Sub-titled 'The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J. B. S. Haldane', J. B. S. grew up in Edinburgh into a family of important landowners who led strict, spare lives, obedient to their Calvinist virtue, but aristocrats all the same. The family lived for much of the year near Gleneagles where Robert had bought a farmhouse and to achieve a manorial look dressed it up with a turret. J. B. S.'s life was rich and strange, from his boyhood apprenticeship to his scientist father who first instilled in him a devotion to the scientific method, to his time in the trenches during WW1 where he wrote his first scientific paper, to his numerous experiments on himself including inhaling dangerous levels of carbon dioxide and drinking hydrochloric acid, to his clandestine research for the British Admiralty during WW2. Haldane is best remembered as a geneticist who revolutionised our understanding of evolution, but his peers hailed him as a polymath. One student called him 'the last man who might know all there was to be known.' Haldane foresaw invitro fertilisation, peak oil, and the hydrogen fuel cell, and his contributions ranged over physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, mathematics and biostatistics. He was also a staunch Communist, which led him to Spain during its Civil War and sparked suspicions that he was spying for the Soviets. He wrote copiously on science and politics in newspapers and magazines, and gave speeches in town halls and on the radio, all of which made him, in his day, as famous in Britain as Einstein. It is the duty of scientists to think politically Haldane believed and sought not simply to tell his readers what to think, but to show them how to think. Although he hated to be bothered by correspondence, he had letters piled up around his various offices over the years - in Cambridge in the 1920s, in University College London until the 1950s, in Calcutta and Bhubaneswar thereafter, but he always tried to reply and never shrank from exalting the scientific method, even in casual correspondence - 'Science advances by successive improvements in former theories.' 383pp, illus., 2020 US first edition.

A penetrating look at near-future disruption as truly autonomous vehicles arrive. Anthony Townsend argues that the driverless car is a red herring. When self-driving technology infects buses, bikes, delivery vans and buildings, a wild future awaits. Technology will transform life behind the wheel into a high-definition video game that makes our rides safer, smoother, and more efficient. Meanwhile, autonomous vehicles will turbo charge our appetite for the instant delivery of goods, making the future as much about moving stuff as it is about moving people. Companies will link the automated machines that move us to the cloud, raising concerns about mobility monopolies and privatisation of 'the curb'. Our cities and towns will change as we embrace new ways to get around. The book explains where we might be heading with driverless vehicles, and the choices we must make as societies and individuals to shape that future. Extensively researched from many articles including curiously titled ones like 'The Rate of Decline in Licensing Was Already Slowing Down' and 'In The Future Commutes You Won't Have to Focus', 'The Cost of Traffic Control Grew Tenfold' and 'Car Was Cheap, Rugged and Simple to Repair?, the robots are coming! 318pp, line art.

The generally accepted theory as to how our moon came into existence is that around 4.5 billion years ago, just after the formation of our solar system, Earth was hit by a wandering molten planet and a lump of this planet and molten Earth, around 20% the size of Earth, cooled and remained in Earth's orbit, circling once every 27.3217 days. The physical effects of the moon's presence and orbit - tides, moonlight, eclipses, its magnetic field, animal behaviour - are well documented and extensively discussed here, but this fascinating and charming book equally presents a portrait of the moon in human society and culture down the ages, as a timekeeping device, a muse, a political weapon, a tourist attraction, in astrology, in the arts, in psychology and more. More and more people are believing in the effects of the moon and lunar cycle in their lives and how it may affect decision-making, images of the moon and its surface have never been in higher demand and in use in fabrics and art installations. Whatever your interest in our only satellite - and it is pretty unlikely that anyone will have none at all - it is all here, from all the precise facts and physics to the more esoteric and abstract - and yes, werewolves! Full of delightful quotes from song, poetry and prose and exquisitely illustrated in colour and b/w photos, artworks, drawings and prints, this is a total joy from cover to cover. A trendy book with a handy practical part, including moon calendars, lunar cycle, etc. 190pp. 192pp, 16 x 21cm.

Science has acquired great authority and that authority has benefitted it all. This historical account of the relationship between public and the expert sheds important light on our current predicament. It shows what went right and wrong in modernity and how scientific discoveries and theories were received, showing that there is nothing obvious or inevitable about the social reception of science. Crease pulls this all off with the thinking of a philosopher, the precision of a scientist and the storytelling of a great biographer. He asks when does a scientific discovery become an accepted fact, and why have scientific facts become easy to deny? Crease answers these questions by describing the origins of our scientific infrastructure - the 'workshop' and the role of ten of the world's greatest thinkers in the shaping it. The provocative leaders and thinkers Kemal Atatürk and Hannah Arendt addressed the relationship between the scientific community and the public in times of deep distrust. Other chapters cover Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, Galileo Galilei and the Authority of Science, René Descartes Workshop Thinking, Gianbattista Vico Going Mad Rationally, Mary Shelley's Hideous Idea, Auguste Comte's Religion of Humanity, Max Weber's Authority and Bureaucracy and Edmund Husserl's Cultural Crisis. Small illus., 319pp.

Professor Dudley Buck invented the Cryotron: a tiny super-conducting computer chip that promised ever-smaller computers. An NSA consultant, he had a hand in countless top-secret projects linked to the space race, missiles and super computers. His inventions cleared a path for some of the most consequential developments of the last half century. Brilliant and unassuming, Buck might have benefitted greatly from his efforts had he not died in mysterious circumstances at the age of 32 soon after a visit to his lab by high-profile USSR government scientists. Was this a coincidence? Drawing on recently released papers, the books suggests a far more sinister picture. The sub-title of this highly acclaimed non-fiction book is 'The Strange Death of a Pioneering Cold War Computer Scientist' and the book is an incredibly thorough and fully accessible deep dive into the Cold War battle for computer supremacy. It details the increasingly relevant and increasingly eerie relationship between geopolitics and technology and is an insider's look at the 1950s military-industrial complex and the ease and informality with which academia, the military, intelligence agencies and industry collaborated. 286pp, paperback with photos.

We are transported back to a time when consumers wondered whether mixing radium into chicken feed might result in eggs that could hard-boil themselves, when diners cheerfully drank radioactive cocktails that glowed in the dark, and when people used toothpaste containing lethal thorium oxide in pursuit of healthy gums. The book unpicks fact from fiction and exhibits a masterful grasp of a complex area of science history that is so often mis-told. Of all the radioactive elements discovered at the end of the 19th century, it was radium that became the focus of both public fascination and entrepreneurial zeal. Here is the macabre story of the element through its ascendence as a desirable item - a present for a queen, a prize in a treasure hunt, a glow-in-the-dark dance costume - to its role as a supposed cure-all in everyday 20th century life when business people (reputable and otherwise) devised ingenious ways of commodifying the new wonder element. Enthusiastic customers welcomed their radioactive wares into their homes. Historian Lucy Jane Santos, herself the proud owner of a formidable collection of radium beauty treatments, delves into these stories and details the gradual downfall and discredit of the radium industry through the eyes of the people who bought, sold and eventually came to fear the once-fetishized substance. It was also to be a cure for cancer, and the book looks at the interplay between science and popular culture. 280pp, photos.

Prize winning very, very funny and popular Dublin writer Mark O'Connell is not concerned himself by the end of days, but sets out to meet them. Are you ready for the end of the world? In the remote mountains of Scotland, in spartan bunkers in South Dakota and in the lush valleys of New Zealand, small groups of determined men and women are getting ready. They are environmentalists who fear the ravages of climate change, billionaire entrepreneurs dreaming of a life on Mars, and right-wing conspiracists yearning for a lost American idyll. One thing unites them - the certainty that we are only years away from the end of civilisation as we know it. Greta Thunberg said, 'I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis... because it is.' We meet all manner of cranks to the details of The Founder's paradox and uneasy fascination with the utopian future imagined by the techno-libertarians of Silicon Valley. Sounds like a strategy board game where you acquire land, rich resources and clean air, away from the chaos and ecological devastation gripping the rest of the world. Utterly fascinating and global in scope. 252pp.

If Professor Brian Cox says this is 'illuminating' we pay attention. The book is a masterclass in clear and captivating writing, dense with ideas and stories. Our Sun drives the weather, forms the landscape, feeds and fuels, but sometimes destroys the creatures that live upon it, controls their activity patterns, mixes chemicals in the skin that cheer up those that bask in its rays, and for the ancients was the seat of divine authority. Steve Jones shows how life on Earth is fuelled by our nearest star. His book is filled with unexpected connections - between the need to stay cool and man's ability to stand upright, between the power of memory and the onset of darkness, between the flow of solar energy through the plants and animals, and of the wealth of society, and between Joseph Goebbel's 1938 scheme to make Edinburgh the summer capital of a defeated Britain and the widening gap in the life expectancy of Scottish men compared to that of other European men brought on by that nation's cloudy climate. The author charts some of his own research in hot places and cold across the globe on the genetic and evolutionary effects of sunlight on snails, fruit flies and people. He braids in gripping storylines on conditions linked to lack of sunlight such as the bone disease rickets, the interplay between night, day and sleep, and throwaway gems from primates urinating on themselves to stay cool to the boiling-porridge turbulence of convection on the solar surface. Witty and insightful from this popular science writer. 360pp, paperback with colour images.

The popular science master investigates what makes you the unique individual you are. From the atomic level, through life and energy to genetics and personality, the book explores how the billions of particles which make up your DNA, your skin, your memories have come to be. It starts with the present day reader and follows a number of trails to discover their origins - how the atoms in your body were created and how they got to you in space and time, the sources of things you consume, how the living cells of your body developed, where your massive brain and consciousness originated, how human beings evolved, ultimately, what your personal genetic history reveals. Full of fascinating true stories featuring royal ancestors, stellar deaths, real-life hobbits and a self-reproducing crayfish to name but a few in this one-of-a-kind voyage of 'self' discovery. From the publisher: 'Around 50% of what makes you you is genetic and epigenetic - yet you share 96% of your genes with a chimp (and 60 with a banana). The hydrogen in your body was created soon after the Big Bang around 13.5 billion years ago. The chemical elements that make up your body are worth around £125.' Delight in science with the master. 240 page paperback with diagrams.

122 Inventions that Changed the World, this extraordinary volume of drawings is taken from the collections at the American and European patent offices, the place where many everyday items we take for granted were registered as monopolies for their inventors. The first patent we would recognise as such comes from Florence in 1421, where the architect of the cathedral dome, Brunelleschi, registered a hoisting machine. It was not until 1884 that a fork was patented in Connecticut, though we are told that this convenient aid to polite eating first came to Europe in the dowry of an 11th century Byzantine princess. The first corkscrew to be patented was in 1795, and here a version where the shaft moves down through a collar is pictured, submitted for patenting in 1883. Patents for Games and Toys include the 1930 drawings for Mickey Mouse submitted by Disney, who originally called his invention "Mortimer" until his wife told him it was too pompous, and original sketches, with measurements, for the Barbie doll in 1961 and G.I. Joe in 1966. The year 1961 also saw the first Lego patents, with its inventor calculating that six 4 x 2 Lego bricks could fit together in 915 million ways. Kermit was patented in 1959, with the prototype being made from a green coat found in a rubbish bin. Laszlo Biro invented the ballpoint pen in 1945. Car airbags were registered in 1972, though they had been invented in an earlier form 20 years before, and the first effective bulletproof vests were patented in 1968. Moving into the computer age, the first Apple mouse was patented in 1984, and 1992 saw the arrival of the floppy disk. 144pp, over 120 original sketches with commentary.