Rethinking Consciousness. A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience Michael S.A. Graziano W.W.Norton & Company

Best known for his revolutionary free-market economics treatise The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith was first and foremost a moral philosopher. In his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he investigated the flip side of economic self-interest: the interest of the greater good. Smith's classic work advances ideas about conscience, moral judgement and virtue that have taken on renewed importance in business and politics

The Theory of (Not Quite) Everything by Kara Gnodde is a tender, intelligent and uplifting novel about brothers and sisters, true love in all its forms, and how life is more than just a numbers game… • Like circles of a Venn diagram, Mimi and Art Brotherton have always come as a pair. Devoted siblings, they're bound together in their childhood home by the tragic death of their parents • Art believes that people - including his sister - are incapable of making sensible decisions when it comes to love. That's what algorithms are for • Mimi knows that her brother is a mathematical genius. But she believes that maths isn't the answer to everything. Not quite. Especially when it comes to love • Still, when Mimi begins her search for a soulmate, Art's insistence that she follow a strict mathematical plan seems reasonable

Michael Pollan's In Defence of Food is a simple invitation to junk the science, ditch the diet and instead rediscover the joys of eating well • This book is a celebration of food. By food, Michael Pollan means real, proper, simple food - not the kind that comes in a packet, or has lists of unpronounceable ingredients, or that makes nutritional claims about how healthy it is. More like the kind of food your great-grandmother would recognize • By following a few pieces of advice (Eat at a table - a desk doesn't count. Don't buy food where you'd buy your petrol!), you will enrich your life and your palate, and enlarge your sense of what it means to be healthy and happy • It's time to fall in love with food again

A solution to one of the most profound questions in physics - what is time? - with ground-breaking implications for the origin of the universe • In The Janus Point renowned physicist Julian Barbour presents a major new solution to one of the most profound questions in physics - what is time? - with ground-breaking implications for the origin and destiny of our universe • 'Both a work of literature and a masterpiece of scientific thought' Lee Smolin • Time is perhaps the greatest mystery in physics. Despite the fact that the fundamental laws of physics don't distinguish between past and future, we do. And so, for over a century, the greatest minds have sought to understand why time seems to flow in one direction, ever forward. In The Janus Point, Julian Barbour, author of the classic The End of Time, offers a radically new answer: it doesn't

From cyborgs, starships, UFOs, aliens and antimatter to telepathy, invisibility, psychokinesis and precognition, Michio Kaku's Physics of the Impossible is an exciting look at how science fiction could soon become science fact • Albert Einstein said, 'If at first an idea does not sound absurd, there is no hope for it.' Physics of the Impossible shows how our most far-fetched ideas today - from Star Trek's phasers and teleportation to time travel as envisioned by Back to the Future - are destined to become tomorrow's reality • Michio Kaku, bestselling science author and one of the world's most acclaimed physicists, looks at the technologies of the future and explains what's just around the corner, what we might have to wait a few millennia to get our hands on and how surprisingly little of it is truly impossible

As an acoustic engineer, Trevor Cox has spent his career eradicating unwanted noises – echoes in concert halls, clamour in classrooms. Until the day he heard something so astonishing that he had an epiphany: rather than quashing rare or bizarre sounds, we should be celebrating these sonic treasures • This is the story of his investigation into the mysteries of these Sonic Wonders of the World. In the Mojave Desert he finds sand dunes that sing. In France he discovers an echo that tells jokes. In California he drives down a musical road that plays the William Tell Overture. In Cathedrals across the world he learns how acoustics changed the history of the Church • Touching on physics, music, archaeology, neuroscience, biology, and design, Cox explains how sound is made and altered by the environment and how our body reacts to peculiar noises – from the exotic sonic wonders he encounters on his journey, or the equally unique and surprising sounds of our everyday environment

Food and travel writer Michael Booth and his family embark on an epic journey the length of Japan to explore its dazzling food culture. They find a country much altered since their previous visit ten years earlier (which resulted in the award-winning international bestseller Sushi and Beyond) • Over the last decade the country’s restaurants have won a record number of Michelin stars and its cuisine was awarded United Nations heritage status. The world’s top chefs now flock to learn more about the extraordinary dedication of Japan’s food artisans, while the country’s fast foods – ramen, sushi and yakitori – have conquered the world. As well as the plaudits, Japan is also facing enormous challenges. Ironically, as Booth discovers, the future of Japan’s culinary heritage is under threat

When the German High Command encircled Leningrad it was a deliberate policy to eradicate the city`s civilian population by starving them to death. As winter set in and food supplies dwindled, starvation and panic set in • A specialist in battle psychology and the vital role of morale in desperate circumstances, Michael Jones tells the human story of Leningrad. Drawing on newly available eyewitness accounts and diaries, he shows Leningrad in its every dimension including taboo truths, long-suppressed by the Soviets, such as looting, criminal gangs and cannibalism • But, for many ordinary citizens, Leningrad marked the triumph of the human spirit. They drew deeply on their inner resources to inspire, comfort and help one another. At the height of the siege an extraordinary live performance of Shostakovich`s Seventh Symphony profoundly strengthened the city`s will to resist

This is not a book of facts; it’s a book of ‘facts’. Should you finish it believing we became the planet’s dominant species because predators found us too smelly to eat; or that the living bloodline of Christ is a family of Japanese garlic farmers – well, that’s on you • Why are we here? Do ghosts exist? Did life on Earth begin after a badly tidied-up picnic? Was it just an iceberg that sank the Titanic? Are authors stealing their plotlines from the future? Will we ever talk to animals? And why, when you’re in the shower, does the shower curtain always billow in towards you? • We don’t know the answers to any of these questions. But don’t worry, no matter what questions you have, you can bet on the fact that there is someone (or something) out there, investigating it on your behalf

'We live within a spectacle of empty clothes and unworn masks' • In this series of remarkable pieces from across his career, John Berger celebrates and dissects the close links between art and society and the individual. Few writers give a more vivid and moving sense of how we make art and how art makes us • One of twenty new books in the bestselling Penguin Great Ideas series. This new selection showcases a diverse list of thinkers who have helped shape our world today, from anarchists to stoics, feminists to prophets, satirists to Zen Buddhists

The brilliant new novel from the winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize • On the eve of Angolan independence, Ludo bricks herself into her apartment, where she will remain for the next thirty years. She lives off vegetables and pigeons, burns her furniture and books to stay alive and keeps herself busy by writing her story on the walls of her home • The outside world slowly seeps into Ludo’s life through snippets on the radio, voices from next door, glimpses of a man fleeing his pursuers and a note attached to a bird’s foot. Until one day she meets Sabalu, a young boy from the street who climbs up to her terrace