Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

$24.99 AUD

Category: Science

#1 New York Times Bestseller From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity's creation and evolution--a #1 international bestseller--that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be "human." One hundred th ousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one--homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us? Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas. Dr. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become? Featuring 27 photographs, 6 maps, and 25 illustrations/diagrams, this provocative and insightful work is sure to spark debate and is essential reading for aficionados of Jared Diamond, James Gleick, Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, and Sharon Moalem. ...Show more

Planets by Professor Brian Cox; Andrew Cohen

$39.99 AUD

Category: General | Reading Level: 4 Science

Jupiter: The Ruthless One - Mars: The Doomed One - Sun: The Fiery One - Saturn: The Beautiful One - Pluto: The Mysterious One Professor Brian Cox is back with another insightful and mind-blowing exploration of space. This time he shows us our solar system as we've never seen it before. We're living thr ough an extraordinary time of exploration. A fleet of space probes are continually beaming data back to Earth. Hidden in this stream of code are startling new discoveries about the worlds we share with the Sun. We will piece together these remarkable findings to tell the greatest science story of them all - the life and times of the Solar System. What emerges is a dramatic tale of planetary siblings. Born from violence, they grow up together, in time becoming living, breathing worlds, only to fade away one by one as they age. Along the way we will meet all eight of the major planets, plus a supporting cast of moons, asteroids and comets, and a mysterious as yet unseen world way out beyond the Kuiper belt. ...Show more

2040: A Household Handbook for the Regeneration by Damon Gameau

$34.99 AUD

Category: Environmental Issues | Reading Level: 4 Non Fiction

'You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.' Buckminster Fuller Like most of us, Damon Gameau has spent most of his adult years overwhelmed into inaction by the problem of climate change and its devastating ef fects on the planet. But when Damon became a father, he knew he couldn't continue to look away. So he decided to do what he does best, and tell a story. And the story became an imagining of what the world could look like in 2040, if we all decided to start doing things differently, right now. The result is the era-defining documentary 2040 - a meticulously researched plea for the adoption of community-building, energy-generating, forest-renewing, ocean-replenishing measures that science tells us will reset our planet's health, drive our economies and improve lives across the globe. 2040: A Household Handbook for the Regeneration shows us how we can stitch this magnificent vision into everyday life by engaging in activities such as cooking, shopping, gardening, sharing, working and teaching our kids. It shows us that climate change is a practical problem that can be tackled by each of us, one small step at a time, and that we can make a genuine difference - if we know what to do. Brimming with practical wisdom and even 50 delicious recipes, 2040: A Household Handbook for the Regeneration empowers you to become the change you want to see in the world. ...Show more

Less Stuff: Simple Zero-Waste Steps to a Joyful and Clutter-free Life by Lindsay Miles

$24.99 AUD

Category: Environmental Issues | Reading Level: 6 Home

 Clutter impacts on our productivity, stresses us out and keeps us stuck. Why do we let our stuff stand in the way of the lives we dream about? Decluttering is great for our mental wellbeing, and when done right, it can be good for the planet too. When we rehome, repurpose or recycle the things we no longer need, we free up existing resources for others and reclaim our homes with less guilt. Less Stuff is a guide for people who find it difficult to declutter and who don't want to see things go to waste. Step by step, you'll explore finding your 'enough', learn how to let go of your old possessions without sending them to landfill, and eventually break the cycle of stuff. The end result is a planet with less strain, a home with more peace and a life with more meaning. ...Show more

Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of how Humans Navigate the World by Maura O'Connor

$32.99 AUD

Category: General

A Family Guide to Waste-free Living by Lauren Carter; Oberon Carter

$34.99 AUD

Category: Environmental Issues | Reading Level: 8

Tackle our ever-growing waste problem with all the information, advice, budget-friendly recipes and projects you'll need to start reducing waste in your life. A Family Guide to Waste-free Living makes it simple and sustainable for families to eliminate waste in the home, at work and out in the world. Th is is a practical and inspiring resource for anyone wanting to live more sustainably. When it comes to waste-free living, Lauren and Oberon Carter really know their stuff. In 2015, they decided to get serious about minimising their ecological footprint, successfully reducing their energy consumption by more than 60 per cent and transitioning to living completely waste and recycling free. They have written this fantastic guide to help and encourage other families do the same. A Family Guide to Waste-free Living provides a roadmap for anyone wanting to reduce their waste. It is packed with information and offers practical and achievable solutions for eliminating waste in the home, at work and in the world.Inside you'll find:- Simple activities for the whole family.- Instructions on building waste-free kits for around the house and out and about.- A plan for creating change by advocating to government and business.- Tackle our ever-growing waste problem with all the information, advice, budget-friendly recipes and projects you'll need to start reducing waste in your life. ...Show more

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben

$34.99 AUD

Category: Environmental Issues | Reading Level: 4 Non Fiction

Thirty years ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change. Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to play itself out. Bill McKibben's groundbreaking book The End of Nature - issued in dozens of languages and long regarded as a classic - was the first book to alert us to global warming. But the danger is broader than that: even as climate change shrinks the space where our civilization can exist, new technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics threaten to bleach away the variety of human experience. Falter tells the story of these converging trends and of the ideological fervor that keeps us from bringing them under control. And then, drawing on McKibben's experience in building 350.org, the first truly global citizens movement to combat climate change, it offers some possible ways out of the trap. We're at a bleak moment in human history -- and we'll either confront that bleakness or watch the civilization our forebears built slip away. Falter is a powerful and sobering call to arms, to save not only our planet but also our humanity. ...Show more

Exactly: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester

$24.99 AUD

Category: General

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2018 Bestselling author Simon Winchester writes a magnificent history of the pioneering engineers who developed precision machinery to allow us to see as far as the moon and as close as the Higgs boson. Precision is the key to everything. It is an int egral, unchallenged and essential component of our modern social, mercantile, scientific, mechanical and intellectual landscapes. The items we value in our daily lives - a camera, phone, computer, bicycle, car, a dishwasher perhaps - all sport components that fit together with precision and operate with near perfection. We also assume that the more precise a device the better it is. And yet whilst we live lives peppered and larded with precision, we are not, when we come to think about it, entirely sure what precision is, or what it means. How and when did it begin to build the modern world? Simon Winchester seeks to answer these questions through stories of precision's pioneers. Exactly takes us back to the origins of the Industrial Age, to Britain where he introduces the scientific minds that helped usher in modern production: John 'Iron-Mad' Wilkinson, Henry Maudslay, Joseph Bramah, Jesse Ramsden, and Joseph Whitworth. Thomas Jefferson exported their discoveries to the United States as manufacturing developed in the early twentieth century, with Britain's Henry Royce developing the Rolls Royce and Henry Ford mass producing cars, Hattori's Seiko and Leica lenses, to today's cutting-edge developments from Europe, Asia and North America. As he introduces the minds and methods that have changed the modern world, Winchester explores fundamental questions. Why is precision important? What are the different tools we use to measure it? Who has invented and perfected it? Has the pursuit of the ultra-precise in so many facets of human life blinded us to other things of equal value, such as an appreciation for the age-old traditions of craftsmanship, art, and high culture? Are we missing something that reflects the world as it is, rather than the world as we think we would wish it to be? And can the precise and the natural co-exist in society? ...Show more

The Science of Fate Why Your Future Is More Predictable Than You Think by Hannah Critchlow

$32.99 AUD

Category: General

So many of us believe that we are free to shape our own destiny. But what if free will doesn't exist? What if our lives are largely predetermined, hardwired in our brains - and our choices over what we eat, who we fall in love with, even what we believe are not real choices at all? Neuroscience is chal lenging everything we think we know about ourselves, revealing how we make decisions and form our own reality, unaware of the role of our unconscious minds. Did you know, for example, that: * You can carry anxieties and phobias across generations of your family? * Your genes and pleasure and reward receptors in your brain will determine how much you eat? * We can sniff out ideal partners with genes that give our offspring the best chance of survival? Leading neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow draws vividly from everyday life and other experts in their field to show the extraordinary potential, as well as dangers, which come with being able to predict our likely futures - and looking at how we can alter what's in store for us. Lucid, illuminating, awe-inspiring The Science of Fate revolutionises our understanding of who we are - and empowers us to help shape a better future for ourselves and the wider world. ...Show more

Our Planet by Alastair Fothergill; Keith Scholey

$49.99 AUD

Category: Environmental Issues

With a foreword by Sir David Attenborough, this is the striking photographic companion to the groundbreaking NETFLIX original documentary series. With six hundred members of crew filming in fifty countries over four years, the directors that brought us the original Planet Earth and Blue Planet, take us on a journey across all the globe's different biological realms to present stunning visuals of nature's most intriguing animals in action, and environmental change on a scale that must be seen to be believed. Featuring some of the world's rarest creatures and previously unseen parts of the Earth--from deep oceans to remote forests to ice caps--Our Planet takes nature-lovers deep into the science of our natural world. Revealing the most amazing sights on Earth in unprecedented ways, alongside stories of the ways humans are affecting the world's ecosystems--from the wildebeest migrations in Africa to the penguin colonies of Antarctica--this book places itself at the forefront of a global conversation as we work together to protect and preserve our planet. ...Show more

Brief Answers to the Big Questions: Stephen Hawking (HB) by Stephen Hawking

$32.99 AUD

Category: General

'A beautiful little book by a brilliant mind' Steven Poole, DAILY TELEGRAPH The world-famous cosmologist and #1 bestselling author of A Brief History of Time leaves us with his final thoughts on the universe's biggest questions in this brilliant posthumous work.   Is there a God? How did it all begin? Can we predict the future? What is inside a black hole? Is there other intelligent life in the universe? Will artificial intelligence outsmart us? How do we shape the future? Will we survive on Earth? Should we colonise space? Is time travel possible? Throughout his extraordinary career, Stephen Hawking expanded our understanding of the universe and unravelled some of its greatest mysteries. But even as his theoretical work on black holes, imaginary time and multiple histories took his mind to the furthest reaches of space, Hawking always believed that science could also be used to fix the problems on our planet. And now, as we face potentially catastrophic changes here on Earth - from climate change to dwindling natural resources to the threat of artificial super-intelligence - Stephen Hawking turns his attention to the most urgent issues for humankind. Wide-ranging, intellectually stimulating, passionately argued, and infused with his characteristic humour, BRIEF ANSWERS TO THE BIG QUESTIONS, the final book from one of the greatest minds in history, is a personal view on the challenges we face as a human race, and where we, as a planet, are heading next. A percentage of all royalties will go to charity. ...Show more

Apollo 11: The Inside Story by David Whitehouse

$29.99 AUD

Category: General

Informed by extensive interviews with astronauts such as Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Gene Cernan, David Scott, John Young, Alan Shepard, Charlie Duke, Al Bean, Gordon Cooper, Al Worden, Walt Cunningham, Tom Stafford, Dick Gordon, John Glenn, Pete Conrad, Edgar Mitchel, James Irwin, Stu Roosa, Ron Evans , Deke Slayton, Wally Schirra, as well as key politicians and NASA personnel Fifty years ago in July 1969, Apollo 11 became the first manned mission to land on the moon, and Neil Armstrong the first man to step onto its surface. President Nixon called it the greatest week since creation. In the most authoritative book ever written about Apollo, David Whitehouse reveals the true drama behind the mission, telling the story in the words of those who took part--based around exclusive interviews with the key players. This enthralling book takes us from the early rocket pioneers to the shock America received from the Soviets' launch of the first satellite, Sputnik; from the race to put the first person into space, through President Kennedy's enthusiasm and later doubts, to the astronauts' intense competition to leave the first footprint. Here is the story as told by the crew of Apollo 11 and the many other astronauts who paved the way or went to the moon themselves after Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins. Astronauts, engineers, politicians, NASA officials, Soviet rivals--all tell their own story of a great moment of human achievement. The full list of interviewees includes NASA employees such as James Fletcher, Roco Petrone, Brainerd Homes, Bob Gilruth, George Mueller, James Webb, John Houbolt, Robert Seamans, Max Faget, Director of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory William Pickering and Sergei Khrushchev, son of Soviet Premier. ...Show more