The Human Cosmos: A Secret History of the Stars by Jo Marchant

$33.00 NZD

Category: Sciences

For most of human history, we have led not just an earthly existence but a cosmic one. Celestial cycles drove every aspect of our daily lives. Our innate relationship with the stars shaped who we are - our religious beliefs, power structures, scientific advances and even our biology. But over the last f ew centuries we have separated ourselves from the universe that surrounds us. And that disconnect comes at a cost.In The Human Cosmos, Jo Marchant takes us on a tour through the history of humanity's relationship with the heavens. We travel to the Hall of the Bulls in Lascaux and witness the summer solstice at a 5,000-year-old tomb at Newgrange. We visit Medieval monks grappling with the nature of time and Tahitian sailors navigating by the stars. We discover how light reveals the chemical composition of the sun, and we are with Einstein as he works out that space and time are one and the same. A four-billion-year-old meteor inspires a search for extra-terrestrial life. And we discover why star-gazing can be really, really good for us.It is time for us to rediscover the full potential of the universe we inhabit, its wonder, its effect on our health and its potential for inspiration and revelation. ...Show more

A Human's Guide to the Future by Jordan Nguyen

$40.00 NZD

Category: Sciences

TECHNOLOGY IS EVOLVING AT THE FASTEST RATE WE'VE EVER SEEN, BUT IT MAY BE THE SLOWEST RATE WE'LL EVER SEE AGAIN! What does this mean for the future of the human race? Do we resist these changes or embrace them?Australian biomedical engineer, inventor and visionary Dr Jordan Nguyen has lived a life of cu riosity and wonder - exploring positive opportunities in science and technology, including robotics, artificial intelligence, bionics, extended reality and avatars. He believes that technology is a powerful tool that we as humans can choose to harness to create a better tomorrow.In A Human's Guide to the Future, Dr Jordan takes us on a journey through the big innovations being developed around the world, along the fun and amazing rollercoaster of his own adventures, and to envisage where our collective future is headed.Written by one of this generation's most exciting voices, this is a book that will deepen your understanding of new and emerging technologies and fuel your imagination at the dawn of what will be the most transformative era in human history. ...Show more

Overkill: When modern medicine goes too far by Paul Offit

$38.00 NZD

Category: Sciences

An acclaimed medical expert and patient advocate offers an eye-opening look at many common and widely used medical interventions that are far more harmful than helpful. Modern medicine has significantly advanced in the last few decades as more informed practices, thorough research, and incredible break throughs have made it possible to successfully treat and even eradicate many serious ailments. But while we have learned much that has changed our outlook and practices, we still rely on medical interventions that are vastly out of date and can adversely affect our health. It is an article of faith, for example, that finishing a course of antibiotics prevents the recurrence of illness, that sunscreens block harmful UV rays which cause skin cancer, and that all cancer-screening programs save lives. But do scientific studies back up such beliefs? In this game-changing book, infectious-disease expert and Rotavirus vaccine inventor Dr Offit highlights fifteen common medical interventions still recommended and practised by medical professionals, despite clear evidence that they are harmful — including the above examples, as well as the treatment of acid reflux in babies, the lowering of fevers, and the reliance on heart stents and knee surgery. By analysing what makes these practices so ineffective and harmful, and by presenting medical alternatives, Overkill gives patients invaluable information to help them ask their doctors better questions and to advocate for their own health. ...Show more

Written in Bone by Sue Black

$37.00 NZD

Category: Sciences

Our bones are the silent witnesses to the lives we lead. Our stories are marbled into their marrow. Drawing upon her years of research and a wealth of remarkable experience, the world-renowned forensic anthropologist Dame Sue Black takes us on a journey of revelation. From skull to feet, via the face, spine, chest, arms, hands, pelvis and legs, she shows that each part of us has a tale to tell. What we eat, where we go, everything we do leaves a trace, a message that waits patiently for months, years, sometimes centuries, until a forensic anthropologist is called upon to decipher it. Some of this information is easily understood, some holds its secrets tight and needs scientific cajoling to be released. But by carefully piecing together the evidence, the facts of a life can be rebuilt. Limb by limb, case by case - some criminal, some historical, some unaccountably bizarre - Dame Sue Black reconstructs with intimate sensitivity and compassion the hidden stories in what we leave behind. ...Show more

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? - And Other Questions about Dead Bodies by Caitlin Doughty

$25.00 NZD

Category: Sciences

What happens if someone dies on a plane? Can we give Grandma a Viking funeral? Why don't animals dig up all the graves? Will my hair keep growing in my coffin after I'm buried? Every day, funeral director Caitlin Doughty receives dozens of questions about death. In this book she offers factual, hilario us and candid answers to thirty-five of the most interesting questions posed by her youngest fans, sharing the lore and science of what happens to, and inside, our bodies after we die. Why do corpses groan? What causes bodies to turn strange colours during decomposition? and why do hair and nails appear longer after death? The answers are all within . . . ...Show more

The Life Scientific: Explorers by Anna Buckley

$28.00 NZD

Category: Sciences

Inside the lives of the scientists who are exploring the world, our universe, the past and ourselves.Based on the interviews broadcast on BBC Radio 4's hugely popular series, The Life Scientific: Explorers takes science out of its box and introduces us to the men and women who make it happen. The explor ers featured in this volume include: Michele Dougherty, the mathematician who persuaded the Cassini mission to Saturn to make a diversion; Richard Fortey on his love of trilobites; Monica Grady, Meteorite Lady; neurosurgeon Henry Marsh on slicing through our thoughts; the Director of the British Antarctic Survey, Jane Francis; Brian Cox on quantum mechanics; and Nobel Prize winner John Sulston on why he thought it would be a good idea to sequence the human genome. ...Show more

Letters from an Astrophysicist by Neil deGrasse Tyson

$24.00 NZD

Category: Sciences

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has attracted one of the world's largest online followings with his fascinating, widely accessible insights into science and our universe. Now, Tyson invites us to go behind the scenes of his public fame by unveiling his candid correspondence with people across the glo be who have sought him out in search of answers. In this hand-picked collection of 100 letters, Tyson draws upon cosmic perspectives to address a vast array of questions about science, faith, philosophy, life, and of course, Pluto. His succinct, opinionated, passionate, and often funny responses reflect his popularity and standing as a leading educator. Tyson's 2017 best seller Astrophysics for People in a Hurry offered more than one million readers an insightful and accessible understanding of the universe. Now, revealing Tyson's most candid and heartfelt writing yet, Letters from an Astrophysicist introduces us to a newly personal dimension of Tyson's quest to understand our place in the cosmos. The full list of narrators includes Victor Bevine, Gabriel Vaughan, Lauren Fortgang, Neil Hellegers, Kevin Free, Vikas Adam, Nick Sullivan, Gabra Zackman, Allyson Johnson, Brandon Rubin, and Piper Goodeve. ...Show more

What Cats Want: An Illustrated Guide for Truly Understanding Your Cat by Yuki Hattori

$27.00 NZD

Category: Sciences

From the top feline doctor in Japan comes a fun, practical, adorably illustrated "cat-to-human" translation guide to decoding your cat's feelings. When your cat's tail is upright, she's saying hello. If it's quivering? She's happy to see you. But if it swishes ominously from side to side across your li ving room floor? Beware - your cat is annoyed. With nineteen bones and twelve muscles, cats' tails have countless ways of expressing their emotions. What Cats Want is here to uncover the meaning behind every movement, and the motivation beneath every quirk. Did you know, for example, that adult cats love to reconnect with their inner kitten? Or that cats prefer multiple watering holes over just one? Our cats are sophisticated-no matter what any dog lover says-and What Cats Want has the answers to every question asked by cat owners young and old. An invaluable new guide filled with creative tips and darling illustrations, What Cats Want provides a much-desired glimpse into the minds of our most mysterious pets. ...Show more

Bees and Their Keepers - In Religion, Revolution and Evolution by Frank Perry (Translator); Lotte Möller

$45.00 NZD

Category: Gardening

A beautifully illustrated and thoroughly engaging cultural history of beekeeping - packed with anecdote, humour and enriching historical detail. The perfect gift. Beekeeper and garden historian Lotte Möller explores the activities inside and outside the hive while charting the bees' natural order and ha bits. With a light touch she uses her encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject to shed light on humanity's understanding of bees and bee lore from antiquity to the present. A humorous debunking of the myths that have held for centuries is matched by a wry exploration of how and when they were replaced by fact. In her travels Möller encounters a trigger-happy Californian beekeeper raging against both killer bees and bee politics, warring beekeepers on the Danish island of Læso, and Brother Adam of Buckfast Abbey, breeder of the Buckfast queen now popular throughout Europe and beyond, as well a host of others as passionate as she about the complex world of apiculture both past and present. Translated from the Swedish by Frank Perry - Sweden's Gardening Book of the Year 2019, shortlisted for the August Prize 2019 ...Show more

How the Brain Lost Its Mind by Allan Ropper; Brian David Burrell

$33.00 NZD

Category: Sciences

In 1882, Jean-Martin Charcot was the premiere physician in Paris, having just established a neurology clinic at the infamous Salpetriere Hospital, a place that was called a 'grand asylum of huma misery'. Assessing the dismal conditions, he quickly set up to upgrade the facilities, and in doing so, revol utionised the treatment of mental illness. Many of Carcot's patients had neurosyphilis (the advanced form of syphilis), a disease of mad poets, novelists, painters, and musicians, and a driving force behind the overflow of patients in Europe's asylums. A sexually transmitted disease, it is known as 'the great imitator' since its symptoms resemble those of almost any biological disease or mental illness. it is also the perfect lens through which to peel back the layers to better understand the brain and the mind. Yet, Charcot's work took a bizarre turn when he brought mesmerism - hypnotism - into his clinic, abandoning his pursuit of the biological basis of illness in favour of the far sexier and theatrical treatment of female 'hysterics', whose symptoms mimic those seen in brain disease, but were elusive in origin. This and a general fear of contagion set the stage for Sigmund Freud, whose seductive theory, Freudian analysis, brought sex and hysteria onto the psychiatrist couch, leaving the brain behind. How The Brain Lost Its Mind tells this rich and compelling story, and raises a host of philosophical and practical questions. Are we any closer to understanding the difference between a sick mind and a sick brain? The real issue remains: where should neurology and psychiatry converge to explore not just the brain, but the nature of the human psyche? ...Show more

Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane

$26.00 NZD

$50.00 (48% off)

Category: Sciences

Hailed as "the great nature writer of this generation" (Wall Street Journal), Robert Macfarlane is the celebrated author of books about the intersections of the human and the natural realms. In Underland, he delivers his masterpiece: an epic exploration of the Earth's underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself. In this highly anticipated sequel to his international bestseller The Old Ways, Macfarlane takes us on an extraordinary journey into our relationship with darkness, burial, and what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind. Traveling through "deep time"--the dizzying expanses of geologic time that stretch away from the present--he moves from the birth of the universe to a post-human future, from the prehistoric art of Norwegian sea caves to the blue depths of the Greenland ice cap, from Bronze Age funeral chambers to the catacomb labyrinth below Paris, and from the underground fungal networks through which trees communicate to a deep-sunk "hiding place" where nuclear waste will be stored for 100,000 years to come. Woven through Macfarlane's own travels are the unforgettable stories of descents into the underland made across history by explorers, artists, cavers, divers, mourners, dreamers, and murderers, all of whom have been drawn for different reasons to seek what Cormac McCarthy calls "the awful darkness within the world." Global in its geography and written with great lyricism and power, Underland speaks powerfully to our present moment. Taking a deep-time view of our planet, Macfarlane here asks a vital and unsettling question: "Are we being good ancestors to the future Earth?" Underland marks a new turn in Macfarlane's long-term mapping of the relations of landscape and the human heart. From its remarkable opening pages to its deeply moving conclusion, it is a journey into wonder, loss, fear, and hope. At once ancient and urgent, this is a book that will change the way you see the world. ...Show more

Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben

$37.00 NZD

Category: Sciences

The first book in New York Times bestselling author Peter Wohlleben's The Mysteries of Nature Trilogy. Book two, The Inner Life of Animals, is available now, and the third book, The Secret Wisdom of Nature, is coming in Spring 2019. Are trees social beings? In this international bestseller, forester an d author Peter Wohlleben convincingly makes the case that, yes, the forest is a social network. He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers. Wohlleben also shares his deep love of woods and forests, explaining the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in his woodland.   After learning about the complex life of trees, a walk in the woods will never be the same again.   Includes a Note From a Forest Scientist, by Dr.Suzanne Simard ...Show more