Spring Rights List 2012

T H E S C I E N C E FA C T O R Y A L I TER ARY AGE N CY FO R C UR I O US M I N DS

S P RI N G R IG HTS LIST LONDON BOOK FA IR 2012

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CONTENTS RECENTLY SOLD Heaven’s Bankers by Harris Irfan 1 Beyond the Vale by Ted Nield 2 Darwin’s Peep Show by Menno Schilthuizen 3 FORTHCOMING TITLES Farewell to Reality by Jim Baggott 4 Five Billion Years of Solitude by Lee Billings 5 A Piece of the Sun by Daniel Clery 6 Eleven Days in August by Matthew Cobb 7 From Cells to Civilizations by Enrico Coen 8 Laboratory of Sound by Trevor Cox 9 Rough Magic by Georgina Ferry 10 The Plato Code by Jay Kennedy 11 The Creative Revolution by Arthur I. Miller 12 Like A Virgin by Aarathi Prasad 13 The Poppy by Nicholas J. Saunders 14 The Gap by Thomas Suddendorf 15 Zombology by Frank Swain 16 RECENTLY PUBLISHED My Beautiful Genome by Lone Frank 17 What Doesn’t Kill Us by Stephen Joseph 18 Reinventing Discovery by Michael Nielsen 19 BACKLIST TITLES The Edge of Physics by Anil Ananthaswamy 20 Atomic by Jim Baggott 21 The Belief Instinct by Jesse Bering 22 The Man Who Ran the Moon by Piers Bizony 23 Wetware by Dennis Bray 24 Brain Bugs by Dean Buonomano 25 The Sun Kings by Stuart Clark 26 The Egg and Sperm Race by Matthew Cobb 27 The Resistance by Matthew Cobb 28 Starman by Jamie Doran & Piers Bizony 29 The Devil’s Derivatives by Nicholas Dunbar 30 How Intelligence Happens by John Duncan 31 Mindfield by Lone Frank 32 Flat Earth by Christine Garwood 33 Quantum by Manjit Kumar 34 The First Psychic by Peter Lamont 35 The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick by Peter Lamont 36

London Book Fair 2012

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London Book Fair 2012

Empire of the Stars by Arthur I. Miller 37 Deciphering the Cosmic Number by Arthur I. Miller 38 Incoming! by Ted Nield 39 The Science of Doctor Who by Paul Parsons 40 Massive by Ian Sample 41 Doomsday Men by P. D. Smith 42 Written in Stone by Brian Switek 43 Selected by Mark Van Vugt & Anjana Ahuja 44 The Evolutionary World by Geerat J. Vermeij 45 A Portrait of the Brain by Adam Zeman 46 CLIENTS & PROJECTS* 47–50 FOREIGN LANGUAGE CO-AGENTS 51

For further information about translation rights in all titles in this catalogue, please contact Louisa Pritchard at Table 1N or Peter Tallack at Table 1O in the International Rights Centre.

Louisa Pritchard mobile: +44 (0)7714 721 787 email: louisa@louisapritchard.co.uk Peter Tallack mobile: +44 (0)7900 826 645 email: peter@sciencefactory.co.uk

* Including world rights sales not detailed in the rights list.

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London Book Fair 2012

RECENTLY SOLD

HEAVEN’S BANKERS Inside the Hidden World of Islamic Finance HARRIS IRFAN

The first book aimed at a general audience to tell the story of the development of the Islamic finance industry from the perspective of someone deeply embedded in it.

Islamic finance today is a trillion-dollar industry. It is fast becoming the main way in which large projects get funded globally (such as buildings, aircraft, shipping) and many financial analysts expect Islamic banking assets worldwide to double within five years. This is because the system is seen as equitable to all parties and has built-in transparency – so it’s much in demand despite today’s gloomy global economic climate.

Harris Irfan has been at the centre of this world for around 15 years. In HEAVEN’S BANKERS, he provides an authoritative yet entertaining account of how a system of finance invented in the seventh-century Middle East is fast taking over the world of modern banking. The book draws on his firsthand relationships with some of the world’s leading bankers, scholars and lawyers, many of whom attend a single mosque in Dubai, the Masjid Al-Samad, the epicentre of today’s Islamic finance revolution. An ‘Al-Samadi’ himself, he provides a warts-and-all description of the industry; debunks some myths about Islamic finance – such as its perceived relationship with the financing of terrorist activity or its incompatibility with Western values; and asks whether today’s Islamic finance industry is true to the fundamental principles of a faith committed to social justice.

Was for example the recent Islamic bond issued by Goldman Sachs to fund its conventional trading activities a legitimate use of Islamic investors’ funds or a cynical exercise in preying on people’s religious insecurities by offering a conventional, interest-bearing bond by another name? In issuing fatwas, or edicts, on Sharia-compliant financial products, were the religious scholars complicit in this alleged subterfuge or were they duped by the bankers of Goldman Sachs? Has the industry forgotten its basic premise of ethical finance and learnt instead how to replicate the excesses of the conventional banking industry?

As the managing partner of a leading Islamic finance advisory firm and the former global desk head of one of the world’s leading financial institutions, Irfan is in an ideal position to explain to the nonexpert reader the mechanics of the most complex and innovative financial products. With his strong yet informed opinions about the ethical practices and direction of the industry, this is a book that should appeal not only to people who normally buy business and finance books but also to those with a more general interest in moral philosophy, politics and religion.

HARRIS IRFAN is one of the world’s leading Islamic finance bankers. He is the founder and managing partner of Cordoba Capital, an independent Islamic finance advisory firm, and was formerly global head of Islamic finance at the Barclays Group. Before working at Barclays, he was a cofounder of Deutsche Bank’s world-leading Islamic finance team. He has represented various institutions to media organizations such as the BBC, CNBC, Bloomberg, Reuters and the Financial Times. Born in 1972 to parents of Pakistani origin, he was brought up in the UK and has a BA and MA in physics from the University of Oxford. He lives in Dubai.

Publisher: Constable Delivery: August 2012 Publication: Spring 2013 Status: Proposal Length: 70,000–80,000 words All rights available excluding World English Language (Constable) For US rights contact Andreas Campomar at Constable (andreas@constablerobinson.com) 1

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RECENTLY SOLD

BEYOND THE VALE A Personal Journey Through Time’s Lost Landscape TED NIELD Nield is a geologist with a sense of history and humour – THE TIMES Nield has a gift for bringing the science alive – BBC FOCUS The go-to guy for the unravelling of geology’s most fascinating mysteries – Simon Winchester, author of THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD and ATLANTIC

An acclaimed geology writer reflects on the man-made holes, scars and spoil-heaps that litter our environment while seeking to restore our respect for the planet’s past and its accumulated wealth.

Since the end of the Second World War, the land has undergone a change that has passed largely unremarked. It has gone hand-in-hand with a parallel transformation of our mental landscape. As our mines and quarries have closed and their traces effaced, we have forgotten where almost everything comes from – because apart from things we grow, nearly all raw materials and energy come from underground. This is never going to change. Even ‘renewable’ energy sources such as light and wind depend on machines whose raw materials all have to be dug from the Earth.

In the past half century, thanks to cheap transport (courtesy of that other Earth material, oil) small local sources of stone, clay and aggregate have been put out of business and replaced by huge holes in the ground far beyond most people’s horizon. Just as supermarkets have divorced us from farming, so cheap transport has divorced us from digging – the activity on which all wealth is ultimately based. But, just like farming, we will never be able to live without digging. Today, human beings dig and transport more Earth materials every 50 years than nature was able to erode from the Grand Canyon in 17 million. The carbon dioxide that we are putting into the atmosphere as a result will visit a terrible curse on our descendants. We worry about food miles. We should worry more about rock miles.

In an intimate journey through the forgotten and vanishing holes and spoil-heaps of the United Kingdom, the geologist and science writer Ted Nield seeks to restore our respect for the planet’s past and its accumulated wealth. By reconnecting with his own ancestors in mining, quarrying and stoneworking, and through a personal quest to restore the ruined tomb of his great grandfather in the cemetery at Aberfan in south Wales, he attempts to reconnect us with the ultimate source of our well-being, in the belief that keeping faith with the past is the best and only way to safeguard our heritage.

TED NIELD holds a doctorate in geology and works for the Geological Society of London as editor of the monthly magazine Geoscientist. A former chair of the Association of British Science Writers, he is a fellow of the Geological Society and a member of the Meteoritical Society. His previous books are SUPERCONTINENT (Granta/Harvard University Press, 2007) and INCOMING! (Granta/Lyons, 2011). He lives in London.

Publisher: Granta Delivery: June 2013 Publication: Autumn 2014 Status: Proposal Length: 80,000 words All rights available excluding World English Language (Granta) For US rights contact Angela Rose at Granta (arose@granta.com)

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RECENTLY SOLD

DARWIN’S PEEP SHOW What Nature’s Nether Regions Reveal about Life, Sex and Death MENNO SCHILTHUIZEN

A popular account of the biology of genitalia, illustrating their remarkable variation in size, shape and skills and what this eyeopening sexual cornucopia reveals about animal behaviour.

The penis has been reinvented more often than the wheel, and some of the reinventions are pretty quirky: for example, a typical damselfly penis has a balloon – an inflatable bulb – and two horns at the tip, plus long bristles down the sides. This great diversity in sexual organs illustrates one of the few rules of biology: that if species are very similar in appearance, but there is only one good way to tell them apart, that difference is almost invariably in the shape of the genitalia.

In the past two decades biologists have discovered that genitals – as tools for passing on genes to future generations – are at the forefront of evolution. Now, in DARWIN’S PEEP SHOW, Menno Schilthuizen describes this revolutionary work and the important new perspectives that it opens up on evolution, development and behaviour. He shows us how the amazing diversity of form and function in female and male genitalia – including human ones – is the result of the unexpected twists of evolution; why, in sex more than anything else, humans are the newbies where outlandish shapes and bizarre behaviours are concerned; and what this eye-popping sexual cornucopia reveals about human nature.

MENNO SCHILTHUIZEN is a 45-year-old evolutionary biologist based at the Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity ‘Naturalist’ in Leiden. The institution has a public museum visited by 300,000 people annually and a 37-million-specimen collection (the fifth largest in the world). He obtained a PhD from Leiden University and two postdoctoral fellowships at Wageningen University, and worked for seven years as an associate professor at the Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation in Malaysia. In addition to his research science (which concentrates on the evolution of land snails and beetles), he has written regularly for New Scientist, Natural History, Science and ScienceNOW, as well as for Dutch and Malaysian national newspapers, and published two books (FROGS, FLIES AND DANDELIONS: The Making of Species, Oxford University Press, 2001; THE LOOM OF LIFE: Unravelling Ecosystems, Springer, 2008). His homepage is at science.naturalis.nl/schilthuizen.

Publisher: Viking/Penguin (US) Delivery: Spring 2013 Publication: Autumn 2013 Status: Proposal Length: 70,000–80,000 words All rights available excluding World English Language (Penguin US), Germany (DTV), Italy (Bollati Boringhieri/ Mauri Spagnol) For UK & Commonwealth rights contact Hal Fessenden at Viking/Penguin US (Hal.Fessenden@us.penguingroup.com)

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FORTHCOMING TITLE

FAREWELL TO REALITY How Fairy-Tale Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth JIM BAGGOTT Praise for Jim Baggott’s work Baggott navigates successfully between the Scylla of mathematical rigor and the Charybdis of popular nonsense. He also manages to get the people right. I know this because for many of the scenes he describes I was there – Jeremy Bernstein, WALL STREET JOURNAL

Stephen Hawking recently remarked, ‘There is no heaven; it’s a fairy story’. But might the same be said of modern theoretical physics?

In FAREWELL TO REALITY, Jim Baggott argues that although we know a lot more about the nature of reality, there is a sense in which we understand less. So far there is no observational or experimental evidence for many of the ideas of modern theoretical physics such as super-symmetric particles, superstrings, the multiverse, the holographic principle or the anthropic cosmological principle. For some of the wilder speculations of theorists such as Hawking there can by definition never be any such evidence. This stuff is not only not true, it is not even science. It is fairy-tale physics: fantastical, bizarre and often outrageous – borderline confidence-trickery, even, claims Baggott.

This book provides a much-needed antidote. Informed, comprehensive and balanced, it offers lay readers an up-to-date summary of the latest thinking about the nature of physical reality while clearly distinguishing between fact and fantasy. With its engaging portraits of many central figures of modern physics, including Paul Davies, John Barrow, Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, Leonard Susskind and other ‘high priests of fairy-tale physics’, it promises to be essential reading for all readers interested in what we do and don’t know about the Universe – and in the future of science itself.

JIM BAGGOTT was born in Southampton, England, in 1957. He graduated in chemistry from the University of Manchester in 1978. After completing his doctorate in physical chemistry at the University of Oxford, he worked as a postgraduate research fellow at Oxford and at Stanford University in California. He has been studying and writing about science, philosophy and science history for some two decades, and has won awards for both scientific research and science writing.

His widely acclaimed books include THE QUANTUM STORY, ATOMIC, A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO REALITY and BEYOND MEASURE. Publisher: Constable Delivery: Autumn 2012 Publication: Spring 2013 Status: Proposal Length: 80,000 words All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth

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FORTHCOMING TITLE

FIVE BILLION YEARS OF SOLITUDE A Journey in Search of Living Worlds LEE BILLINGS

An intimate portrait of our planet, a chronicle of an unfolding scientific revolution and a meditation on the uncertain legacy of humanity.

As long as we humans have existed on Earth, our planet has seemed an isolated oasis, the sole living world known in a vast and silent universe. Now, after nearly five billion years, that isolation is ending, and we can no longer consider ourselves alone. Astronomers are discovering thousands of planets beyond our solar system, some of which may prove to be quite like Earth. They are building giant observatories on the ground and in space to study these strange new worlds, racing to be the first to find alien life on distant planets orbiting other suns, wondering whether worlds like ours are common or rare. But to have hope of recognizing signs of life across the gulfs of interstellar space, astronomers must return from the stars and confront life’s intricate mysteries right here on Earth.

In FIVE BILLION YEARS OF SOLITUDE, the science writer Lee Billings reveals the intertwined history of our planet and of planet-hunting, elegantly depicting the unique moment when life on Earth gains a cosmic context. In a journey that takes him from our world’s deepest origins to its far-distant future, he comes face to face with the pioneering researchers who, in their historic efforts to discover other living worlds, are rediscovering and redefining our own. Readers will meet colourful characters such as the brilliant astrophysicist calculating the monetary value of the Earth, the heroic astronaut battling bureaucracy to build a billion-dollar planet-imaging space telescope, the influential climatologist forecasting a grim fate for our biosphere and the visionary planetary scientist imagining the Earth viewed as an alien world.

In his encounters with the men and women who will be the first to explore other living worlds, Billings finds that their searches for Earth-like planets and speculations about alien civilizations are not only scientific pursuits, but also deep reflections of our hopes, dreams and fears for human destiny. With his vivid description of characters, appetite for details and ability to capture the essence of a complex subject in succinct, lyrical prose, he does for living worlds and the scientists who study them what John McPhee did for the geology and geologists of North America.

LEE BILLINGS is a 30-year-old science journalist. His articles on the science and policy behind breakthrough work in astronomy, planetary science, astrophysics and cosmology have appeared in publications such as Nature, New Scientist, Popular Mechanics and Seed magazine. In February 2011, to coincide with the announcement of major discoveries from NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler mission, he was invited to contribute to BoingBoing.net. His blog posts in a two-week period accumulated around 350 onsite comments, delivered hundreds of thousands of page views and spawned spin-off coverage in a host of other venues, including the Daily Mail, Wired Science, MSNBC.com, New Hampshire Public Radio and NASA’s official Kepler homepage. From January 2006 to March 2011, he was a writer and editor for Seed, where he produced content noted by outlets such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Slate.com. He lives in New York City.

Publisher: Current/Penguin (US) Delivery: December 2012 Publication: Autumn 2013 Status: Proposal Length: 90,000 words All rights available excluding World English Language (Penguin US) For UK & Commonwealth rights contact Emily Angell at Current/Penguin US (Emily.Angell@us.penguingroup.com) 5

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FORTHCOMING TITLE

A PIECE OF THE SUN The Quest for Fusion Energy DANIEL CLERY New realms of chemistry and physics. Nuclear tests without nukes. Power generation on a gigantic scale...

Nuclear fusion is what powers our sun and other stars. If perfected, controlled fusion should generate a hundred times more energy than is used to spark the nuclear reactions. It’s not only powerful but clean and green as well: it doesn’t produce long-lasting nuclear waste, and it’s potentially carbon free. And although fossil fuels, such as oil and coal, and nuclear fission fuels, such as uranium, are limited resources, there’s enough nuclear fusion fuel around us to power the Earth longer than the lifetime of the Sun. In A PIECE OF THE SUN, Daniel Clery recounts the epic tale of how fusion works, its history and its promise for the future. It’s a story of science, politics, diplomacy and historical serendipity, peopled by the legions of scientists who have spent their whole careers in pursuit of burning plasma. We are now entering a decade where it’s imperative that we make fusion happen, he says. Scientists and engineers are closer than ever to triggering nuclear fusion in a controlled setting and confirming that fusion energy is real.

With nations collaborating on massive scientific facilities, the main strands of fusion research are beginning to get noticed: as well as Europe’s programme, which has produced the best fusion reactor so far, there is the US effort and also newcomers in the East – Japan, China, South Korea and India. If, in the next few years, their giant machines make the expected breakthrough in achieving ignition, fusion will be catapulted onto front pages across the globe. A PIECE OF THE SUN aims to be the first book to tell the whole story for people wanting to read more.

DANIEL CLERY is a graduate in theoretical physics who has for more than 20 years worked as a writer and editor on some of the world’s top science magazines, including Physics World, New Scientist and Science. Appointed as Science’s news editor in Europe in 1993, he has covered many of the big science news stories of the past two decades, and has become one of the magazine’s foremost writers on energy research, addressing topics including fission and fusion energy, wind and solar power and tidal barrages.

Publisher: Duckworth /Overlook Delivery: Autumn 2012 Publication: Spring 2013 Status: Proposal and sample chapter Length: 80,000–90,000 words All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US

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FORTHCOMING TITLE

ELEVEN DAYS IN AUGUST The Liberation of Paris in 1944 MATTHEW COBB Praise for THE RESISTANCE Fabulous... painstakingly researched, even-handed and dripping with poignancy – HERALD

The story of a momentous point in 20th-century history – a history that still lives in the streets.

In August 1944, in a tiny Belgian village, 12-year-old Henri Baiverlin looked on in amazement as his father heard of the liberation of Paris: ‘He just sat there, tears streaming down his face, saying over and over again, “Paris is a beautiful city, a great city”.’ All over the world, reactions were the same.

From Manchester to New York, from Quebec to London, bells were rung, people rejoiced, tears were shed and hope sprang anew. As the British government publication Cadran put it: ‘All the war news fades when faced with the liberation of Paris. For the whole world, Paris is a symbol of civilization and of liberty: the first echo of victory could be heard in the bells of Notre Dame... By liberating themselves, the Parisians showed the world that the soul of a people is invincible, stronger than the most powerful war machine.’

The liberation of Paris was a momentous point in twentieth-century history, yet it is now largely forgotten outside France. ELEVEN DAYS IN AUGUST is a pulsating hour-by-hour reconstruction of these tumultuous events that shaped both the end of the Second World War and the whole future of France, told with the pace of a thriller. Full of the atmosphere and spirit of the French capital, it shows how, in 11 dramatic days, people lived, fought and died in the most beautiful city in the world.

As well as describing the drama, it examines the conflicting national and international interests that played out in the bloody street fighting. The tense, heart-wrenching story is told from conflicting points of view, using eyewitness and diary accounts and unpublished archive material from ordinary Parisians, Resistance fighters, the Free French, the Allied High Command, Allied and French spies, the German High Command, rank-and-file German soldiers and French collaborators.

Each of these groups of people experienced these August days in very different ways, praying for different outcomes, fighting for different futures. Hundreds of civilians and soldiers died, some leaving their names on fading plaques on Parisian buildings, but most are now forgotten by history.

This book brings their stories back to life, capturing the emotion, the excitement and the terror of insurrection and fighting, and revealing the history that lives in the streets.

MATTHEW COBB is professor of zoology and associate dean for social responsibility at the University of Manchester. He has translated five books from French into English, and spent most of his adult life as a researcher in Paris, before returning to the UK in 2002. Author of THE EGG AND SPERM RACE (Simon & Schuster/Bloomsbury, 2006) and THE RESISTANCE (Simon and Schuster, 2009), he is a frequent contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and Journal of Experimental Biology.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster (UK) Delivery: 1 May 2012 Publication: Autumn 2012 Length: 120,000 words All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth

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FORTHCOMING TITLE

FROM CELLS TO CIVILIZATIONS The Principles of Change that Shape Life ENRICO COEN A glimpse of that mysterious and awesome circle through which evolution generates not only life, but also self-understanding – Chris Frith, Emeritus Professor, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London Charming, clever and thought-provoking – Stephen C. Stearns, Edward P. Bass Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University Valuable to both general readers and specialists. Its breadth is unmatched – Michael Corballis, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Auckland

The first unified account of how life transforms itself – from the production of bacteria to the emergence of complex civilizations.

What are the connections between evolving microbes, an egg that develops into an infant and a child who learns to walk and talk? In CELLS TO CIVILIZATIONS, the award-winning scientist Enrico Coen synthesizes the growth of living systems and creative processes and reveals that the four great life transformations – evolution, development, learning and human culture – while typically understood separately, actually all revolve around shared core principles and manifest the same fundamental recipe. Coen blends provocative discussion, the latest scientific research and colourful examples to demonstrate the links between these critical stages in the history of life.

Coen tells a story rich with genes, embryos, neurons and fascinating discoveries. He examines the development of the zebra, the adaptations of seaweed, the cave paintings of Lascaux and the formulations of Alan Turing. He explores how dogs make predictions, how weeds tell the time of day and how our brains distinguish a Modigliani from a Rembrandt. Locating commonalities in important findings, Coen gives readers a deeper understanding of key transformations and provides a bold portrait for how science both frames and is framed by human culture.

A compelling investigation into the relationships between our biological past and cultural progress, CELLS TO CIVILIZATIONS presents a remarkable story of living change.

ENRICO COEN is a plant biologist who has worked in the areas of evolution, development and computational modelling for the past 25 years. He is a project leader in cell and developmental biology at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK. His work is regularly published in top scientific journals such as Science, Nature and Cell. He lectures throughout the world at scientific meetings and research establishments and gives popular talks to more general audiences. He has written articles for popular science magazines and helped to publicize his work in national newspapers. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1998 and foreign member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2001. He was also awarded the EMBO Medal in 1996, the Science for Art Prize in 1996, the Linnean Gold Medal in 1997 and the Royal Society Darwin Medal in 2004. He is the author of a popular book on the principles of development, THE ART OF GENES (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Publisher: Princeton University Press (UK/US) Publication: 27 May 2012 Status: Proofs Length: 360 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (Princeton University Press), Germany (Hanser), Spain (Critica)

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FORTHCOMING TITLE

LABORATORY OF SOUND Searching for the Sonic Wonders of the World TREVOR COX

A celebration of the science of sound, by a top researcher and broadcaster who has studied why people hate the noise of fingernails scraping on a chalkboard, constructed the world’s largest whoopee cushion and disproved the old saying that a duck’s quack produces no echo.

Creaking glaciers, whispering galleries, stalactite organs, musical roads, squeaking beaches, groaning waterwheels, frogs that croak in Mexican waves, Mayan pyramids that produce echoes that chirp like a bird – these are just a sample of the impressive, strange and surprising sounds that the acoustic engineer Trevor Cox has tracked down in his search for the ‘sonic wonders of the world’.

In LABORATORY OF SOUND, he uses his experiences of visiting sewers, caves, tidal bores, burial mounds, sand dunes, concert halls and more to explore how sound is made and altered by the environment, how our body hears, perceives and reacts to peculiar sounds and how sounds and acoustics have inspired musicians, artists and writers.

Ranging across a dizzying array of realms including literature, classical music, history, archaeology, psychology, neuroscience, geology, physics, biology and ecology, the book is an original and compelling tour of the world’s most amazing acoustic phenomena and the sometimes even stranger people behind them – and a passionate plea for a deeper appreciation of and respect for our shared sonic landscapes.

TREVOR COX was born in 1967. He is professor of acoustic engineering at Salford University and president of the Institute of Acoustics. For 15 years, he has been communicating science to the public, ranging from work with schools, through shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall, to media stories about duck quacks. He has presented 15 science documentaries for BBC radio including ‘Save Our Sounds’ (which won a Sony Radio Academy Award), appeared frequently on television and written for New Scientist. He was a co-originator and judge of BBC Radio 4’s ‘So You Want To Be A Scientist?’, a competition to find Britain’s best amateur scientist.

Publisher: Bodley Head/Random House Delivery: December 2012 Publication: Autumn 2013 Status: Proposal and sample chapter Length: 80,000 words All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth

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FORTHCOMING TITLE

ROUGH MAGIC Shakespeare’s World of Science GEORGINA FERRY Praise for Georgina Ferry Rapidly turning into the most interesting science writers going – GUARDIAN

A narrative account of the Elizabethan scientific world view, informed by the diverse reference to scientific themes in Shakespeare’s plays, ranging from the cosmos to the nature of matter, mathematics and technology to the natural environment, medicine and disease to melancholy, madness and the human mind.

Writing on the eve of the scientific revolution, Shakespeare touches on an astonishing range of natural phenomena including bee colonies, gardening, earthquakes, climate change, the vacuum, planetary motion, eclipses, geometry, ballistics, windmills, watchmaking, atomism, venereal disease, mercury poisoning, alchemy, melancholia, nature versus nurture, and much more. Just how much did he really know about the physical and biological world? Was he aware of the work of his contemporaries that would launch the scientific revolution – work that has transformed our understanding of the cosmos, the material world and the living body, and led to today’s high technology?

Short and entertaining, ROUGH MAGIC is intended as much for people interested in science as for those interested in Shakespeare. In it, the acclaimed science writer and theatre aficionado Georgina Ferry uses the works of Shakespeare to illustrate our understanding of life and the Universe on the eve of the scientific revolution. It is a book about science, but also about magic and religious belief, common sense and superstition. With Shakespeare’s help, she shows how our view of the material world has been transformed since his time, and asks whether we ourselves have changed, too.

The last time anything similar was attempted was Cumberland Clark’s 1929 book Shakespeare and Science, since when there has been a great deal more Shakespeare scholarship, and some fascinating studies of the science of the Elizabethan/Jacobean period.

GEORGINA FERRY has impeccable credentials as both a science and a Shakespeare buff. Having established herself as a science journalist through writing for New Scientist and broadcasting on BBC Radio, she is today better known for her popular science books and scientific biographies (DOROTHY HODGKIN: A Life; THE COMMON THREAD: A Story of Science, Politics, Ethics and the Human Genome; A COMPUTER CALLED LEO: Lyons Teashops and the World’s First Office Computer; and MAX PERUTZ AND THE SECRET OF LIFE) and her articles on science and culture in the Guardian and Nature. On the theatre side, she is a founder member of the Abbey Shakespeare Players, who have performed each August for some two decades to sellout audiences in St Dogmaels Abbey, Pembrokeshire. In this capacity she has played roles from Miranda in The Tempest to Cerimon in Pericles, and directed productions of Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing and Henry IV Part I and Part II. She lives in Oxford, and her website is at www.georginaferry.com.

Publisher: Bloomsbury (UK) Delivery: Autumn 2012 Publication: Spring 2013 Status: Proposal and sample writing Length: 60,000–80,000 words All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth For US rights contact Ruth Logan at Bloomsbury (ruth.logan@bloomsbury.com)

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FORTHCOMING TITLE

THE PLATO CODE The Secret Life Behind the Ancient World’s Greatest Mystery JAY KENNEDY The results he’s come up with look too neat to be accidental… quite startling – Andrew Barker, Emeritus Professor of Classics, University of Birmingham, author of GREEK MUSICAL WRITINGS and THE SCIENCE OF HARMONY IN CLASSICAL GREECE

A revolutionary discovery in the history of ancient science that promises to rank in importance with the discoveries of the Archimedes palimpsest and the Antikythera mechanism.

Plato, the great philosopher-scientist of classical Athens, was generally believed – from antiquity through the Renaissance – to be a Pythagorean who in the brilliant conversations portrayed in his books used symbols to conceal his real philosophy. This view has been rejected by modern scholars. They say that Pythagoras is hardly mentioned by Plato and that there is no evidence of symbolism in Plato’s writings.

Yet Jay Kennedy, a specialist in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Manchester, has long been convinced that secrets lie within Plato’s work. Drawing on modern techniques of literary analysis and computation, he has now finally cracked the code that has remained undetected for millennia, revealing a system of embedded musical and mathematical patterns and messages that Plato had inherited from Pythagoras a century before.

In THE PLATO CODE, Kennedy provides a popular revisionist biography of the ancient world’s greatest philosopher set against the backdrop of this revolutionary discovery. Now that we know Plato was a Pythagorean, we must completely change our view of him. The Pythagoreans were the terrorists, communists and leading secret society of the classical era. In this new account of Plato’s life and times we learn of the Pythagoreans’ persecution, their violent rise to power in Italy, Plato’s visits to and friendship with their leaders, and the great battle where they defeated Sparta. Plato is radically transformed from genteel don to fellow traveller and activist.

We also see Plato as the surprising initiator of Western mysticism as well as the mathematical and scientific traditions. For behind his code are his true beliefs about the nature of the Universe. His cryptic philosophy anticipates the scientific revolution by some 2,000 years and even suggests a novel way in which science and religion may be reconciled.

What Plato left in his code was his greatest untold legacy. What other radical ideas has he left for us to uncover? It may take some time to assess the code in the thousands upon thousands of pages of his works and evaluate all the implications, but the findings are already beginning to transform our thoughts about the origins of Western civilization. As THE PLATO CODE shows, modern philosophy may well continue to be a series of footnotes to Plato.

JAY KENNEDY holds degrees in mathematics and computing from Princeton and in philosophy from Stanford. An American by birth, he has held academic positions at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Cambridge, and now teaches at the University of Manchester in the UK. His personal biography provides a first-person detective-story angle to the book: among other things, for example, he worked in Baghdad training Saddam Hussein’s army and in Tokyo on advanced computers. Further information about his work on Plato can be found in links on his university webpage at www.chstm.manchester.ac.uk.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster (UK)/Free Press (US) Delivery: 1 June 2012 Publication: June 2013 Status: Proposal and sample chapter Length: 80,000 words All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US, Italy (Rizzoli), Japan (Hayakawa), Netherlands (Nieuw Amsterdam), Portugal (Bertrand/Temas e Debates) 11

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FORTHCOMING TITLE

THE CREATIVE REVOLUTION How Art and Science Reinvented the Modern World ARTHUR I. MILLER Arthur I. Miller is a master at capturing the intersection of creativity and intelligence – Walter Isaacson, author of EINSTEIN: His Life and Universe

An acknowledged authority on creativity in art and science and a distinguished biographer and historian of science tells the parallel stories of art and science in the 20th century.

In a century when both art and science fragmented into apparently diffuse and divergent strands, Arthur I. Miller reveals how artists and scientists were primarily tackling the same problem: fathoming the reality beneath appearances, visualizing the invisible. In essence a group biography, his book is the first to document this revolution in creative thinking that swept through both fields in the twentieth century and continues into the twenty-first.

With his eye for a good story and keen sense of what makes people tick, Miller recounts how over the past hundred years artists and scientists – from Einstein and Picasso, to Dali and Feynman, to Warhol and Mandelbrot – have interacted with and influenced one another: how science has transformed art, how art has transformed science and how these two ways of seeing the world are today starting to merge. Along the way he shows how scientific and artistic developments are motivated by personal passion, ambition and rivalry; how ideas and discoveries are moulded by their cultural and political backdrop; and how the mind governs the creative process and informs our notions of beauty and elegance in science as well as in art – questions that have preoccupied him for most of his professional career.

From the pioneers of quantum theory and abstract expressionism in pre-First World War Europe, to the avant-garde group of artists and engineers behind seminal performance-art events in New York in the 1960s, to today’s dazzling explorations of the atomic world by physicists at CERN in Switzerland and artists such as Ai Weiwei in China, THE CREATIVE REVOLUTION is an epic narrative embracing the crucial thinkers and practitioners, works and results, and areas and movements that have driven art and science in the twentieth century and beyond. The result promises to be a landmark book that stands out for its originality, dramatic flair and intellectual importance – one that radically alters our understanding of how art and science have shaped the way in which we view the modern world.

ARTHUR I. MILLER is emeritus professor of history and philosophy of science at University College London. He has published many critically acclaimed books, including EINSTEIN, PICASSO, EMPIRE OF THE STARS and DECIPHERING THE COSMIC NUMBER, and writes for publications such as New Scientist and The New York Times. An experienced broadcaster, lecturer and biographer, he is particularly interested in the relationship between science and creativity and noted for writing engagingly about complex social and intellectual dramas, weaving the personal with the scientific to produce page-turners that read like novels. His website is at www.arthurimiller.com.

Publisher: Norton Delivery: Spring 2013 Publication: Spring 2014 Status: Proposal and sample chapter Length: 80,000–90,000 words All rights available excluding World English Language (Norton), Korea (Munhakdongne) For UK & Commonwealth rights contact Elizabeth Kerr at Norton (ekerr@wwnorton.com)

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FORTHCOMING TITLE

LIKE A VIRGIN Exploring the Frontiers of Conception AARATHI PRASAD

Now that we have the competent hand of science in our lives, will girls still need men?

Sexual evolution is a slippery business. Like all mammals, we humans seem to have been left no choice in the matter: even though it is costly, inefficient and dangerous, if we want to reproduce we simply have to have sex. Yet most human cultures tell the tale of a maiden who gives birth untouched by a man; and in the wild there are plenty of creatures – such as turkeys, komodo dragons, sharks and the ‘Jesus Christ’ lizard (which walks on water, too) – that take various approaches to reproducing without sex.

In LIKE A VIRGIN, the biology writer Aarathi Prasad discusses how reproduction without sex is achieved in animals and explores why evolution hasn’t made it an option for humans – yet. In doing so, she provides a quirky, entertaining and perceptive overview of the mysteries of evolutionary biology, sex and reproduction – past, present and future.

It’s a remarkable story that ranges across Greek mythology, natural history, agriculture, conservation and medicine; takes in some of the most exciting areas of developmental genetics and molecular biology that other popular science books largely ignore; and is packed full of a cast of amazing characters, be they obscure animals or eccentric scientists such as the respected geneticist Dr Helen Spurway who in the UK in the 1950s unwittingly sparked a nationwide search for a virgin mother.

There is now a plethora of strategies being developed in reproductive medicine that could ultimately keep our species going in a world of embellished sex: the creation of artificial eggs and sperm from bone marrow, labs-on-chips on which eggs are fertilized, silicone wombs (where fetuses can spend their full nine months) and even research to prepare us for reproduction in space. What’s more, we are finally beginning to understand what genetic modifications are needed to allow for the creation of women who could have babies without having sex.

AARATHI PRASAD was born in 1975. She has a PhD in biology and worked in cancer genetics at Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London. In 2005 she moved out of the lab and into the world of science policy and communication, working for Sense About Science and, most recently, the British Council, where she is an advisor on science communication and natural resources.

In 2009 she presented Channel 4’s documentary ‘Is It Better to be Mixed Race?’ and wrote and presented the two-part BBC Radio 4 documentary ‘The Quest for Virgin Birth’. As a single mother who lives in London, she sometimes thinks it would be fabulous to have another child without first having to find the right man. Her website is at www.aarathiprasad.com.

Publisher: Oneworld (UK/US) Publication: 16 August 2012 Status: Draft manuscript Length: 288 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (Oneworld), US, Arabic (Arab Scientific), Japan (East Press)

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FORTHCOMING TITLE

THE POPPY The Story of the World’s Most Famous Flower NICHOLAS J. SAUNDERS Praise for ALEXANDER’S TOMB An armchair Indiana Jones... his lively prose draws readers into this compelling tale of conquest, political intrigue and the aura surrounding one of history’s great heroes – PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

From opiates to buttonholes – the making of an icon.

In the first cultural history of the poppy, Nicholas J. Saunders brings us one of the strangest and most compelling stories of our time: how a humble flower became a universal symbol of remembrance and redemption. It is a journey through 3,000 years, from the Trojan War to the ‘War on Terror’, from a primordial world of Greek sorcery and myth, to the killing fields of the First World War and beyond.

Covering the momentous events of the past century – two world wars, millions of war-dead, pacifism, commemoration and the billion-dollar trade in narcotics trafficking – THE POPPY shows how our fraught history has created one of the most ambiguous and enduring symbols of our humanity. Tragic and uplifting, deadly yet comforting, the poppy is an ancient symbol reborn as a modern icon.

THE POPPY is published in association with the Royal British Legion, and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to this organization.

NICHOLAS J. SAUNDERS is honorary reader in material culture in the Department of Anthropology at University College London. He is the world’s leading authority on the anthropology of the First World War. He has had a five-year exhibition on First World War art at the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, Belgium; is author of more than 20 books including ALEXANDER’S TOMB (Basic, 2007); has written dozens of articles on archaeology and anthropology for publications including New Scientist and Nature; and has appeared on television documentaries made by the BBC and National Geographic, as well as an international range of independent television companies.

Publisher: Oneworld (UK) Delivery: Spring 2012 Publication: Autumn 2012 Status: Proposal and sample chapter Length: 288 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth

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London Book Fair 2012

FORTHCOMING TITLE

THE GAP The Making of Our Peculiar Minds THOMAS SUDDENDORF

The definitive account of what we do and what we don’t know about the differences between animal and human minds.

It has been said that every psychologist must at some point fill in the following sentence: ‘The human being is the only animal that _____.’ Yet despite the many claims for human uniqueness, there is seemingly little consensus about what sets our minds apart from those of other animals.

In THE GAP, Thomas Suddendorf puts the record straight by providing the first complete account of exactly what makes human minds different from any others, and how this difference arose. Drawing on two decades of research on apes, children and human evolution, he surveys all the main areas often cited as uniquely human (language, intelligence, morality, culture, ‘theory of mind’ and ‘mental time travel’); proposes that just two innovations account for why our minds appear so distinct in all these areas – our open-ended ability to imagine and reflect on different situations and our insatiable drive to link our minds together; and argues that this gap is becoming wider not just because we are becoming smarter but also because we are making ourselves appear more special by reducing the capacities of our closest living relatives – by causing their extinction.

Weaving together the latest findings in animal behaviour, child development, anthropology, psychology, physiology, genetics, neuroscience and more, THE GAP is an original, provocative and authoritative book that will change the way we think about our place in nature. It is essential reading for anyone interested in what we really are, where we come from and where we are going – and our continuing relationship with the rest of the animal kingdom.

THOMAS SUDDENDORF was born in 1967 in Germany and is a full professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland, Australia. He has received honors and distinctions for his research and teaching, including awards from the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, the Australian Psychological Society and the American Psychological Association. He has written 10 book chapters and published more than 50 articles, including a 1997 paper on mental time travel that has become one of the most highly cited articles in the field of neuroscience and behaviour. He is regularly invited to give talks, keynote addresses and public lectures. His work has been covered in many distinguished international media outlets (such as ABC, BBC, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Discover, Science, Science News, Spektrum der Wissenschaft and Sueddeutsche Zeitung). He has particularly strong media links in the US and UK, and has been interviewed for recent stories in New Scientist and The New York Times. THE GAP is his first trade book.

Publisher: Basic (UK/US) Delivery: Autumn 2012 Publication: Autumn 2013 Status: Proposal and sample chapter Length: 90,000 words All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US, Germany (Berlin), Spain (Ediciones Destino)

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FORTHCOMING TITLE

ZOMBOLOGY The New Science of Zombies, Reanimation and Mind Control FRANK SWAIN

Quite apart from being surrounded by zombies, are we zombies ourselves?

From commonplace zombie animals in your back garden to the military’s manipulation of human minds, ZOMBOLOGY explores our hundred-year scientific quest to control the bodies and minds of fellow humans. It is packed full of previously untold stories from the most incredible annals of scientific literature: animals brought back to life; unsuspecting citizens dosed with zombifying drugs by secret agents; Soviet experiments in which organs are kept alive when separated from the body; microbes that can cause insanity; parasites that can manipulate their hosts in startling ways, forcing unnatural behaviours, sex changes and suicide; the burgeoning black market in cadavers; how to design the perfect plague; and how, despite our supposed intelligence, we all remain extraordinarily susceptible to manipulation.

Unlike any other book on attempts by humans to influence one another, ZOMBOLOGY plots a course into the highly unsettling territory where human mind control is orchestrated from within by tiny pathogens, and worse still, by nothing at all – where the architecture of both the brain and the world around it interferes with rational thought. In this way it ties together disparate subjects from the trypanosome parasites of South America to interrogation techniques in Iraq, from psychologists reducing crime through urban design in Manchester to doctors treating schizophrenia with antibiotics in Ethiopia. It reveals the advances in medicine and technology that are making Hollywood fiction a reality. And it deals with the questions raised by these advances: When is someone truly dead? What is the legal status of someone who has died but lives on? And if parasites can bend minds, encouraging impulsive or even violent behaviour, then could those infected be acquitted in a court of law?

Entertaining, eye-opening and mind-bending in its own right, ZOMBOLOGY not only reminds us that we can be taken over by other organisms, but also points out that such a thing might have already happened without our knowledge. Perhaps what we consider our own identity is a chorus of voices, only one of which is human...

FRANK SWAIN is a science writer living in the UK. Born in 1982, he graduated from the University of Wales, Bangor in 2003 with a BSc in biology before studying for an MSc at Cranfield University. In 2006, he created SciencePunk, a website devoted to the weird and wonderful fringes of science and now hosted on Seed Media Group’s ScienceBlogs network. It attracted 2.5 million hits in its first year and more than 10 million in the next. In 2008, he was recruited by Sense About Science, a Londonbased charity set up to promote evidence-based science in public discussion. He has contributed to a wide range of publications, including the Guardian’s science blog, and discussed science on national television and radio and at the British Science Festival, the University of Cambridge, and the Secret Garden Party festival – and put on music nights, hosted a radio show and stage-managed burlesque performances. ZOMBOLOGY is his first book. He is currently national coordinator for science training for journalists at the Royal Statistical Society in London.

Publisher: Oneworld (UK/US) Delivery: Autumn 2012 Publication: Spring 2013 Status: Proposal and sample chapter Length: 70,000 words All rights available excluding World English Language (Oneworld), Japan (Intershift), Netherlands (Paradigma)

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RECENTLY PUBLISHED

MY BEAUTIFUL GENOME Exposing Our Genetic Future, One Quirk at a Time LONE FRANK An excellent look into the postgenomic world – FINANCIAL TIMES A pin-sharp, lively memoir-cum-investigation... Frank’s discoveries make for some truly tingling moments... Absorbing – MAIL ON SUNDAY Covers some of the most interesting controversies in biology today… an enthralling read – NEW SCIENTIST Lone Frank is one of the surest science writers I’ve ever read... a page-turning, conversational style… Read this book – your genetic future may depend on it – Michael Shermer, author of THE BELIEVING BRAIN I haven’t seen Lone Frank’s entire genome, but it’s obvious from the first page of MY BEAUTIFUL GENOME that she’s got the SKFF2 gene (Sharp as a Knife and Friggin’ Funny, Too). No decoding needed here: I love this book – Mary Roach, author of STIFF and PACKING FOR MARS Provocative, wryly humorous, illuminating, deeply personal – if you want to know more about the world of consumer genetics, into which we appear to be unstoppably heading, this is the book for you – Frank Ryan, author of VIROLUTION

What can modern genetics tell us about our past, present and future? Is our destiny written in our genes? And if so, how can we read them?

Genomics has hit a tipping point. Today a full genome sequence laying out your six billion DNA building blocks will set you back $10,000 and can be completed in a few months. Companies are now on the march towards reducing the costs to under $1,000. Walgreens, America’s largest drugstore chain, has begun to offer genetic tests to the masses. Within the next decade, all newborns will have their genome mapped and deciphered as a matter of routine.

In MY BEAUTIFUL GENOME, the internationally acclaimed science writer Lone Frank adopts the mantle of an intrepid consumer to look at how this revolution is changing the way in which we view ourselves and live our lives. The possibilities of early detection and prevention of disease are tantalizing, she points out, as are the prospects for personalized drug treatment. Even characteristics such as personality and temperament are being redefined as subtle variations in our chromosomes.

From ancestry tracing and genome sequencing to breast-cancer scanning and personality profiling, Frank describes not only the science and the scientists behind the testing but also how it feels to be at the receiving end of all this genetic information – as both consumer and research subject. Drawing on candid interviews and commentary and adding just a touch of self help, she aims to provide the first truly popular account of what this shiny new science means for the average punter. Laconic, witty and irreverent, MY BEAUTIFUL GENOME is set to be the essential sightseer’s guide to our newly revealed genetic terrain.

LONE FRANK was born in 1966. She has a PhD in neurobiology and worked as a research scientist in the US biotech industry before becoming a journalist in 1997. Today she is an award-winning science writer and TV presenter based in Copenhagen. As well as writing for Denmark’s leading newspaper Weekendavisen, she contributes to such publications as Scientific American, Science and Nature. Her previous book was MINDFIELD, which was published by Oneworld in 2009 (republished in paperback in 2011 as THE NEUROTOURIST: Postcards from the Edge of Brain Science).

Publisher: Oneworld (UK/US) Publication: 1 September 2011 (UK)/16 October 2011 (US) Length: 320 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US, Denmark (Gyldendal), Germany (Hanser), Netherlands (Maven), Norway (Danor), Russia (Azbooka Atticus), Sweden (Fri Tanke) 17

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RECENTLY PUBLISHED

WHAT DOESN’T KILL US The New Psychology of Posttraumatic Growth STEPHEN JOSEPH Sounds a hopeful note. Suffering need not destroy – Terry Waite CBE A thorough and common-sense look at the psychology of survival – NATURE Informative and thoughtful – PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Accessible for all readers… Well worth the time to read, digest, and utilize in one’s daily life – NEW YORK JOURNAL OF BOOKS A sure-to-be-controversial, provocative challenge to prevailing wisdom on how to deal with stress – KIRKUS REVIEWS A compelling, honest and hopeful argument in favour of Nietzsche’s dictum – Jennifer O'Connell, SUNDAY BUSINESS POST (Ireland) Fascinating… should appeal to anyone interested in the human condition – Richard Bentall, Professor of Clinical Psychology, University of Liverpool Insightful and entertaining… An invaluable guide – Elaine Fox, Professor of Psychology, University of Essex A book of wisdom... psychology at its best: honest, hopeful, helpful, and based on sound serious research – Robert J. Wicks, Professor, Loyola University Maryland, author of BOUNCE: Living the Resilient Life Literate and compelling – John Harvey, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Iowa Beautifully written – Mick Cooper, Professor of Counselling, University of Strathclyde Convincingly challenging, highly enlightening and compulsively readable – Elaine Iljon Foreman, author of FLY AWAY FEAR: Overcoming Your Fear of Flying

What would you do if life as you knew it were to fall apart? And how would you recover?

Surprisingly, psychologists studying the effects of trauma have discovered it can benefit us in remarkable ways...

For the past 20 years, the pioneering psychologist Stephen Joseph has worked with survivors of trauma. His studies have yielded a startling discovery: that a wide range of traumatic events – from illness, divorce, separation, assault and bereavement to accidents, natural disasters and terrorism – can act as catalysts for positive change. Boldly challenging the conventional wisdom about trauma and its aftermath, Joseph demonstrates that rather than ruining one’s life, a traumatic event can actually improve it.

Drawing on the wisdom of ancient philosophers, the insights of evolutionary biologists and the optimism of positive psychologists, WHAT DOESN’T KILL US reveals how all of us can navigate change and adversity – traumatic or otherwise – to find new meaning, purpose and direction in life.

STEPHEN JOSEPH is professor of psychology, health and social care at the University of Nottingham, UK, where he is co-director of the Centre for Trauma, Resilience and Growth and an honorary consultant psychologist in psychotherapy. He has published more than two hundred academic papers and seven academic books, and is often asked to comment in the media on topical events relating to his work.

Publisher: Little, Brown (UK)/Basic (US) Publication: 2 February 2012 (UK)/1 November 2011 (US) Length: 288 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US, China (Cheers Publishing Company), Japan (Chikuma Shobo), Netherlands (Archipel), Russia (Hippo/Kariera) 18

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RECENTLY PUBLISHED

REINVENTING DISCOVERY The New Era of Networked Science MICHAEL NIELSEN FINANCIAL TIMES nonfiction favourite in science 2011 BOSTON GLOBE’s best book on science 2011 A thought-provoking call to arms… will frame serious discussion and inspire wild, disruptive ideas for the next decade – Chris Lintott, NATURE Captivating and enlightening – Jonathan Bodnar, LIBRARY JOURNAL A survey, an analysis, a how-to, and a harbinger of greater things to come – Robert Schaefer, NEW YORK JOURNAL OF BOOKS Nuanced, intelligent descriptions… Highly recommended! – Tim O'Reilly, Founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media The most compelling manifesto yet for the transformative power of networked science – James Wilsdon, FINANCIAL TIMES Timely and important – Jack Stilgoe, GUARDIAN The best synthesis I’ve seen of this new kind of science... a delightfully written, thought-provoking book – Carl Zimmer, author of A PLANET OF VIRUSES and THE TANGLED BANK: An Introduction to Evolution This is the book on how networks will drive a revolution in scientific discovery; definitely recommended – Tyler Cowen, author of THE GREAT STAGNATION An unparalleled account of how new tools for collaboration are transforming scientific practice – Clay Shirky, author of HERE COMES EVERYBODY and COGNITIVE SURPLUS

Science, but not as we know it...

We are living at the dawn of the most dramatic change in science in more than 300 years. This change is being driven by powerful new cognitive tools, enabled by the internet, which are greatly accelerating scientific discovery. There are many books about how the internet is changing business or the workplace or government. But this is the first book about something much more fundamental: how the internet is transforming the nature of our collective intelligence and how we understand the world. Science is being done harder, faster and smarter.

In REINVENTING DISCOVERY, Michael Nielsen tells the exciting story of an unprecedented new era of networked science. We learn, for example, how mathematicians in the Polymath Project are spontaneously coming together to collaborate online, tackling and rapidly demolishing previously unsolved problems. We learn how 250,000 amateur astronomers are working together in a project called Galaxy Zoo to understand the large-scale structure of the Universe, and how they are making astonishing discoveries, including an entirely new kind of galaxy. These efforts are just a small part of the larger story told in this book – the story of how scientists are using the internet to dramatically expand our problem-solving ability and increase our combined brainpower.

MICHAEL NIELSEN is one of the pioneers of quantum computing. Born in Brisbane, Australia, in 1974, he is an essayist, speaker and advocate of open science. He lives in Toronto, Canada. His blog is at www.michaelnielsen.org/blog.

Publisher: Princeton University Press (UK/US) Publication: 21 October 2011 Length: 280 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (Princeton University Press), Italy (Einaudi), Japan (Kinokuniya), Russia (AST)

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BACKLIST TITLE

THE EDGE OF PHYSICS A Journey to Earth’s Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe ANIL ANANTHASWAMY PHYSICS WORLD’s Book of the Year 2010 An accomplished and timely overview of modern cosmology and particle astrophysics – NATURE A remarkable narrative that combines fundamental physics with high adventure – NEW SCIENTIST Stirring, scenic narrative… a wonder-steeped page-turner – SEED A thrilling ride around the globe and around the cosmos – Sean Carroll, California Institute of Technology, author of FROM ETERNITY TO HERE Clean, elegant prose, humming with interest – Robert Macfarlane, author of MOUNTAINS OF THE MIND and THE WILD PLACES A genuinely novel route into the story of modern cosmology… a well written and genuinely accessible tale – Thomas Levenson, author of NEWTON AND THE COUNTERFEITER and EINSTEIN IN BERLIN

An intrepid journalist takes us from desolate deserts to derelict mines to answer some of the most burning questions in physics today.

Physics is in crisis. For more than two centuries, our understanding of the laws of nature expanded rapidly. But in the past few decades, we’ve made astonishingly little progress. What will finally break the impasse and get physics back on track?

In this timely and original book, the science writer Anil Ananthaswamy sets out in search of the world’s most audacious physics experiments: the telescopes and detectors that promise to shed new light on such things as dark matter, dark energy and the phenomenon of quantum gravity (which string theory tries to explain). He soon finds himself at the ends of the Earth – in cold and remote and sometimes dangerous places. As it turns out, extreme physics requires extreme environments.

Reporting from some of the most inhospitable and dramatic research sites on our planet – from the Atacama Desert in Chile, to the Indian Observatory in the Himalayas, to the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica to deep within an abandoned iron mine in Minnesota – Ananthaswamy weaves together stories about the people and places at the heart of this research while beautifully explaining the problems that scientists are trying to solve. In so doing, he provides a unique portrait of the Universe and our quest to understand it. Atmospheric, engaging and illuminating, THE EDGE OF PHYSICS brings cosmology – with all its rarefied concepts – back down to Earth.

ANIL ANANTHASWAMY is a consultant editor for New Scientist. He has worked at the magazine since 2000, most recently as deputy news editor, and has written more than 250 news and features articles. He is also a contributor to National Geographic News. He studied electronics, electrical and computer engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (Bachelor of Technology) and the University of Washington, Seattle (Master of Science), and worked as a software engineer in Silicon Valley before training as a journalist in the University of California Santa Cruz’s science-writing programme. He is based in California.

Publisher: Duckworth (UK)/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (US) Publication: 22 April 2010 (UK)/2 March 2010 (US) Length: 336 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US, Germany (Spektrum), Greece (Travlos), India (Penguin), Italy (Codice), Japan (Kawadeshobo), Korea (Humanist), Poland (Prószyński), Russia (Eksmo)

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BACKLIST TITLE

ATOMIC The First War of Physics and the Secret History of the Atom Bomb, 1939–1949 JIM BAGGOTT A BOOKLIST Top Ten Sci-Tech Book of 2010 An excellent introduction to a vast and complicated topic... knits together developments on different sides of the Atlantic into a brisk, exciting and comprehensive narrative – Michael Dobbs, THE NEW YORK TIMES While writing my 20th-century histories… I read everything on [the atomic bomb] I could lay my hands on, but I never read such a good, comprehensive account as Jim Baggott’s… Highly recommended – A. N. Wilson, READER’S DIGEST Replete with drama and insight – Martin J. Sherwin, co-author of AMERICAN PROMETHEUS, winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography This is a very good book. I particularly like the way Baggott has been able to weave the science, ‘grand-scale’ politics and espionage together into one compelling narrative – Mark Walker, author of GERMAN NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE QUEST FOR NUCLEAR POWER

An epic story of science and technology at the very limits of human understanding; a tale barely believable as fiction, which just happens to be historical fact.

Rich in personality, action, confrontation and deception, ATOMIC is the first fully realized popular account of the race between Nazi Germany, Britain, America and the Soviet Union to build atomic weapons. The book draws on declassified material such as MI6’s Farm Hall transcripts, coded Soviet messages cracked by American cryptographers in the Venona project and interpretations by Russian scholars of documents from the Soviet archives.

Jim Baggott weaves these threads into a monumental book that spans ten historic years, from the discovery of nuclear fission in 1939 to ‘Joe-1’, the first Soviet atomic bomb test in August 1949. It includes dramatic episodes such as the sabotage of the Vemork heavy-water plant by Norwegian commandos and the infamous meeting between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, the subject of Michael Frayn’s stage play ‘Copenhagen’. Baggott also tells of how Allied scientists were directly involved in the hunt for their German counterparts in war-torn Europe following D-Day, and brings to light the reactions of captured German scientists on hearing of the Allied success at Hiroshima.

Why did physicists persist in developing the atomic bomb, despite the devastation that it could bring? Why, despite having a clear head start, did Hitler’s physicists fail? To what extent did the Soviet atomic programme rely on intelligence gathered by spies such as Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall, David Greenglass and the Rosenbergs? Did the Allies really plot to assassinate a key member of the German bomb programme? Did the physicists knowingly inspire the arms race? The book answers these and many other questions.

JIM BAGGOTT was born in Southampton, England, in 1957. He graduated in chemistry in 1978 and completed his doctorate at the University of Oxford three years later. He has been studying and writing about the history of physics for some 20 years and has won awards for his scientific research and writing. His books have been widely acclaimed and include A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO REALITY, PERFECT SYMMETRY, BEYOND MEASURE and THE QUANTUM STORY. Publisher: Icon (UK)/Pegasus (US)* Publication: 5 March 2009 (UK)/13 April 2010 (US) Length: 576 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US, Israel (Books in the Attic/Miskal), Japan (Sakuhinsha), Russia (Eksmo) *Published in the US as THE FIRST WAR OF PHYSICS: The Secret History of the Atom Bomb 21

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BACKLIST TITLE

THE BELIEF INSTINCT The Psychology of Souls, Destiny and the Meaning of Life JESSE BERING Top 25 Books of 2011 by the American Library Association, Choice Reviews Named one of the 11 Best Psychology Books of 2011 by THE ATLANTIC Scintillating… with wit and wisdom – Nicholas Humphrey, London School of Economics, author of SEEING RED A triumph – moving, provocative and entertaining – Paul Bloom, Professor of Psychology, Yale University, author of HOW PLEASURE WORKS Spellbinding – Daniel M. Wegner, Harvard University, author of THE ILLUSION OF CONSCIOUS WILL Marvelously informative... an uncommonly compelling case for the self-loathing of humanity – NEW REPUBLIC A balanced and considered approach to this often inflammatory topic – NATURE Fascinating – NEW SCIENTIST A colourful romp through psychology, philosophy and popular culture – NEW HUMANIST

A startling new take on why we believe in God – and how this belief ensured human survival.

God is not merely an idea to be entertained or discarded based on the evidence. Nor is God a cultural invention, an existential Band-Aid or an opiate of the masses. Instead, Jesse Bering argues, belief in God evolved in the human species as an ‘adaptive illusion’. Drawing on groundbreaking research in cognitive science, he unravels the evolutionary mystery of why we grapple for meaning, purpose and destiny in our everyday lives. He argues that the strangely deep-rooted sense that some intentional agent created us as individuals, wants us to behave in particular ways, observes our otherwise private actions and intends to meet us after we die would also have been felt by our ancestors, leading them to behave in ways that favoured their reputations – and thus saved their genes. But in today’s world, these psychological illusions have outlasted their evolutionary purpose, and Bering points out a whole new challenge: escaping them.

His own experiments have revealed that the perceived presence of a supernatural being can affect a person’s behaviour – although in this case the being was not God, but the ghost of a dead person. He has also done studies that indicate that religion promotes fitness by encouraging collaboration within groups. A sense of being watched by a god might be useful, he says: it might encourage cheats to detect and police themselves.

JESSE BERING was born in 1975. He is a frequent contributor to Scientific American, Slate and Das Magazin. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, the Guardian and New Republic, and been featured on NPR, the BBC, Playboy Radio, and more. Formerly director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen's University, Belfast, and professor at the University of Arkansas, he is the author of the forthcoming WHY IS THE PENIS SHAPED LIKE THAT? (Scientific American/ Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 3 July 2012) and is currently working on a book on human sexuality and deviance. He lives near Ithaca, New York. His website is at www.jessebering.com.

Publisher: Nicholas Brealey (UK)*/Norton (US) Publication: 11 November 2010 (UK)/7 February 2011 (US) Length: 288 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US, Brazil (Zahar), Germany (Piper), Italy (Rizzoli), Japan (Kagaku-Dojin), Korea (Purun Communication), Netherlands (Nieuw Amsterdam), Portugal (Temas e Debates), Spain (Paidós), Taiwan (Apocalypse – traditional Chinese characters) *Published in the UK as THE GOD INSTINCT 22

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THE MAN WHO RAN THE MOON James E. Webb, NASA and the Secret History of Project Apollo PIERS BIZONY Bizony’s excellent corrective to NASA’s mythologised history takes an unflinching look… A firebrand of a book – PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

The gripping story of how one man steered NASA through a morass of politics, special interests, profiteering, untested systems, budget restrictions and volatile personalities.

In spring 1961, James E Webb, a North Carolina farm boy turned Washington insider, took charge of the grandest exploration project ever known: America’s bid for the Moon. He persuaded John F. Kennedy to support him and gained control of five per cent of the US federal budget. Webb’s NASA controlled half-a-million workers across America as they built new machines, launch pads and control centres.

But when a spacecraft caught fire in 1967, killing three astronauts, the press exposed a series of failures and the profiteering of Webb’s business partners. To protect NASA’s future, Webb took the heat for the corruption and deaths and enabled his colleagues to land on the Moon by the end of the decade. America had won the Space Race – but the name of the man who made it possible was wiped from history.

THE MAN WHO RAN THE MOON reveals the secret history of Project Apollo and the true cost of America s victory in space.

PIERS BIZONY is a science journalist and space historian who writes for newspapers and magazines such as the Independent, BBC Focus and Wired. His award-winning book on Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ was described as ‘full of sparkling enthusiasm’ by New Scientist and ‘excellent, in every way worthy of Kubrick’s original precision-crafted vision’ by the Evening Standard. His most recent books include ATOM (Icon, 2007), HOW TO BUILD YOUR OWN SPACESHIP (Portobello/ Plume, 2008) and ONE GIANT LEAP: Apollo 11 Forty Years On (Aurum, 2009).

Publisher: Icon (UK)/Thunder’s Mouth (US) Publication: 5 October 2006 (UK)/10 May 2006 (US) Length: 242 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US

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WETWARE A Computer in Every Cell DENNIS BRAY Drawing on the similarities between Pac-man and an amoeba and efforts to model the human brain, this absorbing read shows that biologists and engineers have a lot to learn from working together – DISCOVER Bray tackles the question [of how complex behaviour can arise in a simple life form] with remarkable clarity and style in this excellent book... highly recommended – Graham Lawton, NEW SCIENTIST One of the book’s major strengths is Bray’s overall unity of vision; another is the way he marshals a breathtaking diversity of fields to make his case... Whether cells think or not, there is no question that WETWARE will get the reader thinking – Wallace F. Marshall, SCIENCE A beautifully written journey into the mechanics of the world of the cell, and even beyond – Denis Noble, author of THE MUSIC OF LIFE In this timely and illuminating volume, Bray passionately weaves a compelling case for a computational view of life – Martyn Amos, author of GENESIS MACHINES Does an admirable job explaining complex biological phenomena… to non-experts while keeping the attention of people already familiar with these ideas… a highly thought-provoking look at how cells are similar to computers.

Or, perhaps more correctly, how computers should try to be like living cells – Laura DeMare, YALE JOURNAL OF BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE

How does a single-cell creature such as an amoeba lead such a sophisticated life? How does it hunt living prey, respond to lights, sounds and smells, and display complex sequences of movements without the benefit of a nervous system? This book offers a startling and original answer.

In clear, jargon-free language, Dennis Bray taps the findings of the new discipline of systems biology to show that the internal chemistry of living cells is a form of computation. Cells are built out of molecular circuits that perform logical operations, as electronic devices do, but with unique properties. Bray argues that the computational juice of cells provides the basis of all the distinctive properties of living systems: it allows organisms to embody in their internal structure an image of the world, and this accounts for their adaptability, responsiveness and intelligence.

WETWARE offers imaginative, wide-ranging and perceptive criticism of robotics and complexity theory, as well as many entertaining and telling anecdotes. For the general reader, the practising scientist and all others with an interest in the nature of life, the book is an exciting portal to some of biology’s latest discoveries and ideas.

DENNIS BRAY is emeritus professor in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. A fellow of the Royal Society, he is co-author of several bestselling and influential texts in molecular and cell biology and is internationally sought after as a lecturer on the interface of cell biology and physics. An enthusiastic advocate of the computational approach to living cells, he was awarded the 2007 European Science Prize in Computational Biology – one of the largest international prizes in science.

Publisher: Yale University Press (UK/US) Publication: 30 June 2009 (UK)/26 May 2009 (US) Length: 267 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (Yale), Japan (Hayakawa), Korea (East Asia)

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BRAIN BUGS How the Brain’s Flaws Shape Our Lives DEAN BUONOMANO Excellent… Buonomano treks across evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, neurobiology, philosophy, theory of mind, and a number of other disciplines – though, it’s worth noting, not at all in the fluffy, formulaic fashion of ‘Big Idea books’ – Maria Popova, ATLANTIC An ingenious idea… a remarkably accessible and engaging introduction to the neuroscience of the human condition – Sam Harris, author of THE MORAL LANDSCAPE, LETTER TO A CHRISTIAN NATION and THE END OF FAITH Buonomano has brilliantly pulled off what few psychological scientists can do.

In elegant and clear writing, he masterfully conveys the astonishing capability of the human mind, along with its flaws and limitations – Elizabeth Loftus, Distinguished Professor, University of California at Irvine, author of EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY What a great book, filled with nuggets about how the brain works – and falters – and even some suggestions on how to put it to better use. Very enjoyable – Joseph LeDoux, Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology, New York University, author of THE EMOTIONAL BRAIN and SYNAPTIC SELF An intriguing take on behavioral economics, marketing and human foibles – KIRKUS REVIEWS

A lively, surprising tour of our mental glitches and how they arise.

With its trillions of connections, the human brain is more beautiful and complex than anything we could ever build, but it’s far from perfect. Our memory is unreliable; we can’t multiply large sums in our heads; advertising manipulates our judgment; we tend to distrust people who are different from us; supernatural beliefs and superstitions are hard to shake; we prefer instant gratification to longterm gain; and what we presume to be rational decisions are often anything but.

Drawing on striking examples and fascinating studies, the neuroscientist Dean Buonomano illuminates the causes and consequences of these ‘bugs’ in terms of the brain’s innermost workings and their evolutionary purposes. He then goes one step further, examining how our brains function – and malfunction – in the digital, predator-free, information-saturated, special effects-addled world that we have built for ourselves. Along the way, BRAIN BUGS gives us the tools to hone our cognitive strengths while recognizing our inherent weaknesses.

DEAN BUONOMANO is a full professor in the departments of neurobiology and psychology at the University of California at Los Angeles and an investigator at UCLA’s Brain Research Institute. He has been invited to speak at many American universities and international meetings, published numerous scientific articles in leading journals such as Science and Neuron and been interviewed for newspapers and magazines including Discover, Newsweek, Scientific American and Die Zeit, most recently about his novel research on the psychological perception of time. His laboratory’s website is at www.neurobio.ucla.edu/~dbuono/.

Publisher: Norton (UK/US) Publication: 11 July 2011 Length: 310 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (Norton), Brazil (Elsevier), China (Beijing Multimillion Electronic Graphics and Information), Germany (Hans Huber), Japan (Kawade), Korea (Chiho), Russia (Hippo/ Kariera), Taiwan (Business Weekly/Cite – traditional Chinese characters)

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THE SUN KINGS The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began STUART CLARK 2007 Professional and Scholarly Publishing Award for Excellence in Cosmology and Astronomy Longlisted for the 2008 Royal Society Prize for Science Books I found myself captivated by the characters, the colossal problems they tackled, and the stunning conclusions they finally reached. I commend Stuart Clark for combining so many interesting ideas into a single, fastpaced, beautifully crafted story – Dava Sobel, author of LONGITUDE Undoubtedly the most gripping and brilliant popular science history account that I have ever read. It is informative, accurate and relevant.

The author’s ability to write so vividly makes me seethe with jealousy – Owen Gingerich, Professor of Astronomy and of the History of Science, Harvard University, author of THE BOOK THAT NOBODY READ

The engrossing story of the great 19th-century scientific controversy about the Sun’s hidden influence on our planet – a debate that is of renewed topicality today.

In September 1859, the entire Earth was engulfed in a gigantic cloud of seething gas, and a blood-red aurora erupted across the planet from the poles to the tropics. Around the world, telegraph systems crashed, machines burst into flames, and electric shocks rendered operators unconscious. Compasses and other sensitive instruments reeled as if struck by a massive magnetic fist. For the first time, human beings began to suspect that the Earth was not isolated from the rest of the Universe. But nobody knew what could have released such strange forces upon the Earth – nobody, that is, except the English amateur astronomer Richard Carrington.

In this riveting account, Stuart Clark tells for the first time the full story behind Carrington’s observations of a mysterious explosion on the surface of the Sun and how his brilliant insight – that the Sun’s magnetism directly influences the Earth – helped to usher in the modern era of astronomy.

Clark brings to life the scientists who rejected the significance of Carrington’s discovery of solar flares, as well as those who took up his struggle to prove that the Earth could be touched by influences from space. Clark also reveals new details about the sordid scandal that destroyed Carrington’s reputation and led him from the highest echelons of science to the lowest reaches of love, villainy and revenge.

STUART CLARK is the former editor of Astronomy Now. He has a PhD in astrophysics and until 2001 was director of public astronomy education at the University of Hertfordshire, where he remains a visiting fellow. In 2001, the Independent ranked him alongside Stephen Hawking and Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, as one of the ‘stars’ of British astrophysics teaching. A senior editor for space science for the European Space Agency and a regular contributor to such magazines as New Scientist and BBC Focus, he is also the author of several nonfiction books including DEEP SPACE, GALAXY and THE BIG QUESTIONS: The Universe (Quercus/Barnes & Noble; 2008, 2009, 2010) and VOYAGER (Atlantic, 2010). His most recent book is THE SKY’S DARK LABYRINTH (Polygon/Birlinn, 2011), the first in a trilogy of novels dramatizing the main revolutions in our understanding of the cosmos. His website is at www.stuartclark.com.

Publisher: Princeton University Press (UK/US) Publication: 30 March 2007 Length: 224 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (Princeton), Brazil (Record), Greece (Travlos), Italy (Einaudi), Russia (Azbooka Atticus), Taiwan (Goodness/Wu-Nan – traditional Chinese characters) 26

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THE EGG AND SPERM RACE The Seventeenth-Century Scientists Who Unravelled the Secrets of Sex, Life and Growth MATTHEW COBB A fascinating subject, full of arresting material and personalities – Lisa Jardine, SUNDAY TIMES Lively… You can almost smell the formaldehyde on the page – FINANCIAL TIMES It is a story as relevant today as it was in its own time, and Matthew Cobb tells it with great scholarship and tremendous panache – Tim Birkhead, author of PROMISCUITY and THE RED CANARY A ripping yarn – MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS

Where do we come from? Where do animals come from?

For thousands of years we had no idea how living things were created – great thinkers such as Aristotle and Hippocrates had attempted to explain what became know as the problem of ‘generation’, but none of them had the tools or the insight to solve the mystery. The result was a wealth of weird and wonderful ideals about the components necessary to create new life – blood, ‘vapours’, invisible particles in the air. It was widely accepted that animals could sometimes produce different species, for example; the notion that two sheep can only ever make another sheep is a surprisingly modern idea.

THE EGG AND SPERM RACE is the story of the exciting, largely forgotten decade during the seventeenth century when a group of young men – Jan Swammerdam, the son of a Protestant apothecary, Nils Stensen (also known as Steno), a Danish anatomist who first discovered the human tear duct, Reinier de Graaf, the attractive and brilliant son of a rich and successful Catholic architect, and Antoni Leeuwenhoek, a self-taught draper – dared to challenge thousands of years of orthodox thinking about where life comes from.

By meticulous experimentation, dissection and observation with the newly invented microscope, they showed that like breeds like, that all animals come from an egg, that there is no such thing as spontaneous generation and that there are millions of tiny wriggling ‘eels’ in semen. But their ultimate inability to fully understand the evidence that was in front of them led to a fatal mistake. As a result, the final leap in describing the process of reproduction – which would ultimately give birth to the science of genetics – took nearly two centuries for humanity to achieve.

Including previously untranslated documents, THE EGG AND SPERM RACE interweaves the personal stories of these scientists against a backdrop of the Dutch ‘golden age’. It is a riveting account of the audacious men who swept away old certainties and provided the foundation for much of our current understanding of the living world.

MATTHEW COBB is professor of zoology and associate dean for social responsibility at the University of Manchester. He is also a reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement, and has translated five books on popular science and science history from French into English.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster (UK)/Bloomsbury (US)* Publication: 3 April 2006 (UK)/8 August 2006 (US) Length: 332 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US, Netherlands (Bezige Bij), Turkey (Everest) *Published in the US as GENERATION

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THE RESISTANCE The French Fight Against the Nazis MATTHEW COBB Winner of the Franco-British Society’s Enid McLeod Book Prize 2009 Cobb comes perhaps closer than any other historian to explaining why the Resistance matters – SPECTATOR A fabulous book, painstakingly researched, even-handed and dripping with poignancy… A good book about the Resistance has long been overdue – HERALD Impeccably sourced… A fine piece of work, illustrated with excellent photographs… a successful tribute to extraordinary men and women – THE SUNDAY TIMES

An exciting, tragic and perceptive account of one of the most striking events of the 20th century – and how one of the most powerful modern myths came to be forged.

The French resistance to Nazi occupation during the Second World War was a struggle in which ordinary people fought for their liberty, despite terrible odds and horrifying repression. Hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen and women carried out an armed struggle against the Nazis, producing underground anti-fascist publications and supplying the Allies with vital intelligence.

Based on hundreds of French eye-witness accounts and including recently released archival material, THE RESISTANCE begins with the catastrophic Fall of France in 1940, and shatters the myth of a unified Resistance created by General de Gaulle. In fact, De Gaulle never understood the Resistance, and sought to use, dominate and channel it to his own ends. Brave men and women set up organizations, only to be betrayed or hunted down by the Nazis, and to die in front of the firing squad or in the concentration camps. Eventually, through the determination of Frenchman Jean Moulin, the Resistance was unified. But without the sacrifice of British Special Operations Executive agents and RAF pilots flying into makeshift airstrips on moonlit nights, there would have been no radio contact with London, little money and fewer arms.

In 1943, thousands of young men took to the hills (the maquis) to avoid being sent to work in Nazi Germany. The question of who would control these men – de Gaulle, the Allies or the Resistance – took on a crucial importance after D-Day, when hundreds of thousands of Resistance fighters harassed the retreating Nazi forces and helped two million Allied troops liberate France. Liberation threatened to transform itself into Revolution – the outcome that both De Gaulle and the Allies feared most, and did their utmost to prevent. Victorious, De Gaulle was able to neuter the Resistance, turning its revolutionary force into part of the establishment. Over the next half-century, the true story of the Resistance got blurred and distorted, its heroes and conflicts forgotten as the movement became a myth.

MATTHEW COBB is professor of zoology and associate dean for social responsibility at the University of Manchester. He has translated five books from French into English, and spent most of his adult life as a researcher in Paris, before returning to the UK in 2002. Author of THE EGG AND SPERM RACE (Simon & Schuster/Bloomsbury, 2006), he is a frequent contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and Journal of Experimental Biology.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster (UK) Publication: 1 June 2009 Length: 416 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth

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STARMAN The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin JAMIE DORAN & PIERS BIZONY Takes us breakneck speed through Gagarin’s strange trajectory… Without books like these to shelter it, history is eroded by propaganda and real heroes fall victim to spin – NEW SCIENTIST A riveting account of Gagarin’s life... STARMAN brilliantly captures the atmosphere of the time – EUROPEAN Skilfully achieves two distinct objectives: the uncovering of much of the mystery around one of mankind’s finest periods, and a full and respectful acknowledgement that its many great heroes, both sung and unsung, were, first and foremost, human beings – MOSCOW TIMES Worth writing and definitely worth reading – DAILY TELEGRAPH A fascinating – yet chilling – look at bureaucracy gone wrong – AMAZON.CO.UK

New edition to mark the 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s historic space flight.

On April 12 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to leave the Earth’s atmosphere and venture into space. An icon of the twentieth century, he also became a danger to himself and a threat to the Soviet state. At the age of 34, he was killed in a plane crash.

Based on KGB files, restricted documents from Russian space authorities, and interviews with his friends and colleagues, this biography of the Russian cosmonaut reveals a man in turmoil: torn apart by powerful political pressures, fighting a losing battle against alcoholism and rebelling against the cruelties of a corrupt totalitarian regime.

This reissued edition of STARMAN includes a new afterword that reflects on Gagarin’s legacy and celebrates the importance of his momentous expedition.

JAMIE DORAN is an Irish/Scottish independent documentary filmmaker and former BBC producer. In conjunction with Piers Bizony, he directed and produced for BBC Television the 1998 biographical film about Gagarin, which was shown in more than 60 countries worldwide.

PIERS BIZONY is a science journalist and space historian who writes for newspapers and magazines such as the Independent, BBC Focus and Wired. His award-winning book on Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ was described as ‘full of sparkling enthusiasm’ by New Scientist and ‘excellent, in every way worthy of Kubrick’s original precision-crafted vision’ by the Evening Standard. His most recent books include THE MAN WHO RAN THE MOON (Icon/Thunder’s Mouth, 2006), ATOM (Icon, 2007), HOW TO BUILD YOUR OWN SPACESHIP (Portobello/Plume, 2008) and ONE GIANT LEAP: Apollo 11 Forty Years On (Aurum, 2009).

Publisher: Bloomsbury (UK/US) Publication: 4 April 2011 Length: 248 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US, China (China Youth Press – simplified Chinese characters), Japan (Kawadeshobo-Shinsha), Lithuania (De Libris), Poland (Prószyński), Russia (Azbooka– Atticus) Film rights: optioned to Blue Ice Pictures on behalf of the writer and director Steven Silver

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THE DEVIL’S DERIVATIVES The Untold Story of the Slick Traders and Hapless Regulators Who Almost Blew Up Wall Street… and Are Ready to Do It Again NICHOLAS DUNBAR We highly recommend reading this most serious account. The book is light years ahead of the lurid bestsellers on the crisis – Marc Roche, LE MONDE Well written and will grab the interest of financial professionals before the first time they have to turn a page – REUTERS A well-researched account of the forces and events that led to the implosion of the financial system three years ago – IRISH TIMES A triumphant romp through a decade of financial mismanagement. A must-read – THE NATIONAL An intriguing and original analysis of the problems that Wall Street has been spreading to the world – MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW Nicholas Dunbar follows the first rule of good journalism: talk to everybody… As this book makes clear, the dark side of financial innovation is just getting darker – Frank Partnoy, University of San Diego School of Law A compelling book… Dunbar is a fine writer who combines a deep knowledge of finance with a great knack for storytelling – Edward Chancellor, author of CRUNCH TIME FOR CREDIT and DEVIL TAKE THE HINDMOST A bold book written by a hard-nosed journalist with a stiff backbone… At last, a book on the subject that shows true grit – Jules Kroll, founder of Kroll Inc., and chairman and cofounder of K2 Global Consulting

A compelling narrative about what went wrong with our financial system – and who’s to blame.

From an award-winning journalist who has been covering the industry for more than a decade, THE DEVIL’S DERIVATIVES charts the untold story of modern financial innovation: how investment banks invented new financial products, how investors across the world were wooed into buying them, how regulators were seduced by the political rewards of easy credit and how speculators made a killing from the near-meltdown of the financial system.

Nicholas Dunbar demystifies the revolution that briefly gave finance the same intellectual respectability as theoretical physics. He explains how bankers worldwide created a secret trilliondollar machine that delivered cheap mortgages to the masses and riches beyond dreams to the financial innovators. Fundamental to this saga is how ‘the people who hated to lose’ were persuaded to accept risk by ‘the people who loved to win’. Why did people come to trust and respect arcane financial tools? With whom were the bankers competing to assemble the basic components into increasingly intricate machines? How did this process achieve its own unstoppable momentum – ending in collapse, bailouts and a public outcry against the giants of finance?

Provocative and intriguing, THE DEVIL’S DERIVATIVES sheds much-needed light on the forces that fuelled the most brutal economic downturn since the Great Depression.

NICHOLAS DUNBAR was born in 1965. A columnist for the authoritative financial commentary website breakingviews.com, he is a former editor of Risk magazine and author of INVENTING MONEY (Wiley, 1999). In 2007, he won the State Street award for institutional financial journalism. He lives in London. His website is at www.nickdunbar.hitrefresh.co.uk.

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press (UK/US) Publication: 12 July 2011 Length: 320 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (Harvard Business Review Press), China (China Citic – simplified Chinese characters), Italy (EGEA), Japan (Kobunsha), Taiwan (Wealth Press – traditional Chinese characters) 30

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HOW INTELLIGENCE HAPPENS JOHN DUNCAN A wonderfully compact summary of brain architecture and function – WALL STREET JOURNAL Like getting into a gripping novel… The book is an invigorating read – SACRAMENTO BOOK REVIEW An elegant book… engaging and easily comprehensible without being simplistic – Wendy Johnson, Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION A highly personal and fascinating account – Michael I. Posner, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Oregon A comprehensive account… offering a unique perspective and hypothesis – Earl K. Miller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology A timely, original and highly readable contribution – Nancy Kanwisher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology The experimental findings… are unexpected and arresting… rewarding for the lay reader – Charles F. Stevens, PUBLIC LIBRARY OF SCIENCE BIOLOGY

From the 2012 winner of the prestigious Heineken Prize for Cognition Science, a firsthand account of his search for the biological basis of intelligence.

Understanding how brains build intelligence is among the most fascinating challenges of modern science. How does the biological brain, a collection of billions of cells, enable us to do things no other species can do? John Duncan has spent 30 years studying the human brain, and in this book he tells the story of his hunt for the basic principles of human intelligence, behaviour and thought.

Using results from classical studies of intelligence testing, from attempts to build computers that think, from studies of how minds change after brain damage, from modern discoveries of brain imaging and from groundbreaking recent research, Duncan synthesizes often difficult-to-understand information into a book that will appeal to scientific and popular readers alike. He explains how brains break down problems into useful, solvable parts, then assemble these parts into the complex mental processes of human thought and action.

At the heart of the book is the quest for the seat of intelligence: the cerebral source of general intelligence. The author and his colleagues have identified just one brain region that seems to be at the core of IQ: a zone in the frontal lobes, just above the outer edges of the eyebrows. The region is important for planning and solving novel tasks, keeping many things in mind at once and screening out irrelevant information – and is revealing itself as a hitherto unknown window into human nature.

Moving from the foundations of psychology, artificial intelligence and neuroscience to the latest scientific thinking, HOW INTELLIGENCE HAPPENS is for all those curious to understand what we mean by intelligence, how and why it happens and what this can tell us about ourselves.

JOHN DUNCAN is assistant director of the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge, honorary professor of cognitive neuroscience at the universities of Cambridge and Bangor, visiting professor at the University of Oxford, and fellow of the Royal Society and the British Academy. His work has been covered in the media worldwide, including the BBC, ABC News, The New York Times, Washington Post, Science and New Scientist. HOW INTELLIGENCE HAPPENS is his first book for a popular audience. For more details see www.howintelligencehappens.com.

Publisher: Yale University Press (UK/US) Publication: 26 October 2010 Length: 244 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (Yale University Press), Japan (Hayakawa), Russia (Hippo/ Kariera) 31

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MINDFIELD How Brain Science is Changing Our World LONE FRANK A fascinating exploration of the most intriguing brain experiments so far this century… Her hesitant participation in experiments… along with brutally honest descriptions of the experts add a welcome dose of humour – NEW SCIENTIST Think that you know yourself? Think again. The coming neurorevolution will destroy your certainties – but maybe set you free. Arm yourself.

Read this book – Armand Leroi, Professor of Evolutionary Developmental Biology, Imperial College London, author of MUTANTS Riveting. Lone Frank has selected the most intriguing issues currently engaging scientists and philosophers, and presented them in a way that will engage anyone who possesses the organ she writes about – Rita Carter, author of MAPPING THE MIND and MULTIPLICITY Does a great job of exploring the impending neurorevolution and sometimes scary consequences of neuro-technology – Susan Blackmore, BBC FOCUS

A comprehensive survey of the frontiers of modern neuroscience, interlacing fascinating accounts of the latest findings with witty irreverent interviews with leading researchers in their laboratories.

From religious experience, moral sense and personal choice to subliminal advertising, lie-detection and self-control, the brain has become the focal point for all questions about human nature. Modern neuroscience is now going to the heart of what it means to be human, and beginning to have important social and political repercussions, forcing us to think afresh about who we really are, why we behave as we do and where we are going.

MINDFIELD is the first book to document this coming age of ‘neurocentrism’. In it the award-winning science writer Lone Frank surveys how brain researchers are dissecting everything that makes us human and anchoring all sorts of phenomena we have previously considered incorporeal in soggy biology. She explores the influences these neuroscientific findings are having on society, reveals how this in turn is changing the structure and function of our brains, and speculates on what this cognitive revolution means for us all.

LONE FRANK was born in 1966. She has a PhD in neurobiology and worked as a research scientist in the US biotech industry before becoming a journalist in 1997. Today she is an award-winning science writer and broadcaster based in Copenhagen. As well as writing for Denmark’s leading newspaper Weekendavisen, she contributes to Science, Nature and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Widely sought after as a speaker on science and society, she has been invited to talk at Harvard Medical School, the Library of Congress, the 2009 NeuroLeadership Summit in Los Angeles, London’s Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, TEDx Istanbul and the Sydney Writer’s Festival. She has also appeared on US National Public Radio’s ‘The Leonard Lopate Show’, ‘To The Best of Our Knowledge’ and ‘Radio Lab’ as well as Globosat television. She has written several bestselling books in Danish.

MINDFIELD is the first to appear in English.

Publisher: Oneworld (UK/US)* Publication: 1 April 2009 Length: 320 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (Oneworld), Denmark (Gyldendal), Netherlands (Maven) *Reissued in paperback in June 2011 as THE NEUROTOURIST: Postcards from the Edge of Brain Science

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FLAT EARTH The History of an Infamous Idea CHRISTINE GARWOOD An energetic, all-inclusive and amusing account of man’s impressive capacity for self-delusion. Every creationist should read it – Steve Jones, author of THE LANGUAGE OF THE GENES Quirky and highly entertaining… elicits plentiful laughter and astonishment – SUNDAY TIMES Highly entertaining and often hilarious – SUNDAY TELEGRAPH Impressive research – NEW SCIENTIST A glorious romp around the world of Flat Earthism –DAILY EXPRESS Wonderful . . . dispassionate and understanding – FINANCIAL TIMES A wonderfully rich archive of tracts and correspondence – FORTEAN TIMES

Social and intellectual history at its best – and strangest.

Contrary to popular belief, fostered in countless school classrooms the world over, Christopher Columbus did not discover that the world was round. The idea of the world as a sphere had been widely accepted in scientific, philosophical and even religious circles from as early as the fourth century BC. Yet, bizarrely, it was not until the supposedly more rational nineteenth century that the notion that the world might actually be flat really took hold. Even more bizarrely, it persists to this day, despite Apollo missions and widely publicized pictures of the decidedly spherical Earth from space.

Meticulously researched and compellingly readable, Christine Garwood provides the first definitive account of this infamous idea. She explodes the myths surrounding Columbus and the battles between science and religion, explores the wilder shores of flat-Earth belief and establishes, without doubt, that the world is most emphatically not flat.

From Samuel ‘Parallax’ Rowbotham and his slick advocacy of Zetetic – or free-thinking – astronomy to Darwin’s friend and collaborator Alfred Russel Wallace, and his wager with the flat-Earther John Hampden; from Lady Blount’s earnest pamphleteering in the flat-Earth’s cause to Wilbur Glenn Voliva’s belief that there was no such thing as gravity; from the English Flat Earth Society’s campaign against the Apollo missions to the work of sister organizations in America and Canada, FLAT EARTH is a remarkable study of strange obsessions and sometimes stranger individuals.

CHRISTINE GARWOOD has a BA in history and a PhD in the history of science. She was formerly a research fellow at the Open University, where she was principal archivist of the Wallace Project, and a part-time lecturer at University College Northampton (University of Leicester). The author of several articles on Alfred Russel Wallace and on Victorian and Edwardian science and society more generally, she now lives in London and works as a freelance writer and researcher.

Publisher: Macmillan (UK)/Thomas Dunne (US) Publication: 20 April 2007 (UK)/5 August 2008 (US) Length: 436 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US, Greece (Travlos)

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The Science Factory

London Book Fair 2012

BACKLIST TITLE

QUANTUM Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality MANJIT KUMAR Shortlisted for the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize Longlisted for the 2009 Royal Society Prize for Science Books A very good and thorough history of the quantum revolution… a wonderful trip – Sara Lippincott, LA TIMES Lively… fascinating – Graham Farmelo, THE NEW YORK TIMES One of the best guides yet to the central conundrums of modern physics – John Banville, ‘Books of the Year’, MELBOURNE AGE An exhaustive and brilliant account – Steven Poole, GUARDIAN

Quantum theory made fascinating for readers who’d rather skip the mathematical complexities.

Without quantum physics our world would not exist. Yet for 60 years most physicists believed that quantum theory denied the very existence of reality itself. In this tour de force of science history, Manjit Kumar shows how the golden age of physics ignited the greatest intellectual debate of the twentieth century.

Quantum theory is weird. Albert Einstein was one of the first to recognize the radical nature of quantum theory – it was his 1905 paper on the quantum that he considered ‘very revolutionary’, not the one on relativity for which he is chiefly remembered. As a result, light came to be seen as a particle, not a wave, defying 200 years of experiments. Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and Erwin Schrödinger’s infamous dead-or-alive cat are similarly strange. As the Danish theoretician Niels Bohr said, if you aren’t shocked by quantum theory, you don’t really understand it.

In 1925, the quantum pioneers nearly all hailed from upper-middle-class academic families; most were German; and their average age was 24. Their irrational, romantic spirit, formed in reaction to the mechanized slaughter of the First World War, inspired their will to test science to its limits. Planck, Einstein, Bohr, de Broglie, Pauli, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Dirac – all played their part in this very human and tangled story of love, tragedy and rivalry, as well as muddle, mistakes, intuition, creativity and disappointment.

Kumar’s centrepiece in this dramatic and superbly written history is the fierce battle between Einstein and Bohr about the nature of reality and the soul of science. ‘Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of scientists into believing that the problem had been solved’, lamented the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann. After nearly 80 years, Einstein has been vindicated.

MANJIT KUMAR was the founding editor and publisher of Prometheus, a journal that covered the arts, sciences and humanities. He has a BSc and MSc from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London, and a BA in philosophy from the University of London. He lives in London with his wife and two children. His website is at manjitkumar.blogspot.com.

Publisher: Icon (UK)/Norton (US) Publication: 2 October 2008 (UK)/24 May 2010 (US) Length: 480 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US, Basque (Elhuyar Fundazioa), Brazil (Gerçãao), China (Chongqing – simplified Chinese characters), Croatia (Izvori), France (Jean-Claude Lattes), Germany (Berlin), Greece (Patakis), India (Hachette), Italy (Arnoldo Mondadori), Japan (Shinchosha), Netherlands (Ambo/Anthos), Poland (Prószyński), Portugal (Garvida), Russia (Corpus/AST), Spain (Kairos)

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The Science Factory

London Book Fair 2012

BACKLIST TITLE

THE FIRST PSYCHIC The Peculiar Mystery of a Notorious Victorian Wizard PETER LAMONT Well-researched and illuminating – Philip Hoare, GUARDIAN Lively and engaging… a colourful tale and a rewarding read – SUNDAY HERALD A superb, ingenious biography – SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY [Lamont’s] shrewd and often very funny book distills the perplexities of an age – Hilary Mantel, NEW STATESMAN Great fun, an entertaining, engrossing, provocative portrayal of Victorian society in the mid-1800s – SCOTTISH SUNDAY HERALD

The story of a controversial Victorian celebrity and of the strange and seemingly inexplicable events that occurred in his presence.

On the evening of Sunday 13 December 1868, a remarkable event took place in the Westminster home of Viscount Adare. A 35-year-old man, whose extraordinary exploits had already made him something of a sensation, floated out of one third-floor window and in through another.

This was the most notorious of many feats performed by Daniel Douglas Home, a lowborn Scot who became an international celebrity by convincing the rich and famous that tables floated, that spirit hands materialized and that he himself could levitate. Home is virtually unknown today, but everybody who was anybody in Victorian society, and many who were not, had a strong opinion about him. He was hated by Dickens, defended by Thackeray, denounced by Faraday and mysterious to Darwin. He was insulted by Tolstoy, praised by Mark Twain and patronized by Napoleon III. When he married a god-daughter of the Tsar of Russia, his best man was Alexandre Dumas. Home was the only subject upon which Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning disagreed. And the question that divided them was the same one asked by the Royal Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science: how did he do it?

THE FIRST PSYCHIC investigates the changing fortunes of a man whose life challenged the Victorian obsession with both science and religion, a man who baffled the establishment so much that they coined the word ‘psychic’ to describe him.

PETER LAMONT is a research fellow in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. He specializes in the history and psychology of magic and psychic phenomena, and is a past winner of the Jeremiah Dalziel Prize for British History. He has also worked professionally as a magician and psychic, and has performed and lectured across the world. His first book, THE RISE OF THE INDIAN ROPE TRICK, was published in 2003 by Little, Brown in the UK and Thunder’s Mouth in the US to wide critical acclaim.

Publisher: Little, Brown Publication: 18 August 2005 Length: 320 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth

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The Science Factory

London Book Fair 2012

BACKLIST TITLE

THE RISE OF THE INDIAN ROPE TRICK The Biography of a Legend PETER LAMONT Wry and thoughtful – Teller, THE NEW YORK TIMES Lamont has finally managed to unravel the bizarre truth behind the world’s tallest tale… quirky and expertly written – Derren Brown A fascinating, quirky and authoritative investigation into the world’s greatest mystery – Simon Singh A short, sharp little book… wonderfully entertaining – THE TIMES A great yarn – IRELAND ON SUNDAY Entertaining… Lamont marshals the available evidence with an assured and light touch – LITERARY REVIEW Lamont… has conjured a rather magical read – OBSERVER

How a spectacular hoax became history.

It is the greatest legend of the Orient. A rope is thrown into the air and rises into the sky until it is completely vertical. A boy then climbs up the rope, higher and higher. There, in broad daylight and surrounded by spectators, the boy disappears.

The Indian rope trick has been called a conjuring feat, but nobody has been able to discover how it is done. It has been called impossible, yet many have claimed to have seen it with their own eyes.

Everyone has agreed, however, that the legend is an ancient trick, perhaps as old as India itself.

But everyone has been wrong.

In THE RISE OF THE INDIAN ROPE TRICK, Peter Lamont reveals the truth behind this remarkable legend. The Indian rope trick isn’t Indian, it doesn’t involve a rope and it isn’t a trick. From the Victorian fascination with the East to the Magic Circle, from Chicago and London to the beaches of India, Lamont describes how a simple hoax grew into the world’s most famous mystery, assisted on its way by those in search of fame and fortune, and by others whose aim was to destroy it in defence of the West.

PETER LAMONT is a research fellow in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. He specializes in the history and psychology of magic and psychic phenomena, and is a past winner of the Jeremiah Dalziel Prize for British History. He has also worked professionally as a magician and psychic, and has performed and lectured across the world. His most recent book, THE FIRST PSYCHIC, was published in 2005 by Little, Brown in the UK. Publisher: Little, Brown (UK)/Basic (US) Publication: 1 January 2004 Length: 264 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US

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The Science Factory

London Book Fair 2012

BACKLIST TITLE

EMPIRE OF THE STARS Friendship, Obsession and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes ARTHUR I. MILLER Shortlisted for the 2006 Aventis Prize for Science Books Remarkable… a story that needed to be told – Sir Roger Penrose A fascinating book – SIr Martin Rees, SUNDAY TIMES Fascinating… a quite brilliant account… based on meticulous and thoughtful research – Graham Farmelo, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

Ever since the evocative term was coined in 1967, black holes have assumed an almost mystical appeal for the public. This is the first book to tell the story of their discovery – a remarkable tale of friendship, rivalry and betrayal.

In August 1930, the 20-year-old Indian astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (Chandra) calculated that certain stars could end their lives by collapsing indefinitely to a point of infinite density. But Sir Arthur Eddington, the grand-old man of British astronomy, ridiculed the idea at a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1935. Chandra abandoned his work and emigrated to the US. Although his discovery was eventually recognized with a Nobel Prize in 1983, the episode damaged Chandra professionally and personally and set back astrophysics for 40 years.

EMPIRE OF THE STARS teases out the major implications of this infamous event, setting it against the backdrop of the turbulent growth of astrophysics. As such, it also follows the rise of the two great theories of twentieth-century science – relativity and quantum mechanics – which meet head on in black holes. In the ensuing clash of personalities, epochs and nationalities, the book reveals the deep-seated psychological and philosophical prejudices at work in the acceptance and rejection of new scientific ideas: prejudices that create resistance to the idea of black holes even today.

ARTHUR I. MILLER is emeritus professor of history and philosophy of science at University College London. He is the author of several acclaimed books, including EINSTEIN, PICASSO (Basic, 2001). An experienced broadcaster, lecturer and biographer, he is particularly interested in the relationship between science and creativity and noted for writing engagingly about complex social and intellectual dramas, weaving the personal with the scientific to produce page-turners that read like novels. His most recent book is DECIPHERING THE COSMIC NUMBER (Norton, 2009). His website is at www.arthurimiller.com.

Publisher: Little, Brown (UK)/Houghton Mifflin (US) Publication: 17 March 2005 (UK)/25 April 2005 (US) Length: 400 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US, France (Jean-Claude Lattes), Germany (DVA), Greece (Travlos), Italy (Codice), Japan (Soshisha), Korea (Prunsoop), Poland (Albatros), Russia (Azbooka-Atticus)

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London Book Fair 2012

BACKLIST TITLE

DECIPHERING THE COSMIC NUMBER The Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung ARTHUR I. MILLER Arthur I. Miller is a master at capturing the intersection of creativity and intelligence – Walter Isaacson, President and CEO, Aspen Institute, author of EINSTEIN Gives you a sense of how scientists’ minds work: by leaps of intuition that are quite as irrational and excitable as any poet’s or psychologist’s – Sam Leith, DAILY MAIL A fascinating and unlikely story… brisk and accessible – Gino Segrè, Emeritus Professor of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, author of FAUST IN COPENHAGEN [Miller] writes in the smooth and engaging voice of an experienced teacher, conveying an infectious sense of wonder – Sophia Carroll, BOOKSLUT.COM

The story of the bizarre friendship between two equally brilliant yet very different men who together ventured into the ‘no-man’s land between physics and psychology’.

This is the story of two mavericks: Wolfgang Pauli, the eminent physicist who – unlike his peers – was fascinated by the inner reaches of his own psyche and not afraid to dabble in the occult; and Carl Jung, the famous psychoanalyst who was sure that science held answers to some of the questions that tormented him. Both made enormous and lasting contributions to their fields. But in their many conversations over dinner and wine at Jung’s Gothic mansion on the shores of Lake Zurich, they went much further, striking sparks off each other as they explored the peculiar middle ground between their two subjects.

Jung spent many hours analysing the dream imagery of Pauli, for the great scientist’s unconventional and wild life had brought him to the brink of a mental breakdown. Pauli was obsessed by how he had made his greatest discovery, feeling that he had tapped into something beyond physics – archetypal numbers that hinted at a deeper meaning to the Universe.

In recounting this extraordinary meeting of minds, the historian of science Arthur I. Miller encompasses many of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, as well as taking readers back to the roots of modern science, steeped as they are in mysticism and ancient history. He explores how physicists discover fundamental concepts, probes the relationship between mathematics, the mind and the real world, and reveals how one man’s discoveries pushed him beyond the assumptions of scientific rationalism into what Jung described as ‘the no-man’s land between Physics and the Psychology of the Unconscious… the most fascinating yet the darkest hunting ground of our times’.

ARTHUR I. MILLER is emeritus professor of history and philosophy of science at University College London. He is the author of several acclaimed books including EINSTEIN, PICASSO (Basic, 2001) and EMPIRE OF THE STARS (Little, Brown/Houghton Mifflin, 2005; shortlisted for the 2006 Aventis Prize for Science Books). An experienced broadcaster, lecturer and biographer, he is particularly interested in the relationship between science and creativity, and noted for writing engagingly about complex social and intellectual dramas, weaving the personal with the scientific to produce page-turners that read like novels. His website is at www.arthurimiller.com.

Publisher: Norton (US/UK)* Publication: 27 April 2009 (US)/5 June 2009 (UK) Length: 368 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (Norton), Germany (DVA), Greece (Travlos), Italy (RCS), Japan (Soshisha) *Published in paperback as 137: Jung, Pauli, and the Pursuit of a Scientific Obsession 38

The Science Factory

London Book Fair 2012

BACKLIST TITLE

INCOMING! Or: Why We Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Meteorite TED NIELD Opens a window on the night sky and the marvels that streak across it – GUARDIAN Fascinating… rich in detail, informative and entertaining – NATURE It is hard not to be engaged by this richly explored and expertly explained subject – FINANCIAL TIMES A scrupulously researched and cleverly assembled gem – Simon Winchester, author of THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD and ATLANTIC A fascinating account – Richard Fortey, author of LIFE, THE EARTH and SURVIVORS Nobody writes better on matters geological than Ted Nield… a scientific page-turner of the best kind, rich with personal insights and anecdote – John Gribbin, author of IN SEARCH OF SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT A witty and lively account not just of the perils of asteroids but also of their many mysteries. An entertaining story, delightfully told – Gabrielle Walker, author of SNOWBALL EARTH, THE HOT TOPIC and AN OCEAN OF AIR

An introduction to the science and history of the falling sky that challenges the orthodox view that meteorite strikes are always bad news for life on Earth.

Astonishing new research suggests that 470 million years ago, a stupendous collision in the Asteroid Belt (whose debris is still falling today) bombarded the Earth with meteorites of all sizes. A revolutionary idea is emerging that the resulting ecological disturbance may have been responsible for the single greatest increase in biological diversity since the origin of complex life – the previously unexplained Great Ordovician Biodiversity Event.

Introducing a wealth of extraordinary new research and the fascinating characters behind it, Ted Nield challenges the orthodox view that meteorite strikes are always bad news for life on Earth. He argues that one of the most widely known scientific theories – that dinosaurs were wiped out by a strike 65 million years ago – isn’t the whole picture, and that the causes of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction (of which the dinosaurs’ demise was a part) were much more varied and complex.

Meteorites have been the stuff of legend throughout human history, interpreted as omens of doom or objects of power. But only in the eighteenth century, when the study of falling space debris became a science, were meteorites used to unlock the mysteries of our Universe. INCOMING! traces the history of meteorites from the first recorded strike to the video recordings made routinely today, showing how our interpretations have varied according to the age in which the meteorites fell, and how meteorite impacts were given fresh urgency with the advent of the atom bomb.

TED NIELD holds a doctorate in geology and works for the Geological Society of London as editor of the monthly magazine Geoscientist. A former chair of the Association of British Science Writers, he is a fellow of the Geological Society and a member of the Meteoritical Society. His first book, SUPERCONTINENT, was published in 2007 (Granta/Harvard University Press). He lives in London.

Publisher: Granta (UK)/Lyons Press (US)* Publication: 6 January 2011/18 October 2011 Length: 272 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US *Published in the US as THE FALLEN SKY

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The Science Factory

London Book Fair 2012

BACKLIST TITLE

THE SCIENCE OF DOCTOR WHO PAUL PARSONS Foreword by Arthur C. Clarke There should be a copy in the glove compartment of every Tardis – Colin Baker, the sixth Doctor Snappy, lively, journalistic… imaginative too – NATURE As instructive as it is entertaining – Sir Patrick Moore, THE TIMES

Have you ever wondered if a sonic screwdriver could really work? How Cybermen make little Cybermen? Or where the toilets are on the Tardis?

‘Doctor Who’ arrived on British television screens in 1963. Since then, across light-years and through millennia, the journeys of the Time Lord have shown us alien worlds, strange life-forms, futuristic technology and mind-bending cosmic phenomenon. Viewers cowered terrified of Daleks, were amazed with the wonders of time travel and sped through black holes into other universes and new dimensions.

The breadth and imagination of the Doctor’s adventures have made the show one of science fiction’s truly monumental success stories. Paul Parsons explains the scientific reality behind the fiction in this highly acclaimed unofficial guide.

PAUL PARSONS is the former editor of the monthly science and technology magazine BBC Focus, and has contributed popular science articles to publications ranging from the Daily Telegraph to FHM. He holds a DPhil in cosmology and is a lifelong worshipper of ‘Doctor Who’. His most recent books are SCIENCE 1001: Absolutely Everything that Matters in Science, HOW TO DESTROY THE UNIVERSE: And 34 Other Really Interesting Uses of Physics and SCIENCE: In 100 Key Breakthroughs, (Quercus, 2010/2011). As well as writing, he works as a trading solutions analyst at Ladbrokes.

Publisher: Icon (UK)/Johns Hopkins University Press (US) Publication: 30 March 2006 (UK)/5 May 2010 (US) Length: 342 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US (Johns Hopkins University Press)

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The Science Factory

London Book Fair 2012

BACKLIST TITLE

MASSIVE The Hunt for the God Particle IAN SAMPLE Shortlisted for the 2011 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books Shows a keen eye for the personal equation, even while narrating large swatches of physics history… Sample’s exciting, easy-to-read narrative captures the collaboration, and competition, among the theorists – WALL STREET JOURNAL A lively account… fine reportage… makes clear the sheer achievement of the scientists who have built the LHC – Graham Farmelo, GUARDIAN A fast-moving narrative… a great scientific adventure – Frank Close, BBC FOCUS A compelling work of popular science, full of mind-boggling ideas and a real sense of the excitement of scientific discovery – GUARDIAN Wondering what all the hype over the Higgs boson is about? Look no further… A hundred anecdotes bring the towering figures of particle physics and their key discoveries to life – NEW SCIENTIST When the Higgs boson is discovered, it will be front page news, and this is the book that sets the stage. Ian Sample mixes cutting-edge science with behind-the-scenes stories to paint a compelling picture of one of modern science’s greatest quests – Sean Carroll, author of FROM ETERNITY TO HERE

A dramatic and gripping account of how one big idea has brought life and order to the Universe, sparking the greatest race science has ever seen, costing billions of dollars and involving the construction of the most complex machines ever made.

In the early 1960s, three groups of physicists, working independently in different countries, stumbled on an idea that would change physics and fuel the imagination of scientists for decades. That idea was the ‘God particle’, or Higgs boson. To find this elementary particle would be to finally understand the origins of mass – the last building block of life itself.

Weaving together the personal stories and intense rivalries of the teams of scientists searching for the particle, MASSIVE is a tale of grand ambition, transatlantic competition, clashing egos and occasionally spectacular failures. From the giant particle colliders built to further the scientists’ quest to the political fallout of budget blowouts and debates about whether the search might even destroy the Universe, it is an epic story of imagination, personal ambition, subatomic exploration and global significance.

Drawing on his unprecedented access to Peter Higgs, the scientist after whom the particle is named, the award-winning science writer Ian Sample chronicles the science, culture and politics behind the multinational and multibillion-dollar quest to solve the mystery of mass. Until now, the story of the search has never been told. But with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Laboratory for Nuclear Research near Geneva, we may be on the cusp of discovering the God particle and with it the very origin of mass. Whichever way you look at it, this story is massive.

IAN SAMPLE has a PhD in biomedical science from Queen Mary, University of London. A science correspondent at the Guardian, he has won several journalism prizes, including two from the Association of British Science Writers, which named him investigative journalist of the year in 2005.

He joined the Guardian in 2003 after four years as a reporter, feature writer and news editor at New Scientist. Born in Oxfordshire in 1970, he now lives in London. His website is at www.iansample.com.

Publisher: Virgin (UK)/Basic (US) Publication: 17 June 2010 (UK)/2 November 2010 (US) Length: 320 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US, Greece (Travlos), Poland (Prószyński), Russia (Azbooka– Atticus)

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The Science Factory

London Book Fair 2012

BACKLIST TITLE

DOOMSDAY MEN The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon P. D. SMITH Smith’s dynamic, riveting narrative reveals details of people, places and events that are rarely covered in textbooks, bringing to life not just scientists like Robert Oppenheimer and Leo Szilard but the horrors of chemical and atomic warfare…

Captivating and thoroughly referenced, this chronicle should interest a wide audience, from science and history buffs to armchair politicos – PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Important – John Gribbin, LITERARY REVIEW Readable and entertaining – Tibor Fischer, DAILY TELEGRAPH

The riveting, untold story of the doomsday bomb – the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.

In 1950, the Hungarian-born scientist Leo Szilard made a dramatic announcement on American radio: science was on the verge of creating a doomsday bomb. For the first time in history, mankind realized that he had within his grasp a truly God-like power, the ability to destroy life itself. The shockwave from this statement reverberated across the following decade and beyond.

If detonated, Szilard’s doomsday device – a huge cobalt-clad H-bomb – would pollute the atmosphere with radioactivity and end all life on Earth. The scientific creators of such apocalyptic weapons had transformed the laws of nature into instruments of mass destruction and for many people in the Cold War there was little to distinguish real scientists from that ‘fictional master of megadeath’, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove.

Indeed, as P. D. Smith’s chilling account shows, the dream of the superweapon begins in popular culture. This is a story that cannot be told without the iconic films and fictions that portray our deadly fascination with superweapons, from H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds to Nevil Shute’s On the Beach and Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Weaving together biography, science and art, DOOMSDAY MEN creates a compelling history of physics in the twentieth century, focusing on the long-lasting search for ever-more destructive weapons, from the development of chemical warfare in First World War Germany through the arms race of the Cold War. As it forcefully shows, the culture that grew up in the shadow of this frightening weapon has helped shape all our contemporary anxieties about science, technology and the future.

P. D. SMITH is an independent researcher and writer. He is the author of a short biography of Einstein, and an academic study of science in German literature, both of which were very well received. He has taught at University College London where he is an honorary research fellow in the Department of Science and Technology Studies; writes a biweekly piece for the Guardian in the books section, as well as reviewing for other national publications such as The Times, Independent and Times Literary Supplement; and is a guest contributor to the influential website 3quarksdaily.com. He lives in Winchester, England, and his website is at www.peterdsmith.com.

Publisher: Allen Lane (UK)/St Martin’s (US) Publication: 31 May 2007 (UK)/10 December 2007 (US) Length: 576 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US, Brazil (Companhia das Letras)

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The Science Factory

London Book Fair 2012

BACKLIST TITLE

Written in Stone Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place In Nature

Brian Switek

WRITTEN IN STONE Evolution, the Fossil Record and Our Place in Nature BRIAN SWITEK Pithy accounts... [an] excellent book – WALL STREET JOURNAL Switek seamlessly intertwines two types of evolution: one of life on earth and the other of paleontology itself – DISCOVER A fine guide to the four-dimensional tapestry of life – Jan Zalasiewicz, NATURE A fascinating historical, scientific and cultural tour – Sid Perkins, SCIENCE NEWS Highly instructive… a warm, intelligent yeoman’s guide – KIRKUS REVIEWS

Thoroughly entertaining... a godsend to armchair explorers everywhere – BOOKLIST Magisterial… marks the debut of an important new voice – Neil Shubin, author of YOUR INNER FISH Elegantly and engagingly crafted… unique, informative and entertaining – Niles Eldredge, author of DARWIN A compelling historian of science – Carl Zimmer, author of AT THE WATER’S EDGE and THE TANGLED BANK

A brilliant young science writer takes readers on a wonderful journey through the fossil record, and the people and events that have shaped our understanding of the variety of life on Earth.

In 1859, Charles Darwin unveiled his revolutionary idea that all life had evolved over countless ages by means of natural selection. It made sense of the whole of biology, yet was dogged by a major problem: the connecting forms between the main groups of organisms were seemingly nowhere to be found. Even by the 1970s, some palaeontologists were starting to wonder if the transitions – dubbed ‘missing links’ in common parlance – had been so quick that no trace of them had been left.

Thankfully these scientists turned out to be wrong. Palaeontologists just had not been looking in the right places. Although the fossil deposits in North America and Europe were the most familiar to academics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the keys to some of history’s most magnificent evolutionary transformations were discovered in much more distant locations. During the past three decades palaeontologists have unearthed walking whales from Pakistan, feathered dinosaurs from China, fish with feet from the Arctic Circle, ape-like humans from Africa, and many more bizarre creatures that fill crucial gaps in our understanding of evolution.

WRITTEN IN STONE is the first popular account of the remarkable discovery of these gap fossils.

Only now, with the marriage of palaeontology, genetics and embryology, can such a comprehensive story be told. Scientists are finally beginning to understand how whales walked into the sea, how horses stood up on their tiptoes, how feathered dinosaurs took to the air and how our own ancestors came down from the trees. As this book shows, there is much still to discover and debates will continue, but this is truly a golden age for those looking to reconstruct the past.

BRIAN SWITEK was born in 1983. A freelance science writer with a background in ecology and evolution from Rutgers University, he has done fieldwork on fossils in Utah, Montana and Wyoming.

He is a regular guest on BBC Radio, has written popular articles for Smithsonian magazine, Scientific American, Nature, Guardian and the London Times and has contributed to the edited publications Evolution: Education and Outreach and Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Saurians: A Historical Perspective. He is also the author of the acclaimed blogs Dinosaur Tracking for Smithsonian.com and Laelaps for Wired.com (’Brilliant writing about palaeontology and evolution’, The Times). His website is at www.brianswitek.com. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press (US)/Icon (UK) Publication: 1 November 2010 (US)/7 July 2011 (UK) Length: 320 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US, Japan (Bungeishunju), Russia (Hippo/Kariera) 43

The Science Factory

London Book Fair 2012

BACKLIST TITLE

SELECTED Why Some People Lead, Why Others Follow and Why It Matters MARK VAN VUGT & ANJANA AHUJA The book’s practical suggestions are worth taking seriously – NATURE A really novel book on one of the most important human topics of our time… well written, innovative and fun! – Cary L. Cooper, Distinguished Professor of Organisational Psychology and Health, Lancaster University Management School An intriguing and subtle account of the clash that results when old instincts meet new conditions – Matt Ridley, author of THE RATIONAL OPTIMIST A fascinating and eminently readable book, full of information you will want to share and arguments you will want to debate – Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive, Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce Head and shoulders above most management books – Jeremy Hazlehurst, CITY A.M.

We are all leaders or followers – or both – and we can recognize leadership in almost every area of life. But what makes a good, bad or even outstanding leader?

Fusing psychology, business, history and current affairs, SELECTED examines how and why leadership has evolved over tens of thousands of years, and presents a compelling new hypothesis: that the slow pace of evolution means there is a mismatch between modern leadership and the kind of leadership that our Stone Age brains are still wired for.

Combining academic authority with journalistic style, and full of fascinating examples spanning politics, commerce, sport and culture, the authors explain why taller political candidates usually win, why middle managers are so disliked and why we don’t like working for huge companies.

This extraordinary book explores how the psychology of leadership affects us all – and what we can do about it.

MARK VAN VUGT is professor of social and organizational psychology at the VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands. A leading authority on the evolutionary origins of leadership, he has worked with major figures in evolutionary science, including David Buss, David Sloan Wilson, Robert Hogan and Robin Dunbar. His research has been reported all over the world in both print and broadcast media. He has been featured in The Times and New Scientist, and talked about his work on BBC Radio 4 and CNN and ABC television. He regularly gives lectures to research departments and business schools in both the UK and the US. ANJANA AHUJA worked for 16 years at The Times newspaper in London, where she was a feature writer and science columnist. She has a PhD in space physics from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London. She has held advisory positions at the Royal Society, the British Science Association and the British Council. She has also written for Elle, Science in Parliament and the Oldie, and is a columnist for Prospect. She makes regular radio and television appearances as a science commentator. Now a freelance writer, she lives in London.

Publisher: Profile (UK)/HarperCollins (US)* Publication: 26 August 2010 (UK)/18 January 2011 (US) Length: 272 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US, Brazil (Pensamento – Portuguese), Canada (Random House), Japan (Hayakawa), Korea (Wooongjin Think Big Co.), Netherlands (Bruna), Russia (Hippo/Kariera), Turkey (Everest Yayinlari) *Published in the US as NATURALLY SELECTED: The Evolutionary Science of Leadership 44

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BACKLIST TITLE

THE EVOLUTIONARY WORLD How Adaptation Explains Everything from Seashells to Civilization GEERAT J. VERMEIJ Superb writing… first-rate science… wonderful… This fabulous book deserves widespread attention by specialists and lay readers alike – starred review, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY From why grass evolved to why insects do not inhabit the sea, Vermeij answers questions most of us have forgotten even to ask – Matt Ridley, author of GENOME A bold, brash, and magisterial account… sure to stir the pot... a compelling story to read, to debate and to enlighten – Neil Shubin, author of YOUR INNER FISH A wonderfully rich and wise book… Vermeij is also a refreshingly original thinker. His insights… are striking and thought-provoking. An illuminating book – Nick Lane, author of LIFE ASCENDING [Vermeij’s] naturalistic bent is coupled with literary flair – DALLAS MORNING NEWS A transcendent view of evolution as adaptation – KIRKUS REVIEWS An absorbing joy to read – BOOKLIST

One of the master naturalists of our time celebrates the explanatory power of evolution.

Evolution has outgrown its original home in biology and geology. It is a concept that organizes, explains and predicts a multitude of unconnected facts and phenomena. Adaptation plays a part in the development not only of new species but of human civilization, too. By understanding how evolutionary theory applies to areas such as our economic system, our preparation for catastrophes and even the development of communities, we can learn not just how these systems work but also what challenges lie ahead.

Blind since the age of three, Geerat J. Vermeij has become renowned for his unique ability to recognize details in the natural world that other scientists would never have noticed. In this book, he presents a new argument for evolution’s broader importance. He explores similarities between genomes and languages, the contrasting natural economies of islands and continents, the emergence and importance of human values, the long-range effects of global warming and the perils of monopoly. He also shows that the lessons of evolution have implications for education, our system of laws and economic growth.

THE EVOLUTIONARY WORLD makes a fascinating argument about the broad-reaching influence and importance of evolution. It offers a way for us to understand and work with evolution’s principles so that we can devise better solutions for our own lives, society and the environment around us.

GEERAT J. VERMEIJ is distinguished professor of geology at the University of California at Davis.

Born in the Netherlands, he came to the US with his family in 1955. He has received the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences and was honoured as a MacArthur Fellow. He has published more than two hundred scientific papers and five books and served as editor of Evolution and Paleobiology, the top journals in their fields. He also has a world-class collection of shells and is an intrepid field naturalist and explorer.

Publisher: Thomas Dunne/St Martin’s Press (US) Publication: 23 November 2010 Length: 336 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (Thomas Dunne), China (Zhe Jiang University Press), Israel (Books in the Attic), Netherlands (Nieuw Amsterdam) For UK rights contact Kerry Nordling at St Martin’s Press (kerry.nordling@stmartins.com) 45

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BACKLIST TITLE

A PORTRAIT OF THE BRAIN ADAM ZEMAN A remarkable achievement... neurology has found a fine advocate – LANCET A book which, like the brain itself, is artfully arranged… Zeman’s portrait of the brain is more even than a portrait of Man: it is a portrait of the world he perceives too – THE ECONOMIST A fascinating tale about what we do know about the brain, and what happens when it goes wrong… Zeman comes across as a lucid explainer of scientific complexity, but also as a humane practitioner – FINANCIAL TIMES An erudite discourse on brain components… The science is clear, and the stories of patients are suspenseful and gripping – NATURE Zeman’s enthusiasm for neurology and his fascination with the workings of the nervous system come across clearly – BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL

One of the best short introductions to the human brain, written by a clinical psychologist with expertise in neuroscience and philosophy.

In this compelling book, the neurologist Adam Zeman tells the stories of patients with a variety of neurological disorders, some familiar (epilepsy, chronic fatigue, stroke, memory loss) and others relatively mysterious (narcolepsy, chronic déjà vu, compulsive fidgeting, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease).

Chapter by chapter, he reveals the various levels of the brain, from the atom to the mind, and explores what happens when workings at each level go awry – be they its genes, proteins, neuronal networks or lobes. He requires of his readers no special knowledge of medicine or science, yet he takes us to the very frontiers of current scientific knowledge and elucidates the workings of the brain in astonishing detail.

A PORTRAIT OF THE BRAIN weaves together fascinating case histories, clear accounts of concepts and discoveries in neuroscience, and an intimate view of the suspense, excitement, fun and angst that colour a neurologist’s days. Zeman also considers what the brain’s behaviour and misbehaviour can tell us about the human self as physical system, living creature and conscious mind. In a final chapter, he reflects on the place of the mind in nature. On every page he both entertains and informs, and readers will find themselves pondering the enigmas of brain and mind long after closing the covers of this elegant and erudite volume.

ADAM ZEMAN is professor of cognitive and behavioural neurology, Peninsula Medical School, Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, Exeter, UK. He is the author of CONSCIOUSNESS: A User’s Guide (Yale University Press, 2003).

Publisher: Yale University Press (UK/US) Publication: 5 February 2007 Length: 246 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (Yale University Press), Korea (Chiho), Spain (Ediciones de Intervición Cultural)

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SCIENCE FACTORY CLIENTS & PROJECTS World rights sales not detailed in the rights list are indicated here with asterisks. For further information please contact the publishers directly. WEL, world English language rights

ANJANA AHUJA Science Writer and Journalist, UK SELECTED (Profile/HarperCollins – in US as NATURALLY SELECTED) ANIL ANANTHASWAMY Science Writer; Consultant, New Scientist, US THE EDGE OF PHYSICS (Duckworth/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) JIM BAGGOTT Science Writer, UK ATOMIC (Icon/Pegasus – in US as THE FIRST WAR OF PHYSICS) FAREWELL TO REALITY (Constable) DAVID BAINBRIDGE Zoologist; Director of Studies in Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge, UK *TEENAGERS (Portobello) – world rights, Portobello *MIDDLE-AGE (Portobello) – world rights, Portobello VAUGHAN BELL Clinical Psychologist and Researcher, Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London, UK *THE ENCHANTED WINDOW: How Hallucinations Reveal the Hidden Workings of the Mind and Brain (Penguin) – world rights, Penguin JESSE BERING Psychologist and Columnist; Scholar in Residence, Wells College, US THE BELIEF INSTINCT (Nicholas Brealey – in UK as THE GOD INSTINCT/Norton) *WHY IS THE PENIS SHAPED LIKE THAT? (Scientific American/Farrar, Straus & Giroux) – world rights, FSG *PERV: The Surprising Science of Sexual Deviance (Scientific American/FSG) – world rights, FSG LEE BILLINGS Science Writer, US FIVE BILLION YEARS OF SOLITUDE (Current/Penguin, US) – WEL rights, Penguin US PIERS BIZONY Science Writer and Space Historian, UK THE MAN WHO RAN THE MOON (Icon/Thunder’s Mouth) *ATOM (Icon) – world rights, Icon *HOW TO BUILD YOUR OWN SPACESHIP (Portobello/Plume) – world rights, Portobello *THE SCIENCE GUIDE (Quercus) – world rights, Quercus *THE ROUGH GUIDE TO LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS: The Search for Alien Life (Rough Guides Reference/Penguin) – world rights, Rough Guides STARMAN (with Jamie Doran) – 50th anniversary edition (Bloomsbury, UK & US) DANIEL BOR Psychologist and Science Writer; Visiting Scientist, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, UK; Research Scientist, Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, UK *RAVENOUS FOR WISDOM (Basic, UK & US) – world rights, Basic DENNIS BRAY Biologist/Fellow of the Royal Society; Emeritus Professor, Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, University of Cambridge, UK WETWARE (Yale University Press, UK & US) DEAN BUONOMANO Psychologist; Associate Professor, Departments of Neurobiology and Psychology, University of California at Los Angeles, US BRAIN BUGS (Norton) – WEL rights, Norton 47

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STUART CLARK Astronomy and Cosmology Writer; Senior Editor, European Space Agency; Former Editor, Astronomy Now, UK THE SUN KINGS (Princeton University Press, UK & US) *DEEP SPACE (Quercus/Barnes & Noble) – world rights, Quercus *GALAXY (Quercus/Barnes & Noble) – world rights, Quercus *THE BIG QUESTIONS: The Universe (Quercus) – world rights, Quercus *VOYAGER (Atlantic) – world rights, Atlantic *THE SKY’S DARK LABYRINTH: Novels 1, 2 & 3 (Polygon/Birlinn) – world rights, Polygon/Birlinn DANIEL CLERY European News Editor, Science, UK A PIECE OF THE SUN (Duckworth/Overlook) MATTHEW COBB Biologist, Historian, Writer; Professor of Zoology and Associate Dean for Social Responsibility, University of Manchester, UK THE EGG AND SPERM RACE (Simon & Schuster/Bloomsbury – in US as GENERATION) THE RESISTANCE (Simon & Schuster) ELEVEN DAYS IN AUGUST (Simon & Schuster) ENRICO COEN Plant Biologist/Fellow of the Royal Society, Department of Cell & Developmental Biology, John Innes Centre, UK FROM CELLS TO CIVILIZATIONS (Princeton University Press, UK & US) MICHAEL C. CORBALLIS Psychologist; Professor of Psychology, University of Auckland, New Zealand *THE RECURSIVE MIND (Princeton University Press, UK & US) – world rights, Princeton MOHEB COSTANDI Science writer and neuroscience blogger for the Guardian (’Neurophilosophy’), UK *50 HUMAN BRAIN IDEAS YOU REALLY NEED TO KNOW (Quercus) – world rights, Quercus TREVOR COX Acoustic Engineer & Science Broadcaster; President of the Institute of Acoustics; Professor of Acoustic Engineering, Salford University, UK LABORATORY OF SOUND (Bodley Head/Random House) NICHOLAS DUNBAR Finance Editor and Journalist, UK THE DEVIL’S DERIVATIVES (Harvard Business School Press, UK & US) JOHN DUNCAN Psychologist/Fellow of the Royal Society; Assistant Director, MRC Cognition and Brain Science Unit, University of Cambridge, UK HOW INTELLIGENCE HAPPENS (Yale University Press, UK & US) RICHARD ELWES Popular Mathematics Writer; Visiting Fellow, University of Leeds, UK *MATHEMATICS 1001 (Quercus) – world rights, Quercus *HOW TO BUILD A BRAIN: And 34 Other Really Interesting Uses of Mathematics (Quercus) – world rights, Quercus *MATHS HANDBOOK (Quercus) – world rights, Quercus *MATHS IN 100 KEY DISCOVERIES (Quercus) – world rights, Quercus *50 MORE MATHS IDEAS YOU REALLY NEED TO KNOW (Quercus) – world rights, Quercus GEORGINA FERRY Science Writer and Biographer, UK ROUGH MAGIC: Shakespeare’s World of Science (Bloomsbury) – WEL rights, Bloomsbury (UK) LONE FRANK Science Writer and Broadcaster, Denmark MINDFIELD (Oneworld, UK & US – republished in 2011 as THE NEUROTOURIST) MY BEAUTIFUL GENOME (Oneworld, UK & US) CHRISTINE GARWOOD Freelance Writer and Researcher, UK FLAT EARTH (Macmillan/Thomas Dunne) 48

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SIMON INGS Science Writer and Novelist, UK *THE WEIGHT OF NUMBERS (Atlantic/Grove Atlantic) – world rights, Atlantic *THE EYE (Bloomsbury/Norton) – world rights, Bloomsbury *DEAD WATER (Atlantic) – world rights, Atlantic *RUSSIAN DOLLS (Faber) – world rights, Faber HARRIS IRFAN Founder and Managing Partner, Cordoba Capital; formerly global head of Islamic finance at the Barclays Group and cofounder of Deutsche Bank’s world-leading Islamic finance team – Dubai HEAVEN’S BANKERS (Constable) – WEL, Constable STEPHEN JOSEPH Psychologist and Psychiatrist; Professor of Psychology, Health and Social Care, University of Nottingham, UK WHAT DOESN’T KILL US (Little, Brown/Basic) JAY KENNEDY Historian and Philosopher of Science, University of Manchester, UK THE PLATO CODE (Simon & Schuster/Free Press) MANJIT KUMAR Science Writer, UK QUANTUM (Icon/Norton) PETER LAMONT Psychologist; Research Fellow, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Science, University of Edinburgh, UK THE RISE OF THE INDIAN ROPE TRICK (Little, Brown/Basic) THE FIRST PSYCHIC (Little, Brown) EHSAN MASOOD Writer (Science; International Development; Politics of Muslim World); Former Director of Communications, LEAD International; Former Opinion Editor, New Scientist, UK *SCIENCE AND ISLAM (Icon) – world rights, Icon ARTHUR I. MILLER Historian of Science; Emeritus Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, University College London, UK EMPIRE OF THE STARS (Little, Brown/Houghton Mifflin) DECIPHERING THE COSMIC NUMBER (Norton, US & UK) THE CREATIVE REVOLUTION (Norton, US & UK) TED NIELD Geology Writer; Editor, Geoscientist magazine, and Science and Communications Officer, Geological Society of London, UK INCOMING! (Granta/Lyons Press – in US as THE FALLING SKY) BEYOND THE VALE (Granta) – WEL rights, Granta MICHAEL NIELSEN Physicist, Innovator, Science Writer, Canada REINVENTING DISCOVERY: How Online Tools Are Transforming Science (Princeton University Press, UK & US) PAUL PARSONS Science Writer; Trading Solutions Analyst, Ladbrokes; Former Editor, BBC Focus, UK THE SCIENCE OF DOCTOR WHO (Icon) *SCIENCE 1001 (Quercus) – world rights, Quercus *HOW TO DESTROY THE UNIVERSE: And 34 Other Really Interesting Uses of Physics (Quercus) – world rights, Quercus *SCIENCE: In 100 Key Breakthroughs (Quercus) – world rights, Quercus *INVASIONS OF KILLER TOMATOES AND OTHER HAZARDS: The Rough Guide to Surviving the End of the World (Rough Guides Reference/Penguin) – world rights, Rough Guides *THE PERIODIC TABLE (Quercus) – world rights, Quercus *3-MINUTE STEPHEN HAWKING (Ivy Press) – world rights, Ivy Press AARATHI PRASAD Biology Writer, Advisor, Science Communication and Natural Resources, British Council, UK LIKE A VIRGIN (Oneworld, UK & US) 49

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ANGELA SAINI Science Writer and Broadcaster, UK *GEEK NATION: A Journey Through the New India (Hodder) – world rights, Hodder IAN SAMPLE Science Correspondent, Guardian, UK MASSIVE (Virgin/Basic) – WEL rights, Virgin NICHOLAS J. SAUNDERS Archaeologist; Honorary Reader in Material Culture, Department of Anthropology, University College London, UK *ALEXANDER’S TOMB (Basic, UK & US) – world rights, Basic THE POPPY (Oneworld, UK) MENNO SCHILTHUIZEN Evolutionary biologist, Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity (‘Naturalist’), Leiden, Netherlands DARWIN’S PEEP SHOW (Viking/Penguin, US) – WEL, Viking/Penguin US P. D. SMITH Independent Researcher and Writer; Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College London, UK DOOMSDAY MEN (Macmillan/St Martin’s) *CITY (Bloomsbury, UK & US) – world rights, Bloomsbury (UK) TOM STAFFORD Psychologist; Lecture in Psychology, University of Sheffield, UK *THE ROUGH GUIDE BOOK OF BRAIN TRAINING (Rough Guides Reference/Penguin) – world rights, Rough Guides IAN STEWART Mathematician; Popular Science and Science Fiction Writer; Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Digital Media Fellow, University of Warwick, UK *LETTERS TO A YOUNG MATHEMATICIAN (Basic, UK & US) – world rights, Basic *WHY BEAUTY IS TRUTH (Basic, UK & US) – world rights, Basic *TAMING THE INFINITE (Quercus) – world rights, Quercus *PROFESSOR STEWART’S CABINET OF MATHEMATICAL CURIOSITIES (Profile/Basic) – world rights, Profile *PROFESSOR STEWART’S HOARD OF MATHEMATICAL TREASURES (Profile/Basic) – world rights, Profile *PROFESSOR STEWART’S CASEBOOK OF MATHEMATICAL MYSTERIES (Profile) – world rights, Profile *THE MATHEMATICS OF LIFE (Profile/Basic) – world rights, Profile *THE GREAT MATHEMATICAL PROBLEMS (Profile/Basic) – world rights, Profile THOMAS SUDDENDORF Psychologist; School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Australia THE GAP (Basic, UK & US) FRANK SWAIN Science Writer, Speaker and Blogger; National Coordinator for Science Training for Journalists, Royal Statistical Society, UK ZOMBOLOGY: The Science of Zombies, Reanimation and Mind Control (Oneworld, UK & US) BRIAN SWITEK Science Writer and Blogger, US WRITTEN IN STONE (Bellevue Literary Press) *A DATE WITH A DINOSAUR (Scientific American Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux) – world rights, Scientific American Books/FSG MARK VAN VUGT Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology, VU University Vugt Amsterdam, Netherlands SELECTED (Profile/HarperCollins) GEERAT J. VERMEIJ Biologist; Distinguished Professor of Geology, Department of Geology, University of California at Davis, US THE EVOLUTIONARY WORLD (Thomas Dunne/St Martin’s) – WEL rights, Thomas Dunne ADAM ZEMAN Neurologist; Professor of Cognitive and Behavioural Neurology, Peninsula Medical School, Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, Exeter, UK A PORTRAIT OF THE BRAIN (Yale University Press, US & UK) 50

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SCIENCE FACTORY FOREIGN LANGUAGE CO-AGENTS JAPAN Hamish Macaskill: hamish@eaj.co.jp Junzo Sawa: junzo_sawa@eaj.co.jp The English Agency (Japan) Sakuragi Building 4F 6-7-3 Minami Aoyama Minato-ku Tokyo 107-0062 JAPAN tel: +81 3 3406 5385 fax: +81 3 3406 5387

KOREA Duran Kim: duran@durankim.com Joe Moon: joe@durankim.com Duran Kim Agency 2F Taeyang Building 1586-5 Seocho-dong, Seocho-ku Seoul 137-070 KOREA tel: +822 583 5724 fax: +822 584 5724

REST OF THE WORLD Louisa Pritchard: louisa@louisapritchard.co.uk Louisa Pritchard Associates Flat 5 81 Battersea Church Road London SW11 3LY UNITED KINGDOM skype: + 44 (0)20 7193 7145 mobile: +44 (0)7714 721 787

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