Sex and mutiny is the first chapter which begins "To botanists, the coconut palm is the Cocos nucifera, a member of the Aceraceae or Palm family." Writings in Sanskrit refer to coconut oil as being used in a medicine 3500 years ago. Coconuts appear again in the Hindu epic story the Ramayana 1000 years later and the Arabic folk tales of 1001 Nights include the seven voyages of Sinbad the sailor whose crew threw stones at monkeys who retaliated by throwing down coconuts, which the sailors probably sold to finance their next voyage! In the Song of Solomon, the last section of the Hebrew Bible likened the woman's body to the coconut palm. Seafaring Arab traders likely carried coconuts from India to East Africa as long as 2000 years ago. The rarity value of the coconut was soon to pass. Today supermarket shelves, health food shops and beauty salons are crowded with coconut products, but we look here beyond the oils and healthy drinks to uncover the unexpected and often surprising vital roles that the coconut palm has played. They have been used as part of the charcoal filters in First World War gas masks and it was coconuts that triggered the mutiny on the Bounty and coconuts that saved the life of the man who went on to become the 35th President of the United States. The coconut has long been the unseen player in the endeavours of industrialists and bomb makers, physicians and silversmiths, smugglers and snake charmers. 224 pages, illustrations and colour plates.

'The Surprising New Science of Uric Acid' introduces a secret key to losing weight, controlling blood sugar, and achieving extraordinary heath. The book features the LUV Diet and 40 delicious recipes, self-assessment quizzes, and a 21-day programme for dropping uric acid levels. The bestselling author Dr David Perlmutter offers dietary and lifestyle tweaks to help you lose weight, prevent and reverse disease, and live a long, healthy life. What do obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, insulin resistance, hypertension, fatty liver disease, stroke, neurological disorders and premature death have in common? All can be stoked by high uric acid levels and even slight elevations are still within the 'normal' range. The book offers simple dietary edits focussed on managing common ingredients, natural hacks that lower levels such as consuming tart cherries, quercetin and coffee, information on over-the-counter and prescription drugs that threaten to increase uric acid, and lifestyle interventions such as restorative sleep, meal timing and exercise. From diabetes to dementia the book explains the fallacy of fructose and how uric acid amplifies brain decline and triggers fat production, from thickening your waistline to filling your liver with dangerous fat, even if you're not overweight. The book involves a little history, science and physiology and goes on to describe how managing healthy levels is not nearly as hard as you may think. The pay off will be well worth the time and effort. 325pp, large paperback with clear layout.

With over 30 years' experience as a nurse, Anthea Allan thought she had seen it all, but with Covid came the greatest trial, personally and professionally, of her life. Thrust hourly into life and death challenges while on the critical care unit of St George's hospital in South London, Anthea processed her shocking experiences through writing. It started with an email to request biscuits, but her appeal to help boost morale of her fellow nurses soon turned into a series of astonishingly moving stories, detailing the realities of being a frontline worker. Soon her accounts were circulating far and wide, capturing the attention of the nation and being feted by the likes of Richard Branson and Good Morning Britain's Susanna Reid. "Not many doctors know how to programme a ventilator. It doesn't matter how many ventilators there are, critical care nurses are required to operate them. We don't have enough critical care nurses." These are deeply personal, moving stories with all the names changed to protect identities and privacy. Colour photographs include rainbow cakes, holding the hands of a patient delivering end of life compassion, her co-workers wearing their scrubbers' caps and a picture with her own daughter on St George's helipad. Anthea's book is a testimony to love, resilience and the human spirit. Includes colour photographs, 328 pages.

Is it possible to cool the planet by injecting reflective particles of sulfuric acid into the upper atmosphere where they would scatter a tiny fraction of incoming sunlight back to space, creating a thin sunshade for the ground beneath? It is cheap and technically easy. The specialised aircraft and dispersal systems required to get started could be deployed in a few years for the price of a Hollywood blockbuster. The underlying science is sound and the technological developments are real and this single technology could increase the productivity of ecosystems across the planet and stop global warming; it would increase crop yields particularly in the hottest and poorest parts of the world. Solar geoengineering is a set of emerging technologies to manipulate the climate and partially counteract climate change caused by the gradual accumulation of carbon dioxide. But deliberately adding one pollutant to temporarily counter another is a brutally ugly technical fix. It is also dangerous and entails novel environmental risks, and may accelerate the shifting balance of global power, raising security concerns that could in the worst case lead to war. Many people feel a visceral sense of repugnance on first hearing about geoengineering but for others it brings an appreciation of the hard choices at its roots. There is no magic bullet, but geoengineering's powerful potential demands a broad debate. This book attempts a synoptic view for the educated non-specialist willing to work through some complex arguments. 194pp.

Billed as "The most user-friendly guide to the Birds of Britain and Ireland", this soft-backed chunky volume would just about fit in a capacious pocket, certainly a rucksack, and covers over 300 different common species. The Unique Selling Point of the volume is the illustrations. Each bird is presented in close-up photography from a number of different angles, sometimes as many as ten, against a typical background, but instead of the usual long-range shot without much detail, the close-up photos are presented in montage, so a far greater degree of clarity and accuracy is achieved. The first 12 pages consist of thumbnail quick identifiers of all the birds, categorised as swimming, flying or walking waterbirds, followed by upland gamebirds, raptors, miscellaneous larger landbirds, and songbirds. The main text for each bird includes the bird's length next to the name of the species, given with the English and scientific names. On each plate, plumage, age and sex are labelled, and the text describes population, behaviour, flight, identification points, and general quirks and peculiarities. The song is described, though this is a challenge: the whimbrel has "a 7-note tittering call pupupu" while a waxwing has "a distinctive, trilled sree, sibilant like a pea-whistle". Described as a "birders' favourite", the waxwing can eat up to a thousand berries a day and is often found in car parks, immune to human activity. Apart from the birds themselves, the photos of habitat are also gorgeous. 302pp, softback, colour photos.
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In 1931, when Thomas Edison was at the end of his life, it was suggested to President Hoover that the entire electrical system of the United States should be shut off for one minute as a mark of respect for the man who mobilised the power of electricity. Fortunately Hoover realised that the gesture would immobilise the nation and quite possibly kill a lot of people. Even turning the lights out was unthinkable. Since his birth in 1847 Edison's discoveries had changed everything. This big and authoritative biography takes the unusual step of recounting Edison's life in reverse. It is at the end of the book that we finally learn of the interest in science and discovery that was awakened in the young Thomas, or Alva as he was known then, by his mother's home schooling, and which extraordinarily was not stifled by his deafness at the age of 12. Edison left home to become a telegraph boy in the southern states at the time of the Civil War, when faster communications were being developed. He developed a method of receiving Morse code on cylinder tape and managed to patent the invention, though he also had to suffer setbacks, jealousies and obstructive bureaucracy. By this time he was running his own business. In 1871 he married his first wife Mary, aged 16, who died aged 28 leaving Edison with three children. His second wife Mina bore three more children, neglecting the offspring of his first marriage, whose chaotic lives caused endless anxiety to their troubled father. Edison's laboratory at Menlo Park was the scene of thousands of experiments that led to the invention of the phonograph, which he was still perfecting decades later, early forms of X-ray which were used by surgeons to locate embedded bullets, and invention of the storage battery. The goal of creating a mass-market electric light was a long time in development in the 1880s but finally assured his place in history. Altogether Edison had over 1000 patents to his name. 783pp, black and white reproductions. Remainder mark.

Can fear really turn your hair white? Can a human brain get full? Where is the safest place in the world to give birth? Can an unborn baby swallow? Did cave men suffer from allergies? What are dreams for? How many watts does your brain run on? What is the weight of the human soul? How many organs could you live without? Here is a fun, fact filled guide to the mysteries of the human body, with more than 100 questions to quench your curiosity. The ten chapters cover Birth and Before, Weights and Measures, Historical Bodies, Decorated Bodies, Liver and Lights, Unexpected Events, In Your Head, The Human Senses, Medicine and Disease and Death and After. Each chapter concludes with a quiz to test your knowledge. 224 page colourful paperback, nicely designed and fully illustrated.

Sub-titled 'The Revolutionary Life of Jean-François Champollion,' rightly regarded as the founder of Egyptology. Ancient Egypt fascinated the ancient Greeks and Romans including Alexander the Great. It still fascinates us more than any other ancient civilisation, but no Greek or Roman could read the elaborate Egyptian hieroglyphs. For almost two millennia the hieroglyphic script became a 'lost language', until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone by Napoleon's soldiers in Egypt in 1799. Despite the efforts of some of Europe's most intelligent scholars, including the English polymath Thomas Young, to crack the hieroglyphic code, it was an impoverished, arrogant and brilliant child of the French Revolution Jean-François Champollion who made the vital breakthrough. This finely illustrated biography charts his dramatic life and achievements and how, against the odds, Champollion led an expedition to Egypt with royal backing, lived in the tomb of the Valley of the Kings, and made the voices of the Pharaohs and their subjects speak. His obsession eventually drove him to an early death at the age of only 41. Chapters also cover the Curator at the Louvre and In Search of Ramesses and the First Professor of Egyptology. A memorable and beautifully written historical detective story, first time translated into English and here in fine heavyweight Oxford University Press hardback. Very well illustrated throughout, 272pp.

Professor Stefan Buczacki is one of the world's most renowned botanists having written around 60 books including several standard works of reference. He spent 12 unbroken years as panellist and chairman on BBC Radio Four's Gardener?s Question Time. Join him as he uncovers the wild animals and plants that thrive among the headstones from the graveyard beetle to the mighty yew as he reveals the natural secrets to be found in God's Acre. From the earliest Pagan sites to modern urban cemeteries, burial grounds have always enjoyed a sacred, protected status in the history of society. Consequently, they have become tranquil oases in which wildlife can flourish - a microcosm of the natural habitat long since disappeared from the surrounding area. Buczacki explores the history of churchyards and the landscape as well as what can be done to conserve them for future generations. He looks at plants and fungi, lichens, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, birds and small creatures and shows how deeply churchyards are rooted in British history and literature. We can all look with fresh eyes and be better informed whether or not you are spiritually and religiously motivated. Chapter one opens aptly with Thomas Gray's 1751 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Includes beautiful coloured line art of creatures like frogs, bats, moles, crows and badgers to contemporary photographs, full page colour. 2018 first edition, satin pagemarker.

2022 revised paperback edition of a book which answers the profound question 'Where do we come from?' The story and study of human evolution is one of extraordinary discoveries, daring adventures and often spectacularly vehement arguments, and encompassing a swathe of technical disciplines. The first seven chapters tell the story in chronological order beginning with the earliest primates, the earliest ape-like hominins, and concluding with the rise of modern civilisation. Our distant ancestors most likely evolved in Asia, in a hothouse world newly free of dinosaurs more than 55 million years ago in the lush rainforests. A fossil unveiled in 2013 might give us an idea of what this crucial ancestor looked like when the American palaeontologist Christopher Beard and his colleagues found Archicebus achilles in eastern China. It has the relatively small eyes of an animal active during the day and the sharp molar teeth of an insect-eater. Significantly it also has the hind limbs and flexible foot of a primate gripping with its feet and leaping through branches. Homo sapiens has in the blink of an evolutionary eye spread around the globe, taken control of earth's biological and mineral resources, transformed the environment, discovered the secrets of the universe, and travelled into space. Discover how our ancestors made their first tentative steps, how we lost our fur but gained language, fire and tools, how we strode out of Africa, invented farming and cities and ultimately created modern civilisation - perhaps the only one of its kind in the universe. How did we get to where we are? Where are we going? The astonishing evolution is told in this brief overview. 241pp, paperback with illus. and maps and diagrams.