Atlantic Led by Donkeys. How Four Friends with a Ladder Took on Brexit

Like it or not, our lives are dominated by mathematics. Our daily diet of news regales us with statistical forecasts, opinion polls, risk assessments, inflation figures, weather and climate predictions and all sorts of political decisions and advice backed up by supposedly accurate numbers. Most of us do not even pause and question such figures even to ask what they really mean and whether they raise more questions than they answer • In this simple guide for anyone numbed by numbers, William Hartston reveals with clarity and humour why the figures being flung at us may not tell the whole story. Along the way he explains commonly misused mathematical terms, solves everyday mathematical problems and shows how to steer a safe path through the minefield of mathematics that surrounds us

What better way to understand ourselves than through the eyes of comedians – those who professionally examine our quirks on stage daily? In this touching and witty book, award-winning presenter and comic Robin Ince uses the life of the stand-up as a way of exploring some of the biggest questions we all face. Where does anxiety come from? How do we overcome imposter syndrome? What is the key to creativity? How can we deal with grief? • Informed by personal insights from Robin as well as interviews with some of the world’s top comedians, neuroscientists and psychologists, this is a hilarious and often moving primer to the mind. But it is also a powerful call to embrace the full breadth of our inner experience – no matter how strange we worry it may be!

It's not what you know, it's who you know. Or so the adage goes. Professor Matthew Jackson, world-leading researcher into social and economic networks, shows us why this is far truer than we'd like to believe • Based on his ground-breaking research, The Human Network reveals how our relationships in school, university, work and society have extraordinary implications throughout our lives and demonstrates that by understanding and taking advantage of these networks, we can boost our happiness, success and influence • But there are also wider lessons to be learnt. Drawing on concepts from economics, mathematics, sociology, and anthropology, Jackson reveals how the science of networks gives us a bold new framework to understand human interaction writ large - from banking crashes and viral marketing to racism and the spread of disease

Why does one smoker die of lung cancer but another live to 100? The answer is ‘The Hidden Half’ – those random, unknowable variables that mess up our attempts to comprehend the world • We humans are very clever creatures – but we’re idiots about how clever we really are. In this entertaining and ingenious book, Blastland reveals how in our quest to make the world more understandable, we lose sight of how unexplainable it often is. The result – from GDP figures to medicine – is that experts know a lot less than they think • Filled with compelling stories from economics, genetics, business, and science, The Hidden Half is a warning that an explanation which works in one arena may not work in another. Entertaining and provocative, it will change how you view the world

Britain shaped the modern Middle East through the lines that it drew in the sand after the First World War and through the League of Nations mandates over the fledgling states that followed. Less than forty years later, the Suez crisis dealt a fatal blow to Britain’s standing in the Middle East and is often represented as the final throes of British imperialism. However, as this insightful and compelling new book reveals, successive prime ministers have all sought to extend British influence in the Middle East and their actions have often led to a disastrous outcome • While Anthony Eden and Tony Blair are the two most prominent examples of prime ministers whose reputations have been ruined by their interventions in the region, they were not alone in taking significant risks in deploying British forces to the Middle East

В Лондоне расположено двенадцать крупных железнодорожных вокзалов, больше, чем в любом другом городе мира. Они варьируются от величественных и дворцовых, таких как Кингс-Кросс и Паддингтон, до скромных и менее известных, таких как Фенчерч-стрит и Кэннон-стрит. Эти памятники эпохи поездов являются центром транспортной системы Лондона, и их развитие, упадок и недавнее обновление во многом определили историю столицы • В увлекательном и драматичном повествовании "Паровые соборы. Как были построены Великие вокзалы Лондона – и как они преобразили город" Кристиан Вольмар прослеживает развитие этих великолепных паровых соборов, дает уникальное представление об их истории, приводит множество занимательных анекдотов и отмечает недавнее превращение нескольких из этих станций в замечательное сочетание старого и нового

Here is what happens when your mother dies.It's the brightest day of summer and it's dark outside. It's dark in your house, dark in your room, and dark in your heart. You feel like the darkness is going to split you apart.That's how it feels for Tiger. It's always been Tiger and her mother against the world. Then, on a day like any other, Tiger's mother dies. And now it's Tiger, alone.Here is how you learn to make friends with the dark

The Sunday Times bestselling manifesto for a twenty-first century understanding of human evolution and variation - and a weapon against scientific racism • The Sunday Times bestseller • As heard on BBC radio 4 book of the week • 'The ultimate anti-racism guide' Caroline Criado Perez • 'Seriously important' Bill Bryson • 'A fascinating debunking of racial pseudoscience' Guardian • Racist pseudoscience may be on the rise, but science is no ally to racists. Instead science and history can be powerful allies against bigotry, granting us the clearest view of how people actually are, rather than how we judge them to be. HOW TO ARGUE WITH A RACIST dismantles outdated notions of race by illuminating what modern genetics can and can't tell us about human difference

I thought I was done with death, at least a little bit, but death wasn’t done with me • It’s always been Tiger and her mother against the world. Then, on a day like any other, Tiger’s mother dies. Now it’s Tiger, alone • And she must learn to make friends with the dark

In 1954, Darrell Huff decided enough was enough. Fed up with politicians, advertisers and journalists using statistics to sensationalise, inflate, confuse, oversimplify and - on occasion - downright lie, he decided to shed light on their ill-informed and sneaky ways. How to Lie with Statistics is the result - the definitive and hilarious primer in the ways statistics are used to deceive • With over one and half million copies sold around the world, it has delighted generations of readers with its cheeky takes on the ins and outs of samples, averages, errors, graphs and indexes. And in the modern world of big data and misinformation, Huff remains the perfect guide through the maze of facts and figures that are designed to make us believe anything

The story of an awful, universe-gone-mad-mistake, and one girl’s emotional battle for clarity and forgiveness.Tiger’s mother has always been her whole world, but now she’s sixteen her mother’s control over everything in her life is suffocating. Just when Tiger feels she can no longer bear the way her life is managed, the unimaginable happens and her mother dies. As she slowly begins to make a way for herself, Tiger creates a new kind of family, some related and some not, who will love her and travel forward with her.This is how you make friends with the dark

They were an astonishing group: glamorous, gutsy, and irreverent to the bone. As cub reporters in the 1920s, they roamed across a war-ravaged world, sometimes perched atop mules on wooden saddles, sometimes gliding through countries in the splendour of a first-class sleeper car. While empires collapsed and fledgling democracies faltered, they chased deposed empresses, international financiers and Balkan gunrunners, then knocked back doubles late into the night • Last Call at the Hotel Imperial is the extraordinary story of John Gunther, H.R. Knickerbocker, Vincent Sheean, and Dorothy Thompson: a close-knit band of wildly famous American reporters who, in the run-up to World War II, took on dictators and rewrote the rules of modern journalism