Vintage books Sacred Nature. How we can recover our bond with the natural world Armstrong Karen

What is AIQ? How does it work? Most importantly, how can it help us? • Two leading data scientists offer an up-close and user-friendly look at artificial intelligence and how to harness its power for a better world • 'A positive and entertaining look at the great potential unlocked by marrying human creativity with powerful machines.' Steven D. Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics • Dozens of times per day, we all interact with intelligent machines that are constantly learning from the wealth of data now available to them. These machines, from smart phones to talking robots to self-driving cars, are remaking the world in the twenty first century in the same way that the Industrial Revolution remade the world in the nineteenth • AIQ is based on a simple premise: if you want to understand the modern world, then you have to know a little bit of the mathematical language spoken by intelligent machines

How have feelings come to shape the world around us? Why has politics become so fractious and warlike? What might the future hold? • In this bold and compelling exploration of our new political reality, William Davies reveals how feelings have come to reshape our world. Drawing on history, philosophy, psychology and economics, Nervous States is an essential guide to the turbulent times we are living through

Did Neil Armstrong really set foot on the moon? • Was the United States government responsible for the 11 September attacks? • Should we doubt the accidental nature of Diana's death? • Voodoo Histories entertainingly demolishes the absurd and sinister conspiracy theories of the last 100 years. Aaronovitch reveals not only why people are so ready to believe in these stories but also the dangers of this credulity • Includes a new chapter investigating the conspiracy theories that question Obama's legitimacy as president

A young army captain who risked execution to swim from free-market Taiwan to Communist China • A barber who made $150 million in the gambling dens of Macau • The richest woman in China, a recycling tycoon known as the ‘Wastepaper Queen’ • Age of Ambition describes some of the billion individual lives that make up China’s story – one that unfolds on remote farms, in glittering mansions, and in the halls of power of the world’s largest authoritarian regime. Together they describe the defining clash taking place today: between the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control • Here is a China infused with a sense of boundless possibility and teeming romance. Yet it is also riven by contradictions. It is the world’s largest buyer of Rolls Royces and Ferraris yet the word ‘luxury’ is banned from billboards

Meet the three women who helped shape the course of modern Chinese history; a gripping story of sisterhood and betrayal from the bestselling author of Wild Swans • They were the most famous sisters in China. As the country battled seismic transformations these three women left an indelible mark on history • Red Sister rose to be Mao's vice-chair • Little Sister became first lady of pre-Communist Nationalist China • Big Sister made herself one of country's richest women • Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister takes us on a sweeping journey from exiles' quarters in Japan and Berlin to secret meeting rooms in Moscow, and from the compounds of the Communist elite in Beijing to the corridors of power in democratic Taiwan. By turns intimate and epic, Jung Chang reveals the lives of three extraordinary women who helped shape twentieth-century China

The second book by the bestselling author of Extraordinary Insects • Trees clean air and water; hoverflies and bees pollinate our crops; the kingfisher inspired the construction of high-speed trains. In Tapestries of Life, bestselling author Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson explains how closely we are all connected with the natural world, highlighting our indelible link with nature’s finely knit system and our everyday lives • In the heart of natural world is a life-support system like no other, a collective term that describes all the goods and services we receive – food, fresh water, medicine, pollination, pollution control, carbon sequestration, erosion prevention, recreation, spiritual health and so much more. In this utterly captivating book, Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson sets out to explore these wonderful, supportive elements – taking the reader on a journey through the surprising characteristics of the natural world

How can sea cucumbers, geckos and termites help us cure diseases, camouflage soldiers and even keep our buildings cool? Nature’s creations are more sophisticated and elegant than anything humans have created. Adapt explores how we can harness such ideas through the ground-breaking new science of biomimicry – which looks to nature to solve pressing problems in engineering and science. From the depths of the oceans to the ice sheets of the Arctic, Amina Khan talks to the researchers at the forefront of this exciting new science, who are designing everything from wind turbines to military camouflage. Adapt draws the line from nature to modernity

Described as 'Britain's greatest living nature writer', Richard Mabey has revealed his passion for the natural world in eloquent stories for BBC Wildlife Magazine. This volume features his favourite pieces and presents a fascinating and inspiring view of the changing natural landscape in which we live • Peppered throughout with references to the heritage of nature writing, and great writers from Richard Jefferies and John Clare to Roger Deakin and Robert MacFarlane, A Brush With Nature is part memoir, part nature journal, part social history, giving us a unique insight into a nature lover's reflections over a quarter of a century

In Utopia for Realists, Rutger Bregman shows that we can construct a society with visionary ideas that are, in fact, wholly implementable. Every milestone of civilisation from the end of slavery to the beginning of democracy was once considered a utopian fantasy. New utopian ideas such as universal basic income and a fifteen hour work week can become reality in our lifetime • From a Canadian city that once completely eradicated poverty, to Richard Nixon's near implementation of a basic income for millions of Americans, Bregman takes us on a journey through history, beyond the traditional left-right divides, as he introduces ideas whose time has come

Могут ли миры науки и философии работать вместе, чтобы распознать наши разрушительные эмоции, такие как ненависть, жажда и заблуждение? Объединив древнюю буддийскую мудрость и последние достижения в различных областях, от нейробиологии до развития детей, необычная книга Дэниела Гоулмана предлагает свежий взгляд на то, как мы можем распознавать и трансформировать наши разрушительные эмоции. В результате недельной дискуссии между Далай-ламой и небольшой группой выдающихся психологов, нейробиологов и философов Гоулман сплетает воедино убедительную повествовательную версию. Откуда берутся эти разрушительные эмоции (жажда, гнев и заблуждение, известные в буддизме как три яда)? И как мы можем преобразовать их, чтобы они не угрожали коллективной безопасности человечества и его будущему? • язык издания: Английский • Can the worlds of science and philosophy work together to recognise our destructive emotions such as hatred, craving, and delusion? Bringing together ancient Buddhist wisdom and recent breakthroughs in a variety of fields from neuroscience to child development, Daniel Goleman's extraordinary book offers fresh insights into how we can recognise and transform our destructive emotions

Our relationship with our land is broken: we must heal it • Jake Fiennes is on a mission to change the face of the English countryside. As Conservation Manager at Holkham in Norfolk, one of the country's largest historic country estates, his radical habitat restoration and agricultural work has nurtured its species and risen its crop yields - bringing back wetlands, hedgerows, birds and butterflies over 25,000 acres of land • But this isn't rewilding - there is no 'wild' in Britain anymore. Mass farming, crop science and industrial chemicals have destroyed the majority of our natural landscape and wildlife over the last century. Land Healer is the story of Fiennes's ambition to bring back our flora and fauna - by reclaiming our traditions and trialling new experiments which could restore our symbiosis with our land, and save our shared future

William Morris – poet, designer, campaigner, hero of the Arts & Crafts movement – was a giant of the Victorian age, and his beautiful creations and provocative philosophies are still with us today: but his wife Jane is too often relegated to a footnote, an artist’s model given no history or personality of her own • In truth, Jane and William’s personal and creative partnership was the central collaboration of both their lives. The homes they made together – the Red House, Kelmscott Manor and their houses in London – were works of art in themselves, and the great labour of their lives was life itself: through their houses and the objects they filled them with, they explored how we all might live a life more focused on beauty and fulfilment • In How We Might Live, Suzanne Fagence Cooper explores the lives and legacies of Jane and William Morris, finally giving Jane’s work the attention it deserves and taking us inside two lives of unparalleled creative artistry