William Collins Bat, Ball and Field. The Elements of Cricket Hotten Jon

An unprecedented history of the personality test conceived a century ago by a mother and her daughter - fiction writers with no formal training in psychology - and how it insinuated itself into our boardrooms, classrooms, and beyond • The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is the most popular personality test in the world. It has been harnessed by Fortune 100 companies, universities, hospitals, churches, and the military. Its language - of extraversion vs. introversion, thinking vs. feeling - has inspired online dating platforms and Buzzfeed quizzes alike. And yet despite the test's widespread adoption, experts in the field of psychometric testing, a $500 million industry, struggle to account for its success - no less validate its results. How did the Myers-Briggs insinuate itself into our jobs, our relationships, our internet, our lives? • First conceived in the 1920s by the mother-daughter team of Katherine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, a pair of aspiring novelists and devoted homemakers, the Myers-Briggs was designed to bring the gospel of Carl Jung to the masses

From Aristotle to Ada Lovelace: a brief history of the mathematical ideas that have forever changed the world and the everyday people and pioneers behind them. The story of our best invention yet • From our ability to calculate the passing of time to the algorithms that control computers and much else in our lives, numbers are everywhere. They are so indispensable that we forget how fundamental they are to our way of life • In this international bestseller, Mickael Launay mixes history and anecdotes from around the world to reveal how mathematics became pivotal to the story of humankind. It is a journey into numbers with Launay as a guide. In museums, monuments or train stations, he uses the objects around us to explain what art can reveal about geometry, how Babylonian scholars developed one of the first complex written languages, and how ‘Arabic’ numbers were adopted from India

The latest adventure from bestselling author Ben Fogle explores what we can learn from nature about living well and living wild • What can rowing across the Atlantic teach us about boredom and about patience? • Can coming down from Everest take more resilience than climbing up in the first place? • How can the isolation of the South Pole highlight what’s most important? And how can we tap into the same reflective state in our daily lives? • Writing during the unprecedented period of the coronavirus pandemic and drawing on a wealth of personal stories, Ben reflects on the significance of nature to all our lives and shows us how we can benefit from living a little more wild • Drawing on his greatest adventures, he shares what his time spent in the wilderness has taught him about life

From the founder of Mary’s Meals and the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Shed That Fed a Million Children, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow travels the world encountering startling acts of charity and the power of generosity • Few people in the world are better placed to understand the role of charity and generosity than Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow. As the founder and CEO of Mary’s Meals, Magnus helps feed and educate millions of children in 18 different countries across the world every year • In a time when some charitable organisations have been rocked by scandal and many are questioning their effectiveness in the modern age, Give takes us on an epic journey to rediscover the beauty and transformative power of authentic charity • Powerful and inspiring, Give celebrates the impact of charity in all our lives, illustrating how the act of sharing – and even sacrifice – is the key to a life of joy

From a long-term planning lead for the Mars Exploration Rover Project comes this vivid insider account of some of NASA’s most vital and exciting missions to the Red Planet, illustrated with full-colour photographs—a wondrous chronicle of unprecedented scientific discovery and the search for evidence of life on Mars • ‘There are probably just a few of moments in human history when a small group of humans stood on the margins of a vast new world, and it is no stretch of the romantic imagination that the arrival of two rovers on the surface of another planet was surely one of them.’ • Human exploration of Mars is the most ambitious and exciting scientific goal of the 21st century, and few people on earth know as much about this fascinating planet as Dr Larry Crumpler

Dave Grohl and Alicia Keys loved it, Bjork treasured it, Ed Sheeran’s life was changed by it, Kano felt at home while Nick Cave was horrified but inspired, and they all kept coming back • This first-hand account of the BBC’s Later… with Jools Holland takes you behind the scenes of one of the world’s great musical meeting places. Legends including Sir Paul McCartney, Mary J. Blige and David Bowie found a regular welcome, alongside the next generation of superstars including Adele, Ed Sheeran and Amy Winehouse. Part of what has made the show so special is the format – all those bands, singers, stars and newbies brought together to listen as well as to perform in Jools’ circle of dreams. But there’s always been plenty of mayhem alongside the magic of convening a room full of musicians hosted by one of their own

A classic of travel writing, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is Eric Newby’s iconic account of his journey through one of the most remote and beautiful wildernesses on earth • It was 1956, and Eric Newby was earning an improbable living in the chaotic family business of London haute couture. Pining for adventure, Newby sent his friend Hugh Carless the now-famous cable – CAN YOU TRAVEL NURISTAN JUNE? – setting in motion a legendary journey from Mayfair to Afghanistan, and the mountains of the Hindu Kush, north-east of Kabul • Inexperienced and ill prepared (their preparations involved nothing more than some tips from a Welsh waitress), the amateurish rogues embark on a month of adventure and hardship in one of the most beautiful wildernesses on earth – a journey that adventurers with more experience and sense may never have undertaken

From the bestselling author of With the End in Mind, this is a book about the conversations that matter and how to have them better – more honestly, more confidently and without regret • A child coming out to their parent. A family losing someone to terminal illness. A friend noticing the first signs of someone’s dementia. A careers advisor and a teenager with radically different perspectives • There are moments when we must talk, listen and be there for one another. Why do we so often come away from those times feeling like we could have done more, or should have been braver in the face of discomfort? Why do we skirt the conversations that might matter most? • By bringing together stories with a lifetime’s experience working in medicine and the newest psychology, Mannix offers lessons for how we can better speak our mind and help when others need to

Swifts live almost entirely in the air. They eat, drink, sleep, mate and gather their nesting materials on the wing, fly thousands of miles across the world, navigating their way around storms, never lighting on tree, cliff or ground, until they return home with the summer • Sarah Gibson has written a fascinating story of discovery, exploring what is known about these mysterious birds, their ancient ancestry and how they have been regarded through history. But the swifts are in real danger: often unintentionally, we are sealing our homes against wildlife of any kind. Cracks, gaps and crevices which for thousands of years have offered nesting space in buildings, are being closed off, while new housing rarely offers entry holes for nesting birds

‘For awhile after you quit Keats,’ Fitzgerald once wrote, ‘All other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.’ • John Keats died two hundred years ago, in February 1821. F. Scott Fitzgerald defined a decade that began one hundred years ago, the Jazz Age • In this biography, prizewinning author Jonathan Bate recreates these two shining, tragic lives in parallel. Not only was Fitzgerald profoundly influenced by Keats, titling Tender is the Night and other works from the poet’s lines, but the two lived with echoing fates: both died young, loved to drink, were plagued by tuberculosis, were haunted by their first love, and wrote into a new decade of release, experimentation and decadence • Luminous and vital, this biography goes through the looking glass to meet afresh two of the greatest and best-known Romantic writers in their twinned centuries

Foxes, buzzards, crows, badgers, weasels, seals, kites - Britain and Ireland's predators are impressive and diverse and they capture our collective imagination. But many consider them to our competition, even our enemies • The problem is that predators eat what we farm or use for sport. From foxes and ravens attacking new-born lambs to weasels eating game-bird chicks, predators compete with us, putting them directly into the firing line. Farming, fishing, sport and leisure industries want to see numbers of predators reduced, and conservation organisations also worry that predators are threatening some endangered species. Other people, though, will go to great lengths to protect them from any harm. This clashing of worlds can be intense. So, what do we do? One of the greatest challenges facing conservation today is how, when and where to control predators

"Мерлин. Мощь, стоящая за "Спитфайром", "Москито" и "Ланкастером". История двигателя" • Самые культовые самолеты Второй мировой войны - Supermarine Spitfire, Hawker Hurricane, DeHavilland Mosquito и Avro Lancaster - оснащались одним двигателем Rolls-Royce Merlin. История "Мерлина" - это история британской изобретательности на пике ее расцвета, артистизма и решения проблем, результатом которых стал дизайн, победивший в войне • Опубликованная к 75-летию Дня Победы и 80-летию начала битвы за Британию, книга Грейама Хойланда "Мерлин. Мощь, стоящая за "Спитфайром", "Москито" и "Ланкастером". История двигателя" представляет собой экстраординарную историю разработки двигателя Rolls-Royce, который помешал Гитлеру вторгнуться в Британию и перенес войну в самое сердце Германии