The Science Factory
London Book Fair 2019
CONTENTS NEW PROJECTS Speed Limit by Tanya Bub & Jeffrey Bub 1 LATEST DEALS The Spike by Mark Humphries 2 The Century of Deception by Ian Keable 3 Cryptography by Keith Martin 4 FORTHCOMING TITLES Keep Calm and Log On by Gillian Andrews 5 Waters of the World by Sarah Dry 6 The Wood Age by Roland Ennos 7 The Fear Paradox by Frank Faranda 8 Stop Being Reasonable by Eleanor Gordon-Smith 9 Once Upon a Time I Lived On Mars and Other Stories by Kate Greene 10 Dark Data by David Hand 11 The Fear of Doing Nothing by Valery Hazanov 12 Ouch by Margee Kerr and Linda Rodriguez McRobbie 13 Am I Dreaming? by James Kingsland 14 Universal Play by Alexander Kriss 15 The Last Stargazers by Emily Levesque 16 The Angina Monologues by Samer Nashef 17 How to Think Like a Woman by Regan Penaluna 18 How to Live a Good Life edited by Massimo Pigliucci, Skye Cleary & Daniel A. Kaufman 19 A Handbook for New Stoics by Massimo Pigliucci & Gregory Lopez 20 Superior by Angela Saini 21 Bad Data by Peter Schryvers 22 Beyond the Valley by Ramesh Srinivasan 23 RECENTLY PUBLISHED Dispatches from Planet Three by Marcia Bartusiak 24 A Very Human Ending by Jesse Bering 25 Advantage Play by Steve Haake 26 Alice and Bob Meet the Wall of Fire edited by Thomas Lin 27 The Prime Number Conspiracy edited by Thomas Lin 28 Wally Funk’s Race for Space by Sue Nelson 29 BACKLIST TITLES 30–34 RECENT WORLD RIGHTS DEALS* 35 FOREIGN LANGUAGE CO-AGENTS 36
For further information about rights in all titles in this catalogue, please get in touch with us at table 7o (Louisa Pritchard Associates) or table 8o (Science Factory) in the International Rights Centre on the second floor of Olympia. Louisa Pritchard (mobile: +44 7714 721 787; email: louisa@louisapritchard.co.uk) Jeff Shreve (mobile: +1 917 576 8531; email: jeff@sciencefactory.co.uk) Tisse Takagi (mobile: +1 646 404 4886; email: tisse@sciencefactory.co.uk) Peter Tallack (mobile: +49 151 4246 1109; email: peter@sciencefactory.co.uk)
* World rights sales are not detailed in the rights list.
The Science Factory
London Book Fair 2019
NEW PROJECTS
SPEED LIMIT A Light-speed Trip Into Einstein’s Mind-bending, World-changing Theory of Relativity TANYA BUB & JEFFREY BUB Praise for TOTALLY RANDOM Accessible, smart, and funny. An entanglement page-turner! – David Kaiser, author of HOW THE HIPPIES SAVED PHYSICS
A book about relativity that puts the pictures in Einstein’s head into the heads of its readers. Like many people interested in the theory of relativity, the artist, philosopher and humorist Tanya Bub had never read Einstein's original work, somehow assuming she would be better off with more modern takes on the subject. But after idly clicking on a link to the 1905 paper Einstein had written when he was 24 years old – a first stab at explaining to the world his revolutionary ideas on space, time and matter – she ended up spending two years absorbed in his imaginative vision of the world. What particularly struck her was that Einstein used words and maths to draw pictures in his readers’ minds. As she worked through his paper, she sketched in little diagrams and doodles to help her keep track of the thread of his argument and understand the rationale behind his equations. Soon her imagined scenarios became more elaborate, with props ranging from trains, mirrors and light guns to balloons, ice cream cones and baseballs. Much to her surprise it turned out that the pictures could also generate numbers – the same values usually calculated with abstract mathematical equations. But here the pictures made intuitive sense because they came with a story. In SPEED LIMIT, Tanya Bub teams up with her father, the distinguished physicist Jeffrey Bub, to explain relativity in a way that’s never been done before. It’s a deliciously visual, wildly creative journey that reveals astonishing truths about the world we inhabit: time is relative, lengths get shorter with motion, the Universe has a speed limit, energy and mass are interchangeable, and gravity is the same thing as acceleration. The result: a quirky, funny accessible blend of science and art that goes to the heart of one of science’s most revolutionary discoveries. TANYA BUB is the founder of 48th Ave Productions, a web-development company. She has degrees in philosophy of science from McGill University and fine arts from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver. JEFFREY BUB is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland. He studied physics with David Bohm at Birkbeck College, London, and philosophy of science with Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos at the London School of Economics. Tanya and Jeff’s first book together, TOTALLY RANDOM: Why Nobody Understands Quantum Mechanics (Princeton University Press, 2018), was voted best quantum physics book of 2018 by Ethan Siegel of Forbes magazine (‘If you ever wondered about quantum entanglement and why it's so weird, this book is perhaps the best, simplest explainer of how it actually works’). Agent: Peter Tallack Publisher: To be confirmed Delivery: Autumn 2019 Publication: Autumn 2020 Status: Proposal and sample spreads Length: 240 pages All rights available 1
The Science Factory
London Book Fair 2019
LATEST DEALS
THE SPIKE An Epic Journey Through the Brain in 2.8 Seconds MARK HUMPHRIES
An original snapshot of how the brain works that takes readers to the cutting edge of neuroscience research. Our brains use electricity to communicate. Each nerve cell, each neuron, talks to other neurons by sending a tiny blip of voltage down a gossamer-thin cable. Neuroscientists call that blip ‘the spike’. And spikes are how we do anything: talk, eat and run; see, plan and decide. In THE SPIKE, Mark Humphries takes us on the journey of a single spike in a single act, from seeing to thinking to moving. Even in these few seconds, more than 10 billion spikes will fire all across the brain. As he follows just one spike across just a few moments in time, we meet dark neurons, the literal silent majority, who sit unmoved by anything and everything going on around them. They are invisible to neuroimaging, and challenge our most deeply held theories of what neurons do. We meet spontaneous spikes: spikes created by neurons without any input from the outside world; spikes created solely by the myriad feedback loops between neurons that drive each other to spike endlessly. Crazier still are spikes born without any input even to the neuron that created them, spikes created solely by the internal cycling of molecules inside a neuron. We encounter layers upon layers of mystery and wonder and almost unimaginable complexity. New technologies have begun to draw back the curtain on this neuronal drama, and every day new research upends our understanding of how neurons talk to each other. Of how we see, of how we decide, of how we move. But until now we've had no big-picture narrative; no story of how all our discoveries fit together. THE SPIKE tells that story. MARK HUMPHRIES is a professor of computational neuroscience at the University of Nottingham, where he holds a prestigious seven-year senior fellowship from the UK’s Medical Research Council – the only computational scientist ever to have been awarded one. Before moving to Nottingham in 2018, he was a senior research fellow at the University of Manchester, a fellow at École Normale Supérieure in Paris and a postdoctoral and PhD student at the University of Sheffield. His work has been published in leading scientific journals including Neuron, eLife and Nature Communications. In 2016 he founded the Medium publication ‘The Spike’ to bring the unheralded golden age of systems neuroscience to the general public. His stories there have amassed close to half a million views in the publication’s first two years. Agent: Jeff Shreve Publisher: Princeton University Press Delivery: October 2019 Publication: Autumn 2020 Status: Proposal Length: 60,000 words All rights available excluding World English Language (Princeton University Press)
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The Science Factory
London Book Fair 2019
LATEST DEALS
THE CENTURY OF DECEPTION The Birth of the Hoax in EighteenthCentury Britain IAN KEABLE
‛Fake news’, ‛going viral’ and ‛social media’ may be phrases from the twenty-first century but the concepts were all born in a series of absurdist events some 250 years ago. England, 1749. A newspaper advertisement appears stating that a man will climb inside a bottle on the stage of a London theatre. Unfortunately, although the audience turns up, the conjurer doesn’t. Earlier in the same century a woman said she was giving birth to rabbits; later a new Shakespearian play was supposedly discovered and performed – like the Bottle Conjurer for one night only. In THE CENTURY OF DECEPTION the magician and historian of conjuring Ian Keable tells the stories of these and several other eighteenth-century hoaxes including a sociopathic liar, a hilarious astrological prediction, a rapping ghost and a Frenchman attempting to go airborne in a Chinese temple. Hoaxes, of course, have always been around. But this was the era when they were first extensively reported, vividly depicted and reliably described – as well as forensically investigated. They were also widely influential, drawing in many celebrities of the day such as Samuel Johnson, Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Swift and inflaming concerns about ‘English credulity’. Embracing history and society, literature and the theatre, medicine and religion, satirical prints and paintings, imprisonment and capital punishment, and questions of ‘whodunit’ and ‘whydunit’, this entertaining and eye-popping book reveals how these hoaxes provide the perfect mirror for reflecting universal truths about our susceptibility to being duped. IAN KEABLE obtained a first-class degree from the University of Oxford in philosophy, politics and economics, qualified as a chartered accountant and then became a professional magician. A member of The Magic Circle with gold star, he has won several awards for his unique brand of comedy magic and is the author of three books for the general public as well as three works for professionals including Stand-Up: A Professional Guide to Comedy Magic and Charles Dickens Magician: Conjuring in Life, Letters and Literature. He has made numerous appearances on television including ‘New Faces’, the predecessor to ‘Britain's Got Talent’, and has written and presented programmes for BBC Radio. An accredited lecturer for The Arts Society, he gives talks on cartoons, satirical prints and eighteenth-century hoaxes. He still performs as a magician at corporate events and private parties and also does a show about Dickens's interest in conjuring and spiritualism. He is married with two children and lives in London. Agent: Peter Tallack Publisher: Westbourne Press Delivery: Spring 2020 Publication: Autumn 2020 Status: Proposal and sample chapters Length: 80,000 words All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth (Westbourne Press) 3
The Science Factory
London Book Fair 2019
LATEST DEALS
CRYPTOGRAPHY The Keys to Cyberspace KEITH MARTIN
A concise, accessible and authoritative guide that tells you everything you need to know about cryptography. What are the implications of connecting to an unprotected Wi-Fi network? Is it really that important to have different passwords for different accounts? Could you lose all your money if you convert it to bitcoin? Can we ever be truly anonymous when online? Will quantum computers break all known cryptography, or will smarter machines make our world more secure? Cryptography is being used, behind the scenes, to secure most of the technologies that each of us uses every day in cyberspace. It protects half of all global connections made to the world wide web. We use it when we withdraw cash from an ATM, log in to a computing device, search for information on Google, watch movies on Netflix or even use a key fob to open our car door. With Forbes predicting that cybercrime will be worth two trillion dollars by 2019, cryptography really is something that none of us can afford to ignore. Yet in cyberspace we often leave our front doors wide open. We hand over our bank account details to strangers and we etch personal messages into tablets of digital stone that will remain legible forever. At the same time some political leaders are calling for cryptography to be weakened. A former director of the FBI says he is ‘concerned’, even ‘depressed’, about how it it is hampering intelligence gathering. Two UK prime ministers have openly stated they wanted to ban it. Indeed, a former contractor to the US National Security Agency was so worried about attempts to subvert the use of it that he gave up his career and personal freedom to share his concerns with the world. This book is the first to demystify cryptography for the general public. By looking at why we need cryptography, what it does, how we use and abuse it, what its limitations are and why it is so controversial, it aims to provide readers with a profound yet practical perspective on their own personal security in cyberspace. KEITH MARTIN is a professor of information security at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is a chartered mathematician and a fellow of the Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications. He has worked in cryptographic research for almost 30 years, formerly holding positions at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. The author of Everyday Cryptography (Oxford University Press, 2017 – 2nd edn), he has written over 100 scientific papers on aspects of cryptography and cybersecurity, articles for the technical press including Computing Magazine, Infosecurity Magazine, Cyber Security Law and Practice and Cyber Talk, and many pieces for the Conversation. Agent: Peter Tallack Publisher: Norton Publication: Autumn 2020 Status: Manuscript Length: 85,000 words All rights available excluding World English Language (Norton)
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
KEEP CALM AND LOG ON The Complete Survival Guide to Fake News, Identity Theft, Online Addiction, FOMO, and More GILLIAN ANDREWS
A civilian handbook to living through the digital revolution without getting trampled. There are no established Geneva Conventions to protect bystanders in cyberwarfare; it’s time for each of us to understand our individual roles in fighting for security, privacy and peace of mind. As Gillian Andrews shows, we can draw on historical civilian wartime activities such as growing victory gardens and fighting propaganda to provide inspiration for concrete tips and tactics to protect our information, our possessions and our peace of mind. Along the way, she goes beyond our own garden borders to show what we all can do to help the global digital security effort. Through mindfulness exercises, explorations of media history, and media literacy activities, readers will build strength and courage to fight everything from cybercrime to fake news, online addiction to domestic violence. The book contains activities, charts and lists to make it easy for readers to apply this knowledge to their daily life, and beautiful public-domain posters from civilian efforts during the First and Second World Wars illustrate how everyday folks have always pitched in during tough times. A companion website, keepcalmlogon.com, gives specific, regularly updated technical recommendations, while the book itself sticks to time-tested, timeless skills and techniques. You weren’t born knowing these skills – nobody was! But you can train up and learn them. And you may feel like one insignificant person, but if you come together with your neighbours, colleagues and loved ones, you can do your part to defend yourself and your community. And even keep your spirits up, in the face of it all. GILLIAN ANDREWS has an unusual background as both a hacker and an educator. A graduate of Teachers College, Columbia University and former Google Academic Research Fellow, she has been tracking warnings about digital privacy and security issues for over a decade and is the creator of ‘The Media Show’, an award-winning YouTube series that shares media and digital-literacy insights with a young adult audience. In her work for ThoughtWorks, Second Life, Simply Secure and the Open Internet Tools project, she has helped developers make systems easier for everyday people to use. She has taught media literacy and digital media skills at Marist College and was a former panelist on the digital-rights radio show ‘Off The Hook’ and an organizer of the Hackers On Planet Earth conference. In addition to academic articles in Fibreculture Journal, E-Learning and Digital Media and the Teachers College Record, she has written popular pieces for Salon.com, the Village Voice, .net magazine, ReadWriteWeb and io9 and has been anthologized in Bitch magazine’s tenth anniversary collection ‘Bitchfest’. Her website is at http://gandre.ws/. Agent: Jeff Shreve Publisher: MIT Press Delivery: Autumn 2019 Publication: Autumn 2020 Status: Proposal Length: 90,000 words All rights available excluding World English Language (MIT Press) 5
The Science Factory
London Book Fair 2019
FORTHCOMING TITLES
WATERS OF THE WORLD The Story of the Scientists Who Unravelled the Mysteries of Our Oceans, Atmosphere and Ice Sheets and Made the Planet Whole SARAH DRY Praise for THE NEWTON PAPERS Engaging – ECONOMIST A fresh and readable chronicle of the tortuous route that Newton’s manuscript took to being made public – NATURE
How we unravelled the mysteries of Earth's water – and in doing so discovered a global climate. We’re taught early on about the importance of water, about how our bodies are largely made up of H2O and how Earth is the blue planet. Water makes life possible, and we seek evidence of its traces when exploring Mars, distant moons and exoplanets. Less well-known is how the extraordinary forms of water that pervade our environment – clouds, glaciers, waves, rain – not only give rise to life but, more importantly, create, sustain and change the climate on which life depends. Starting in the 1850s, with the advent of large-scale international meteorological efforts, and ending in the present day, WATERS OF THE WORLD tells the story of how we sought to understand the weather though water – and ended up discovering a global climate. Through the adventures of the scientists who pioneered this new climate science, Sarah Dry weaves a gripping tale of how we came to our acute awareness of the interconnectedness of all things on our planet. Along the way we learn how storms in the Southern Ocean generate waves that end up on Alaskan beaches; how water vapour in the atmosphere creates a heat blanket, protecting the planet from the cold of interstellar space; how isotopes in rainwater circulate throughout the globe, preserving evidence of temperature changes across space and time. The first book on water to focus exclusively on the physics of the environment, WATERS OF THE WORLD brings this important science to life by getting as close as possible to the remarkable individuals at the heart of the research – very human stories of love, tragedy, rivalry, muddle, mistakes, intuition, creativity and disappointment. The result is an intimate chronicle of amazing discoveries made in the most remote places on Earth – discoveries that together profoundly transformed our understanding of our changing planet. SARAH DRY is a writer and historian of science. She has a PhD in the history of science from the University of Cambridge, where she was awarded a Gates Cambridge Fellowship from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and studied history and literature as an undergraduate at Harvard University. Her previous books include CURIE: A Life (Haus, 2004) and THE NEWTON PAPERS: The Strange and True Odyssey of Isaac Newton’s Private Manuscripts (Oxford University Press, 2013). She lives in Oxford with her family. Agent: Peter Tallack Publisher: University of Chicago Press (US)/Scribe (UK) Publication: Autumn 2019 Status: Manuscript Length: 95,000 words All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth (Scribe), US & Canada (University of Chicago Press), Japan (Kawadeshobo-Shinsha)
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
THE WOOD AGE How Our Relationship With Wood Transformed Us from Tiny Tree Shrews to World-dominating Industrialists ROLAND ENNOS Most histories of humanity begin with us coming down from the trees and striding out onto the plains, and then follow a hackneyed journey through the successive ages of stone, bronze and iron. This book tells a far longer and more enlightening story… How did we, the descendants of small arboreal primates, manage to stand on our own two feet, become top predators and spread about the world? How did we transform the world’s vegetation and build large settlements, develop civilizations and produce a globalized economy? In THE WOOD AGE, Roland Ennos shows that the key to our success has been our relationship with a material usually whitewashed from world histories: wood. Drawing together recent research and reinterpreting our existing knowledge in fields as wide-ranging as primatology, anthropology, archaeology, history, architecture, engineering and carpentry, he charts for the first time how our ability to exploit wood’s unique properties has shaped our bodies and minds, societies and lives. Our binocular vision, upright stance and grasping hands, our intelligence and empathy, the ability to make and use tools, and even to walk on two legs – all evolved to help our ancestors live among the narrow wooden branches of the rainforest canopy. Wood was also vital to our success as huntergatherers: we burnt wood to keep warm, protect ourselves and cook our food, and carved it to make increasingly sophisticated weapons. Novel woodworking tools enabled us to clear forests, plough the land and build the first houses, boats and wheels. And during historical times wood shaped our culture and history through architecture, shipbuilding and industrialization, responsible for the rise and fall of empires and the emergence of the modern world. Wood is still among the world’s most important structural materials and fuels, and in the past 150 years we have learnt to transform it into a whole new range of wood products including paper, plywood and laminates. So great is the demand for these energy-intensive materials that their use is starting to degrade the global environment. At the same time, by treating trees as commodities, we have paradoxically begun to devalue wood and turn our back on it. We need, Ennos argues, to relearn what we have forgotten about trees and traditional woodworking practices. Because our relationship with wood is so engrained in us, for our own welfare and for the benefit of the planet we must return to more traditional ways of growing and using trees locally. We must return to the Wood Age. ROLAND ENNOS is a visiting professor of biological sciences at the University of Hull. An expert on the mechanics of wood and the design of trees, he has investigated how our fingers are modified for gripping, how apes move about and make their nests in the forest canopy, how early humans designed better axes to cut down trees and how we have managed and altered forests. In addition to over 120 scientific publications, he has written a popular book on trees for London’s Natural History Museum and several pieces for Physics World and the Conversation (including one on keeping your house warm which has been read one-and-a-half million times). Agent: Peter Tallack Publisher: Scribner (US)/William Collins (UK) Delivery: 1 January 2020 Publication: Autumn 2020 Status: Proposal and sample chapter Length: 80,000 words All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth (William Collins), US & Canada (Scribner), China (United Sky (Beijing)), Japan (NHK), Korea (Forest Book Publishing Co.) 7
The Science Factory
London Book Fair 2019
FORTHCOMING TITLES
THE FEAR PARADOX How Our Obsession with Security Imprisons Our Minds and Shapes Our Society FRANK FARANDA
A clinical psychologist reveals how fear – which evolved to keep us safe and enhance our existence – has grown into the greatest single threat to our humanity and our collective survival. What if our exciting innovations and continuous technological progress are driven not by curiosity, pure creativity or bright ideals of human advancement but instead by fear, an evolutionary state embedded in our brains and reinforced over countless millennia? In THE FEAR PARADOX, Frank Faranda shows how most of our technological and social changes are simply more imaginative ways for us to run from danger. Yet no matter how many dangers, real or imagined, we neutralize, new ones emerge. Superbugs arise from our battle with bacteria; worldwide social media platforms give propagandists, trolls and outside operatives unprecedented power to manipulate and control; industrial robotics are devouring our workforce; and sadly, as we seek to share more of ourselves online, we feel less connected and more alone. Our level of fear remains constant. Faranda’s argument serves as a universal translator for our current state of affairs in politics, in Silicon Valley, online and in the real world – a lens that gathers diffuse light and focuses it into a sharp, incisive point. Our opioid crisis, our smartphone addictions, the rise of ‘strong’ authoritarian leaders who leverage our fear to gain power, the constant march of ever-more-convenient technologies that minimize genuine interaction with others, the rush to develop artificial intelligence – at the root of all of this is fear of pain, of domination by others, of outside threats, of the unknown. THE FEAR PARADOX tackles all this and more, uncovering the evolutionary roots of our heedless advancement and examining our personal and societal obsession with that mythical, always-just-outof-reach utopian future: a provocative, important and original work that connects the state of our world to the state of our minds. FRANK FARANDA is a clinical psychologist with 15 years of experience in private practice. He has helped thousands of patients deal with fear and conducted more than 30,000 hours of depth psychotherapy. Along the way, he has expanded his practice to include insights from neuroscience and neurobiology, and has published papers in Psychoanalytic Inquiry and the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration. He earned his master’s degree in developmental psychology and education from Columbia University, Teacher’s College, and his PhD in clinical psychology from the Derner Institute at Adelphi University. He was awarded postdoctoral fellowships from New York University’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, where he trained in neuropsychological testing and cognitive remediation. Between 2003 and 2012, he taught several semesters of ‘The Development of the Self’ and ‘An Introduction to Jung’ courses at The New School in New York. Over the past several years he has published academic articles on mind, metaphor and imagination and guest-edited two themed journal issues for Psychoanalytic Inquiry. Agent: Jeff Shreve Publisher: Mango Media Delivery: 1 August 2019 Publication: Autumn 2020 Status: Proposal and sample chapter Length: 65,000 words All rights available excluding World English Language (Mango Media) 8
The Science Factory
London Book Fair 2019
FORTHCOMING TITLES
STOP BEING REASONABLE True Stories about How We Change Our Minds When It Matters Most ELEANOR GORDON-SMITH
A narrative field guide to how people really change their minds, and what we can do to help. Despite the accepted wisdom that cool, reasoned debate is the currency of persuasion, the state of our political, social and personal lives makes it all too clear that we all are messy, flawed, irrational people. This is not something we should hide or deny; sometimes, in fact, it is something we should cherish. To take an example from this book, Don Ritchie talked more than 160 people down from the Sydney suicide cliff known as ‘the gap’ by asking if they’d like a cup of tea or some breakfast. For many of these people, this was probably the biggest about-face they would ever make – and it somehow came down to a gentle, everyday, utterly trivial question. In STOP BEING REASONABLE, Eleanor Gordon-Smith combines modern philosophy with real-world stories to explore what makes the process of changing minds as flawed and unpredictable as the people who have to do it. She has conducted in-depth interviews with people who have changed their minds about some of their most fundamental beliefs: who they ‘really’ are, whether their spouse is capable of heinous crimes, whether their parents adopted them, whether a nuclear bomb really was about to go off just down the road, whether they really believe the edicts of the punitive religious sect they have found themselves in, whether what they saw from outer space proves that there is a God, or whether their memories of childhood abuse are false. With years of experience in radio and reporting, Gordon-Smith brings these stories and characters to life with honest emotional dialogue, vivid imagery, suspenseful pacing and deep compassion. The book closes with advice that proceeds from the simple and all-too-human observation that changing our mind can hurt. If we want to help each other be prepared to let go of the beliefs we use as buttresses for our sense of self, then we need to find ways of cushioning the fall, by easing the sense of loss and shame that can come with the realization that we were wrong. Before we can ever understand how persuasion really works, we first have to find our way back to each other; to the mess, the mistakes, the love and the tangles that make up the minds we want to change. ELEANOR GORDON-SMITH is a writer and radio broadcaster working at the intersection of academic ethics and the chaos of human life. Currently at Princeton University, she has produced ‘The Philosopher’s Zone’ on Australia’s Radio National, appeared as the ‘Clinical Ethicist’ on 702 Sydney radio and lectured on ethics, from political contract theory to the philosophy of sex, at the University of Sydney. Her work has appeared on National Public Radio’s ‘This American Life’ and in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and Meanjin. She came to fame through her ‘This American Life’ piece on responding to cat-callers: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/603/once-morewith-feeling. Agent: Jeff Shreve Publisher: NewSouth Publishing/UNSW Press (Australia & New Zealand)/Scribe (UK)/Public Affairs (US) Publication: 1 May 2019 (Australia & New Zealand) Status: Manuscript Length: 240 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth (Scribe), US & Canada (PublicAffairs), ANZ (NewSouth Publishing/UNSW Press), Netherlands (Ten Have) 9
The Science Factory
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
ONCE UPON A TIME I LIVED ON MARS AND OTHER STORIES KATE GREENE
Observations and insights on space exploration, as inspired by the author’s experience of living in a simulated Martian environment on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawaii. When it comes to colonizing Mars, so often we focus on how to get there: the rockets, the engines, the fuel. Yet once we arrive, what will it actually be like? In 2013, Kate Greene came one step closer to finding out. Along with five fellow crew members, she was chosen for NASA’s first HI-SEAS mission, a simulated Martian environment located on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawaii. For the next four months she lived, worked and slept in an isolated white dome, conducting a sleep study on her crew mates but also gaining incredible insight into human behaviour in tight quarters, as well as the nature of the boredom, dreams, isolation and irritation that arise despite the promise of scientific progress and glory. In MARS AND OTHER STORIES, Greene uses her experience to contemplate humanity’s broader impulse to explore and asks: what kind of wisdom will we take to Mars and elsewhere in the Universe? It is an examination of our time in space right now, as a pre-Mars species, poised on the edge, readying for launch. KATE GREENE is an essayist, journalist and former laser physicist whose work has appeared in Aeon, Discover, Harvard Review, the New Yorker, Pacific Standard, Slate, the Economist and Wired, among others. She holds a BS in chemistry and an MS in physics. The co-author with Nathan Eagle of REALITY MINING: Using Big Data to Engineer a Better World (MIT Press, 2014), she lives in New York City. Her website is at http://www.kategreene.net. Agent: Tisse Takagi Publisher: St Martin’s Press Delivery: Spring 2019 Publication: Spring 2020 Status: Proposal and sample writing Length: 80,000 words All rights available excluding US & Canada (St Martin’s Press), China (Ginkgo (Beijing) Book Co. Ltd)
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
DARK DATA Why What We Don’t Know Is Even More Important Than What We Do DAVID HAND Praise for THE IMPROBABILITY PRINCIPLE Should be, in all probability, required reading for us all – John A. Adam, WASHINGTON POST A superlative introduction to critical thinking, accessible to everybody – NEW SCIENTIST
A much-need counterpoint to the big-data hype of recent years – and a clarion call for us all to be constantly on the alert to unknown unknowns as well as the known unknowns. A good cartoon captures the important features of a face or behaviour, but there is no guarantee of this. It can easily miss much that matters. Indeed, it can easily miss the most important things. Big data is like a cartoon simplification. Although it’s meant to represent and describe the world, its abundance can mislead people into thinking they know everything. In DARK DATA, the eminent statistician David Hand explores the implications of what we might be missing. He shows, through many real examples, just how serious things can get – how missing data can lead to death and disaster, failed economies and societies, and ruined lives. Hand lays bare the ubiquity of dark data, what causes it and where it is likely to manifest itself. It can arise for many reasons, which themselves may not be obvious – asymmetric information in wars, time delays in financial trading, dropouts in clinical trials and deliberate selection to enhance apparent performance in hospitals, policing and schools. What is clear is that measuring and collecting more and more data are not guaranteed to lead to more relevant information or to better understanding. But there’s also a more positive side to dark data. When approached from the right angle, it can lead to insights that cannot be obtained any other way. Counterintuitive though it might seem, deliberately obscuring some of the data can lead to improved predictions and better understanding – providing, of course, the right data are obscured in the right way. The modern world of big data holds huge potential for improving the human condition as well as for misleading us. DARK DATA shows how to achieve the first while avoiding the second. DAVID HAND is a senior research investigator and emeritus professor of mathematics at Imperial College, London. He is also chief scientific advisor to Winton Capital Management. He is a fellow of the British Academy and an honorary fellow of the Institute of Actuaries, and has served (twice) as president of the Royal Statistical Society. He is a non-executive director of the UK Statistics Authority, and is chair of the board of the UK Administrative Data Research Network. He has published 300 scientific papers and 28 books, including THE IMPROBABILITY PRINCIPLE (Scientific American/FSG, 2014). In 2013 he was made OBE for services to research and innovation. Agent: Peter Tallack Publisher: Princeton University Press Publication: Autumn 2019 Status: Manuscript Length: 90,000 words All rights available excluding World English Language (Princeton University Press), China (CITIC), Italy (Rizzoli), Korea (Gilbut), Russia (Alpina), Taiwan (Locus)
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
THE FEAR OF DOING NOTHING Notes of a Young Therapist VALERY HAZANOV
In the spirit of Mikhail Bulgakov’s A Young Doctor’s Notebook and Sandeep Jauhar’s Intern, a deeply honest, searching examination of psychotherapy based on the experiences of a young sceptical trainee in New York City. Born to a family with six generations of doctors, Valery Hazanov knew he was breaking with a long tradition when he decided to pursue psychology. What he didn’t know was that, over the course of his training, his own doubts about his chosen field would overtake his family’s scepticism. Try as he might to seek answers and reassurance, he kept returning to the same fears: therapy is bullshit. It does nothing, and helps no one. Through ten linked stories, we follow Hazanov as he navigates the maze of psychological theories he’s been taught and manages complex, often fraught relationships with his first patients: a dying patient who can’t separate from his family properly because they don’t understand him; a formerly brilliant scientist who becomes psychotic and mistrustful; an older man who finds a first girlfriend at the age of 67, only to be dumped by her a few months later; a couple that loves each other with limitations. What Hazanov eventually realizes is that these patients achieve in psychotherapy not a complete transformation of their lives, but rather a more truthful way to exist. ‘What is the meaning of life?’ asks Lily Briscoe in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. She proceeds to answer: ‘The great revelation had never come.... Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.’ In THE FEAR OF DOING NOTHING, Hazanov illuminates the intimacy, vulnerability and messiness of the therapeutic encounter. These moments are – ultimately – his best answer to the question of what psychotherapy is and what it can achieve. Struggling together with his patients, Hazanov discovers his own sense of purpose and in doing so overcomes his biggest fear: the fear of doing nothing. VALERY HAZANOV was born in Moscow in 1982 and raised in Israel. He received his PhD in clinical psychology at Columbia University and trained at Columbia University Medical Center, Weill Cornell Medical College, St Luke’s Hospital and Columbia Psychoanalytic Center, among other institutions. A former fellow of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, Hazanov was awarded the White Institute Psychotherapy Case Presentation Award for his paper ‘The Fear of Doing Nothing’, which was published in Contemporary Psychoanalysis in 2012. He lives in Jerusalem, Israel. Agent: Tisse Takagi Publisher: Sphinx/Aeon Books Publication: 27 June 2019 Status: Manuscript Length: 224 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (Sphinx/Aeon Books)
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
OUCH The New Science of Pain MARGEE KERR & LINDA RODRIGUEZ MCROBBIE
Whether you’re suffering from chronic pain or simply curious about the workings of the human body and mind, this book will change the way you think about this fundamental human experience that, directly or indirectly, affects us all. From the mounting casualties of the opioid crisis to doctors downplaying and misdiagnosing patients’ suffering, we clearly have an increasingly dysfunctional relationship with pain. As children we’re taught to avoid pain at all costs and rely on painkillers to dull even the mildest of aches. Yet this strategy of avoidance and suppression has unexpectedly resulted in our feeling worse. The first step to feeling better, argue Margee Kerr and Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, is to stop being scared and lean into the pain. In OUCH, they reveal that pain is a rich, layered experience governed not only by the signals tripped the moment a needle pricks our skin but also by where we are, who we’re with, why we’re there, and our individual history. By understanding the complexity of how pain is made, we can learn in many cases how to reduce the perceived intensity of pain as well as recast and transform the negative emotions – the fear and helplessness – associated with it. On their journey Kerr and McRobbie seek out pain-sensing robots and pain-seeking parishioners, explore burning bug bites and blissful lashings and witness for themselves – at the Tough Mudder, a team-oriented 18–20-kilometre obstacle course designed to test physical strength and mental grit – the power of pain to bring people together. Ultimately, OUCH offers us a deeper understanding of this incredibly subjective yet universal experience, revealing a truth we instinctively know: not all pain is bad, not all pain is harmful. As they discover, pain can be not just useful, but even rewarding. Through immersive reporting, in-depth interviews and original research, OUCH takes us on an adventure to discover that pain is not just something that happens to us, and that we have more control over our experience than we think. MARGEE KERR is a sociologist who has been teaching and conducting research since 2004. The author of SCREAM: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear (PublicAffairs, 2015), she holds a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon and the New York Post, among other publications. She lives in Philadelphia. LINDA RODRIGUEZ McROBBIE is a freelance writer and journalist specializing in science, culture and history. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, Smithsonian Magazine, the Boston Globe, Slate, Atlas Obscura and other outlets. She is the author of PRINCESSES BEHAVING BADLY: Real Stories from History Without the Fairy-Tale Endings (Quirk Books, 2013). She lives in London. Agent: Tisse Takagi Publisher: Bloomsbury Sigma Delivery: 30 October 2019 Publication: Autumn 2020 Status: Proposal and sample chapter Length: 90,000 words All rights available excluding World English (Bloomsbury Sigma) 13
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
AM I DREAMING? The New Science of Consciousness and How Altered States Reboot the Brain JAMES KINGSLAND Praise for SIDDHARTHA’S BRAIN Fascinating… Whether you’re a skeptic or a true believer, exploring SIDDHARTHA’S BRAIN offers compelling insights and invites further questions about the potential of the human mind – CHICAGO TIMES
A guide for anyone wanting to explore altered states of consciousness, not as an escape from reality but as a way to wake up to it. Picture yourself flying high over a beautiful landscape, as free as a bird. Imagine visiting other planes of existence, conversing with alien beings and communing with the spirits of plants and animals. Imagine if all you had to do to feel perfect bliss, happiness and contentment was to close your eyes…. In AM I DREAMING?, the science writer James Kingsland provides a scientific travel guide to altered states of consciousness. A growing body of research, in fields ranging from neuroscience and clinical psychology to molecular biology and statistics, shows that the extraordinary realms of experience that can be reached through lucid dreaming, virtual reality, hypnotic trance, meditation, psychedelic drugs and even video games can heighten and refine our capacity for clear-sighted awareness. Drawing on interviews and conversations with many of the most influential and colourful characters studying altered states, he explains how by fostering lucidity and a greater sense of meaning and purpose, regular journeys into alternative realms of consciousness can bolster our mental and spiritual wellbeing – and how research into these adventures of the mind is exposing the unsettling truth about how the brain creates ordinary conscious awareness. JAMES KINGSLAND is a science journalist with 30 years of experience working for publications such as the Guardian, New Scientist and Nature. He is a dreamer, blogger, meditator and psycho-naut, and author of the award-winning SIDDHARTHA’S BRAIN: Unlocking the Ancient Science of Enlightenment (Robinson/Morrow, 2016). Agent: Peter Tallack Publisher: Atlantic Books Publication: 1 August 2019 Status: Manuscript Length: 256 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (Atlantic Books)
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
UNIVERSAL PLAY How Video Games Tell Us Who We Are and Show Us Who We Could Be ALEXANDER KRISS
A clinical psychologist reveals how video games can reveal who we are and who we could be, and in so doing help us decide the kinds of lives we want to live. What is it about video games? Despite their ubiquity – you can always find a handful of subway riders playing Candy Crush on any commute – there’s something embarrassing about admitting to enjoying them. Moreover, those of us who don’t identify as ‘gamers’ tend to pathologize what appears to be self-indulgent escapism and a retreat into fantasyland. Frustrated by such dismissals of game-playing behaviour, the clinical psychologist Alexander Kriss began looking more closely at the phenomenon of gaming. What he learned was that video games were not always a mere escape, but rather could be a rich source of psychological and personal growth and insight. For many of us, games can provide a kind of potential space – an open world – outside dreams and reality yet bounded by certain rules and feedback, where we can work out issues that we couldn’t face elsewhere. Drawing on his own history with gaming and his experience with his patients, Kriss illustrates how video games can help us to explore our potential, make sense of our lives’ complexities and even heal our minds. Games, he shows, like the people who play them, are diverse and complicated, and to understand them it is vital to examine not only isolated games but also each individual player– game relationship. UNIVERSAL PLAY offers an accessible and empathic framework through which players, parents and curious onlookers can understand our vital and evolving relationship with video games. ALEXANDER KRISS is a clinical psychologist and writer based in New York. He has a private psychotherapy practice, where he specializes in treating adolescents and adults who feel they are suffering from video-game addiction. He is an adjunct professor of psychology at Fordham University and a clinical supervisor at the New School for Social Research and the City College of New York. He writes regularly on the intersections of mental health, politics and popular culture, and his work has appeared in Psychology Today, Kill Screen, Logic and various academic journals and books. Agent: Tisse Takagi Publisher: Robinson/Little, Brown Publication: 4 July 2019 Status: Proofs Length: 256 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (Robinson/Little, Brown)
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
THE LAST STARGAZERS Surprisingly True Tales from the Colorful, Vanishing World of Observational Astronomy EMILY LEVESQUE
An astronomer pulls back the curtain on the ‘rigors and delights and jerry-rigging absurdity’ of the past century of observational astronomy, while looking ahead to a future in which robots, not humans, peer skyward in pursuit of the Universe’s secrets. Emily Levesque’s 15-year career as an observational astronomer has been full of surprises, hardships, worldwide travel and awe-inspiring discoveries. She’s shared that road with a unique cohort, a group of astronomers braving mountain passes, subzero temperatures, poisonous or otherwise hostile fauna and flora, and the pulse-quickening technical difficulties of telescopes the size and weight of apartment buildings. In THE LAST STARGAZERS, she weaves together the incredible episodes and experiences of over a hundred astronomers and observatory employees to build a narrative history of observational astronomy, offer a tour d’horizon of the research behind our current understanding of the Universe and reveal the transformative developments in the field’s immediate future. That future includes the rise of robotic telescopes such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope – a triumph of modern technology, able to map the Universe in unprecedented detail and generate dozens of terabytes of data in a single night. The LSST will usher in a new age rich in data and potential discoveries, but it will also signal the end of a certain type of human discovery and creativity that has been with us since Galileo. THE LAST STARGAZERS tells these human stories not simply to preserve them but also to remind us that our ingenuity and curiosity should not be wholly sacrificed in the pursuit of gleaming columns of big data. Levesque’s own story shows us that brilliant scientists can do more than move the wheel of scientific progress forward; they can also inspire future generations to take up the effort. EMILY LEVESQUE is a professor of astronomy at the University of Washington. She received her BSc in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006 and her PhD in astronomy from the University of Hawaii in 2010. From 2010 to 2015 she was an Einstein Fellow and Hubble Fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 2014 she was awarded the Annie Jump Cannon Prize by the American Astronomical Society, and in 2017 she was selected as an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in Physics. Her primary research area is observational stellar astrophysics, with an emphasis on the explosive supernova deaths of massive stars. She has observed for upwards of 50 nights on almost all of the world’s largest optical telescopes, visiting more than a dozen leading observatories (including Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, the Very Large Array in New Mexico, Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii, and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile). She has also been a principal investigator on the Hubble Space Telescope and has led research using data from the entire breadth of the electromagnetic spectrum, as well as gravitational waves. Her website is at http://emlevesque.com. Agent: Jeff Shreve Publisher: Sourcebooks (US)/Oneworld (UK) Delivery: 1 November 2019 Publication: Autumn 2020 Status: Proposal and sample chapter Length: 90,000 words All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth (Oneworld), US & Canada (Sourcebooks) 16
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
THE ANGINA MONOLOGUES Stories of Surgery for Broken Hearts SAMER NASHEF Praise of THE NAKED SURGEON Takes a Malcolm Gladwell-esque look at what happens in operating theatres…. Nashef’s humanity and compassion shine through – THE TIMES One can’t help but think of Henry Marsh when reading Samer Nashef…. Nashef does a fine job of guiding the reader though the surgical and statistical intricacies and he writes clearly, with plentiful moments of humour – INDEPENDENT
True stories from the cutting edge of heart surgery. This is a book about heart surgery. Through a series of real-life stories of major heart operations, the pioneering heart surgeon Samer Nashef relates the real-life stories of patients who had major open heart operations to fix their cardiac problems. It tells of the triumphs and disasters of heart surgery, of the places where it is done and the professionals who do it. More importantly, it tells the true stories of those people who are at the centre of it all: the patients. Some of these stories are gory, some are wickedly funny and some have happy endings. But the aim is neither to scaremonger nor to sensationalize, but to provide an honest insight into what happens behind the closed doors of a cardiac operating theatre. This is a world of drama, life and death. It is also a world in which some of the finest attributes of human nature – such as inventiveness, compassion and resilience – shine most brightly both in the patients and in the people who care for them. Finally, it is a world that actually matters directly to everyone because, more likely than not, one day, we or someone we love will need a heart operation. From transplants, bypasses and coronary artery repair to cardiac arrest, dietary fads and international aid, these are illuminating tales that never fail to grip. What’s more, they provide a seamless framework for communicating scientific knowledge about the heart in an eminently engaging and accessible way: how the heart works, what can go wrong with it and how it can be fixed. Along the way we gain an insider’s view on how to avoid heart disease, the necessity of calculating risks, the role of decision-making, the challenges of working in a threadbare national health service and much, much more. SAMER NASHEF is a consultant cardiac surgeon at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, and the world’s leading expert on risk and quality in surgical care. He is the creator of EuroSCORE, the most successful risk model in medicine, used worldwide and credited with saving tens of thousands of lives. The author of more than 200 publications, he has been invited to lecture in more than 30 countries and his research is widely cited. As clinical tutor at the University of Cambridge, he is also a dedicated teacher and public communicator. The author of THE NAKED SURGEON: The Power and Peril of Transparency in Medicine (Scribe, 2015), he is also a regular compiler of cryptic crosswords for the Guardian and Financial Times under a pseudonym. Agent: Peter Tallack Publisher: Scribe Publication: 9 May 2019 Status: Proofs Length: 288 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (Scribe)
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
HOW TO THINK LIKE A WOMAN Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Live a Life of the Mind REGAN PENALUNA
An alternative history of philosophy told through one woman’s own search for beauty and truth. As a young woman growing up in a small, religious town in Iowa, Regan Penaluna daydreamed about the big questions: who are we and what is this strange world we find ourselves in? In college she discovered philosophy and fell in love with its rationality, its abstractions, its beauty. After graduation, it seemed an obvious choice to enter a philosophy PhD programme – the first step, she believed, to becoming a self-determined woman and living a life of the mind. What Penaluna didn’t realize was that philosophy – at least the Western philosophical canon that’s taught in American universities, as well as the culture that surrounds it – would slowly grind her down through its misogyny, its sexual harassment, its devaluation of women and their minds. Women were nowhere in her graduate curriculum, and feminist philosophy was dismissed as marginal, unserious. Meanwhile Penaluna realized she had transformed from an energetic, independent seeker of wisdom to a quiet, passive student, complicit in the silencing of her own mind. Where were the women? One day, while digging through footnotes in an obscure monograph, Penaluna came across the work of a seventeenth-century woman named Damaris Cudworth Masham. On a whim she pulled up Masham’s work and it was like reaching through time: writing 300 years ago, Masham was speaking directly to her. Masham wrote about knowledge and God, but also the condition of women. Her work eventually led Penaluna to other remarkable women philosophers of the era: Mary Astell, who moved to London at the age of 21 and made a living writing philosophy; Catharine Cockburn, a philosopher, novelist and playwright who explored women’s humanity; and the better-known Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote extensively and passionately in defence of women’s minds. Together these women rekindled Penaluna’s love of philosophy and taught her how to live a truly philosophical life. In HOW TO THINK LIKE A WOMAN, Penaluna tells the stories of these four women as well as of her own personal and intellectual voyage in a moving, beautiful meditation of what a philosophy by women might look like. REGAN PENALUNA is a senior editor at Guernica magazine, a global magazine of art and politics. Previously she was an editor at Nautilus magazine, where she wrote and edited long-form stories. A feature she wrote on the ‘fish kick’, the fastest yet relatively unknown swim stroke, was listed in the Atlantic as one of ‘100 Exceptional Works of Journalism’. She has also written for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Philosophy Now and the Philosophers’ Magazine. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and a PhD in philosophy from Boston University. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Agent: Tisse Takagi Publisher: Grove Atlantic Delivery: 1 November 2019 Publication: Winter 2021 Status: Proposal and sample chapter Length: 80,000 words All rights available excluding World English Language (Grove Atlantic) 18
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
HOW TO LIVE A GOOD LIFE A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy Edited by MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI, SKYE C. CLEARY & DANIEL A. KAUFMAN
Socrates famously said the ‘unexamined life is not worth living’, but what does it mean to truly live philosophically? In this thought-provoking, wide-ranging collection, Massimo Pigliucci, Skye Cleary and Daniel Kaufman have collected essays by 15 leading philosophers reflecting on what it means to live according to a philosophy of life. From John Kaag’s experience grappling with Pragmatism and William James’s question of whether life is worth living, to Skye Cleary’s examination of how the Existentialists’ view of love altered the course of her romantic and professional paths, to Bryan van Norden’s rumination of Confucianism’s relationality and what it means in a Western world where we hold dear the individual self, contributors offer accounts of how they find meaning in the practice of their 15 chosen philosophical traditions (including Neo-Aristotelianism, Daoism and Judaism, among others). Together, the pieces in HOW TO LIVE A GOOD LIFE provide not only a beginner’s guide to choosing a life philosophy but also a timely portrait of what it means to live an examined life in the twenty-first century. MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI is the K. D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. He has written for publications such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, among others. He is the author or editor of 12 books, most recently HOW TO BE A STOIC: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life (Basic Books, 2017). He lives in New York City. SKYE C. CLEARY is a philosopher and the author of EXISTENTIALISM AND ROMANTIC LOVE (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). She is the associate director of the Center for New Narratives in Philosophy at Columbia University and teaches courses at Columbia, Barnard College and the City College of New York, and previously at the New York Public Library. She is also the lead editor of the blog of the American Philosophical Association. Her work has been published in Aeon, Paris Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Ted-Ed, Independent, HuffPost, Business Insider, Quartz, New Republic, Philosophers’ Magazine and others. She is Australian and lives in New York City. DANIEL A. KAUFMAN is a professor of philosophy at Missouri State University. Together with Massimo Pigliucci, he hosts the ‘Sophia’ programme on BloggingHeads.TV, a dialogue-based show devoted to philosophy and the humanities, and he edits ‘The Electric Agora’, an online magazine that publishes essays, dialogues and reviews at the intersection of the humanities, social sciences and popular culture. He lives in Springfield, Missouri. Agent: Tisse Takagi Publisher: Vintage/Penguin Random House US Publication: Autumn 2019 Status: Manuscript Length: 75,000 words All rights available excluding World English (Vintage/Penguin Random House US), Japan (Kagaku-Dojin), Spanish rights in the US (Vintage Español)
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
A HANDBOOK FOR NEW STOICS How to Thrive in a World Out of Your Control – 52 Week-by-Week Lessons MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI & GREGORY LOPEZ In an age that equates virtue with frenzies of outrage and denunciations of others’ failings, A HANDBOOK FOR NEW STOICS serves as an inspired self-help cure that, with insight and sympathy, will nudge you in the direction of the happiness and equanimity born of strength of character and wisdom – Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of PLATO AT THE GOOGLEPEX
In a world that’s increasingly uncertain, how can we overcome adversity and find tranquility? An ancient pragmatic belief system that is more popular than ever, Stoicism teaches us how to accept the things we cannot change and how to live a good life. It helps us improve our outlook, increase our wellbeing, and thrive in the face of adversity. But how does one live like a Stoic? In A HANDBOOK FOR NEW STOICS, the philosopher Massimo Pigliucci and the practitioner Gregory Lopez guide readers through 52 weekly lessons, each based on a common obstacle. Stressing out about a meeting at work? Try listing the things you can control and those you can’t. Epictetus writes, ‘In our power are thought, impulse, will to get, and will to avoid’ – in other words, our own attitudes. Discover what you can control, and quickly achieve peace of mind. Featuring quotes from philosophers, analysis by the authors and journaling activities, these lessons enable readers to reframe their perceptions and be happier. MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI is the K. D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. He has written for publications such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, among others. He is the author or editor of 12 books, most recently HOW TO BE A STOIC: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life (Basic Books, 2017). He lives in New York City. GREGORY LOPEZ is a practIsing secular Buddhist and Stoic. The founder and facilitator of the New York City Stoics meet-up, he is also the co-host of Stoic Camp New York, director of membership for the Stoic Fellowship, co-organizer of Stoicon 2016, and on the team at ModernStoicism.com. After stepping down in 2017 as president of SMART Recovery NYC, a nonprofit organization that uses cognitive behavioural therapy to treat addictive behaviour, he co-founded the Stoic Fellowship, which aims to support Stoic communities worldwide. He lives in New York City. Agent: Tisse Takagi Publisher: The Experiment (US)/Rider (Penguin Random House) (UK)* Publication: 14 May 2019 (US)/9 May 2019 (UK) Status: Proofs Length: 336 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth (Rider), US & Canada (The Experiment), Italy (Garzanti), Spain (Ariel) *Published in the UK as LIVE LIKE A STOIC: 52 Exercises for Cultivating a Good Life
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
SUPERIOR The Return of Race Science ANGELA SAINI Praise for INFERIOR A brilliant approach to a long overlooked topic, INFERIOR is impossible to ignore and invaluable – BOOKLIST
Weaving rich history, on-the-ground reporting and fresh, critical analysis, a book that shines a fresh perspective on one of the most important issues of our time. As the world once more teeters between far-left and far-right ideologies, when race has come into sharp focus through movements such as Black Lives Matter and fresh debates about the legacies of slavery and colonialism, it is more important than ever to recognize the risk of confusing the lived, social and cultural reality of race with the biological myth. In SUPERIOR, the science writer Angela Saini explores how science created the idea of race and fanned the flames of racism, as well as how modern genetics, medicine, psychology and anthropology are failing to destroy these old ideas and sometimes even perpetuating them. It is a sordid, ugly story, one of intellectual failure and abuse. Showing how a catalogue of bad science has shaped all our lives, Saini argues that biological race is an idea that desperately needs to be shelved, both in science and in our everyday lives. Not just because it matters to how we live, but also because good science really does show that there is little to divide us biologically besides individual difference. For a new generation obsessed by identity politics, this is an urgent reminder of a story that has been forgotten. It is an account that desperately needs to be re-told in a clear, accessible, personal way. Using firsthand interviews with race scientists on all sides of the divide, and those who are fighting to have race removed as a way of categorizing people in science, medicine and genetics, SUPERIOR reveals just what a scientific nonsense race really is, and yet how dangerous a concept it remains. ANGELA SAINI is an award-winning British science journalist and broadcaster. Well known for presenting science programmes on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service, she also writes for the Guardian and New Scientist, as well as prominent journals including Science. A former BBC and ITN television news reporter, she has a masters degree in engineering science from the University of Oxford and a second masters in science and security from the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. She is the author of two books, GEEK NATION: How Indian Science is Taking Over the World (Hodder, 2011) and INFERIOR: How Science Got Women Wrong – and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story (Fourth Estate, 2017). Agent: Peter Tallack Publisher: Fourth Estate (UK)/Beacon (US) Publication: 30 May 2019 (UK)/11 June 2019 (US) Status: Proofs Length: 272 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth (Fourth Estate), US & Canada (Beacon), Netherlands (Ten Have)
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
BAD DATA Why We Measure the Wrong Things and Often Miss the Metrics that Matter PETER SCHRYVERS
‘Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts’ – William Bruce Cameron Big data has arrived. The concept is so ubiquitous, in fact, that the term may sound anachronistic in just a few more years – 'big data' is just data at this point. Our new obsession with ‘datafication’ began benignly enough, with data-nerd sports GMs and improved Netflix recommendations, but has metastasized into invasive Facebook harvesting and massive data breaches. In 15 years, we’ve gone from Moneyball to Black Mirror. Despite the rapid rise and ubiquity of big data today, there is a fundamental question, underlying all of data science, that has so far been mostly ignored: how does the data we choose to collect change our thoughts, values, actions and achievements? After all, every metric we use does not really exist, statistically speaking, until we consciously choose to measure it. The way we measure something – even the choice to simply begin measuring – unavoidably colours how we approach a problem, and often determines whether we solve it or simply transform it into a different problem. In BAD DATA, Peter Schryvers looks at the use and abuse of metrics, including the pitfalls associated with misunderstanding them. There is a dark side to metrics, a blind faith in the power of big data that can lead to death-spiral thinking. He highlights the dangers of this unthinking adherence in our personal, professional, national and global endeavours. Along the way, he shares many stories of metrics-gone-wrong, but unlike similar books on the subject, BAD DATA is defined by his dogged pursuit of solutions. Big-data metrics are here to stay; no amount of hand-wringing or cautionary tales is going to put them back in the bottle. Across all spheres of public life – education, health, city development, even the state of our planet – we use metrics to shape our future. As an urban planner, Schryvers has faced countless examples of poorly chosen or constructed metrics, and he has devoted himself to spotting their flaws and solving them. BAD DATA is not a book about statistics, analytics or mathematics. It is a book about metrics – about when they work, when they don’t and when they never will. Ultimately, it seeks to answer a simple question: are we measuring the right thing? Does what we are counting really count? PETER SCHRYVERS is a senior planner for the city of Calgary, and is the founder of the Beltline Urban Murals Project. He earned his master’s degree in environmental design from the University of Calgary. He has devoted his career to uncovering metrics-based errors in an attempt to create a more productive relationship between the measurements we make and the lessons we draw from those measurements. Agent: Jeff Shreve Publisher: Prometheus Publication: Spring 2020 Status: Draft manuscript Length: 80,000 words All rights available excluding World English (Prometheus), China (CITIC)
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
BEYOND THE VALLEY
RAMESH SRINIVASAN The smartest person around thinking about the impact of digital technology on global society – the first of the next generation of media philosophers who will shepherd humanity through the changes ahead – Douglas Rushkoff, author of THROWING ROCKS AT THE GOOGLE BUS, PRESENT SHOCK and PROGRAM OR BE PROGRAMMED
A rising voice in new technology presents a bold, truly global vision for equality, diversity and justice in our digital age. Ramesh Srinivasan has travelled far from Silicon Valley to investigate the Internet from the other end of the wires, seeing for himself the actual impact of digital technology on the rest of the world. He has visited AI labs in Uganda, street-level entrepreneurs in Kenya, Native Americans in the United States, Mayan and Zapotec indigenous community-created and -owned cell-phone and Internet networks in Mexico, labour-union and worker-council leaders in the United States and Europe, and blockchain innovators. Along the way, he has also talked to a range of high-profile public figures, including Elizabeth Warren, David Axelrod, Eric Holder, Noam Chomsky, Lawrence Lessig and the founders of Reddit, as well as community organizers, labour leaders and human-rights activists. In BEYOND THE VALLEY, Srinivasan focuses on the disconnection he sees between designers and users, producers and consumers, and tech elites and the rest of us. He tells stories from across the world that show the contrast between the facade of ‘connectivity’ that tech billionaires offer us versus engaged, collaboration and human connection around technology. Sure, we are ‘connected’ when we use an app or visit a webpage; it feels frictionless and efficient. But do we have any power over the design of this technology or whose interests it ultimately serves? Despite its promise of connectivity, in reality the top-down Internet so many of us engage with today is a dirty tangle of politics, economics and other messy human affairs that lock users out of its design process. In search of a more balanced, democratic Internet, Srinivasan visits the ‘design labs’ of rural, lowincome and indigenous people around the world. Through the eyes of users in the mountains of Oaxaca, East and Western Africa, China, Scandinavia, North America and elsewhere, familiar digital technologies suddenly look like Picassos: recognizable but skewed, missing some crucial dimension, yet appealing and artful. Their visions of a digital future are not part of any Silicon Valley (or Chinese technology company) blueprint. And they show what it looks like when such people demand, invent and construct their own entry into the design space. This is innovation from beyond the valley: creating more with less, shaping the technologies of tomorrow to transcend the inequalities of today. RAMESH SRINIVASAN studies the relationship between technology, politics and societies across the world. He is an associate professor in the Departments of Information Studies and Design|Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the founder of the UC-wide Digital Cultures Lab. His fieldwork and research engagements span Latin and South America, South Asia, West Africa, Papua New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand and indigenous communities in the United States and Canada. He has given keynote talks on every continent in the world (except Antarctica), discussing new technology and culture. He is the author of WHOSE GLOBAL VILLAGE? (New York University Press, 2017) and (with Adam Fish) AFTER THE INTERNET (Polity – in the press). He makes regular media appearances on MSNBC, NPR, Al Jazeera, The Young Turks and more. His writing has been published by Al Jazeera English, National Geographic, CNN, Washington Post, Forbes and HuffPost. Agent: Jeff Shreve Publisher: MIT Press Publication: 15 October 2019 Status: Manuscript Length: 100,000 words All rights available excluding World English Language (MIT Press) 23
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London Book Fair 2019
RECENTLY PUBLISHED
DISPATCHES FROM PLANET THREE Thirty-Two (Brief) Tales on the Solar System, the Milky Way, and Beyond MARCIA BARTUSIAK An intriguing look at the sky from a top-class science journalist who has always been attuned to the most recent advancements of research – Carlo Rovelli, author of SEVEN BRIEF LESSONS ON PHYSICS The overall effect of the book is like binge-watching an excellent Netflix documentary series and leaves the reader with a renewed sense of wonder about our bizarre and vast cosmic habitat – Steven Poole, WALL STREET JOURNAL
In the tradition of Carlo Rovelli’s Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and Neil Tyson’s Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, an anthology of cosmological stories for the armchair astronomer. Early astronomers spent much of their time devoted to our local celestial neighbourhood. They aimed their telescopes at our Solar System and prominent stars in the nighttime sky. Armed with Newton’s law of gravitation, they were able to predict the motions of the Moon, planets and comets and detect new and unexpected objects such as asteroids. They found rings around Saturn and canal-like features on Mars. Could that mean there is water on the red planet? Is their other life in the Solar System or even on planets circling other stars? And what about those stars? They soon found that these ranged in size from huge red giants to tiny white dwarfs no bigger than the Earth. And then there were even weirder possibilities such as neutron stars no bigger than cities. Astronomers then moved outwards. They traced how galaxies are uniquely arranged through the cosmos and evolve over time. They learned what elements reside in both stars and interstellar space, and realized that regular matter – the stuff of stars, planets and us – is not the major component of the Universe. Instead, some unknown ‘dark matter’ is five times more abundant. Meanwhile, Einstein’s theories recast our vision of the Universe as violent rather than serene, powered by objects with amazing energies. New tools arrived for exploring the cosmos, taking us beyond the visible-light spectrum – and recently even allowing us to detect the ripples generated in the very fabric of spacetime as black holes collide more than a billion light-years away. Shortly after learning that the Milky Way is accompanied by billions of other galaxies, cosmologists were astounded to find out that spacetime was expanding, with galaxies surfing outward on the wave. It didn’t take long for them to imagine this ballooning in reverse, leading to the conception of the Big Bang – a prediction not firmly proven for nearly two decades. In DISPATCHES FROM PLANET THREE, Marcia Bartusiak shares the scientific and human backstories of these momentous discoveries while bringing the tale of cosmic creation right up to date. The latest research indicates for example that the Universe may have begun with a brief moment of super-accelerated expansion, called inflation. What’s more, parallel universes might be generated in a similar way, meaning we live in a ‘multiverse’, side-by-side with other universes. But to prove that, she says, theorists must first wrestle with the thorniest question of all: the nature of time. MARCIA BARTUSIAK is a professor in the graduate programme in science writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the award-winning author of six previous books, including BLACK HOLE, THE DAY WE FOUND THE UNIVERSE and EINSTEIN’S UNFINISHED SYMPHONY. Agent: Peter Tallack Publisher: Yale University Press Publication: 18 September 2018 Length: 320 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (Yale University Press) 24
The Science Factory
London Book Fair 2019
RECENTLY PUBLISHED
A VERY HUMAN ENDING How Suicide Haunts Our Species JESSE BERING Bering’s book touches upon some deep questions relevant to all of us. Indeed, it is as much about what makes us uniquely human as it is about suicide. A VERY HUMAN ENDING transcends its own objectives. It is a fascinating, thoughtful, unflinching meditation on one of the most intriguing and curious aspects of the human condition – Dr Frank Tallis, clinical psychologist, EVENING STANDARD May very well be the most important book you will ever read – Michael Shermer, publisher of SKEPTIC magazine, monthly columnist for SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, and author of THE BELIEVING BRAIN, THE MORAL ARC and HEAVEN ON EARTH A brave and important exploration of a subject we urgently need to demystify. It will change every reader for the better – Derren Brown
What does it feel like to want to kill yourself? For much of his thirties, Jesse Bering thought he was probably going to kill himself. He was a successful psychologist and writer, with books to his name and bylines in major magazines. But none of that mattered. The impulse to take his own life remained. At times it felt all but inescapable. Bering survived. And in addition to relief, the fading of his suicidal thoughts brought curiosity. Where had they come from? Would they return? Is the suicidal impulse found in other animals? Or is our vulnerability to suicide a uniquely human evolutionary development? In A VERY HUMAN ENDING, Bering answers all these questions and more, taking us through the science and psychology of suicide, revealing its cognitive secrets and the subtle tricks our minds play on us when we’re easy emotional prey. Scientific studies, personal stories and remarkable crossspecies comparisons come together to help readers critically analyse their own doomsday thoughts while gaining broad insight into a problem that, tragically, will most likely touch all of us at some point in our lives. But while the subject is certainly a heavy one, Bering’s touch is light. Having been through this himself, he knows that sometimes the most effective response to our darkest moments is a gentle humour, one that, although not denying the seriousness of suffering, at the same time acknowledges our complicated, flawed and yet precious existence. Authoritative, accessible, personal, profound – there’s never been a book on suicide like this. It will help you understand yourself and your loved ones, and it will change the way you think about this most vexing of human problems. JESSE BERING is an associate professor of science communication at the University of Otago, New Zealand. A renowned expert in the field of cognitive science and and the psychology of religion, he is the author of THE BELIEF INSTINCT (Norton, 2011), WHY IS THE PENIS SHAPED LIKE THAT? (Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012) and PERV (Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013). Agent: Peter Tallack Publisher: Transworld (UK)/University of Chicago Press (US)* Publication: 5 November 2018/23 August 2018 Length: 272 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth (Transworld), US & Canada (University of Chicago Press), China (Beijing White Horse Time Culture Development Co. Ltd — simplified characters), Japan (Kagaku-Dojin), Korea (Gilbut), Netherlands (Nieuw Amsterdam) *Published in the US as SUICIDE: Why We Kill Ourselves 25
The Science Factory
London Book Fair 2019
RECENTLY PUBLISHED
ADVANTAGE PLAY Technologies That Changed Sporting History STEVE HAAKE A fascinating and entertaining story… told with technical rigour and humour, unveiling the magic behind the scenes of some of sport’s most famous breakthrough moments – Bob Kirk, Director, Future Footwear, Adidas
Sports technology isn’t as new as you might think – it’s as old as civilization itself. In an enthralling trip across 2,700 years of sporting evolution, the award-winning sports engineer Steve Haake tells the stories of thirteen technological breakthroughs – from the ancient Greek starting line, though the vulcanization of rubber, to marginal gains – that have transformed the intimate relationship of technology, sport and culture, the delicate balance between tradition and modernity, and sometimes even the rules of sport themselves. Drawing on thirty years of experience as a researcher working for some of the biggest companies in sport, Haake takes readers on a behind-the-scenes tour of the world’s best sports research centres that design, build and test the equipment we take for granted: from javelins, golf clubs, footballs, tennis rackets and swimsuits to goal-line technology, activity trackers, prosthetics and barefoot running shoes. Along the way he describes the science behind the innovations and the ambition and obsession of the charismatic inventors who created them. As with much of science, breakthroughs happen when mistakes are made and an innovator seizes an opportunity. In sport, these moments often come during play: a slight nick on a ball that makes it fly further or an unplayable pitch that helps create a new boot. Now that sporting performance is reaching a plateau, we are relying more and more on technology to improve sport – and bizarrely the ruling bodies of sport are sometimes spending almost as much time on researching how to limit performance as companies do on enhancing it. How do we decide when a technology has overstepped the mark? How do we decide when it’s technical doping? And what if all the performance claims are hype and it’s all about the advertising? Entertaining, authoritative and thought-provoking, ADVANTAGE PLAY addresses these and many other questions and considers what the future might hold, be it the analysis of big data collected at tournaments, new Olympic sports such as skateboarding, or ‘steampunk’ experiences that mix modern athletes with old technologies. STEVE HAAKE is director of the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University. An internationally renowned pioneer in sports engineering, he has published six edited books of conference proceedings, authored over 150 journal papers, written articles for magazines such as New Scientist and Times Higher Education, and appeared frequently on television and radio. Among other collaborations, he has been a consultant to Callaway Golf in California, Adidas in Germany and the International Tennis Federation in London. Agent: Peter Tallack Publisher: Arena Sport/Birlinn Publication: 4 October 2018 Length: 320 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth (Arena Sport/Birlinn)
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London Book Fair 2019
RECENTLY PUBLISHED
ALICE AND BOB MEET THE WALL OF FIRE The Biggest Ideas in Science from Quanta Edited by THOMAS LIN Foreword by Sean M. Carroll If you're a science and data nerd like me, you may be interested in ALICE AND BOB MEET THE WALL OF FIRE and THE PRIME NUMBER CONSPIRACY – Bill Gates
Accessible and essential coverage of today’s challenging, speculative, cutting-edge science from Quanta magazine. Quanta, under editor-in-chief Thomas Lin, is the only popular publication that offers in-depth coverage of today’s challenging, speculative, cutting-edge science. It communicates science by taking it seriously, wrestling with difficult concepts and clearly explaining them in a way that speaks to our innate curiosity about our world and ourselves. Bringing together the best and most interesting science stories appearing in Quanta over the past five years, ALICE AND BOB MEET THE WALL OF FIRE reports on some of the greatest scientific minds as they test the limits of human knowledge while revealing the latest efforts to untangle the mysteries of the Universe. In the title story, Alice and Bob – beloved characters of various thought experiments in physics – grapple with gravitational forces, possible ‘spaghettification’ and a massive wall of fire as Alice jumps into a black hole. Another story considers whether, in the light of experimental results at the Large Hadron Collider, the Universe is impossible. We learn about quantum reality and the mystery of quantum entanglement; explore the source of time’s arrow and witness a eureka moment when a quantum physicist exclaims: ‘Finally, we can understand why a cup of coffee equilibrates in a room’. We reflect on humans’ enormous skulls and the ‘brain boom’; consider the evolutionary benefits of loneliness; peel back the layers of the newest artificial-intelligence algorithms; follow the ‘battle for the heart and soul of physics’; and mourn the disappearance of the ‘diphoton bump’, revealed to be a statistical fluctuation rather than a revolutionary new particle. The result is a front-row seat to scientific discovery. THOMAS LIN is the founding editor-in-chief of Quanta magazine, an online publication that reports on developments in science and mathematics, with content syndicated in such publications as Wired, the Atlantic and Scientific American. Lin previously worked for the New York Times, and has written for the New Yorker, Tennis and other publications. Sean M. Carroll is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology and the bestselling author of popular science books including THE BIG PICTURE: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself. Contributors: Philip Ball, K. C. Cole, Robbert Dijkgraaf, Dan Falk, Courtney Humphries, Ferris Jabr, Katia Moskvitch, George Musser, Michael Nielsen, Jennifer Ouellette, John Pavlus, Emily Singer, Andreas von Bubnoff, Frank Wilczek, Natalie Wolchover, Carl Zimmer. Agent: Jeff Shreve Publisher: MIT Press Publication: November 2018 Length: 328 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (MIT Press), Korea (Kachi)
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The Science Factory
London Book Fair 2019
RECENTLY PUBLISHED
THE PRIME NUMBER CONSPIRACY The Biggest Ideas in Math from Quanta Edited by THOMAS LIN Foreword by James Gleick If you're a science and data nerd like me, you may be interested in ALICE AND BOB MEET THE WALL OF FIRE and THE PRIME NUMBER CONSPIRACY – Bill Gates
Quanta magazine’s stories of mathematical explorations show that ‘inspiration does strike willy-nilly’, revealing surprising solutions and exciting discoveries. Quanta is the only popular publication that offers in-depth coverage of the latest breakthroughs in understanding our mathematical universe. It communicates mathematics by taking it seriously, wrestling with difficult concepts and clearly explaining them in a way that speaks to our innate curiosity about our world and ourselves. This collection of stories from the magazine maps the routes of mathematical exploration, showing readers how cutting-edge research is done, while illuminating the productive tension between conjecture and proof, theory and intuition. One researcher thinks of quantum chaotic systems at a bus stop; another suddenly realizes a path to proving a theorem of number theory while in a friend’s backyard; a statistician has a ‘bathroom sink epiphany’ and discovers the key to solving the Gaussian correlation inequality. Readers of THE PRIME NUMBER CONSPIRACY, says Quanta editor-in-chief Thomas Lin, are headed on ‘breathtaking intellectual journeys to the bleeding edge of discovery while strapped to the narrative rocket of humanity’s never-ending pursuit of knowledge’. We learn that prime numbers have decided preferences about the final digits of the primes that immediately follow them (the ‘conspiracy’ of the title); consider whether mathematics is the universal language of nature (allowing for ‘a unified theory of randomness’); discover surprising solutions (including a pentagon tiling proof that solves a century-old maths problem); ponder the limits of computation; measure infinity; and explore the eternal question: ‘Is mathematics good for you?’ THOMAS LIN is the founding editor-in-chief of Quanta magazine, an online publication that reports on developments in science and mathematics, with content syndicated in such publications as Wired, the Atlantic and Scientific American. Lin previously worked for the New York Times, and has also written for the New Yorker, Tennis and other publications. James Gleick is the bestselling author of several popular books about science and technology, including THE INFORMATION: A History, a Theory, a Flood and CHAOS: Making a New Science. Contributors: Ariel Bleicher, Robbert Dijkgraaf, Kevin Hartnett, Erica Klarreich, Thomas Lin, John Pavlus, Siobhan Roberts, Natalie Wolchover. Agent: Jeff Shreve Publisher: MIT Press Publication: 20 November 2018 Length: 336 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (MIT Press), China (CITIC – simplified characters), Korea (Kachi)
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The Science Factory
London Book Fair 2019
RECENTLY PUBLISHED
WALLY FUNK’S RACE FOR SPACE The Extraordinary Story of a Female Aviation Pioneer SUE NELSON Wally Funk’s story is a textbook study in indefatigable, American, can-do spirit – GUARDIAN An absolute joy… Beautifully told by one of the world’s foremost space journalists, this fascinating portrait puts the story of women in space front and centre – Dallas Campbell, author of AD ASTRA
The incredible story of one of history’s ‘hidden figures’ set against the backdrop of space exploration – past, present and future. In 1961, Wally Funk was among the Mercury 13, the first group of American women slated to enter the ‘Women in Space’ programme. Like the other participants, she was put through rigorous physical and mental testing by the same doctor who developed tests for the male NASA astronauts. Wally came third, her score beating those of many male candidates, including John Glenn (the first American in orbit). But one week before she was due to enter the final phase of training, the programme was abruptly cancelled. Since then, Wally has travelled the world, flown above it and become one of America’s first female aviation inspectors, air-safety investigators and civilian flight instructors. Still regularly taking to the skies as a pilot, she has clocked up 19,000 flight hours and taught over 3,000 students. All along her dream of being an astronaut has never dimmed. Six decades on, she is waiting to enter Earth’s orbit as a paying passenger. In this offbeat odyssey, the journalist and fellow space buff Sue Nelson joins Wally, now approaching her eightieth birthday, as she races to make her own giant leap before it’s too late. Covering their travels across the United States and Europe – taking in NASA’s mission control in Houston, the European Space Agency’s headquarters in Paris and Spaceport America in New Mexico, where Wally’s ride into space awaits – this is a uniquely intimate and entertaining portrait of a true aviation trailblazer. SUE NELSON is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster. She produces documentaries for BBC Radio, co-presents the ‘Space Boffins’ podcast and makes short films on science and space. Her award-winning 2016 documentary ‘Women with the Right Stuff’, on the history of women in space, was one of BBC World Service’s most-listened-to podcasts. Agent: Peter Tallack Publisher: Westbourne Press (UK)/Chicago Review Press (US) Publication: 4 October 2018 Length: 272 pages All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth (Westbourne Press), US & Canada (Chicago Review Press)
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BACKLIST TITLES
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BACKLIST TITLES
The Great Invention The Story of GDP and the Making (and Unmaking) of the Modern World
Ehsan Masood
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RECENT WORLD RIGHTS SALES In addition to the titles described in this rights list, the Science Factory is proud to have sold world rights in a number of recent books as listed below*. For information about the availability of foreign rights, please contact the publishers directly. THROUGH TWO DOORS AT ONCE: The Elegant Experiment That Captures the Enigma of Our Quantum Reality by Anil Ananthaswamy (Dutton/Penguin US, 7 August 2018) THINKING MATTER: The Sciences of the Brain – Past, Present and Future by Matthew Cobb (Profile, 2020) GET SMART – MATHS: The Big Ideas You Should Know by Julia Collins (Quercus, 6 September 2018) UNDERSTANDING NUMBERS: Simplify Life’s Mathematics, Decode the World Around You by Marianne Freiberger and Rachel Thomas (White Lion Publishing/Quarto, 11 April 2019) THE DANCE OF LIFE: Symmetry, Cells and How We Become Human by Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz and Roger Highfield (W. H. Allen/Ebury, 18 July 2019) – US rights sold on to Basic Books THE RULES OF CONTAGION: How Outbreaks Happen – From Ideas to Infectious Diseases by Adam Kucharski (Profile, autumn 2019) THE GENESIS QUEST: The Geniuses and Madmen Who Tried to Uncover the Origin of Life on Earth by Michael Marshall (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2020) – US rights sold on to University of Chicago Press LIQUID: The Delightful and Dangerous Substances That Flow Through Our Lives by Mark Miodownik (Viking UK, 6 September 2018) – US rights sold on to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt IT’S A GAS by Mark Miodownik (Viking UK, 2020) – US rights sold on to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF EVERYTHING: From the Big Bang to the End of the Universe by Paul Parsons (Michael O’Mara, 1 November 2018) WATCHING THE DETECTIVES: The Birth of a Modern Hero by P. D. Smith (Bloomsbury, 2020) EINSTEIN’S WAR: How Relativity Conquered Nationalism and Shook the World by Matthew Stanley (Viking UK, 23 May 2019) – represented by Jeff Shreve DO DICE PLAY GOD? The Mathematics of Uncertainty by Ian Stewart (Profile, 6 June 2019) – US rights sold on to Basic Books THE USES OF MATHEMATICS by Ian Stewart (Profile, 2020) – US rights sold on to Basic Books LIVING IN DATA by Jer Thorp (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020) – represented by Jeff Shreve THE POWER OF RITUAL: How Rituals Soothe, Excite, Divide and Unite Us by Dimitris Xygalatas (Profile, 2020)
*Represented by Peter Tallack unless stated otherwise.
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SCIENCE FACTORY FOREIGN LANGUAGE CO-AGENTS JAPAN Hamish Macaskill: hamish@eaj.co.jp Tsutomu Yawata: tsutomu_yawata@eaj.co.jp The English Agency (Japan) Sakuragi Building 3F 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 Duran Kim Agency 2F Taeyang Building 263 Hyoryeong-ro, Seocho-gu Seoul 06653 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
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