Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

$22.99 AUD

Category: Science

A New York Times BestsellerA Midwest Connections PickA National BestsellerNamed one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People"A Time and Entertainment Weekly Best Book of 2016 So FarLab Girl is a book about work, love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren's remarkable stories: about her childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and a father who encouraged hours of play in his classroom's labs; about how she found a sanctuary in science, and learned to perform lab work done "with both the heart and the hands"; and about the inevitable disappointments, but also the triumphs and exhilarating discoveries, of scientific work.Yet at the core of this book is the story of a relationship Jahren forged with a brilliant, wounded man named Bill, who becomes her lab partner and best friend. Their sometimes rogue adventures in science take them from the Midwest across the United States and back again, over the Atlantic to the ever-light skies of the North Pole and to tropical Hawaii, where she and her lab currently make their home. ...Show more

A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough

$39.99 AUD

Category: Science

See the world. Then make it better. 'I am 93. I've had an extraordinary life. It's only now that I appreciate how extraordinary. As a young man, I felt I was out there in the wild, experiencing the untouched natural world - but it was an illusion. The tragedy of our time has been happening all around us , barely noticeable from day to day - the loss of our planet's wild places, its biodiversity. I have been witness to this decline. A Life on Our Planet is my witness statement, and my vision for the future. It is the story of how we came to make this, our greatest mistake - and how, if we act now, we can yet put it right. We have one final chance to create the perfect home for ourselves and restore the wonderful world we inherited.' All we need is the will do so.   ...Show more

A Letter to Layla - Travels to Our Deep Past and near Future by Ramona Koval

$34.99 AUD

Category: Science

How might the origins of our species inform the way we think about our planet? At a point of unparalleled crisis, can human ingenuity save us from ourselves? Much-loved writer and broadcaster Ramona Koval travels the globe in a quest to answer these difficult questions and more. She speaks with an emin ent paleo-archaeologist in the Republic of Georgia, meets the next generation of robots in Berlin, attends a transhumanist conference in California, and explores a cave in southern France before talking with the world's leading authority on cave art. And throughout, she returns to her quick-witted, ever-engaging youngest granddaughter, Layla, whose development in infancy spurs Koval to find out what makes us human, what separates us from the other apes. Filled with insightful and unexpected discussions with scientists whose knowledge of the past could hold the key to our future, A Letter to Laylawill surprise and delight in equal measure. ...Show more

The Secret Life of Stars: Astrophysics for Everyone by HARVEY-SMITH LISA

$34.99 AUD

Category: Science

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor

$35.00 AUD

Category: Science

300,000 years ago, Homo sapienshad bigger skulls. Cooked food meant our heads shrunk; alongside a growing brain, our airways got narrower. Urbanisation then led us to breathe less deeply and less healthily. And so today more than 90% of us breathe incorrectly. So we might have been breathing all our lif e, but we need to learn how to breathe properly! In Breath, James Nestor meets cutting-edge scientists at Harvard and experiments on himself in labs at Stanford to see the impact of bad breathing. He revives the lost, and recently scientifically proven, wisdom of swim coaches, Indian mystics, stern-faced Russian cardiologists, Czechoslovakian Olympians and New Jersey choral conductors - the world's foremost 'pulmonauts' - to show how breathing in specific patterns can trigger our bodies to absorb more oxygen, and he explains the benefits for everyone that result, from staying healthy and warding off anxiety to improving focus and losing weight. Breathis a fascinating ride through evolution, medicine and physiology - and extreme sports. But mostly it explores you. Structured as a journey with chapters from the mouth and nose through to the lungs and nervous system, it is non-fiction at its breath-taking best. ...Show more

A Human's Guide to the Future by Jordan Nguyen

$34.99 AUD

Category: Science

TECHNOLOGY IS EVOLVING AT THE FASTEST RATE WE'VE EVER SEEN, BUT IT MAY BE THE SLOWEST RATE WE'LL EVER SEE AGAIN! What does this mean for the future of the human race? Do we resist these changes or embrace them?Australian biomedical engineer, inventor and visionary Dr Jordan Nguyen has lived a life of c uriosity and wonder - exploring positive opportunities in science and technology, including robotics, artificial intelligence, bionics, extended reality and avatars. He believes that technology is a powerful tool that we as humans can choose to harness to create a better tomorrow.In A Human's Guide to the Future, Dr Jordan takes us on a journey through the big innovations being developed around the world, along the fun and amazing rollercoaster of his own adventures, and to envisage where our collective future is headed.Written by one of this generation's most exciting voices, this is a book that will deepen your understanding of new and emerging technologies and fuel your imagination at the dawn of what will be the most transformative era in human history. ...Show more

Fire - A Brief History (Second Edition) by Pyne, Stephen J

$29.99 AUD

Category: Science

Over vast expanses of time, fire and humanity have interacted to expand the domain of each, transforming the earth and what it means to be human. In this concise yet wide-ranging book, Stephen J. Pyne?named by Science magazine as ?the world?s leading authority on the history of fire??explores the surpri sing dynamics of fire before humans, fire and human origins, aboriginal economies of hunting and foraging, agricultural and pastoral uses of fire, fire ceremonies, fire as an idea and a technology, and industrial fire. In this revised and expanded edition, Pyne looks to the future of fire as a constant, defining presence on Earth. A new chapter explores the importance of fire in the twenty-first century, with special attention to its role in the Anthropocene, or what he posits might equally be called the Pyrocene. ...Show more

How To by Randall Munroe

$22.99 AUD

Category: Science

Randall Munroe is . . .'Nerd royalty' Ben Goldacre 'Totally brilliant' Tim Harford 'Laugh-out-loud funny' Bill Gates 'Wonderful' Neil Gaiman AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally bad that no one would e ver try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole. Bestselling author and cartoonist Randall Munroe explains how to predict the weather by analyzing the pixels of your Facebook photos. He teaches you how to tell if you're a baby boomer or a millennial by measuring the radioactivity of your teeth. He offers tips for taking a selfie with a telescope, crossing a river by boiling it, and getting to your appointments on time by destroying the moon. And if you want to get rid of this book once you're done with it, he walks you through your options for proper disposal, including dissolving it in the ocean, converting it to a vapour, using tectonic plates to subduct it into the Earth's mantle, or launching it into the sun. By exploring the most complicated ways to do simple tasks, Munroe doesn't just make things difficult for himself and his readers. As he did so brilliantly in What If?, he invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible. Full of clever infographics and amusing illustrations, How To is a delightfully mind-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day. ...Show more

How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems by Randall Munroe

$32.99 AUD

Category: Science | Reading Level: 4 Non Fiction

The world's most entertaining and useless self-help guide, from the brilliant mind behind the wildly popular webcomic xkcd and the million-selling What If? and Thing Explainer For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally bad that no one would ever try i t. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole. Bestselling author and cartoonist Randall Munroe explains how to predict the weather by analyzing the pixels of your Facebook photos. He teaches you how to tell if you're a baby boomer or a millennial by measuring the radioactivity of your teeth. He offers tips for taking a selfie with a telescope, crossing a river by boiling it, and getting to your appointments on time by destroying the moon. And if you want to get rid of this book once you're done with it, he walks you through your options for proper disposal, including dissolving it in the ocean, converting it to a vapour, using tectonic plates to subduct it into the Earth's mantle, or launching it into the sun. By exploring the most complicated ways to do simple tasks, Munroe doesn't just make things difficult for himself and his readers. As he did so brilliantly in What If?, he invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible. Full of clever infographics and amusing illustrations, How To is a delightfully mind-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day. ...Show more

Is the Moon Upside Down? by Greg Quicke

$29.99 AUD

Category: Science

During his younger days working as a bush mechanic and pearl diver in remote WA, Greg Quick spent countless nights lying in a swag and staring at the stars. That daily distraction grew into a passion that has seen him become one of Australia's best known and most engaging astronomers. In recent years Gr eg - aka 'Space Gandalf' - has taken on cult status among audiences via his appearances alongside Professor Brian Cox in the hit TV series Stargazing Live. Greg's practical explanations of the complexities of space have also earned him respect from astronomers around the world. Is The Moon Upside Down?is an absorbing guided tour of the cosmos as seen through Greg's eyes. Unlike many of his peers who studied at university he offers a unique and refreshing perspective on astronomy that was instead forged on cliff tops outside Alice Springs, in the endless expanse of the Great Sandy Desert, on the floor of the Indian Ocean and in his own front yard in Broome. No matter what mysteries you've pondered about Earth's astral dance with the Sun, planets, Moon and the stars, it's guaranteed Greg has thought about them too, and the answers can be found in the pages of this book.   ...Show more

The Language of Butterflies by Wendy Williams

$29.99 AUD

Category: Science

An enthralling look at one of the world's most beautiful and resilient animals, and the role they play in our ecosystem Butterflies are beloved across the globe, adorning gardens, parks and zoos. Their feats are staggering - monarchs migrate thousands of kilometres each year. They are smarter than we th ink - some species have learned to fool ants into taking care of them. Their beauty has led many to obsession - lepidopterists (butterfly-seekers) have died in search of particular species, frenzied and driven mad in the pursuit of colour. What draws us to these creatures so intensely? Why do they live so briefly? How do they get their colours? Science journalist Wendy Williams investigates butterflies across the globe, their habitats and those dedicated to studying them. She examines the ancient partnership between butterflies and humans, and the ways we depend on them today - from a bellwether on climate change to a source of life-saving medical technology. For lovers of Sy Montgomery's The Soul of an Octopusand Peter Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees, this melodious book reveals the inner lives of these special creatures and shows why they continue to fascinate us. Touching, eye-opening and profound, it is a love letter to these vanishing species, and a celebration of the beauty and joy they bring to our world. ...Show more

The Story of More by Hope Jahren

$22.99 AUD

Category: Science

Hope Jahren is an award-winning geobiologist, a brilliant writer, an inspiring teacher, and one of the seven billion people with whom we share this earth. In The Story of More, Jahren illuminates the link between human consumption habits and our imperiled planet. In short, highly readable chapters, she takes us through the science behind the key inventions - from electric power to large-scale farming and automobiles - that, even as they help us, release untenable amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. She explains the current and projected consequences of greenhouse gases - from superstorms to rising sea levels - and the actions that all of us can take to fight back. At once an explainer on the mechanisms of warming and a lively, personal narrative given to us in Jahren's inimitable voice, The Story of More is the essential pocket primer on climate change that will leave an indelible impact on everyone who reads it. ...Show more