williamson’s You Are the Music is published on 6th March and to celebrate, there are copies available to win via Caboodle (National Book Tokens) and Goodreads.

Do babies remember music from the womb? Can classical music increase your child’s IQ? Is music good for productivity? Can it aid recovery from illness and injury? And what is going on in your brain when Ultravox’s ‘Vienna’, Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht or Dizzee Rascal’s ‘Bonkers’ transports you back to teenage years?

In a brilliant new work that will delight music lovers of every persuasion, music psychologist Victoria Williamson examines our relationship with music across the whole of a lifetime. Along the way she reveals the amazing ways in which music can physically reshape our brains, explores how ‘smart music listening’ can improve cognitive performance, and considers the perennial puzzle of what causes ‘earworms’.

Requiring no specialist musical or scientific knowledge, You Are the Music reveals as never before the extent of the universal language of music that lives deep inside us all.

Head over to Caboodle to enter to win one of 15 signed copies and Goodreads to win one of five copies (only one week left to enter!). Follow Vicky on Twitter @DrVickyW and find out more about the book here.

New Books Published in February: Dice World, July 1914 & The Nature Magpie, now available in paperback

We published three brilliant paperbacks this week! Take a look below to read more about them.

Dice World: Science and Life in a Random Universe, Brian Clegg
As troubling as we pattern-seeking humans may find it, modern science has repeatedly shown us that randomness is the underlying heartbeat of nature.

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.

Read an extract and find out more about the book.

July 1914: Countdown to War, Sean McMeekin

The outbreak of the First World War was ‘a drama never surpassed’.

One hundred years later, the characters still seem larger than life: Archduke Franz Ferdinand, brooding heir to the Habsburg throne; the fanatical Bosnian Serb assassins who plot to murder him; Conrad and Berchtold, the Austrians who exploit the outrage; Kaiser Wilhelm and Bethmann Hollweg, backing up the Austrians; Sazonov, Russian Foreign Minister, trying to live down a reputation for cowardice; Poincaré and Paléologue, two French statesmen who urge on the Russians; and not least Winston Churchill, who, alone among Cabinet officials in London, perceives the seriousness of the situation in time to take action.

July 1914 tells the story of Europe’s countdown to war through the eyes of these men, between the bloody opening act on 28 June 1914 and Britain’s final plunge on 4 August, which turned a European conflict into a world war.

Read an extract and find out more about the book.

The Nature Magpie: A Cornucopia of Facts, Anecdotes, Folklore and Literature from the Natural World, by Daniel Allen

A collection of anecdotes, facts, figures, folklore and literature, The Nature Magpie is a veritable treasure trove of humanity’s thoughts and feelings about nature. With acclaimed nature writer Daniel Allen as your guide, join naturalists, novelists and poets as they explore the most isolated parts of the planet, choose your side – pineapple or durian – in the great ‘king of fruits’ debate and discover which plants can be used to predict the weather.

Meet the roadkill connoisseurs, learn to dance the Hippopotamus Polka, find out the likelihood of sharing your name with a hurricane – and much more

Find out more about the book.

A Letter from Harry by Second World War RAF veteran Harry Leslie Smith, to be published June 2014

We are excited to announce that we will be publishing A Letter from Harry: Why the world we built is falling down, and what we can do to save it, by Second World War RAF veteran Harry Leslie Smith, in June.

Harry Leslie Smith was born in 1923 in Barnsley. King George V was on the throne. Stanley Baldwin was Prime Minister. Eliot’s The Waste Land was picking up mixed reviews. There was no NHS, no welfare state. Those who could afford to took care of themselves; those who couldn’t, suffered.

And then out of the rubble of the Second World War Harry’s generation rebuilt the country. They wanted to build a better, fairer world for their children and grandchildren. And they succeeded.

But now Harry sees history repeating – from NHS cutbacks to immigration policies and everything in between. With a voice as angry as it is lyrical, Harry shows us what the world looks like to him and why we shouldn’t take it lying down.

A Letter from Harry is a searing modern polemic that shows, with the indisputable force of lived experience, why the past shouldn’t stay buried, and the future is ours for the taking.

Read the announcement about the acquisition in the Bookseller or Book Brunch and find out more about the book here.

Productivity Tips from the Icon Books Ninjas

Graham Allcott’s How to Be a Productivity Ninja was published this week and to celebrate, we thought we’d share our own productivity tips with you! We’re getting in the New Year, New Ninja mood…

Kate (Commissioning Editor)
I ‘go dark’, to use the terminology in Graham Allcott’s How to be a Productivity Ninja. This means when I really need to focus I turn off my email and put my voicemail on for a few hours, so I can work uninterrupted.

Stacey (Sales and Marketing Executive)
I note down all the tasks I have to do and projects that need to be completed, plus little notes to myself and deadlines, on a to-do list in Excel. In How to Be a Productivity Ninja, this is what Graham Allcott calls our ‘second brain’. I don’t have to try and memorise every task, I can just get on and do them! I also keep a daily to-do list, so I always know what I need to prioritise.

Andrew (Sales and Marketing Director)
I regularly email myself ideas in the evening or at the weekend. It means I don’t forget them when I am at work but it also means I can forget them when I’m not!

Michael (Sales Executive)
With so much of my work based online it’s easy to get lost in spreadsheets and emails. I’ve found that retreating to the safety of ink and paper is often the best resort. Handwritten to-do lists, strategic print outs and a patchwork of post it notes help cut through the snow-blindness of pixelated-living. Plus, crossing out things on my to-do list in thick felt tip pen is incredibly satisfying.

Leena (Digital Sales Executive)
However many spreadsheets you make, sometimes having things existing ‘digitally’ just isn’t enough. And that’s coming from ‘the ebooks girl’ of the office! Get yourself some colourful Sharpies and colour-code those urgent problems in front of you, lay them out like puzzle pieces.
After all, for every job that must be done …

Graham Allcott does not endorse our productivity advice – we may be failing in our attempts to become a Productivity Ninja, but we are human (not superhero!) and will continue in our attempts to live the Ninja way!

How to be a Productivity Ninja is available now from all good bookshops and as an eBook. Follow Graham @grahamallcott.

How to Be a Productivity Ninja is published today!

Move beyond time management, get your inbox to zero and learn to think like a Productivity Ninja! Get your hands on a copy of How to Be a Productivity Ninja by Graham Allcott, published today. It’s finally January, so it’s time for New Year, New Ninja!

In this age of information overload, traditional time-management techniques simply aren’t able to deal with overflowing inboxes, ever-expanding to-do lists and endless, pointless meetings that leave us all feeling panicked and overworked. The solution? Think like a Ninja!

With techniques from ruthlessness to stealth to mindfulness, you can get your inbox down to zero, make the most of your attention, avoid procrastination and learn to work smarter, not harder. Fun, accessible and practical, How to be a Productivity Ninja teaches you how to stay calm, cool and collected, get more done, and love your work again.

Watch Graham Allcott talk about 9 characteristics of the Productivity Ninja (and how he wrote the book in a beach hut in Sri Lanka!) in the video below:

How to Be a Productivity Ninja is available now from all good bookshops and as an eBook. Follow Graham on Twitter @grahamallcott.

Listen to Mark Forsyth on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme!

Mark Forsyth, bestselling author of The Etymologicon and The Horologicon, appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, talking about the hidden formulas for making lines memorable.

In The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase, Mark Forsyth explores the flowers of rhetoric, such as diacope (used in Shakespeare’s ‘O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?’ and ‘Love me love me, say that you love me’ by The Cardigans) and antithesis – the use of opposites in the same sentence, used by famous figures from Charles Dickens to Katy Perry.

The Elements of Eloquence can be purchased from the following online bookshops: Amazon UK, Hive, Waterstones, WHSmith, Book Depository, Foyles, Blackwell’s and Wordery, as well as many hundreds of offline ones too, including your local independent. It is is also available as an eBook.

Follow Mark on Twitter @inkyfool and for all things Mark Forsyth, follow the Tumblr.

The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth is out now!

The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase, from bestselling author of The Etymologicon and The Horologicon, Mark Forsyth, is out today.

Watch the video below to find out more about The Elements of Eloquence, from Mark Forsyth himself.

The Elements of Eloquence is available from all good bookshops as and as an eBook. Go here to read more about the book.

Can you get to central London by 6:30pm on Tuesday 12th November? If so, you and a friend could be heading off to Mark Forsyth’s exclusive book launch, held in a fancy central London location on Tuesday 12th November (next week!).

Just enter below (and extra entries are available!):

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Follow Mark on Twitter @inkyfool and visit his Inky Fool blog here. We’ve also redesigned the Mark Forsyth Tumblr, so head over to that here.

A Magpie arrives in the Icon Books office!

Copies of The Antiques Magpie: A Fascinating Compendium of Absorbing History, Stories, Facts and Anecdotes from the World of Antiques, published 5th September, arrived into the Icon Books office last week.

With Antiques Roadshow regular Marc Allum as your guide, go in search of stolen masterpieces, explore the first museums, learn the secrets of the forgers, brush up on your auction technique, and much more.

You can read more about The Antiques Magpie here and head over to Goodreads to enter to win a copy of the book. Follow Marc Allum on Twitter @Marc_Allum.

SIGN UP TO THE ICON BOOKS NEWSLETTER