Introducing Positive Psychology (Paperback)
A Practical Guide
Bridget Grenville-Cleave
An INTRODUCING PRACTICAL GUIDE to improving your outlook on life
Introducing Positive Psychology
Archives: Titles
Introducing Mindfulness
Introducing Mindfulness (Paperback)
A Practical Guide
Tessa Watt
Appreciate your life- right here, right now.
Learn how to use mindfulness every day, by listening to your body, becoming more aware of the present and letting go of negative thoughts.
Mindfulness teacher and consultant Tessa Watt introduces simple techniques with lots of examples and exercises for newcomers to begin right away, as well as outlining deeper mindfulness practice for those who wish to take it further.
Reduce anxiety and handle your emotions more effectively, enjoy the moment and recover from bad moods more quickly, and slow down and find your own source of calm.
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Introducing Happiness
Introducing Happiness (Paperback)
A Practical Guide
Will Buckingham
Apply the wisdom of philosophers to become a happier person.
What is happiness? What makes you happy?Is there more to life than happiness?
Learn to cultivate your taste for pleasure, free yourself from the various disturbances of life, and overcome irrational expectations that cause distress. Go with the flow and rediscover the joy of existence.
Filled with exercises, tips and case studies, this Practical Guide will enable you to see happiness in a new light, with the help of the world’s greatest minds
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Introducing Ethics for Everyday Life
Introducing Ethics for Everyday Life (Paperback)
A Practical Guide
Dave Robinson
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Inflight Science
Inflight Science (Paperback)
A Guide to the World from Your Airplane Window
Brian Clegg
The perfect companion to any flight – a guide to the science on view from your window seat. There are few times when science is so immediate as when you're in a plane. Your life is in the hands of the scientists and engineers who enable tons of metal and plastic to hurtle through the sky at hundreds of miles an hour. Inflight Science shows how you stay alive up there – but that's only the beginning.
Brian Clegg explains the ever changing view, whether it's crop circles or clouds, mountains or river deltas, and describes simple experiments to show how a wing provides lift, or what happens if you try to open a door in midair (don't!). On a plane you'll experience the impact of relativity, the power of natural radiation and the effect of altitude on the boiling point of tea. Among the many things you'll learn is why the sky is blue, the cause of thunderstorms and the impact of volcanic ash in an enjoyable tour of mid-air science. Every moment of your journey is an opportunity to experience science in action: Inflight Science will be your guide.
What a lovely little book this is: the ultimate holiday read before the holiday's even begun…. Author Brian Clegg clearly understands that science is only as dry as the ivy-covered professors who make it so.
This is science simplified, surprising and entertaining.
Everything you were afraid (very afraid) to ask is explained in this brilliant guide to the science of getting into the air, staying there and landing.
'Inflight Science,' by Brian Clegg, is essentially an eye-spy book for adults. After passing through the traumas and trials of security (where it is unlikely, you will be pleased to learn, to get enough of an X-ray dose to damage your DNA), and settling the kids to watch movies on their seatback screen (the LCD TV, by the way, relies on the same technology as sunglasses) this book will take you through the rest of your journey. Despite the odd alarming fact it is not, however, designed to scare one off flying. Quite the reverse: its intention is to inform – fitting into that publishing niche somewhere between hard science and Schott's Miscellany that was so successfully exploited by books such as 'The CloudSpotter's Guide.' The great strength of the book is its ability to pull out from the mundane experiences of modern air travel – the contrails and cumulonimbus, the security scanners and salted snacks – to explain a wider technical point.
…we should be grateful for this book from Brian Clegg, an unabashed aircraft geek. Everything about aircraft seems to fascinate him: how much they weigh, how their lavatories work, how they affect our bodies. His curiosity extends to airports, which he turns into pleasure palaces full of little-known facts rather than the dull shopping malls we normally take them to be. His book is structured as a representative flight, from check-in to customs, in which at every turn he micro-analyses the technical and scientific aspects of the experience. I consider myself reasonably competent on matters aeronautical, but he still managed to surprise me with something new on every page. For example, he digresses on why there will never be electric aircraft. The reason is that to carry the same amount of energy as 10kg of jet fuel, you'd need one ton of batteries…. With this book in hand, we have all we need to set off on our next flight with our eyes open to the sheer wonder of what is involved.
Clegg's foray into the science of air travel should be awarded some precious space in your hand luggage … The beauty of the book … lies in the way it makes you see the world afresh, learning about the way things work.
Each paragraph makes the world of science easier.
The perfect non-fiction equivalent of an airport novel.
Light but informative … fun and accessible and the perfect book to read on your travels … it'll leave you marvelling at the science and engineering that goes into flying.
'Inflight Science' catches the current wave of Brian Cox-approved popular science … for those who are interested in the way things work, and have seen the films on offer on board, it's a pleasant way of riding out the bumps.
An engaging guide for the unscientific to every aspect of your flight.
['Inflight Science'] is a revelation … In short, a whole new world of flying opens up.
Imagine Leonardo da Vinci seated next to you on an airplane. . . . Brian Clegg attempts to restore something of the lost wonder of air travel . . . even as Leonardo, so fascinated by science, might have done . . . leav[ing] his readers improved for the journey and filled with a renewed sense of curiosity toward the wonders out their window.
If flying in an airplane has left you with questions, Clegg will have the answers you're looking for and then some.
In other discussions of everything from jet engines to jet lag, Clegg both fascinates and informs.
There's much to be learned in this book, for both young and old.
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Written in Stone
Written in Stone (Paperback)
The Hidden Secrets of Fossils and the Story of Life on Earth
Brian Switek
The first book on the hunt for evolution’s ‘missing links’ over the last three decades – and what palaeontologists’ findings mean for our place on earth.
Well researched and beautifully written
Magisterial … part historical account, part scientific detective story. Switek's elegant prose and thoughtful scholarship will change the way you see life on our planet.
A fine guide to the four-dimensional tapestry of life
Switek has produced in his first book prose and paleontological inspiration comparable to the work of the late Stephen Jay Gould … Highly recommended.
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Not Fade Away
Not Fade Away (Paperback)
The Life and Music of Buddy Holly
John Gribbin
Buddy Holly was killed at 22 when the plane he was travelling in crashed on 3 February 1959. Although this was less than two years after Holly's first hit record, Don McLean described this as 'the day the music died.' But Sonny Curtis, Holly's friend and musical colleague, told us that the music didn't die, because 'Buddy Holly lives every time you play rock'n'roll.' Fifty years after Holly's death, his lasting influence is clear; a musical based on his life seems set to run for longer than his lifetime and artists as diverse as Blink 182 and Bob Dylan call him an inspiration.The Beatles chose That'll Be the Day by Buddy's group The Crickets as their first attempt at recording, as well as taking the idea for their name. Clearly, the music didn't die!John Gribbin, an ardent fan since he was twelve, presents this labour of love written in the spirit of Sonny Curtis' lyric, as a celebration of Holly's all too brief life, and as an introduction,for all those not around in 1959, to the man and his astonishing musical legacy. "Not Fade Away" also includes – uniquely – a full and detailed account of every Holly recording session, which any Buddy fan will devour.
If you want an introduction to the man and his music, you should read this charming and enthusiastic volume by John Gribbin.
Buddy Holly and The Crickets had an electrifying effect on us as young lads in Liverpool … things would definitely not have been the same without his huge talent. Love ya' Buddy!
Buddy Holly and The Crickets had an electrifying effect on us as young lads in Liverpool. We were inspired to learn guitar by seeing him on television and listening to his records. 'That'll Be The Day' blew our minds and Lord knows how long we took trying to learn the opening riff. His guitar and vocal style was massively influential on us as writers and players and things would definitely not have been the same without his huge talent. Love ya' Buddy! P.S. The name of his band, The Crickets, also influenced our choice of band name so those boys have a lot to answer for!
This new book provides the excuse to keep Holly's music-making memory and influences alive.
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Join the Club
Join the Club (Paperback)
How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World
Tina Rosenberg
In the style of Nudge or The Spirit Level – a groundbreaking book that will change the way you look at the world. This is the story of a new kind of social revolution which has transformed the lives of millions. It has drawn oppressed Indian women out of misery and passivity, persuaded teenagers to demand safe sex and to rebel against smoking; helped cure tuberculosis; enabled soldiers to have the confidence to face enemy fire and organized the nonviolent overthrow of a brutal dictator. Radical, optimistic and cogently argued, Join the Club will make you appreciate the power of one of humanity's most abundant resources: our connections with each other.
Timely, thoughtful and important.'
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Introducing Joyce
Introducing Joyce (Paperback)
A Graphic Guide
David Norris Carl Flint
Introducing Joyce provides an introduction to the life and work of the great pioneer of modernism.
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The Dickens Dictionary
The Dickens Dictionary (Hardback)
An A-Z of England's Greatest Novelist
Jon Sutherland
For fans new and old, an enjoyable tour through the world of Dickens in the hands of a master critic. Charles Dickens, the 'Great Inimitable', created a riotous fictional world that still lives and breathes for thousands of readers today. But how much do we really know about the dazzling imagination that brought all this into being?
For the bicentenary of Dickens' birth, Victorian literature expert John Sutherland has created a gloriously wide-ranging alphabetical companion to Dickens' work, excavating the hidden links between his characters, themes, and preoccupations, and the minutiae of his endlessly inventive wordplay.
Covering America, Bastards, Childhood, Christmas, Empire, Fog, Larks, London, Madness, Murder, Orphans, Pubs, Punishment, Smells, Spontaneous Combustion and Zoo to name but a few – John Sutherland gives us a uniquely personal guide to the great man's work.
Excerpt: HANDS; Every Dickens novel has a master image. In Our Mutual Friend it is the river. In Bleak House it is the fog. In Little Dorrit, it is the prison. In Great Expectations it is the hand. We often know much more about the principals' hands in that novel than their faces. Who, when the name Magwitch is mentioned, does not think of those murderous 'large brown veinous hands'? Jaggers? One's nose twitches—scented soap (the lawyer, like Pontius Pilate, is forever washing his hands). Miss Havisham? Withered claws. So it goes on…
John Sutherland, sharpest and wittiest of literary commentators, turns his attention to the Inimitable, with lively results.
Sutherland, as always, wears his erudition lightly, and his love of the quirky and off-beat shines warmly through this enjoyable book, which often made me laugh aloud.
Step forward John Sutherland, whose crackling little book is a surprise antidote to Dickens ennui.
Sutherland is clearly a man who knows his subject so well that he's able to play games with it. The result is a joyful dance of a book that even the most jaded Dickens reader will relish.
An imaginative and witty dictionary.
[Sutherland] has written a witty and quirky Dickens Dictionary in handy bite-sized entries … A delight.
Sutherland, as always, wears his erudition lightly, and his love of the quirky and off-beat shines warmly through this enjoyable book, which often made me laugh aloud
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Ronaldo – 2013 Edition
Ronaldo – 2013 Edition (Paperback)
The Obsession for Perfection
Luca Caioli
From the author of the bestselling Torres and Messi, a revealing new biography of Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo. When a young Portuguese player with sublime abilities arrived at Manchester United in 2003, Alex Ferguson put the no. 7 shirt – once worn by Best, Cantona and Beckham – on his back without hesitation. The expectation was clear, and Cristiano Ronaldo didn't disappoint. Ronaldo won the FIFA World Footballer of the Year in 2008, the first Premier League player ever to do so. Since his record-breaking GBP80m move to Real Madrid, his goal-scoring flair has continued and made his on-going rivalry with Barcelona's Lionel Messi even more intense. Luca Caioli tells the inside story of this global superstar both on and off the pitch, unveiling the life of one of modern football's great players as never before.
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Economyths
Economyths (Paperback)
How the Science of Complex Systems is Transforming Economic Thought
David Orrell
From the inability of wealth to make us happier, to our catastrophic blindness to the credit crunch, "Economyths" reveals ten ways in which economics has failed us all. Forecasters predicted a prosperous year in 2008 for financial markets – in one influential survey the average prediction was for an eleven per cent gain. But by the end of the year, the Standard and Poor's 500 index – a key economic barometer – was down 38 per cent, and major economies were plunging into recession. Even the Queen asked – Why did no one see it coming? An even bigger casualty was the credibility of economics, which for decades has claimed that the economy is a rational, stable, efficient machine, governed by well-understood laws. Mathematician David Orrell traces the history of this idea from its roots in ancient Greece to the financial centres of London and New York, shows how it is mistaken, and proposes new alternatives. "Economyths" explains how the economy is the result of complex and unpredictable processes; how risk models go astray; why the economy is not rational or fair; why no woman (until 2009) had ever won the Nobel Prize for economics; why financial crashes are less Black Swans than part of the landscape; and, finally, how new ideas in mathematics, psychology, and environmentalism are helping to reinvent economics.
A must read for understanding the roots of the financial crisis, the severe limitations of the field of economics and what needs to be done to improve our ability to avoid future crises.
This is without doubt the best book I've read this year, and probably one of the most important books I've ever read…. Orrell exposes the rotten heart of economics… There are other books talking on economics, but I've not come across another that explains it so well for the layperson, takes in the credit crunch, totally destroys the validity of economics as we know it and should be required reading for every politician and banker. No, make that every voter in the land. This ought to be a real game changer of a book. Read it.
The author dissects ten fundamental misunderstandings … Orrell manages to convincingly explain the relevance of these myths and make them understandable, even for laymen, in a wider context.
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The Universe Inside You
The Universe Inside You (Paperback)
The Extreme Science of the Human Body from Quantum Theory to the Mysteries of the Brain
Brian Clegg
Built from the debris of exploding stars that floated through space for billions of years, home to a zoo of tiny aliens, and controlled by a brain with more possible connections than there are atoms in the universe, the human body is the most incredible thing in existence.
In the sequel to his bestselling Inflight Science, Brian Clegg explores mitochondria, in-cell powerhouses which are thought to have once been separate creatures; how your eyes are quantum traps, consuming photons of light from the night sky that have travelled for millions of years; your many senses, which include the ability to detect warps in space and time, and why meeting an attractive person can turn you into a gibbering idiot.
Read THE UNIVERSE INSIDE YOU and you'll never look at yourself the same way again.
The Universe Inside You is science writer Brian Clegg's latest attempt to catalogue a world of science that you probably should remember from school but never quite paid enough attention to.
[The Universe Inside You] explains the inner workings of your body in order to explore the outermost workings of the universe. I'm completely gripped.
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Introducing Self-Esteem
Introducing Self-Esteem (Paperback)
A Practical Guide
David Bonham-Carter
Self-Esteem: A Practical Guide brings you easy-to-follow techniques for improving your self-image. It's packed with practices from CBT and related disciplines so you can achieve a realistic and positive view of yourself and live a happier and more successful life. FEEL BETTER and worry less. VALUE YOURSELF and overcome feelings of inadequacy. GET MOTIVATED and unlock your potential. COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY to maintain successful relationships.
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Introducing Psychology of Relationships
Introducing Psychology of Relationships (Paperback)
A Practical Guide
John Karter
A Practical Guide to using psychological techniques to improve your relationships
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Introducing Philosophy for Everyday Life
Introducing Philosophy for Everyday Life (Paperback)
a Practical Guide
Trevor Curnow
An Introducing Practical Guide to how philosophy can be used in everyday life
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Introducing Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) for Work
Introducing Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) for Work (Paperback)
A Practical Guide
Dianne Lowther
A Practical Guide to using NLP to become more successful at work
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Third Man in Havana
Third Man in Havana (Hardback)
Finding the Heart of Cricket in the World's Most Unlikely Places
Tom Rodwell Courtney Walsh
When Tom Rodwell embarked on a cricketing tour of India, he had only ever thought of the game as great fun.
But the simple joy of the local street kids when his team donated their kit to them made him realise that it could be more than that.
By turns touching and amusing, and imbued with a deep love of the game, Third Man in Havana is the story of the charity cricket programmes ‘Major’ Tom Rodwell has helped run around the world, and of the people he has encountered along the way.
From Be’er Sheva Cricket Club pavilion in Israel – a converted nuclear bomb shelter, useful in the face of Hamas’ regular rocket attacks – to a game of tapeball cricket with ex-Tamil Tiger child soldiers behind barbed wire in Sri Lanka, Rodwell discovered that the heart of the game is beating fast in countries more used to conflict than cricket.
Third Man in Havana is a wonderfully positive story, revealing that the spirit of cricket is alive and well.
A cellarful of dry white wit
'It's marvellous … Magnificent observation. Great humour. A wonderful book'.
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In Harm's Way
In Harm's Way (Paperback)
Bosnia: A War Reporter's Story
Martin Bell
First published in October 1995, In Harm's Way established itself rapidly as a classic of war reporting.
'One of the great memoirs of war reporting'.
Written with clarity and often understated anger … a prophetic warning from the brutal European battlefield.
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The Shrink and the Sage
The Shrink and the Sage (Paperback)
A Guide to Living
Antonia Macaro Julian Baggini
Based on their Financial Times Weekend column, philosopher Julian Baggini and his psychotherapist partner Antonia Macaro offer intriguing answers to life's questions. Can infidelity be good for you? What does it mean to stay true to yourself? Must we fulfil our potential? Self-help with a distinctly cerebral edge, the shrink and the sage – aka Julian Baggini and Antonia Macaro – have been dispensing advice through their FT column since October 2010. Combining practical advice on personal dilemmas with meditations on the meaning of concepts like free will, spirituality and independence, this book – their first together – expands on these columns and adds much more. Through questions of existential unease, metaphysical trauma and – for instance – how much we should care about our appearance, intellectual agony uncle and aunt team Baggini and Macaro begin to piece together the answer that we'd all like to hear: what is the good life, and how we can live it?
[A] very elegant, high-class self-help book
It gave me some serious food for thought'
