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Adult Non-Fiction > Science and Discovery

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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

$30.00 NZD

Available Stock:
3

Category: Science and Discovery

#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 thou sand 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

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Hawking by Joel Levy

$45.00 NZD

Available Stock:
2

Category: Science and Discovery | Series: Amazing Minds Ser.

Hawking explores the life and work, explaining the breakthroughs at the cutting edge of cosmology, from the Big Bang to black holes, and the ups and downs of Stephen Hawking's extraordinary and often turbulent life. The death of Stephen Hawking in March 2018 brought to a close one of the most remarkabl e and inspiring scientific life stories of all time. This in-depth and comprehensive biography covers both the well-known aspects of his celebrated life and work, as well as the personal elements of his life, that make his astounding triumph over disability and his titanic achievements all the more impressive. Full of documents and photographs providing extra details and context to Hawking's discoveries, this is the complete story of how Hawking defied medical science and the frailties of his twisted body to explore vast cosmic realms, tour the world, create a publishing phenomenon, embrace celebrity, experience incredible adventures and enjoy romance and family life. ...Show more

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The Planets by Professor Brian Cox; Andrew Cohen

$45.00 NZD

Available Stock:
2

Category: Science and Discovery | 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

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The Inflamed Mind: A Radical New Approach to Depression by Edward Bullmore

$26.99 NZD

Available Stock:
2

Category: Science and Discovery

'A lucid, lively study of a complex subject.' Sydney Morning Herald 'I'm obsessed with this book.' Dr Rangan Chatterjee 'Too important to ignore.'Jeremy Vine A radical new approach to depression. Worldwide, depression will be the single biggest cause of disability in the next 20 years. But treatment for it has not changed much in the last three decades. In the world of psychiatry, time has apparently stood still . . . until now. In this game-changing book, University of Cambridge Professor Edward Bullmore reveals the breakthrough new science on the link between depression and inflammation of the body and brain. He explains what we now know about how and why mental disorders can have their roots in the immune system, and outlines a future revolution in which treatments could be specifically targeted to break the vicious cycle of stress, inflammation and depression. The Inflamed Mind goes far beyond the clinic and the lab, exploring a whole new way of looking at how mind, brain and body all work together in a sometimes misguided effort to help us survive in a hostile world. It offers insights into the story of Western medicine, how we have got it wrong as well as right in the past, and how we could start getting to grips with depression and other mental disorders much more effectively in the future. 'This is an important book, a hopeful book, for anyone who wants to think about depression in a new way.' Tom Insel, CEO and President, Mindstrong Health 'Psychiatry is on the brink of a revolution.' Sir Colin Blakemore, Professor of Neuroscience and Philosophy, University of London ...Show more

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Frank Whittle: Invention of the Jet by Andrew Nahum

$24.99 NZD

Available Stock:
2

Category: Science and Discovery | Series: Icon Science Ser.

Frank Whittle always maintained that he was held back by a lack of government support. At the very moment in 1943 when his invention was unveiled to the world, his company, Power Jets, was forcibly nationalised. Yet, as Andrew Nahum shows in this brilliantly researched book, Whittle's innovative brillia nce, charm and charisma helped him recruit major support from the British government and the RAF, who gave him the green light 'to build a jet engine' at a time when to do so made little sense. Frank Whittle: Invention of the Jet is a story of what pushing technology to its limits can achieve and the effect that such achievement can have on those involved. ...Show more

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Critical: Science and Stories from the Brink of Human Life by Matt Morgan

$37.99 NZD

Available Stock:
2

Category: Science and Discovery

'This book offers real insight into life and death medicine' - Dr. Michael Mosley Critical is an intelligent, compelling and profoundly insightful journey into the world of intensive care medicine and the lives of people who have forever been changed by it. Being critically ill means one or more of yo ur vital organs have failed - this could be your lungs, your heart, your kidneys, gut or even your brain. Starting with the first recognised case in which a little girl was saved by intensive care in 1952 in Copenhagen, Matt writes brilliantly about the fascinating history, practices and technology in this newest of all the major medical specialties. Matt guides us around the ICU by guiding us around the body and the different organs, and in this way, we learn not only the stories of many of the patients he's treated over the years, but also about the various functions different parts of the body. He draws on his time spent with real patients, on the brink of death, and explains how he and his colleagues fight against the odds to help them live. Happily many of his cases have happy endings, but Matt also writes movingly about those cases which will always remain with him - the cases where the mysteries of the body proved too hard to solve, or diagnoses came too late or made no difference to the outcome. 'This book is marvellous: buy it, share it, recommend it.... We are fortunate to have dedicated, caring and humble folks such as Doc Morgan on the Critical Care front line. We are even better off when a writer can capture all that this exciting, mad, glorious and even exasperating job means. If you work in healthcare, know somebody that does, or simply inhabit a body then this book is for you: in fact it's critical.' Peter Brindley MD FRCP Can FRCP Edin FRCP Lond Professor of Critical Care Medicine, Anesthesiology, Medical Ethics University of Alberta 'Just wonderful. I love the exploration of what it means to survive, at what cost and so on. Such an important factor and it's a real problem with what we do. An old surgeon once told me 'just because we can, doesn't mean we should. Operating is the easiest thing in the world, not doing so is incredibly challenging'. A lovely book.' Nikki Stamp,author of Can you Die of a Broken Heart? ...Show more

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Letters from an Astrophysicist by Neil deGrasse Tyson

$35.00 NZD

Available Stock:
2

Category: Science and Discovery | Reading Level: 4 Science

Join the galactic conversation on the biggest issues in the universe 'Don't fear change. Don't fear failure. The only thing to fear is loss of ambition. But if you've got plenty of that, then you have nothing to fear at all' - Neil deGrasse Tyson Neil deGrasse Tyson is arguably the most influential, ac claimed scientist on the planet. As director of the Hayden Planetarium, and host of Cosmos and StarTalk, he has dedicated his life to exploring and explaining the mysteries of the universe. Every year, he receives thousands of letters - from students to prisoners, scientists to priests. Some seek advice, others yearn for inspiration; some are full of despair, others burst with wonder. But they are all searching for understanding, meaning and truth. His replies are by turns wise, funny, and mind-blowing. In this, his most personal book by far, he covers everything from God to the history of science, from aliens to death. He bares his soul - his passions, his doubts, his hopes. The big theme is everywhere in these pages- what is our place in the universe? The result is an awe-inspiring read and an intimate portal into an incredible mind, which reveals the power of the universe to start conversations and inspire curiosity in all of us. ...Show more

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The Uninhabitable Earth - A Story of the Future by David Wallace-Wells

$26.00 NZD

Available Stock:
2

Category: Science and Discovery

The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn't happening at all, and if your anxiety about it is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today. Ov er the past decades, the term "Anthropocene" has climbed into the popular imagination - a name given to the geologic era we live in now, one defined by human intervention in the life of the planet. But however sanguine you might be about the proposition that we have ravaged the natural world, which we surely have, it is another thing entirely to consider the possibility that we have only provoked it, engineering first in ignorance and then in denial a climate system that will now go to war with us for many centuries, perhaps until it destroys us. In the meantime, it will remake us, transforming every aspect of the way we live-the planet no longer nurturing a dream of abundance, but a living nightmare. ...Show more

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Superheavy: Making and Breaking the Periodic Table by Kit Chapman

$32.99 NZD

Available Stock:
1

Category: Science and Discovery

Creating an element is no easy feat. It's the equivalent of firing six trillion bullets a second at a needle in a haystack, hoping the bullet and needle somehow fuse together, then catching it in less than a thousandth of a second - after which it's gone forever. Welcome to the world of the superheavy e lements: a realm where scientists use giant machines and spend years trying to make a single atom of mysterious artefacts that have never existed on Earth.From the first elements past uranium and their role in the atomic bomb to the latest discoveries stretching our chemical world, Superheavy will reveal the hidden stories lurking at the edges of the periodic table. Why did the US Air Force fly planes into mushroom clouds? Who won the transfermium wars? How did an earthquake help give Japan its first element? And what happened when Superman almost spilled nuclear secrets?In a globe-trotting adventure that stretches from the United States to Russia, Sweden to Australia, Superheavy is your guide to the amazing science filling in the missing pieces of the periodic table. By the end you'll not only marvel at how nuclear science has changed our lives - you'll wonder where it's going to take us in the future.'Quite a tale' Simon Mayo ...Show more

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Chasing the Moon: An Epic Rivalry, A Monumental Challenge, The Race to be First by Robert Stone; Alan Andres (As told to)

$36.99 NZD

Available Stock:
1

Category: Science and Discovery | Reading Level: near fine

This companion to the six-hour "American Experience" documentary airing on PBS goes beyond the series to reveal the stories of the visionaries who helped America complete the 1961 vision of President John F. Kennedy, with the first lunar landing in 1969.

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The Basis of Everything: Rutherford, Oliphant and the Coming of the Atomic Bomb by Andrew Ramsey

$45.00 NZD

Available Stock:
1

Category: Science and Discovery | Reading Level: very good

The story that bonds Ernest Rutherford and Marcus Oliphant is as extraordinary as it is unlikely. They were kindred souls, schooled and steeped in the furthest frontiers of Britain's empire, whose restless intellect and tireless conviction fused in the crucible of discovery at Cambridge University's cel ebrated Cavendish Laboratory, at a time when nature's deepest secrets were being revealed. Their brilliance illuminated the sub-atomic recesses of the natural world and, as a direct result, set loose the power of nuclear fusion. It was a heartfelt, enduring partnership, born at the University of Adelaide's modest physics department and flourishing further in the confines of the Cavendish before ultimately driving the famed Manhattan Project, which produced the world's first nuclear weapons, unleashed to such devastating effect on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Rutherford and Oliphant were men with a shared devotion to pure science, who, through circumstance and necessity, found themselves betrayed as instruments of the war they detested but were duty-bound to prosecute. Consequently, their influence was pivotal in the last great global conflict the world witnessed and in engendering the thermonuclear threat that has held the planet hostage ever since. Yet their pioneering work lives on too in a vast array of innovations seeded by nuclear physics, from radiocarbon dating and TV screens to life-saving diagnostic-imaging devices. ...Show more

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Life: Titanic 100 Years Later: The Epic Disaster Remembered - in Words and Pictures by Editors of Life

$29.99 NZD

Available Stock:
1

Category: Science and Discovery

One hundred years ago, a ship thought to be indestructible suffered the ill fate to strike an iceberg during its maiden voyage across the North Atlantic. The unthinkable occurred, and the Titanic went to the bottom. What happened on that cold and inky night has haunted and entranced us ever since. Goodn ess knows, there have been other disasters - far too many disasters. But as the initial reception to "Titanic", the most popular movie ever, just now being re-released in 3-D, proves: There has never been a disaster that so captivates the human imagination as that of the sinking of the Titanic. Now, on the 100th anniversary of "the night to remember," "LIFE" revisits this awesome human drama. Heroism is involved, and hubris. Romance and recrimination. A thousand stories spiralling outward - and all of them told in this commemorative "LIFE book", in words and pictures. ...Show more

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Bay Plaza
221, Russell St, Hastings 4122
books@plazabooks.co.nz

06 878 4082

 

 

 

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