Icon News & Events

‘Science should be enthralling – it’s how everything works, it’s life and death’

Posted on 2011/04/14 in General, tagged as

There’s an interesting interview with Inflight Science author Brian Clegg on Litopia.com where he talks about the process of writing the book. ‘Every point of a flight, inside and out, there are things happening that can give fascinating and fun insights into the realities of science and how it influences our lives…I had more fun doing it than I have had with pretty well any other book I can think of,’ Brian Clegg There’s also a good review (by… Read more »

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How does a jumbo jet fly? Why does my cup of tea taste funny? Is it dangerous for my ears to pop?

Posted on 2011/04/08 in General, tagged as

These and many more questions are answered in an extract from Brian Clegg’s Inflight Science in today’s Daily Mail. Read the full article here and much more about the book here.

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Kate Monro’s The First Time goes to print

Posted on 2011/04/06 in General, tagged as

One of our most commercial books for this season has just gone to print – Kate Monro’s The First Time: True Tales of Virginity Lost and Found (Including My Own). Here’s the full cover and there’s more about it below. It’s published at the start of May. Losing our virginity … it happens to all of us. How did it happen for you? What do other people think and feel about it? Kate Monro is on a mission to find out. She asked men and women – old and yo… Read more »

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‘The most impressive [book] I have yet read on the ending of the Cold War’

Posted on 2011/04/01 in General, tagged as

Waterstones Bookseller Henry Coningsby at their Watford branch has written a fabulous review of David Hoffman’s The Dead Hand on the Waterstones website. ‘It combines the pace of a Tom Clancy thriller with the latest investigative research to show how close, how agonisingly close, we came to Armageddon.’ Read the full piece here – and order your copy while you’re there too if you haven’t already!

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Bell tolls for Icon

Posted on 2011/04/01 in General, tagged as

Publishing trade magazine The Bookseller runs a story today about our acquisition of a new title by one of our favourite and best-known authors, Martin Bell, pictured left. His book – For Whom the Bell Tolls – is a collection of often autobiographical light verse. Oscillating between trenchant satire and touching honesty, Bell presents poems on Tony Blair and Iraq, on Radovan Karadzic, the Serbian war criminal whom he met on trial in the Hague, o… Read more »

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Alain de Botton heaps praise on Inflight Science in the Mail on Sunday

Posted on 2011/03/30 in General, tagged as

Brian Clegg’s Inflight Science was reviewed by Alain de Botton (left) in the Mail on Sunday over the weekend. ‘We should be grateful for this book from Brian Clegg, an unabashed aircraft geek …’ he says. ‘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.’ For a very special offer on the book, visit the homepage of popularscience.co.uk and the book has its own Fa… Read more »

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Masha Gessen on RTE’s Pat Kenny show in the next hour

Posted on 2011/03/29 in General, tagged as

Masha Gessen, author of Perfect Rigour and pictured left, will be interviewed on Ireland’s RTE Radio 1 Today with Pat Kenny show this morning. If you’re not in Ireland you can listen live via their website here and there’s more on the show itself here.

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‘An eye-spy book for adults’

Posted on 2011/03/28 in General, tagged as

Brian Clegg’s Inflight Science, published on 7th April, was reviewed in The Times on Saturday. ‘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… Read more »

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‘By any standards, Grigori Perelman makes a marvellous subject for a biography…’

Posted on 2011/03/28 in General, tagged as

Masha Gessen’s Perfect Rigour was reviewed by Robin McKie in the Observer yesterday: ‘Perfect Rigour is readable, coherent and enjoyable and we get a distinct image of a man crippled by his inabilities to empathise with or understand other men or women.’ Read the full piece here.

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Icon has TWO books shortlisted for the 2011 Best Book of Ideas

Posted on 2011/03/24 in General, tagged as

Six books have been shortlisted for 2011 Best Book of Ideas, and they include Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender and David Shenk’s The Genius in All of Us. The prize – worth £7,500 in 2011 – is awarded to the book published in 2010 which presents new, important and challenging ideas, which is rigorously argued,  and which is engaging and accessible. Icon’s MD, Simon Flynn, is quoted on the site’s page: ‘At Icon, we believe in independent thought… Read more »

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