Unstrange Minds (Hardback)

A Father Remaps the World of Autism

Roy Richard Grinker

This title provides new answers to this most puzzling and often controversial of disorders, combining moving stories, personal experience and the latest science. It is about Anthropologist and father Roy Richard Grinker's heartfelt, deeply touching quest to understand autism – and his powerful, compelling conclusions.When Roy Richard Grinker's daughter Isabel was diagnosed with autism in 1994, he knew nothing about the condition. It was considered rare, occurring in about 3 in every 10,000 births. Within ten years, however, most Westerners would be familiar with autism. Scientists have now reported rates as high as 1 in 100, and autism has been called an epidemic.Driven to learn more about this dramatic increase – both as an anthropologist and a father – Grinker set forth on a journey around the world, talking to mothers and fathers, physicians and teachers, advocates and scientists. Travelling from Africa and India to East Asia, from the mountains of Appalachia to America's National Institutes of Health, Grinker made a surprising and controversial discovery about the so-called autism epidemic that would change both his understanding of the disorder and his relationship with his daughter.Filled with moving stories, and informed by the latest science and Grinker's own experience, "Unstrange Minds" is a powerful testament to a father's quest for the truth, and is urgently relevant to anyone whose life is touched by one of history's most puzzling disorders.

Roy Richard Grinker is Professor of Anthropology and the Human Sciences at George Washington University in Washington, DC. He is the author of four other books, including the widely-acclaimed In the Arms of Africa: The Life of Colin M. Turnbull. He lectures widely about autism, and lives in suburban Maryland. His website is www.unstrange.com

Match Wits with the Kids (Paperback)

A Little Learning for All the Family

Jonathan Green

How does photosynthesis work? Who was the first Tudor king? What is a preposition, or a conjunction? What causes a tsunami? If you're caught In flagrante delicto what has happened? And how do you calculate the area of a triangle? Answering all the questions you're afraid to admit you need to ask, "Match Wits with the Kids" covers all the key school subjects – Maths, English, Science, History, Geography and languages. Jonathan Green, a highly experienced teacher and popular author, provides in a nutshell everything you need to refresh your memory. Including tests to see if you've taken it all in, "Match Wits with the Kids" is a lot of fun – and the ideal read for anyone feeling threatened by know-it-all children.

Jonathan Green has worked as a teacher for the last thirteen years, four of those as a deputy head teacher. In that time he has also written numerous popular books for children – everything from Sonic the Hedgehog to Doctor Who – and science fiction and fantasy novels for adults. He is also the author of What Is Myrrh Anyway?

Forty-fied (Paperback)

How to be a Fortysomething

Malcolm Burgess

"I Hate the Office" author presents a walking tour of your fifth decade, and advice on which fleece to take along…Is being forty the new thirty or are we all just kidding ourselves? Malcolm Burgess presents a riotous A – Z of the realities of fortysomething life in the Noughties. Riotous, that is, like having your iPod on in the house. Today's fortysomethings have never had it so good – or so confusing. While our parents could look forward to a sensible middle age we're more likely to be playing our Morrissey records and thanking God Jonathan Ross is on Radio 2. There are so many different ways of being in our forties that many of us aren't quite sure where we're supposed to go next – or just how grumpy we're meant to be. "Forty-fied" is the hilariously wry and observant essential guide to this complex decade in our lives. "The Metro" newspaper columnist and bestselling author of "I Hate the Office" leaves no embarrassing fortysomething scenario unturned – or do we mean unstoned? For anyone forty and fabulous, or who's forty and owns ten fleeces, this is the laugh-out- loud funny book of your dreams…and no doubt your screams, too.

Malcolm Burgess 49, is a journalist, scriptwriter and author. His comic series have appeared in The Times, the Mail on Sunday's You magazine, the Evening Standard and its ES magazine, the Financial Times, the Guardian, and the Metro, in which I Hate the Office, his recent bestselling book, was originally a weekly column.

Shakespeare on Toast (Hardback)

Getting a Taste for the Bard

Ben Crystal

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. Told in five fascinating Acts, "Shakespeare on Toast" sweeps the cobwebs from the Bard – from his language, his life, his time – revealing both the man and his work to be relevant, accessible and full of beans.

Ben Crystal is an actor and writer. He has worked in TV, film and theatre, including the reconstructed Shakespeare's Globe, London, and is a narrator for RNIB Talking Books, Channel 4 and the BBC. He co-wrote Shakespeare's Words (Penguin 2002) and The Shakespeare Miscellany (Penguin 2005) with David Crystal, and regularly gives talks and workshops on Shakespeare.

Quantum (eBook)

Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality

Manjit Kumar

'This is about gob-smacking science at the far end of reason … Take it nice and easy and savour the experience of your mind being blown without recourse to hallucinogens' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian

For most people, quantum theory is a byword for mysterious, impenetrable science. And yet for many years it was equally baffling for scientists themselves.

In this magisterial book, Manjit Kumar gives a dramatic and superbly-written history of this fundamental scientific revolution, and the divisive debate at its core. Quantum theory looks at the very building blocks of our world, the particles and processes without which it could not exist.

Yet for 60 years most physicists believed that quantum theory denied the very existence of reality itself.
In this tour de force of science history, Manjit Kumar shows how the golden age of physics ignited the greatest intellectual debate of the twentieth century.

Quantum theory is weird. In 1905, Albert Einstein suggested that light was a particle, not a wave, defying a century of experiments. Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and Erwin Schrodinger's famous dead-and-alive cat are similarly strange. As Niels Bohr said, if you weren't shocked by quantum theory, you didn't really understand it.

While "Quantum" sets the science in the context of the great upheavals of the modern age, Kumar's centrepiece is the conflict between Einstein and Bohr over the nature of reality and the soul of science. 'Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of physicists into believing that the problem had been solved', lamented the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann. But in "Quantum", Kumar brings Einstein back to the centre of the quantum debate. "Quantum" is the essential read for anyone fascinated by this complex and thrilling story and by the band of brilliant men at its heart.

Manjit Kumar is the editor of Prometheus, a journal that covers the arts, sciences and humanities and has written for the Guardian, the TES and the Irish Times. He is the co-author of Science and the Retreat from Reason, an adapted chapter of which Michael Frayn described as 'the clearest account I've read yet of the development of quantum mechanics.'

Best of Times, Worst of Times (Hardback)

365 Great Stories from Modern History

Gerard Cheshire

This is the third book in Icon's increasingly admired "365" series, revelling in the highs and lows of the world since the last year of the Second World War.The world since 1945 often seems to represents the lighter half of the 20th century. Rapid recovery from the ravages of war; the rise of popular culture; the phenomenal growth in affluence, health and quality of life; the communications revolution – in the West at least the story is a good one. But the years between 1945 and 2007 – those covered in this book – are far from being post-war. They are also, sadly, no strangers to famine, disease, violent political and social upheaval, terrorism, discrimination and environment catastrophe.Gerard Cheshire's "365" picks up where its predecessors left off. Featuring a historical story for every single day of the year, this volume reports the facts of the modern world but leaves the reader in no doubt – the end of history is a long way off yet.18 March 1965: A cosmonaut, and not an astronaut, becomes the first person to conduct a 'space walk'.14 May 1948: The first Jewish state in 2,000 years comes into being.21 September 1995: The 'Hindu Milk Miracle' causes mass hysteria in India.2 5 November 1984: Bob Geldof and Midge Ure assemble musicians to record 'Do they know it's Christmas?' under the collective name Band Aid.13 December 2006: The Chinese Yangtze river dolphin, the Baiji, is declared 'functionally extinct' after a research team fails to find a single specimen.

Gerard Cheshire has written a number of books on British and world history over a career spanning fifteen years including British History and World History (both Flametree Publishing). He is a graduate of UCL and holds a postgraduate degree from Bath Spa University College.

Atomic (Hardback)

The First War of Physics and the Secret History of the Atom Bomb 1939-49

Jim Baggott

Rich in personality, action, confrontation and deception, "Atomic" is the first fully realised popular account of the race to build humankind's most destructive weapon. The book draws on declassified material, such as MI6's FarmHall transcripts, coded Soviet messages cracked by American cryptographers in the Venona project, and interpretations by Russian scholars of documents from the Soviet archives. Jim Baggott weaves these threads into a monumental book that spans ten historic years, from the discovery of nuclear fission in 1939 to the aftermath of 'Joe-1', August 1949's first Soviet atomic bomb test.Why did physicists persist in developing the atomic bomb, despite the devastation that it could bring? Why, despite having a clear head start, did Hitler's physicists fail? Could the Soviets have developed the bomb without spies like Klaus Fuchs or Donald Maclean? Did the Allies really plot to assassinate a key member of the German bomb programme? Did the physicists knowingly inspire the arms race? "Atomic" is an epic story of science and technology at the very limits of human understanding; a tale barely believable as fiction, which just happens to be historical fact.

Jim Baggott is an award-winning science writer. A former academic chemist,he runs an independent management consultancy practice but maintains a broad interest in science, philosophy and history and continues to write on these subjects in his spare time, for, amongother publications, New Scientist magazine. His previous bookshave been widely acclaimed and include A Beginner's Guide to Reality (Penguin, 2005) and Beyond Measure: Modern Physics,Philosophy and the Meaning of Quantum Theory (OUP, 2004).

X Marks the Box (eBook)

Daniel Blythe

What is politics? And why does it matter? Self-confessed born-again voter Daniel Blythe presents a popular, forceful argument designed to shake up anyone 's apathy. Politics sets the agenda. Climate change, education, crime, housing these are political issues, but for many, party politics is still a turn-off. Daniel Blythe negotiates the political maze from the citizen' s point of view. Why should we vote? What do politicians do and why does it make a difference? Are you a Diehard, a Bloody-Noser or a Tactical? What can your MP do for you? And just why do they avoid answering direct questions? Along the way, we examine the most fun general elections and the under-rated politicians; the sauciest scandals and the bizarre sexiest MP polls; the biggest political victories, the U-turns and betrayals; the issues on the street, the part played by your choice of newspaper and what manifestos really mean; how to make your vote count, how to protest, and why you should care about by-elections. Whether you are disenchanted or a ballot-box regular, an activist or a floating voter, this is a book to amuse, inform and entertain. Irreverent, topical, sceptical and packed with useful facts and trivia, X Marks The Box takes you on a journey through apathy to activism – and everything in between.

Daniel Blythe is an author of many fiction and non-fiction titles and lives in Sheffield.

How I Caused the Credit Crunch (eBook)

An Insider's Story of the Financial Meltdown

Tetsuya Ishikawa

This is a vivid and personal account of 21st century banking excess. "How I Caused the Credit Crunch" traces seven years at the forefront of the credit markets – a tale from the heart of the bewildering banking maelstrom whose catastrophic collapse has plunged the world towards the worst recession since the 1930s. Tetsuya Ishikawa's story reveals how a young Oxford graduate finds himself in command of vast sums of other people's money; how a novice to the mysteries of hedge funds, subprime mortgages and CDOs can fix complex deals for billions of dollars in the exclusive bars, brothels and trading floors of London, New York, Frankfurt and Tokyo, and reap the benefits in a colossal annual bonus and an international luxury lifestyle. Ishikawa's book, which deftly explains the arcane financial instruments now grimly associated with the credit crunch, is both a powerful tale of lost innocence and an expose of the disturbing truth of the collective folly, frailty and greed at the heart of the banking crisis.

Tetsuya Ishikawa, Japanese by birth, grew up in London, and attended Eton College before reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University. Throughout his banking career that included Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and ABN AMRO, he structured, syndicated and sold Credit Derivative, CDO and Securitisation (including subprime) products to investors globally. He was made redundant by Morgan Stanley in May 2008. He currently lives in London with his wife and children.

The Selfish Genius (Paperback)

How Richard Dawkins Rewrote Darwin's Legacy

Fern Elsdon-Baker

Richard Dawkins' brand of evolutionary theory – which says that natural selection acts at the level of genes, not organisms or species – now seems to dominate our understanding of what Darwinism is all about. His shoot-from-the-hip style of communicating science has also fuelled a growing but unproductive feud between science and religion. But does Dawkins give us the full picture? Does disagreeing with him necessarily make you anti-Darwin, or anti-science? Fern Elsdon-Baker explores the historical, philosophical and scientific arguments that are beginning to show the cracks in Dawkins' thinking. Published in the year that celebrates the 150th anniversary of "On the Origin of Species", "The Selfish Genius" argues that Dawkins' way of seeing evolution – and indeed the world – is far from the only one possible, and that his popular image as the guardian of Darwinism in fact does it a disservice.

Fern Elsdon-Baker originally studied Environmental Sciences and now also has a PhD in the history and philosophy of evolutionary theory.

God's Philosophers (eBook)

How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science

James Hannam

Presents a narrative history that reveals the roots of modern science in the medieval world. This book debunks many of the myths about the Middle Ages, showing that medieval people did not think the earth is flat, nor did Columbus 'prove' that it is a sphere; the Inquisition burnt nobody for their science nor was Copernicus afraid of persecution.