Oneworld Publications – serie

From the very first dog to glowing fish and designer pigs – the human history of remaking nature‘Enlightening… Big history meets big science – and it’s great entertainment.’ THE TIMES, BEST BOOKS OF 2021Malaria-free mosquitoes, resurrected dinosaurs and woolly mammoths, designer humans – such is the power of the science of tomorrow. But the idea that humans have only recently begun to tinker with the natural world is false. We’ve been meddling with nature since the last ice age, we’re just getting a lot better at it.Drawing on decades of research, Beth Shapiro reveals the surprisingly long history of human intervention in evolution – for good and for ill – and looks ahead to the future, casting aside scaremongering myths about the dangers of interference. New biotechnologies can present us with the chance to improve our own lives, and increase the likelihood that we will continue to live in a rich and biologically diverse world.‘Very few people write about the insane complexities and power of biology with greater clarity, insight and levity than Beth Shapiro.’ ADAM RUTHERFORD, AUTHOR OF A BRIEF HISTORY OF EVERYONE WHO EVER LIVED

The astonishing reality of living without our most important resource: money.'An inspiring and entertaining guide to escaping the money trap and reconnecting with reality.' Paul Kingsnorth, author of Real EnglandImagine a year living without spending money...Former businessman Mark Boyle undertook this extraordinary challenge and recounts the amazing adventure it led him on. Going back to basics and following his own strict rules, Mark learned ingenious ways to eliminate his bills and discovered that friendship has no price.Encountering seasonal foods, solar panels, skill-swapping schemes, caravans, compost toilets, and – the unthinkable – a cash-free Christmas, Boyle puts the fun into frugality and offers some great tips for economical (and environmentally friendly) living. A testament to Mark’s astounding determination, this witty and thought-provoking book will make you reevaluate what is most precious in life.

An honest, radical and moving account of life off the grid. It was 11pm when I checked my email for the last time and turned off my phone for what I hoped would be forever.No running water, no car, no electricity or any of the things it powers: the internet, phone, washing machine, radio or light bulb. Just a wooden cabin, on a smallholding, by the edge of a stand of spruce.In this upfront and lyrical account of a remarkable life without modern technology, Mark Boyle explores the hard won joys of building a home with his bare hands, learning to make fire, collecting water from the spring, foraging and fishing.What he finds is an elemental life, one governed by the rhythms of the sun and seasons, where life and death dance in a primal landscape of blood, wood, muck, water, and fire – much the same life we have lived for most of our time on earth. Revisiting it brings a deep insight into what it means to be human at a time when the boundaries between man and machine are blurring.***‘Boyle's memoir of his first year off-grid is fascinating… A poetic meditation on the almost-mystical benefits of falling in sync with nature.’ —New Statesman‘A warts-and-all look at an extreme way of life, but one that, by the end of this engrossing book, makes the world around it seem dysfunctional.’ —Irish Independent, BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019‘A beautiful and thought-provoking story that will inspire you to live differently. Mark asks the most fundamental questions then sets out to live the answers.’ Lily Cole, model and activist

Where did the ideas of heaven and hell come from?'An engaging but expert guide.' THE TIMESAs strange as it may seem to us now, there was a time when no one thought they would go to heaven or hell after they died. In fact, there is no mention of them in the Old Testament, and Jesus did not believe the souls of the departed were bound for either realm.In this gripping history of the afterlife, Bart Ehrman reveals how the concepts of heaven and hell developed and took hold, and why they endure to this day. He examines the social, cultural and historical roots of competing views held by Greeks, Jews and Christians, and traces how beliefs changed over time. Ultimately, he shows that many of our ideas about heaven and hell emerged long after Jesus’s time, through the struggle to explain the injustices of the world.***'There’s no one I’d rather read on what Christians believe, and why they believe it, than Bart Ehrman.' TOM BISSELL, AUTHOR OF APOSTLE'An impressively readable, clear and wide-ranging study.' SPECTATOR'This elegant history explores the evolution of the concept of the afterlife in Western thought... presented with engaging clarity.' THE NEW YORKER

A harrowing tale of courage and sacrifice at the limits of human endurance‘A stirring story… a brilliant exposition of narrative non-fiction: moving, harrowing, as gripping as any well-paced thriller.’ The TimesThe age of exploration was drawing to a close, yet the mystery of the North Pole remained. Contemporaries described the pole as the ‘unattainable object of our dreams’, and the urge to fill in this last great blank space on the map grew irresistible. In 1879 the USS Jeannette set sail from San Francisco to cheering crowds and amid a frenzy of publicity. The ship and its crew, captained by the heroic George De Long, were destined for the uncharted waters of the Arctic.But it wasn’t long before the Jeannette was trapped in crushing pack ice. Amid the rush of water and the shrieks of breaking wooden boards, the crew found themselves marooned a thousand miles north of Siberia with only the barest supplies, facing a seemingly impossible trek across endless ice. Battling everything from snow blindness and polar bears to ferocious storms and frosty labyrinths, the expedition fought madness and starvation as they desperately strove for survival.

Are you a regular quizzer at your local pub? Do you fancy yourself a cryptic crossword whiz? Might you be up for a challenge?'Frank Paul is an extremely impressive chap and a dazzling quizzer' Victoria Coren Mitchell, presenter of Only ConnectSince 2015, The Mill in Cambridge has hosted an unusually fiendish quiz from the mind of legendary quizmaster Frank Paul. Contestants could expect to be delighted and perplexed by wordsearch poems, jokes and rebuses, a bewildering encounter with the Sphinx and a confounding murder mystery.With rounds including Motion Picture Mixture, Eight Degrees of Kevin Bacon, Gogglebox Jigsaw and Chemical Element Blind Date, this is the best of The Mill’s quiz night. Are you ready to have your mind bent, blown and boggled?

A curious history of the strange, wonderful and sometimes terrifying worlds created by our minds.‘An utterly engrossing book.' ZOE WILLIAMSFor centuries we’ve dismissed delusions as something for doctors to sort out behind locked doors. But delusions are more than just bizarre quirks – they hold the key to collective anxieties and traumas.In this groundbreaking history, Victoria Shepherd uncovers stories of delusions from medieval times to the present day and implores us to identify reason in apparent madness.Discover how the King of France – thinking he was made of glass – was terrified he might shatter... and he wasn’t alone...Uncover the peculiar case of the dozens of Victorian women who tried to convince their physicians that they were, in fact, dead.And learn how after the Emperor met his end at the Battle of Waterloo, an epidemic of 'Napoleons' piled into France’s asylums.

‘A fascinating insider account’ Grace BlakeleyBritish democracy is on trial. We can no longer hold our leaders to account; the state has too much power; and the truth doesn’t matter at all. Those we voted into government have nothing but contempt for the democraticsystem that got them there.When the Prime Minister illegally prorogued Parliament, barrister Sam Fowles was part of the team that took him to court, and won. The scenes of the police violently restraining womenat a vigil for Sarah Everard shook the nation. In a high-profile parliamentary inquiry, Fowles proved the Met’s actions fundamentally breached our right to protest. For decades, the Post Office pursued criminal prosecutions against its own employees, knowing the evidence was dodgy all along. Fowles helped reveal the rot at the heart of a trusted national institution.We shouldn’t have to take our rulers to court just to get them to follow the rules. At a crucial juncture for British governance, Fowles urges us not to take our freedoms for granted.

'A cracking read' Lorraine Kelly‘Riveting’ Sunday Telegraph‘Behind every great interview is a great booker – Sam McAlister is one of the unsung heroes of television news’ Piers MorganSam McAlister is the woman who clinched the 2019 interview with Prince Andrew, described as ‘a plane crashing into an oil tanker, causing a tsunami, triggering a nuclear explosion’. She is many things beside: the first in her family to go to university; a trained barrister; a single mum; a master of persuasion. In her former BBC colleagues’ words, she was the ‘booker extraordinaire’, responsible for many of Newsnight’s exclusives over the past decade, including Stormy Daniels, Sean Spicer, Brigitte Höss, Steven Seagal, Mel Greig and Julian Assange.After twelve years producing content for Newsnight, McAlister reflects with candour on her experience, sharing not just the secrets of how the best news gets made, but also the changes to the BBC, the future of ‘mainstream media’ in the age of clickbait and the role of power and privilege in shaping our media landscape.   Now a major motion picture featuring Gillian Anderson, Billie Piper, Keeley Hawes and Rufus Sewell, Scoops is a backstage pass to the most unforgettable journalism of our times.

WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2023'Never before, in years of reviewing books about buildings, has one brought me to tears. This one did.' Rowan Moore, Observer Book of the WeekOn 14 June 2017, a 24-storey block of flats went up in flames.The fire climbed up cladding as flammable as solid petrol. Fire doors failed to self-close. No alarm rang out to warn sleeping residents. As smoke seeped into their homes, all were told to ‘stay put’. Many did – and they died.It was a tragedy decades in the making.Peter Apps meticulously exposes how a steady stream of deregulation, corporate greed and institutional indifference caused a tragedy. 72 people did not need to die, as the Grenfell Tower Inquiry makes clear. Here is the story of a grieving community forsaken by our government, a community still waiting for justice.***'Enormously important… A painstaking chronicle of an entirely avoidable tragedy, its aftermath and its causes.' JAMES O'BRIEN'Show Me the Bodies will never leave the mind of anyone who reads it.' GUARDIAN'A searing indictment of the construction industry and regulators… The book that follows reads like a prosecution, meticulous and fierce.' THE TIMES

There’s no such thing as a former KGB man...'A gripping story filled with remarkable revelations.' Tom Bower, author of RevengeAgents of Influence reveals the secret history of an intelligence agency gone out of control, accountable to no one but itself and intent on subverting Western politics on a near-inconceivable scale. In 1985, 1,300 KGB officers were stationed in the USA. The FBI only had 350 counter-intelligence officers. Since the early days of the Cold War, the KGB seduced parliamentarians and diplomats, infiltrated the highest echelons of the Civil Service, and planted fake news in papers across the world.More disturbingly, it never stopped. Putin is a KGB man through and through. Journalist Mark Hollingworth reveals how disinformation, kompromat and secret surveillance continue to play key roles in Russia’s war with Ukraine. It seems frighteningly easy to destabilise Western democracy.

Life innovates constantly, producing perfectly adapted species – but there’s a catch. A TIMES AND TELEGRAPH BEST BOOK OF 2023'Hopeful and fascinating.' THE TIMESMany animals and plants eke out seemingly unremarkable lives. Passive, constrained, modest, threatened. Then, in a blink of evolutionary time, they flourish spectacularly. Once we start to look, these ‘sleeping beauties’ crop up everywhere. But why?Looking at the book of life, from apex predators to keystone crops, and informed by his own cutting-edge experiments, renowned scientist Andreas Wagner demonstrates that innovations can come frequently and cheaply to nature, well before they are needed. We have found prehistoric bacteria that harbour the remarkable ability to fight off 21st-century antibiotics. And human history fits the pattern too, as life-changing technologies are invented only to be forgotten, languishing in the shadows before they finally take off.In probing the mysteries of these sleeping beauties, Wagner reveals a crucial part of nature’s rich and strange tapestry.

The brain weighs just three and a half pounds, but it governs every aspect of our lives...AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR'A fascinating and wide-ranging account of what neurosurgery is really about – the past, present and future.' Henry Marsh, author of Do No HarmSince its inception in the early twentieth century, brain surgery has maintained an air of mystery. As the saying ‘it’s not exactly brain surgery’ suggests, the specialty has become synonymous with a level of complexity and meticulousness rivalled only by, well, rocket science.Warm, rigorous and deeply insightful, neurosurgeon Theodore Schwartz reveals what it’s really like to get inside someone’s head – where every second can mean the difference between life or death. Drawing from Schwartz’s experience in one of New York’s busiest hospitals, Gray Matters explores the short but storied history of brain surgery. From the dark days of the lobotomy to the latest research into the long-term effects of contact sports on athletes’ cerebral health, Schwartz unfolds the fascinating story of how we came to understand this extraordinary, three-pound organ, which not only keeps us alive, but makes us who we are.'Fascinating... Schwartz’s way with words is as skilful as his wielding of microscissors.' Mail on Sunday

Let us take a look back over three decades of outrageous political mishaps – with a new introduction from Sir Ivor Crewe covering Brexitblunder /ˈblʌndə(r)/, n.A gross mistake; an error due to stupidity or carelessness.There are a handful of cock-ups that we remember all too well, from the poll tax to the Millennium Dome. However, the list is longer than most of us realize – and it’s growing. With unrivalled political savvy and a keen sense of irony, distinguished political scientists Anthony King and Ivor Crewe open our eyes to the worst government horror stories and explain why the British political system is quite so prone to appalling mistakes.Groupthink, constantly rotating ministers and a weak parliament all contribute to wasted billions and illogical policy. But, it doesn’t have to be this way. Informed by years of research, this razor-sharp diagnosis of flawed government with its spirited prescriptions for more fool-proof policymaking is required reading for every UK citizen.

We are hard-wired to believe that the world is more predictable than it is. We chase ‘winning streaks’ that are often just illusions, and we are all too predictable exactly when we try hardest not to be.In the 1970s, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky coined the phrase ‘representativeness’ to describe the psychology of this behaviour. Since then representativeness has been used by auditors to catch people fiddling their tax returns and by hedge fund managers to reap billions from the emotions of small investors. Now Poundstone for the first time makes these techniques fun, easy, and profitable for everyone, in the everyday situations that matter. You’ll learn how to tackle multiple choice tests, what internet passwords to avoid, how to up your odds of winning the office Premier League sweepstakes, and the best ways to invest your money.

Never before have our cities been as important as they are now. The drivers of innovation and growth, they are essential to the prosperity of nations. But they are also destructive, plunging us into housing crises and deepening inequality. How can we keep the good and break free of the bad?In this bracingly original work of research and analysis, leading urbanist Richard Florida explores the roots of this new crisis and puts forward a plan to make this the century of the fairer, thriving metropolis.

Nobel Prize winner Venki Ramakrishnan tells the thrilling story of how scientists unlocked a new window onto how life works‘Beyond superb.’ Bill Bryson‘A wonderful book.’ Ian McEwanEveryone knows about DNA, the essence of our being, the molecule where our genes reside. But DNA by itself is useless without a machine to decode the genetic information it contains. The ribosome is that machine. Venki Ramakrishnan tells the story of the race to uncover its enormously complex structure, a fundamental breakthrough that resolves an ancient mystery of life itself.

The first major account of HS2 – and how it went so wrong‘A jaunty account of a monumental cock-up. Makes the unbelievable readable.’ Sir Michael Palin‘High-Speed 2’ was to be the crown jewel of British rail. The first intercity railway built north of London in over a century, it would connect London with Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, bridging the North–South divide and propelling Britain’s infrastructure into the twenty-first century.Dogged by mismanagement, overspending and incompetence, HS2 has collapsed. What remains is a bleeding stump between Birmingham and the outskirts of London – Euston, the central London terminus, still seemingly unreachable. All of this has cost taxpayers tens of billions.Sally Gimson meets with the politicians, engineers and ordinary people affected by the failure of HS2. Travelling from demolished council estates in Camden to ghost towns along the now cancelled Northern branch, Off the Rails provides a forensic examination of how a vital social project imploded.***'Deeply researched.' Daily Telegraph, ★★★★'Forensic, gripping.' Sir Ivor Crewe'Penetrating, fair and ultimately furious.' Financial Times

Meet the scientists uncovering the secrets of Earth's harshest environments – the polar regionsSHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY TRIVEDI SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2025AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR'Thrilling... This book is a reminder of how incredibly "cool" our planet can be, and how we must fight to protect it.' Nick MohammedFrigid, remote and inhospitable – the polar regions seem far removed from our everyday lives.But these seemingly isolated ice realms shape life on our planet far more than we realise, influencing everything from the climate to ocean health. They may even hold the secrets to the origins of the Earth.Taking an epic journey of discovery from pole-to-pole, ferrying between penguins and polar bears, Ends of the Earth reveals the polar regions as never before. Meeting with the leading physicists, climatologists, geologists, biologists and palaeontologists working in these extremes – often as eccentric as they are intrepid – Neil Shubin presents the compelling new science of the Arctic and Antarctic with characteristic verve and expertise.***'A fast-moving, fascinating book that combines travelogue and natural science discovery... a delightful and compelling read.' Daniel J. Levitin, author of The Organised Mind'Gripping... Shubin’s captivating storytelling will give you a new appreciation for some of the harshest and most mysterious places on Earth.' Steve Brusatte, author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs'What a remarkable planet we live on – wildest at its cold and lovely poles. This compelling volume should summon us to defend that cold, the vital task for our time on earth.' Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature'Fascinating. Important.' Spectator

Better than happiness, positivity will boost your life, not just your smile'A sure-footed and compassionate guide.' Washington PostDrawing on more than twenty years of scientific research into positive emotions, Fredrickson shows us that attaining positivity is not about striving to be an annoyingly and unnaturally cheerful 'Pollyanna'. It is about putting into practice the '3-to-1 ratio' of positive to negative emotions.With Positivity, you’ll learn to see new possibilities, bounce back from setbacks, connect with others, and become the best version of yourself.One of the leading members of the positive psychology movement brings together cutting-edge research and lab-tested tools to explain:Why positivity is more important than happiness.How it relieves depression, broadens minds, and builds lives.How to tap into your own sources of positivity.