PD Smith
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1998
“In Abraham’s situation”, Der Grosse Kater, by Thomas Huerlimann
“Once a dissident . . .”, Erwachsenenspiele: Erinnerungen, by Guenter Kunert
1999
“Cause and ill effect”, Wie Man’s Nimmt, by Norbert Niemann
2000
“An impossible journey?”, Rosa, by Thomas Harlan
“Elective Affinity: A Tale of Two Cultures?”
"Fiction of the fatal kind", Agnes, by Peter Stamm. Translated by Michael Hofmann
‘Science and the City: Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz’
2001
“Gene pool”, Emma Darwin: The Inspirational Wife of a Genius by Edna Healey and Annie’s Box by Randal Keynes
“Man behaving (relatively) badly”, Einstein in Love: a scientific romance, by Dennis Overbye
“Saying the world”, Five Portraits: Modernity and the Imagination in Twentieth-Century German Writing, by Michael André Bernstein
“The uses of enchantment”, Literature and the Gods, by Roberto Calasso
“The wingbeat of the unknown”, Grammars of Creation, by George Steiner
"Journals: Literature", Publications of the English Goethe Society
Hampels Fluchten, by Michael Kumpfmuller
2002
“Back at the lab”, Fabulous Science: Fact and Fiction in the History of Scientific Discovery by John Waller; The Eureka! Moment: 100 Key Scientific Discoveries of the 20th Century by Rupert Lee
“Beautiful minds”, It Must Be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science, ed by Graham Farmelo
“Best wear a good thick skirt”, Landscape, Nature, & the Body Politic by K Olwig; The Politics of Nature by N Roe; Romanticism & the Materiality of Nature by O Oerlemans; In Nature’s Name, ed B Gates
“Darwinism in a flutter”, Of Moths and Men: Intrigue, Tragedy & the Peppered Moth, by Judith Hooper
“Keeping Mother Nature in the family”, Chance in the House of Fate: a natural history of heredity, by Jennifer Ackerman
“Nor am I out of it”, Die Vertreibung aus der Holle, by Robert Menasse
“The shadow of the beast”, Evolution by Stephen Baxter
“Why physics can be fun,” Science: A History, 1543-2001, by John Gribbin
“With fame I become more stupid”, The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 7, The Berlin Years: Writings, 1918-1921, ed Michel Janssen, et al
The One Culture? A conversation about science, ed by Jay A. Labinger and Harry Collins
2003
“Blood ties”, Pointing From the Grave: A True Story of Murder and DNA, by Samantha Weinberg
“Fear factory”, How to Build a Nuclear Bomb and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction, by Frank Barnaby
“Lichens and other likenings”, The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, his Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History, by David Freedberg
“Nature’s revenge”, Darwin’s Children by Greg Bear
“Relativity was not just Einstein’s monster”, Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps, by Peter Galison
“Where did it all go right? 2004 will be dominated by the big questions, says PD Smith”
“Wrestling with devils”, Hitler’s Scientists: Science, War and the Devil’s Pact, by John Cornwell
2004
“Before the flood”, Forty Signs of Rain, by Kim Stanley Robinson
“Eureka!”, Leaps in the Dark: The Making of Scientific Reputations, by John Waller
“Here be monsters”, White Devils, by Paul McAuley
“How a child becomes a scientist”, When We Were Kids, ed by John Brockman
“In the ditch”, Literature and Science, 1660–1834, ed by Judith Hawley
“Mind map”, Mind Wide Open: One Man’s Journey into the Workings of His Brain, by Steven Johnson
“On reflection …”, Mirror, Mirror: A History of the Human Love Affair with Reflection, by Mark Pendergrast
“Tasty tale of the tortoise”, A Sheltered Life: The Unexpected History of the Giant Tortoise, by Paul Chambers
"Try as we might, we can't cheat time", Rhythms of Life, by R Foster & L Kreitzman
In Albert’s Shadow: The life and letters of Mileva Maric, Einstein’s first wife, by Milan Popovic
Science, reading, and renaissance literature: The art of making knowledge, by Elizabeth Spiller
2005
“Heart of the atom”, The Fly in the Cathedral: How a small group of Cambridge scientists won the race to split the atom, by Brian Cathcart
“The cutting edge”, The Knife Man: The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery, by Wendy Moore
“The genius of space and time”, the best books of the 2005 Einstein Year
“Time lords”, Transformations, by Mike Ashley
“Time, space and problem hair”, exhibition: Albert Einstein: Man of the Century, The Jewish Museum, London
2006
“A glass of wine and a bullet to bite”, The Worst of Evils: The Fight Against Pain, by Thomas Dormandy
“Change or die”, Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning, by George Monbiot
“Gravity eclipsed”, Einstein’s Jury: The race to test relativity, by Jeffrey Crelinsten
“Intriguing yet uneasy amalgam into ‘the greatest of all human adventures’ “, The Beginner’s Guide To Winning The Nobel Prize, by Peter Doherty
“Life for this cloning pioneer won’t be the same again”, After Dolly, by Ian Wilmut and Roger Highfield
“Our sneezing, wheezing plague”, Allergy: The History of a Modern Malady by Mark Jackson (Reaktion)
“The fire in Lonesome George’s loins”, Lonesome George: The Life and Loves of a Conservation Icon, by Henry Nicholls
“The hidden assassin”, One in Three: A Son’s Journey into the History and Science of Cancer, by Adam Wishart
“The ragged-trousered alchemist”, The Devil’s Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science, by Philip Ball
“The secret of life with a pint of bitter”, Francis Crick, by Matt Ridley
“Who cares when the rockets come down?”, Mad, Bad and Dangerous? The Scientist and the Cinema, by Christopher Frayling
Conversations on Consciousness, by Susan Blackmore; The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution, by Elisabeth A Lloyd
Sky in a Bottle, by Peter Pesic
The End of the World: From Revelation to Eco-Disaster, by S Pearson; The Gecko’s Foot: How Scientists Are Taking a Leaf From Nature’s Book, by P Forbes
The Evolution-Creation Struggle, by Michael Ruse; Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life, by Nick Lane
The Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations, by Bynum & Porter; The Google Story, by David Vise
What We Believe But Cannot Prove, ed by John Brockman; Space Race: The Battle to Rule the Heavens, by Deborah Cadbury
2007
“A plague on all our houses”, Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped Our History, by Dorothy Crawford
“Ambassadors of the soul”, The Eye: A Natural History, by Simon Ings; Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture, by Stuart Clark
“Beep beep beep”, Red Moon Rising, by Matthew Brzezinski; Iron Curtain, by Patrick Wright
“Culture clash”, Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism, by Erhard Bahr
“Masters of rock”, Supercontinent: Ten Billion Years in the Life of Our Planet, by Ted Nield
“Reluctant polymath”, The Last Man Who Knew Everything by Andrew Robinson
“The man beneath the electrified halo of hair”, Einstein: His Life and Universe, by Walter Isaacson
“You can understand quantum mechanics!”, The Universe: A Biography, by John Gribbin
Adam Smith and the Pursuit of Perfect Liberty, by James Buchan; Sky in a Bottle, by Peter Pesic
Book of a Lifetime – Franz Kafka’s “Josephine the Singer”
Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, by William Bryant Logan; Earthquakes in Human History, by de Boer & Sanders
Field Notes from a Catastrophe, by Elizabeth Kolbert; Climate Change, ed by JFC DiMento and P Doughman
Garden Natural History, by Stefan Buczacki; Rise and Shine: Sunlight, Technology and Health, by Simon Carter
Hollow Earth, by David Standish; The Mercurial Emperor, by Peter Marshall
Homo Britannicus, by Chris Stringer; The Man Who Ran the Moon, by Piers Bizony
JD Bernal, by Andrew Brown; A World Without Time, by Palle Yourgrau
Letters to a Young Mathematician, by I Stewart; In Search of Memory, by E Kandel
Nature’s Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick, by Jenny Uglow; iWoz, by Steve Wozniak
Plows, Plagues and Petroleum, by W F Ruddiman; City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish, by Peter Parsons
Seven Tenths, by James Hamilton-Paterson; Seed to Seed, by Nicholas Harberd
Spying on the Bomb, by Jeffrey T Richelson; Battlefield: Decisive Conflicts in History, ed by Richard Holmes
Suffer and Survive: The Extreme Life of J. S Haldane, by Martin Goodman
The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings, by L Kalof; In the Shadow of the Bomb: Oppenheimer, Bethe, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist, by SS Schweber
The Grand Contraption, by David Park; The Cosmos: A Beginner’s Guide, by A Hart-Davis and P Bader
The History of Science Fiction, by Adam Roberts; When Computers Were Human, by David Alan Grier
The Last Generation: How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change, by Fred Pearce; Water Under Threat, by Larbi Bouguerra
The Life and Death of Planet Earth, by Ward & Brownlee; What Is Your Dangerous Idea?, ed by John Brockman
The March of Unreason: Science, Democracy, and the New Fundamentalism, by Dick Taverne; In the Heart of the Amazon Forest, by Walter Henry Bates
The Portable Atheist, ed by Christopher Hitchens; Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm since Hippocrates, by D. Wootton
The Revenge of Gaia, by James Lovelock; Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History, by Stephen Jay Gould
Under the Sea-Wind, by Rachel Carson; The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, by EO Wilson
What Makes Us Human?, ed by Charles Pasternak; Taking the Proverbial, by Geoff Rolls
What’s Science Ever Done for Us?, by Paul Halpern; Zeppelin! Germany and the Airship, 1900-1939, by G. de Syon
2008
“Bombs away”, A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry, by N Hodge & S Weinberger
“Look and learn”, Proust and the Squid, by Maryanne Wolf
“Murder, he wrote”, The Father of Forensics, by Colin Evans
“Shish-kebab with a spud”, Chambers Dictionary of Science and Technology
“Skeletal Support”, The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought, by Robert J. Richards
142 Strand: A Radical Address in Victorian London, by R Ashton; Sex & the Psyche: The Truth About Our Most Secret Fantasies, by B Kahr
A Philosophy of Fear, by Lars Svendsen
Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race, by Richard Rhodes
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Sex and Science, by M Roach; Skin: A Natural History, by N Jablonski
China: A-Z, by Kai Strittmatter; Modern China: A Very Short Introduction, by Rana Mitter
Citrus: A History, by Pierre Laszlo
Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity, by Virginia Smith
Cosmos: An Illustrated History of Astronomy and Cosmology, by J North
Crow Country: A Meditation on Birds, Landscape & Nature, by M Cocker
Field Guide to the Natural World of New York City, by L Day; A Perfect Mess, by E Abrahamson & D Freedman
Films of Fact: A History of Science in Documentary Films and Television, by Timothy Boon
Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea, by C Garwood; Notebooks, by Leonardo da Vinci
H.G. Wells, Modernity and the Movies, by K Williams; Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, and the End of the World, by S Perkowitz
Interventions, by Noam Chomsky
Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor, by Hervé This
Off the Page, ed by Carole Burns; China: Empire of Living Symbols, by C Lindqvist
On Brick Lane, by Rachel Lichtenstein
Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, by L Brown; The Music of Life, by Denis Noble
Reading Comics : How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean, by Douglas Wolk
Star Trek, by Ina Rae Hark
The American Dream, by Harmon Leon
The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb; Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities, by J Rosenthal
The Canon: The beautiful basics of science, by Natalie Angier
The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth’s History, by D Beerling
The Essential Einstein: His Greatest Works, ed by Stephen Hawking
The Firecracker Boys, by Dan O’Neill; The Transition Handbook, by Rob Hopkins
The Great Railway Bazaar, by Paul Theroux; The Archimedes Codex, by R Netz and W Noel
The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West and the Fight Against Aids, by H Epstein; Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Revolutionary Structure, by A Gordon
The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution, by D Harkness
The Mountains of California, by John Muir
The Spaces of the Modern City, ed by G Prakash & K Kruse; Consumed, by B Barber
The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life, by Richard Sennett
To Follow the Water: Exploring the Sea to Discover Climate, by D Murphy
Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age, by A Goldgar
Utopian Dreams, by Tobias Jones; After Atheism, by Mark Vernon
When Languages Die, by K David Harrison
When Life Nearly Died, by M J Benton; Mind, Life and Universe, ed by L Margulis & E Punset
Why the Sky is Blue: Discovering the Color of Life, by Götz Hoeppe
Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees, by R Deakin; The Meaning of Life, by Terry Eagleton
2009
“Two legs good, four legs better, six legs brilliant”: Pavlov’s Dogs and Schrödinger’s Cat, by Rom Harré; The Lives of Ants, by Laurent Keller & É Gordon; Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War, by Jeffrey A Lockwood
"W, X and O: The Wonder of Woolworth": The Skyscraper & the City, by G Fenske; Invented Edens, by R Kargon & A Molella; Another City, by D Upton
American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and M Sherwin
Architectures of the Near Future, ed Nic Clear
Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre
Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, Ed by J Prucher
Delirious New Orleans, by Stephen Verderber
Designing the Seaside: Architecture, Society and Nature, by Fred Gray
European Cities and Towns: 400-2000, by Peter Clark
Forgotten Fruits: The Stories behind Britain's Traditional Fruit & Vegetables, by C Stocks
Gang Leader for a Day, by Sudhir Venkatesh
Hatfield’s Herbal: The Curious Stories of Britain’s Wild Plants, by Gabrielle Hatfield
Leviathan or, The Whale, by Philip Hoare
Militant Modernism, by Owen Hatherley
Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity, by Marc Augé
Obelisk: A History, by Brian A Curran, A Grafton, P O Long & B Weiss
Photography and Literature, by François Brunet
Rebooting Britain: Tax people back into the cities, by PD Smith
Seasons of Life, by R Foster & L Kreitzman
Space, Time and Architecture, by Sigfried Giedion
State of the World 2009, ed by Linda Starke
Terminator and Philosophy: I'll Be Back, Therefore I Am Edited, by W Irwin et al
The Big Necessity, by Rose George
The BLDGBLOG Book, by Geoff Manaugh
The British Cinema Book, Ed by Robert Murphy
The Ethical Travel Guide, by Polly Pattullo
The Grid Book, by Hannah Higgins
The Hamburger, by Josh Ozersky
The Kingdom of Infinite Space, by Ray Tallis
The Oxford Companion to the Photograph, ed by Robin Lenman
The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess, by Andrei Codrescu
The Telephone Gambit, by Seth Shulman
Venice is a Fish, by Tiziano Scarpa
Where the Stress Falls, by Susan Sontag
Your Inner Fish, by Neil Shubin
2010
"Boulevards of Dreams": Restless Cities, by Matthew Beaumont & Gregory Dart
2001: A Space Odyssey, by Peter Krämer
Alternative Medicine?, by Roberta Bivins
America, by Jean Baudrillard
Amsterdam, ed by H Reyes & V Schiferli
An Orchard Invisible, by J Silvertown
Au Revoir to All That, by Michael Steinberger
Charles Darwin: Evolutionary Writings, ed by J Secord
Climate Refugees, by Collectif Argos
Collider: The Search for the World's Smallest Particles, by Paul Halpern
Colossus, ed by B Jack Copeland
Damascus: Taste of a City, by R Schami & M Fadel
Dancing in the Dark, by Morris Dickstein
Darwin's Sacred Cause, by A Desmond & J Moore
Dubai: Gilded Cage, by Syed Ali
Eadweard Muybridge, by Marta Braun
Einstein and Oppenheimer, by Silvan Schweber
Food Politics, by Robert Paarlberg
Fresh: A Perishable History, by S Freidberg
Have You Seen..?, by David Thomson
In Defence of the Enlightenment, by T Todorov
Justice, by Michael Sandel
Map Addict, by Mike Parker
Mind the Gap, by Ferdinand Mount
Newton & the Counterfeiter, by Thomas Levenson
On London, by Charles Dickens
On Rumours, by Cass Sunstein
Portrait of the Gulf Stream, by E Orsenna
Sand: A Journey Through Science & the Imagination, by M Welland
Seeing Further: The Story of Science & the Royal Society, ed by Bill Bryson
The Art Instinct, by Denis Dutton
The Best Technology Writing 2010, ed by Julian Dibbell
The Case for Books, by Robert Darnton
The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life, by P Seabright
The Decisive Moment, by Jonah Lehrer
The Parthenon, by Mary Beard
The Protestor's Handbook, by Bibi van der Zee
The Secret State, by Peter Hennessy
The Situationists & the City, ed by Tom McDonough
The Spirit Level, by R Wilkinson & K Pickett
Thousand Mile Song, by David Rothenberg
Titian: The Last Days, by Mark Hudson
Tormented Hope: 9 Hypochondriac Lives, by B Dillon
Travels: Collected Writings, by Paul Bowles
Two Billion Cars, by D Sperling & D Gordon
Venice, ed by Heather Reyes
When the Lights Went Out: What Really Happened to Britain in the 70s, by A Beckett
2011
"Big Smokes", Encyclopedia of Urban Studies, ed by Ray Hutchison
"Enchanted Ground", Vauxhall Gardens: A History, by David Coke and Alan Borg
"Survival of the Swiftest", Aerotropolis, by J. Kasarda & G. Lindsay; The New North, by L. Smith
23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism, by H-J Chang
A Book of Migrations, by Rebecca Solnit
A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, by O Hatherley
A Little Book of Language, by David Crystal
A Reader on Reading, by Alberto Manguel
Ai Weiwei's Blog: Writings, Interviews & Digital Rants, 2006-2009, by Ai Weiwei
Ancient Worlds: The Search for the Origins of Western Civilization, by R Miles
Aristocracy, by William Doyle
Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writer's Life, by Michael Greenberg
City Boy, by Edmund White
Cuisine & Culture: A History of Food & People, by Linda Civitello
Cured, Fermented and Smoked Foods, ed by Helen Saberi
Dinosaur in a Haystack, by Stephen Jay Gould
Fragments from 'The Life of Luxury', by Archestratus
Genius: A Very Short Introduction, by Andrew Robinson
Ghetto at the Center of the World, by Gordon Mathews
Guy Debord: Revolution in the Service of Poetry, by Vincent Kaufmann
Hermit in Paris, by Italo Calvino
How Many Friends Does One Person Need?, by Robin Dunbar
Invented Knowledge, by Ronald H Fritze
Koestler, by Michael Scammell
Literature and Science, by Charlotte Sleigh
Mao’s Great Famine, by Frank Dikötter
Massive: The Hunt for the God Particle, by Ian Sample
MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service, by K Jeffery
Murder City, by Charles Bowden
My Father's Fortune, by Michael Frayn
Naked City: The Death & Life of Authentic Urban Places, by Sharon Zukin
New York, ed by Heather Reyes
On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears, by S Asthma
Our Hero: Superman on Earth, by Tom De Haven
Pashas, by James Mather
Perfect Rigour, by Masha Gessen
Reveries of the Solitary Walker, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Science Fiction, by David Seed
Sentient City, ed by Mark Shephard
St Pancras Station, by Simon Bradley
Strong Opinions, by Vladimir Nabokov
The Arsenic Century, by J Whorton
The Fish on Your Plate, by Paul Greenberg
The Invention of Paris, by Eric Hazan
The Last Lingua Franca: The Rise & Fall of the World's Languages, by N Ostler
The Making of London, by Sebastian Groes
The Man Who Recorded the World, by John Szwed
The Ocean at Home, by Bernd Brunner
The Social Life of Coffee, by Brian Cowan
The Trouble with City Planning, by K Ford
The Ultimate Book of Gangster Movies, by G Anastasia & G Macnow
The Wagon and Other Stories from the City, by Martin Preib
Wine: A Cultural History, by John Varriano
2012
"Cynics and Monsters", Communion Town: A City in Ten Chapters, by Sam Thompson
A Planet of Viruses, by Carl Zimmer
About Time, by Adam Frank
Atomic Obsession, by John Mueller
Blade Runner, by Scott Bukatman
British Crime Film, by Barry Forshaw
Build Your Own Time Machine: The Real Science of Time Travel, by Brian Clegg
City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire, by Roger Crowley
Dada in Paris, by Michel Sanouillet
Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, by B Forshaw
Evocative Objects, ed by Sherry Turkle
Geek Nation, by Angela Saini
Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age, by Kurt W Beyer
London Peculiar and Other Nonfiction, by Michael Moorcock
Losing the Head of Philip K Dick, by D Dufty
Lost World, England 1933-1936, by Dorothy Hartley
Manuscripts Don't Burn: Mikhail Bulgakov – A Life in Letters & Diaries, by JAE Curtis
Mediterranean Seafood, by Alan Davidson
My Inventions and Other Writings, by Nikola Tesla
Olympia, by Taylor Downing
Paris, by Julian Green
Philosophy and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, ed by Nicholas Joll
Philosophy Bites, by D Edmonds and N Warburton
Physics of the Future, by Michio Kaku
Poetry and the Police, by Robert Darnton
Science on Stage, by Kirsten Shepherd-Barr
Self-Portrait, by Man Ray
St Petersburg, ed by Heather Reyes
Stieg and Me: Memories of My Life with Stieg Larsson, by Eva Gabrielsson
Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile, by Taras Grescoe
Taxi Driver, by Amy Taubin
The Art of Immersion, by Frank Rose
The Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch
The English Lakes: A History, by Ian Thompson
The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon, by Leo Braudy
The London Square: Gardens in the Midst of Town, by T. Longstaffe-Gowan
The London Square: Gardens in the Midst of Town, by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan
The Planet in a Pebble, by Jan Zalasiewicz
The Puzzle of Left-handedness, by Rik Smits
The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, by D Yergin
The Rise of Nuclear Fear, by Spencer R Weart
The Scramble for China, by Robert Bickers
The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, by Andrew Feinstein
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas S Kuhn
ThermoPoetics, by Barri J Gold
Tripe, by Marjory Houlihan
Triumph of the City, by Edward Glaeser
What a Plant Knows, by Daniel Chamovitz
When London Was the Capital of America, by Julie Flavell
2013
100 Science Fiction Films, by Barry Keith Grant
A Brief History of Nakedness, by Philip Carr-Gomm
Collection of Sand, by Italo Calvino
Constantinople, by Edmondo De Amicis
Deception: Spies, Lies & How Russia Dupes the West, by Edward Lucas
Dreaming in French, by Alice Kaplan
Fear and Art in the Contemporary World, by Caterina Albano
Fear of Food: A History of Why We Worry About What We Eat by H Levenstein
Garlic, Mint & Sweet Basil: Essays on Marseilles, Mediterranean Cuisine & Noir Fiction, by J-C Izzo
Gustav Mahler, by Jens Malte Fischer
Habitats: Private Lives in the Big City, by Constance Rosenblum
Holiday Reading: Non-fiction suggestions for the summer
Invisible Romans, by Robert Knapp
Istanbul, ed by Heather Reyes
Kafka: The Decisive Years, by Reiner Stach
London's Shadows: The Dark Side of the Victorian City, by D Gray
London: From Punk to Blair, ed by J Kerr
Masters of Sex, by Thomas Maier
Ninja: 1,000 Years of the Shadow Warriors, by John Man
No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems, by Liu Xiaobo
Pan's Labyrinth, by Mar Diestro-Dópido
Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed, by Jim Al-Khalili
Reading and the Reader, by Philip Davis
Some Remarks, by Neal Stephenson
Still Life: Klipfisk, Cloudberries and Life After Kids, by Elisabeth Luard
Streetlife: The Untold Story of Europe's 20th Century, by L Jerram
The Best American Science & Nature Writing 2013, ed by S Mukherjee
The Best Science Writing Online, ed by Zivkovic and Ouellette
The Crime Fiction Handbook, by Peter Messent
The English Breakfast, by Kaori O'Connor
The Honoured Society: My Journey to the Heart of the Mafia, by P Reski
The Infinity Puzzle, by Frank Close
The Joy of Secularism, ed by George Levine
The New York Nobody Knows, by William Helmreich
The Private Eye: Detectives in the Movies, by Bran Nicol
The Sea: A Cultural History, by John Mack
The Shining, by Roger Luckhurst
Thirst: Water and Power in the Ancient World, by Steven Mithen
Traces Remain, by Charles Nicholl
Travels in the Reich, 1933-1945, ed by O Lubrich
Understanding a Photograph, by John Berger, ed G Dyer
Vegetables: A Biography, by Evelyne Bloch-Dano
Watermark: An Essay on Venice, by Joseph Brodsky
When the Lights Went Out: A History of Blackouts in America, by David Nye
Why Does the World Exist? One Man's Quest for the Big Answer, by Jim Holt
World Film Locations: San Francisco, ed by Scott Harris
2014
Akira Kurosawa, by Peter Wild
Anime: A History, by Jonathan Clements
Carl Jung, by Paul Bishop
China's Silent Army, by Juan P Cardenal & Heriberto Araújo
Collected Prose, by Paul Auster
Discord: The Story of Noise, by Mike Goldsmith
Earth vs. the Sci-Fi Filmmakers, by Tom Weaver
Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers who Turned the Tide in the Second World War, by P Kennedy
Englishness: Politics & Culture, 1880-1920, ed by R Colls & P Dodd
Euro Noir, by Barry Forshaw
Film After Film: Or, What Became of 21st Century Cinema?, by J Hoberman
Good-bye to All That, by Robert Graves
Greater London: The Story of the Suburbs, by Nick Barratt
Horace and Me: Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet, by H Eyres
James Ellroy: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction, by Jim Mancall
Lost Antarctica: Adventures in a Disappearing Land, by James McClintock
Narcoland: The Mexican Drugs Lords & their Godfathers, by Anabel Hernández
Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition, by Czesław Miłosz
Philosophy Bites Back, by David Edmonds, Nigel Warburton
Sherlock Holmes, ed by Tom Ue & J Cranfield
Song of the Vikings: Snorri & the Making of Norse Myths, by N Brown
Subliminal: The New Unconscious and What It Teaches Us, by L Mlodinow
The Appian Way, by Robert Kaster
The Danube: A Journey Upriver from the Black Sea to the Black Forest, by N Thorpe
The Downfall of Money: Germany's Hyperinflation & the Destruction of the Middle Class, by F Taylor
The Food History Reader, ed by Ken Albala
The Garden of Eros, by John Calder
The Getaway Car: A Donald E Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany, ed by Levi Stahl
The History of the Kiss! The Birth of Popular Culture, by M Danesi
The Huguenots, by Geoffrey Treasure
The Measure of Manhattan, by Marguerite Holloway
Two Girls, One on Each Knee: The Puzzling, Playful World of the Crossword, by A Connor
Writing a First Novel: Reflections on the Journey, by Karen Stevens
2015
A Message from Martha, by Mark Avery
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, by Chris Hadfield
B Is for Bauhaus: An A-Z of the Modern World, by Deyan Sudjic
Dirty Old London: The Victorian Fight Against Filth, by Lee Jackson
Discontent and Its Civilizations by Mohsin Hamid
Easy Riders, Rolling Stones, by John Scanlan
Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime, by Val McDermid
Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born, by M Parker
Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design, by Charles Montgomery
Havel: A Life by Michael Žantovský
Imagining New York City: Literature, Urbanism and the Visual Arts, 1890-1940, by C Lindner
James Bond and Popular Culture, ed by Michele Brittany
Kafka: The Years of Insight, by Reiner Stach
London Fog, by Christine Corton
Neil Gaiman in the 21st Century, ed by T Prescott
No Man’s Land: Writings from a World at War, ed by P Ayrton
Owning the Earth: The Transforming History of Land Ownership, by A Linklater
Pauperland: Poverty and the Poor in Britain, by Jeremy Seabrook
Ring of Steel, by Alexander Watson
Rush Hour: How 500 million commuters survive the daily journey to work, by Iain Gately
Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found, by Frances Larson
Shakespeare in London, by H Crawforth et al
Shopgirls: The True Story of Life Behind the Counter, by P Cox & A Hobley
The Dark Net, by Jamie Bartlett
The Emperor Far Away: Travels at the Edge of China, by David Eimer
The Flâneur, by Edmund White
The Gardens of the British Working Class, by Margaret Willes
The Land Where Lemons Grow, by Helena Attlee
The Making of Home, by Judith Flanders
The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited, by Louisa Lim
They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper, by Bruce Robinson
Universal Man: The Seven Lives of John Maynard Keynes, by R Davenport-Hines
William S Burroughs: A Life, by Barry Miles
2016
A Burglar’s Guide to the City, by Geoff Manaugh
A Prehistory of the Cloud, by Tung-Hui Hu
Adventures in Human Being, by Gavin Francis
Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive, by Mark Winston
Black Flags: The Rise of Isis, by Joby Warrick
Common Ground, by Rob Cowen
Criminal, by Tom Gash
Falcon, by Helen Macdonald
Food Worth Fighting For, by Josh Sutton
Gut, by Giulia Enders
It’s All in Your Head, by Suzanne O’Sullivan
Joy Ride: Lives of the Theatricals, by John Lahr
Letters to Véra, by Vladimir Nabokov
Planet of the Bugs, by Scott Richard Shaw
The Art of the Publisher, by Roberto Calasso
The Book of Human Emotions, by Tiffany Watt Smith
The Crime and the Silence, by Anna Bikont
The Railways: Nation, Network and People, by Simon Bradley
The Year of Living Danishly, by Helen Russell
Vanessa Bell, by Frances Spalding
What Are You Looking At?, by Will Gompertz
When I Was Old, by Georges Simenon
William and Dorothy Wordsworth: ‘All in Each Other’, by Lucy Newlyn
Written Lives, by Javier Marías
2017
A Natural History of the Hedgerow, by John Wright
Against the Double Blackmail, by Slavoj Žižek
American Noir, by Barry Forshaw
Black Hole Blues, by Janna Levin
Britain’s Europe, by Brendan Simms
Einstein’s Greatest Mistake, by David Bodanis
Footnotes: How Running Makes Us Human, by Vybarr Cregan-Reid
Isis: A History, by Fawaz A Gerges
Lenin on the Train, by Catherine Merridale
Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman by Minoo Dinshaw
Outskirts, by John Grindrod
Passchendaele: A New History, by Nick Lloyd
Rubbish Theory: The Creation and Destruction of Value, by Michael Thompson
Snowball in a Blizzard, by Steven Hatch
The Age of Genius, by AC Grayling
The Autonomous City, by Alexander Vasudevan
The Bestseller Code, by J Archer and M Jockers
The Bible for Grown-Ups, by Simon Loveday
The Chibok Girls, by Helon Habila
The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben
The Mushroom at the End of the World, by Anna Tsing
The Red Parts, by Maggie Nelson
The Running Hare, by John Lewis-Stempel
The Way We Die Now, by Seamus O’Mahony
The Zoo: The Wild & Wonderful Tale of the Founding of London Zoo, by I Charman
Think Like an Anthropologist, by Matthew Engelke
This Long Pursuit, by Richard Holmes
Ultimate Questions, by Bryan Magee
Weapons of Math Destruction, by Cathy O’Neil
What Is Populism?, by Jan-Werner Müller
Where Poppies Blow, by John Lewis-Stempel
Winchester in the spotlight: the city where Jane Austen died 200 years ago
2018
A Certain Idea of France, by Julian Jackson
A Monk’s Guide to a Clean House and Mind, by Shoukei Matsumoto
A Philosophy of Dirt, by Olli Lagerspetz
A Tokyo Romance, by Ian Buruma
All That Remains, by Sue Black
All the Pieces Matter, by Jonathan Abrams
Another Kyoto, by Alex Kerr & Kathy A Sokol
Applied Ballardianism, by Simon Sellars
Being Ecological, by Timothy Morton
Elisabeth’s Lists, by Lulah Ellender
Enemies and Neighbours, by Ian Black
Ground Work, edited by Tim Dee
Hesse, by Gunnar Decker
In the Restaurant, by Christoph Ribbat
Inglorious Empire, by Shashi Tharoor
Inside the Mind of Marine Le Pen, by Michel Eltchaninoff
Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel, by John Stubbs
King Arthur, by Nicholas J Higham
Landfill, by Tim Dee
Letters to Change the World, ed by Travis Elborough
Life in the Garden, by Penelope Lively
Love Songs: The Hidden History, by Ted Gioia
Medieval Bodies, by Jack Hartnell
Midlife, by Kieran Setiya
Night Trains, by Andrew Martin
Owl Sense, by Miriam Darlington
Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain’s Underclass, by D McGarvey
Primate Change, by Vybarr Cregan-Reid
Room to Dream, by Kristine McKenna & David Lynch
Sleep Demons, by Bill Hayes
The Case Against Sugar, by Gary Taubes
The Cow Book, by John Connell
The Dawn of Christianity, by Robert Knapp
The Diary of a Bookseller, by Shaun Bythell
The Ends of the World, by Peter Brannen
The Epic City, by Kushanava Choudhury
The Future of War, by Lawrence Freedman
The Glorious Art of Peace, by John Gittings
The Life and Death of Sherlock Holmes, by Mattias Boström
The Lost Boys, by Gina Perry
The Pixels of Paul Cézanne, by Wim Wenders
The Ravenmaster, by Christopher Skaife
The Real Lolita, by Sarah Weinman
The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain, by Ian Mortimer
The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein, ed by Ze’ev Rosenkranz
The Wood, by John Lewis-Stempel
The Written World, by Martin Puchner
This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor, by Adam Kay
2019
A Half Baked Idea by Olivia Potts
A Line in the River by Jamal Mahjoub
A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar
A Savage Dreamland: Journeys in Burma by David Eimer
An Economic History of the English Garden by Roderick Floud
Around the World in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh
Babel by Gaston Dorren
Blue Mythologies by Carol Mavor
Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
Europe: The First 100 Million Years by Tim Flannery
Excellent Essex by Gillian Darley
Hired by James Bloodworth
Last Train to Hilversum by Charlie Connelly
Lights in the Distance by Daniel Trilling
Milk by Mark Kurlansky
My Country by Kassem Eid
Notes from a Public Typewriter by Michael Gustafson
Now You’re Talking by Trevor Cox
Orchid Summer by Jon Dunn
Outpost by Dan Richards
Radical Help by Hilary Cottam
Sex, Lies & Brain Scans by Barbara J Sahakian and Julia Gottwald
Ships of Heaven by Christopher Somerville
The Cut Out Girl by Bart van Es
The Fate of Rome by Kyle Harper
The Garden Jungle by Dave Goulson
The Grassling by Elizabeth-Jane Burnett
The Happiness Curve by Jonathan Rauch
The Ingenious Language by Andrea Marcolongo
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
The Scoundrel Harry Larkyns by Rebecca Gowers
The Space Oracle by Ken Hollings
The Summer Isles by Philip Marsden
Travels with a Writing Brush edited by Meredith McKinney
Trick or Treat by Lisa Morton
Unnatural Causes by Richard Shepherd
What Dementia Teaches Us about Love by Nicci Gerrard
When the Dogs Don’t Bark by Angela Gallop
Where Shall We Run to? by Alan Garner
Who Owns England? by Guy Shrubsole
Why Cities Look the Way They Do by Richard J Williams
With the End in Mind by Kathryn Mannix
Yellow: The History of a Colour by Michel Pastoureau
2020
A Tomb With a View, by Peter Ross
Amour, by Stefania Rousselle
Around the World in 80 Trees, by Jonathan Drori
British Summer Time Begins, by Ysenda Maxtone Graham
Emperors of the Deep, by William McKeever
Figuring, by Maria Popova
Good Husbandry, by Kristin Kimball
His Imperial Majesty, by Matthew Oates
How to Fail, by Elizabeth Day
Lives of Houses, edited by Kate Kennedy and Hermione Lee
Nala’s World, by Dean Nicholson
Relative values: The private and public lives of Albert Einstein
Rewild Yourself, by Simon Barnes
Secondhand, by Adam Minter
The Address Book, by Deirdre Mask
The Impossible Climb, by Mark Synnott
The SS Officer's Armchair, by Daniel Lee
The Volunteer, by Jack Fairweather
The Way We Eat Now, by Bee Wilson
The Well Gardened Mind, by Sue Stuart-Smith
Water Ways, by Jasper Winn
2021
Ancestors, by Alice Roberts
Birding Without Borders, by Noah Strycker
Birdsong in a Time of Silence, by Steven Lovatt
Bloody Brilliant People, by Cathy Newman
Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town, by Lamorna Ash
Expert: Understanding the Path to Mastery, by Roger Kneebone
Exponential, by Azeem Azhar
Feline Philosophy, by John Gray
Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
How to Love Animals, by Henry Mance
Life’s Edge, by Carl Zimmer
On the Fringe, by Michael D Gordin
On Time and Water, by Andri Snær Magnason
Palace of Palms: Tropical Dreams and the Making of Kew by Kate Teltscher
Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes, by Claire Wilcox
Salmon, by Mark Kurlansky
The Emperor’s Feast, by Jonathan Clements
The Gospel of the Eels, by Patrik Svensson
The Handshake, by Ella Al-Shamahi
The Louvre, by James Gardner
The War of Nerves, by Martin Sixsmith
Wanderers: A History of Women Walking, by Kerri Andrews
When the Sahara Was Green, by Martin Williams
Why Rebel, by Jay Griffiths
Work, by James Suzman
2022
A Brief History of Motion, by Tom Standage
Autobiography, by Margiad Evans
Body Am I, by Moheb Costandi
Cloven Country, by Jeremy Harte
Delicious, by Rob Dunn and Monica Sanchez
Edge of England, by Derek Turner
Essex Girls, by Sarah Perry
Hogarth, by Jacqueline Riding
Migrant City, by Panikos Panayi
Mine!, by Michael Heller and James Salzman
Notes on the Death of Culture, by Mario Vargas Llosa
Penguin Classics Marvel Collection, ed by Ben Saunders
Planta Sapiens, by Paco Calvo
Reality+, by David J Chalmers
Sacred Nature, by Karen Armstrong
Shadowlands, by Matthew Green
Slime, by Susanne Wedlich
Sybil & Cyril, by Jenny Uglow
The Digital Silk Road, by Jonathan E. Hillman
The Genetic Lottery, by Kathryn Paige Harden
The Library, by Andrew Pettegree & Arthur der Weduwen
The Lost Café Schindler, by Meriel Schindler
The Matter of Everything, by Suzie Sheehy
The Ruin of all Witches, by Malcolm Gaskill
The Story of Yoga, by Alistair Shearer
The Women Who Saved the English Countryside, by Matthew Kelly
The Wood Age, by Roland Ennos
Things I have Withheld, by Kei Miller
Time on Rock, by Anna Fleming
We Own this City, by Justin Fenton
What We're Reading
Why Women Read Fiction, by Helen Taylor
Writing from Ukraine, by Mark Andryczyk (editor)
2023
Aesop’s Animals, by Jo Wimpenny
Africa is Not a Country, by Dipo Faloyin
Back in the Day, by Melvyn Bragg
Eating to Extinction, by Dan Saladino
Eve Bites Back, by Anna Beer
Fire and Flood, by Eugene Linden
Games People Played: A Global History of Sport, by Wray Vamplew
Haywire, by Craig Brown
If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal, by Justin Gregg
Murder in a Heatwave, ed by Cecily Gayford
Otherlands, by Thomas Halliday
Painted People, by Matt Lodder
Sleepless, by Marie Darrieussecq
Takeaway: Stories From a Childhood Behind the Counter, by Angela Hui
The Fire, by Daniela Krien
The Flow, by Amy-Jane Beer
The Hindu Bard, ed by M Gupta and A Whitehead
The Lion House, by Christopher de Bellaigue
The Plague, by Jacqueline Rose
The Poisonous Solicitor, by Stephen Bates
The world in 2050, Hamish McRae
This Book is a Plant, Wellcome Collection
What we’re reading: the Martin Beck novels
Articles & Reviews
“A glass of wine and a bullet to bite”, The Worst of Evils: The Fight Against Pain, by Thomas Dormandy
“A plague on all our houses”, Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped Our History, by Dorothy Crawford
“Ambassadors of the soul”, The Eye: A Natural History, by Simon Ings; Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture, by Stuart Clark
“An impossible journey?”, Rosa, by Thomas Harlan
“Back at the lab”, Fabulous Science: Fact and Fiction in the History of Scientific Discovery by John Waller; The Eureka! Moment: 100 Key Scientific Discoveries of the 20th Century by Rupert Lee
“Beautiful minds”, It Must Be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science, ed by Graham Farmelo
“Beep beep beep”, Red Moon Rising, by Matthew Brzezinski; Iron Curtain, by Patrick Wright
“Before the flood”, Forty Signs of Rain, by Kim Stanley Robinson
“Best wear a good thick skirt”, Landscape, Nature, & the Body Politic by K Olwig; The Politics of Nature by N Roe; Romanticism & the Materiality of Nature by O Oerlemans; In Nature’s Name, ed B Gates
“Blood ties”, Pointing From the Grave: A True Story of Murder and DNA, by Samantha Weinberg
“Bombs away”, A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry, by N Hodge & S Weinberger
“Cause and ill effect”, Wie Man’s Nimmt, by Norbert Niemann
“Change or die”, Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning, by George Monbiot
“Culture clash”, Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism, by Erhard Bahr
“Darwinism in a flutter”, Of Moths and Men: Intrigue, Tragedy & the Peppered Moth, by Judith Hooper
“Elective Affinity: A Tale of Two Cultures?”
“Eureka!”, Leaps in the Dark: The Making of Scientific Reputations, by John Waller
“Fear factory”, How to Build a Nuclear Bomb and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction, by Frank Barnaby
“Gene pool”, Emma Darwin: The Inspirational Wife of a Genius by Edna Healey and Annie’s Box by Randal Keynes
“Gravity eclipsed”, Einstein’s Jury: The race to test relativity, by Jeffrey Crelinsten
“Heart of the atom”, The Fly in the Cathedral: How a small group of Cambridge scientists won the race to split the atom, by Brian Cathcart
“Here be monsters”, White Devils, by Paul McAuley
“How a child becomes a scientist”, When We Were Kids, ed by John Brockman
“In Abraham’s situation”, Der Grosse Kater, by Thomas Huerlimann
“In the ditch”, Literature and Science, 1660–1834, ed by Judith Hawley
“Intriguing yet uneasy amalgam into ‘the greatest of all human adventures’ “, The Beginner’s Guide To Winning The Nobel Prize, by Peter Doherty
“Keeping Mother Nature in the family”, Chance in the House of Fate: a natural history of heredity, by Jennifer Ackerman
“Lichens and other likenings”, The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, his Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History, by David Freedberg
“Life for this cloning pioneer won’t be the same again”, After Dolly, by Ian Wilmut and Roger Highfield
“Look and learn”, Proust and the Squid, by Maryanne Wolf
“Man behaving (relatively) badly”, Einstein in Love: a scientific romance, by Dennis Overbye
“Masters of rock”, Supercontinent: Ten Billion Years in the Life of Our Planet, by Ted Nield
“Mind map”, Mind Wide Open: One Man’s Journey into the Workings of His Brain, by Steven Johnson
“Murder, he wrote”, The Father of Forensics, by Colin Evans
“Nature’s revenge”, Darwin’s Children by Greg Bear
“Nor am I out of it”, Die Vertreibung aus der Holle, by Robert Menasse
“On reflection …”, Mirror, Mirror: A History of the Human Love Affair with Reflection, by Mark Pendergrast
“Once a dissident . . .”, Erwachsenenspiele: Erinnerungen, by Guenter Kunert
“Our sneezing, wheezing plague”, Allergy: The History of a Modern Malady by Mark Jackson (Reaktion)
“Relativity was not just Einstein’s monster”, Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps, by Peter Galison
“Reluctant polymath”, The Last Man Who Knew Everything by Andrew Robinson
“Saying the world”, Five Portraits: Modernity and the Imagination in Twentieth-Century German Writing, by Michael André Bernstein
“Shish-kebab with a spud”, Chambers Dictionary of Science and Technology
“Skeletal Support”, The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought, by Robert J. Richards
“Tasty tale of the tortoise”, A Sheltered Life: The Unexpected History of the Giant Tortoise, by Paul Chambers
“The cutting edge”, The Knife Man: The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery, by Wendy Moore
“The fire in Lonesome George’s loins”, Lonesome George: The Life and Loves of a Conservation Icon, by Henry Nicholls
“The genius of space and time”, the best books of the 2005 Einstein Year
“The hidden assassin”, One in Three: A Son’s Journey into the History and Science of Cancer, by Adam Wishart
“The man beneath the electrified halo of hair”, Einstein: His Life and Universe, by Walter Isaacson
“The ragged-trousered alchemist”, The Devil’s Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science, by Philip Ball
“The secret of life with a pint of bitter”, Francis Crick, by Matt Ridley
“The shadow of the beast”, Evolution by Stephen Baxter
“The uses of enchantment”, Literature and the Gods, by Roberto Calasso
“The wingbeat of the unknown”, Grammars of Creation, by George Steiner
“Time lords”, Transformations, by Mike Ashley
“Time, space and problem hair”, exhibition: Albert Einstein: Man of the Century, The Jewish Museum, London
“Two legs good, four legs better, six legs brilliant”: Pavlov’s Dogs and Schrödinger’s Cat, by Rom Harré; The Lives of Ants, by Laurent Keller & É Gordon; Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War, by Jeffrey A Lockwood
“Where did it all go right? 2004 will be dominated by the big questions, says PD Smith”
“Who cares when the rockets come down?”, Mad, Bad and Dangerous? The Scientist and the Cinema, by Christopher Frayling
“Why physics can be fun,” Science: A History, 1543-2001, by John Gribbin
“With fame I become more stupid”, The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 7, The Berlin Years: Writings, 1918-1921, ed Michel Janssen, et al
“Wrestling with devils”, Hitler’s Scientists: Science, War and the Devil’s Pact, by John Cornwell
“You can understand quantum mechanics!”, The Universe: A Biography, by John Gribbin
"Big Smokes", Encyclopedia of Urban Studies, ed by Ray Hutchison
"Boulevards of Dreams": Restless Cities, by Matthew Beaumont & Gregory Dart
"Cynics and Monsters", Communion Town: A City in Ten Chapters, by Sam Thompson
"Enchanted Ground", Vauxhall Gardens: A History, by David Coke and Alan Borg
"Fiction of the fatal kind", Agnes, by Peter Stamm. Translated by Michael Hofmann
"Journals: Literature", Publications of the English Goethe Society
"Survival of the Swiftest", Aerotropolis, by J. Kasarda & G. Lindsay; The New North, by L. Smith
"Try as we might, we can't cheat time", Rhythms of Life, by R Foster & L Kreitzman
"W, X and O: The Wonder of Woolworth": The Skyscraper & the City, by G Fenske; Invented Edens, by R Kargon & A Molella; Another City, by D Upton
‘Science and the City: Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz’
100 Science Fiction Films, by Barry Keith Grant
142 Strand: A Radical Address in Victorian London, by R Ashton; Sex & the Psyche: The Truth About Our Most Secret Fantasies, by B Kahr
2001: A Space Odyssey, by Peter Krämer
23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism, by H-J Chang
A Book of Migrations, by Rebecca Solnit
A Brief History of Motion, by Tom Standage
A Brief History of Nakedness, by Philip Carr-Gomm
A Burglar’s Guide to the City, by Geoff Manaugh
A Certain Idea of France, by Julian Jackson
A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, by O Hatherley
A Little Book of Language, by David Crystal
A Message from Martha, by Mark Avery
A Monk’s Guide to a Clean House and Mind, by Shoukei Matsumoto
A Natural History of the Hedgerow, by John Wright
A Philosophy of Dirt, by Olli Lagerspetz
A Philosophy of Fear, by Lars Svendsen
A Planet of Viruses, by Carl Zimmer
A Prehistory of the Cloud, by Tung-Hui Hu
A Reader on Reading, by Alberto Manguel
A Tokyo Romance, by Ian Buruma
A Tomb With a View, by Peter Ross
About Time, by Adam Frank
Adam Smith and the Pursuit of Perfect Liberty, by James Buchan; Sky in a Bottle, by Peter Pesic
Adventures in Human Being, by Gavin Francis
Aesop’s Animals, by Jo Wimpenny
Africa is Not a Country, by Dipo Faloyin
Against the Double Blackmail, by Slavoj Žižek
Ai Weiwei's Blog: Writings, Interviews & Digital Rants, 2006-2009, by Ai Weiwei
Akira Kurosawa, by Peter Wild
All That Remains, by Sue Black
All the Pieces Matter, by Jonathan Abrams
Alternative Medicine?, by Roberta Bivins
America, by Jean Baudrillard
American Noir, by Barry Forshaw
American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and M Sherwin
Amsterdam, ed by H Reyes & V Schiferli
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, by Chris Hadfield
An Orchard Invisible, by J Silvertown
Ancestors, by Alice Roberts
Ancient Worlds: The Search for the Origins of Western Civilization, by R Miles
Anime: A History, by Jonathan Clements
Another Kyoto, by Alex Kerr & Kathy A Sokol
Applied Ballardianism, by Simon Sellars
Architectures of the Near Future, ed Nic Clear
Aristocracy, by William Doyle
Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race, by Richard Rhodes
Atomic Obsession, by John Mueller
Au Revoir to All That, by Michael Steinberger
Autobiography, by Margiad Evans
B Is for Bauhaus: An A-Z of the Modern World, by Deyan Sudjic
Back in the Day, by Melvyn Bragg
Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre
Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive, by Mark Winston
Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writer's Life, by Michael Greenberg
Being Ecological, by Timothy Morton
Birding Without Borders, by Noah Strycker
Birdsong in a Time of Silence, by Steven Lovatt
Black Flags: The Rise of Isis, by Joby Warrick
Black Hole Blues, by Janna Levin
Blade Runner, by Scott Bukatman
Bloody Brilliant People, by Cathy Newman
Body Am I, by Moheb Costandi
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Sex and Science, by M Roach; Skin: A Natural History, by N Jablonski
Book of a Lifetime – Franz Kafka’s “Josephine the Singer”
Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, Ed by J Prucher
Britain’s Europe, by Brendan Simms
British Crime Film, by Barry Forshaw
British Summer Time Begins, by Ysenda Maxtone Graham
Build Your Own Time Machine: The Real Science of Time Travel, by Brian Clegg
Carl Jung, by Paul Bishop
Charles Darwin: Evolutionary Writings, ed by J Secord
China's Silent Army, by Juan P Cardenal & Heriberto Araújo
China: A-Z, by Kai Strittmatter; Modern China: A Very Short Introduction, by Rana Mitter
Citrus: A History, by Pierre Laszlo
City Boy, by Edmund White
City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire, by Roger Crowley
Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity, by Virginia Smith
Climate Refugees, by Collectif Argos
Cloven Country, by Jeremy Harte
Collected Prose, by Paul Auster
Collection of Sand, by Italo Calvino
Collider: The Search for the World's Smallest Particles, by Paul Halpern
Colossus, ed by B Jack Copeland
Common Ground, by Rob Cowen
Constantinople, by Edmondo De Amicis
Conversations on Consciousness, by Susan Blackmore; The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution, by Elisabeth A Lloyd
Cosmos: An Illustrated History of Astronomy and Cosmology, by J North
Criminal, by Tom Gash
Crow Country: A Meditation on Birds, Landscape & Nature, by M Cocker
Cuisine & Culture: A History of Food & People, by Linda Civitello
Cured, Fermented and Smoked Foods, ed by Helen Saberi
Dada in Paris, by Michel Sanouillet
Damascus: Taste of a City, by R Schami & M Fadel
Dancing in the Dark, by Morris Dickstein
Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town, by Lamorna Ash
Darwin's Sacred Cause, by A Desmond & J Moore
Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, by B Forshaw
Deception: Spies, Lies & How Russia Dupes the West, by Edward Lucas
Delicious, by Rob Dunn and Monica Sanchez
Delirious New Orleans, by Stephen Verderber
Designing the Seaside: Architecture, Society and Nature, by Fred Gray
Dinosaur in a Haystack, by Stephen Jay Gould
Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, by William Bryant Logan; Earthquakes in Human History, by de Boer & Sanders
Dirty Old London: The Victorian Fight Against Filth, by Lee Jackson
Discontent and Its Civilizations by Mohsin Hamid
Discord: The Story of Noise, by Mike Goldsmith
Dreaming in French, by Alice Kaplan
Dubai: Gilded Cage, by Syed Ali
Eadweard Muybridge, by Marta Braun
Earth vs. the Sci-Fi Filmmakers, by Tom Weaver
Easy Riders, Rolling Stones, by John Scanlan
Eating to Extinction, by Dan Saladino
Edge of England, by Derek Turner
Einstein and Oppenheimer, by Silvan Schweber
Einstein’s Greatest Mistake, by David Bodanis
Elisabeth’s Lists, by Lulah Ellender
Emperors of the Deep, by William McKeever
Enemies and Neighbours, by Ian Black
Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers who Turned the Tide in the Second World War, by P Kennedy
Englishness: Politics & Culture, 1880-1920, ed by R Colls & P Dodd
Essex Girls, by Sarah Perry
Euro Noir, by Barry Forshaw
European Cities and Towns: 400-2000, by Peter Clark
Eve Bites Back, by Anna Beer
Evocative Objects, ed by Sherry Turkle
Expert: Understanding the Path to Mastery, by Roger Kneebone
Exponential, by Azeem Azhar
Falcon, by Helen Macdonald
Fear and Art in the Contemporary World, by Caterina Albano
Fear of Food: A History of Why We Worry About What We Eat by H Levenstein
Feline Philosophy, by John Gray
Field Guide to the Natural World of New York City, by L Day; A Perfect Mess, by E Abrahamson & D Freedman
Field Notes from a Catastrophe, by Elizabeth Kolbert; Climate Change, ed by JFC DiMento and P Doughman
Film After Film: Or, What Became of 21st Century Cinema?, by J Hoberman
Films of Fact: A History of Science in Documentary Films and Television, by Timothy Boon
Fire and Flood, by Eugene Linden
Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea, by C Garwood; Notebooks, by Leonardo da Vinci
Food Politics, by Robert Paarlberg
Food Worth Fighting For, by Josh Sutton
Footnotes: How Running Makes Us Human, by Vybarr Cregan-Reid
Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime, by Val McDermid
Forgotten Fruits: The Stories behind Britain's Traditional Fruit & Vegetables, by C Stocks
Fragments from 'The Life of Luxury', by Archestratus
Fresh: A Perishable History, by S Freidberg
Games People Played: A Global History of Sport, by Wray Vamplew
Gang Leader for a Day, by Sudhir Venkatesh
Garden Natural History, by Stefan Buczacki; Rise and Shine: Sunlight, Technology and Health, by Simon Carter
Garlic, Mint & Sweet Basil: Essays on Marseilles, Mediterranean Cuisine & Noir Fiction, by J-C Izzo
Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Geek Nation, by Angela Saini
Genius: A Very Short Introduction, by Andrew Robinson
Ghetto at the Center of the World, by Gordon Mathews
Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born, by M Parker
Good-bye to All That, by Robert Graves
Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age, by Kurt W Beyer
Greater London: The Story of the Suburbs, by Nick Barratt
Ground Work, edited by Tim Dee
Gustav Mahler, by Jens Malte Fischer
Gut, by Giulia Enders
Guy Debord: Revolution in the Service of Poetry, by Vincent Kaufmann
H.G. Wells, Modernity and the Movies, by K Williams; Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, and the End of the World, by S Perkowitz
Habitats: Private Lives in the Big City, by Constance Rosenblum
Hampels Fluchten, by Michael Kumpfmuller
Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design, by Charles Montgomery
Hatfield’s Herbal: The Curious Stories of Britain’s Wild Plants, by Gabrielle Hatfield
Have You Seen..?, by David Thomson
Havel: A Life by Michael Žantovský
Haywire, by Craig Brown
Hermit in Paris, by Italo Calvino
Hesse, by Gunnar Decker
His Imperial Majesty, by Matthew Oates
Hogarth, by Jacqueline Riding
Holiday Reading: Non-fiction suggestions for the summer
Hollow Earth, by David Standish; The Mercurial Emperor, by Peter Marshall
Homo Britannicus, by Chris Stringer; The Man Who Ran the Moon, by Piers Bizony
Horace and Me: Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet, by H Eyres
How Many Friends Does One Person Need?, by Robin Dunbar
How to Love Animals, by Henry Mance
If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal, by Justin Gregg
Imagining New York City: Literature, Urbanism and the Visual Arts, 1890-1940, by C Lindner
In Albert’s Shadow: The life and letters of Mileva Maric, Einstein’s first wife, by Milan Popovic
In Defence of the Enlightenment, by T Todorov
In the Restaurant, by Christoph Ribbat
Inglorious Empire, by Shashi Tharoor
Inside the Mind of Marine Le Pen, by Michel Eltchaninoff
Interventions, by Noam Chomsky
Invented Knowledge, by Ronald H Fritze
Invisible Romans, by Robert Knapp
Isis: A History, by Fawaz A Gerges
Istanbul, ed by Heather Reyes
It’s All in Your Head, by Suzanne O’Sullivan
James Bond and Popular Culture, ed by Michele Brittany
James Ellroy: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction, by Jim Mancall
JD Bernal, by Andrew Brown; A World Without Time, by Palle Yourgrau
Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel, by John Stubbs
Joy Ride: Lives of the Theatricals, by John Lahr
Justice, by Michael Sandel
Kafka: The Decisive Years, by Reiner Stach
Kafka: The Years of Insight, by Reiner Stach
King Arthur, by Nicholas J Higham
Koestler, by Michael Scammell
Landfill, by Tim Dee
Lenin on the Train, by Catherine Merridale
Letters to a Young Mathematician, by I Stewart; In Search of Memory, by E Kandel
Letters to Change the World, ed by Travis Elborough
Letters to Véra, by Vladimir Nabokov
Leviathan or, The Whale, by Philip Hoare
Life in the Garden, by Penelope Lively
Life’s Edge, by Carl Zimmer
Literature and Science, by Charlotte Sleigh
London Fog, by Christine Corton
London Peculiar and Other Nonfiction, by Michael Moorcock
London's Shadows: The Dark Side of the Victorian City, by D Gray
London: From Punk to Blair, ed by J Kerr
Losing the Head of Philip K Dick, by D Dufty
Lost Antarctica: Adventures in a Disappearing Land, by James McClintock
Lost World, England 1933-1936, by Dorothy Hartley
Love Songs: The Hidden History, by Ted Gioia
Manuscripts Don't Burn: Mikhail Bulgakov – A Life in Letters & Diaries, by JAE Curtis
Mao’s Great Famine, by Frank Dikötter
Map Addict, by Mike Parker
Massive: The Hunt for the God Particle, by Ian Sample
Masters of Sex, by Thomas Maier
Medieval Bodies, by Jack Hartnell
Mediterranean Seafood, by Alan Davidson
MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service, by K Jeffery
Midlife, by Kieran Setiya
Migrant City, by Panikos Panayi
Militant Modernism, by Owen Hatherley
Mind the Gap, by Ferdinand Mount
Mine!, by Michael Heller and James Salzman
Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor, by Hervé This
Murder City, by Charles Bowden
Murder in a Heatwave, ed by Cecily Gayford
My Father's Fortune, by Michael Frayn
My Inventions and Other Writings, by Nikola Tesla
Naked City: The Death & Life of Authentic Urban Places, by Sharon Zukin
Nala’s World, by Dean Nicholson
Narcoland: The Mexican Drugs Lords & their Godfathers, by Anabel Hernández
Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition, by Czesław Miłosz
Nature’s Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick, by Jenny Uglow; iWoz, by Steve Wozniak
Neil Gaiman in the 21st Century, ed by T Prescott
New York, ed by Heather Reyes
Newton & the Counterfeiter, by Thomas Levenson
Night Trains, by Andrew Martin
Ninja: 1,000 Years of the Shadow Warriors, by John Man
No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems, by Liu Xiaobo
No Man’s Land: Writings from a World at War, ed by P Ayrton
Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity, by Marc Augé
Notes on the Death of Culture, by Mario Vargas Llosa
Obelisk: A History, by Brian A Curran, A Grafton, P O Long & B Weiss
Off the Page, ed by Carole Burns; China: Empire of Living Symbols, by C Lindqvist
Olympia, by Taylor Downing
On Brick Lane, by Rachel Lichtenstein
On London, by Charles Dickens
On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears, by S Asthma
On Rumours, by Cass Sunstein
On the Fringe, by Michael D Gordin
On Time and Water, by Andri Snær Magnason
Otherlands, by Thomas Halliday
Our Hero: Superman on Earth, by Tom De Haven
Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman by Minoo Dinshaw
Outskirts, by John Grindrod
Owl Sense, by Miriam Darlington
Owning the Earth: The Transforming History of Land Ownership, by A Linklater
Painted People, by Matt Lodder
Palace of Palms: Tropical Dreams and the Making of Kew by Kate Teltscher
Pan's Labyrinth, by Mar Diestro-Dópido
Paris, by Julian Green
Pashas, by James Mather
Passchendaele: A New History, by Nick Lloyd
Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes, by Claire Wilcox
Pauperland: Poverty and the Poor in Britain, by Jeremy Seabrook
Penguin Classics Marvel Collection, ed by Ben Saunders
Perfect Rigour, by Masha Gessen
Philosophy and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, ed by Nicholas Joll
Philosophy Bites Back, by David Edmonds, Nigel Warburton
Philosophy Bites, by D Edmonds and N Warburton
Photography and Literature, by François Brunet
Physics of the Future, by Michio Kaku
Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, by L Brown; The Music of Life, by Denis Noble
Planet of the Bugs, by Scott Richard Shaw
Planta Sapiens, by Paco Calvo
Plows, Plagues and Petroleum, by W F Ruddiman; City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish, by Peter Parsons
Poetry and the Police, by Robert Darnton
Portrait of the Gulf Stream, by E Orsenna
Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain’s Underclass, by D McGarvey
Primate Change, by Vybarr Cregan-Reid
Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed, by Jim Al-Khalili
Radical Help by Hilary Cottam
Reading and the Reader, by Philip Davis
Reading Comics : How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean, by Douglas Wolk
Reality+, by David J Chalmers
Rebooting Britain: Tax people back into the cities, by PD Smith
Reveries of the Solitary Walker, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rewild Yourself, by Simon Barnes
Ring of Steel, by Alexander Watson
Room to Dream, by Kristine McKenna & David Lynch
Rubbish Theory: The Creation and Destruction of Value, by Michael Thompson
Rush Hour: How 500 million commuters survive the daily journey to work, by Iain Gately
Sacred Nature, by Karen Armstrong
Salmon, by Mark Kurlansky
Sand: A Journey Through Science & the Imagination, by M Welland
Science Fiction, by David Seed
Science on Stage, by Kirsten Shepherd-Barr
Science, reading, and renaissance literature: The art of making knowledge, by Elizabeth Spiller
Seasons of Life, by R Foster & L Kreitzman
Seeing Further: The Story of Science & the Royal Society, ed by Bill Bryson
Self-Portrait, by Man Ray
Sentient City, ed by Mark Shephard
Seven Tenths, by James Hamilton-Paterson; Seed to Seed, by Nicholas Harberd
Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found, by Frances Larson
Shadowlands, by Matthew Green
Shakespeare in London, by H Crawforth et al
Sherlock Holmes, ed by Tom Ue & J Cranfield
Shopgirls: The True Story of Life Behind the Counter, by P Cox & A Hobley
Sky in a Bottle, by Peter Pesic
Sleep Demons, by Bill Hayes
Sleepless, by Marie Darrieussecq
Slime, by Susanne Wedlich
Snowball in a Blizzard, by Steven Hatch
Some Remarks, by Neal Stephenson
Song of the Vikings: Snorri & the Making of Norse Myths, by N Brown
Space, Time and Architecture, by Sigfried Giedion
Spying on the Bomb, by Jeffrey T Richelson; Battlefield: Decisive Conflicts in History, ed by Richard Holmes
St Pancras Station, by Simon Bradley
St Petersburg, ed by Heather Reyes
Star Trek, by Ina Rae Hark
State of the World 2009, ed by Linda Starke
Stieg and Me: Memories of My Life with Stieg Larsson, by Eva Gabrielsson
Still Life: Klipfisk, Cloudberries and Life After Kids, by Elisabeth Luard
Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile, by Taras Grescoe
Streetlife: The Untold Story of Europe's 20th Century, by L Jerram
Strong Opinions, by Vladimir Nabokov
Subliminal: The New Unconscious and What It Teaches Us, by L Mlodinow
Suffer and Survive: The Extreme Life of J. S Haldane, by Martin Goodman
Sybil & Cyril, by Jenny Uglow
Takeaway: Stories From a Childhood Behind the Counter, by Angela Hui
Taxi Driver, by Amy Taubin
Terminator and Philosophy: I'll Be Back, Therefore I Am Edited, by W Irwin et al
The Age of Genius, by AC Grayling
The American Dream, by Harmon Leon
The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings, by L Kalof; In the Shadow of the Bomb: Oppenheimer, Bethe, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist, by SS Schweber
The Appian Way, by Robert Kaster
The Arsenic Century, by J Whorton
The Art Instinct, by Denis Dutton
The Art of Immersion, by Frank Rose
The Art of the Publisher, by Roberto Calasso
The Autonomous City, by Alexander Vasudevan
The Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch
The Best American Science & Nature Writing 2013, ed by S Mukherjee
The Best Science Writing Online, ed by Zivkovic and Ouellette
The Best Technology Writing 2010, ed by Julian Dibbell
The Bestseller Code, by J Archer and M Jockers
The Bible for Grown-Ups, by Simon Loveday
The Big Necessity, by Rose George
The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb; Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities, by J Rosenthal
The BLDGBLOG Book, by Geoff Manaugh
The Book of Human Emotions, by Tiffany Watt Smith
The British Cinema Book, Ed by Robert Murphy
The Canon: The beautiful basics of science, by Natalie Angier
The Case Against Sugar, by Gary Taubes
The Case for Books, by Robert Darnton
The Chibok Girls, by Helon Habila
The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life, by P Seabright
The Cow Book, by John Connell
The Crime and the Silence, by Anna Bikont
The Crime Fiction Handbook, by Peter Messent
The Danube: A Journey Upriver from the Black Sea to the Black Forest, by N Thorpe
The Dark Net, by Jamie Bartlett
The Dawn of Christianity, by Robert Knapp
The Decisive Moment, by Jonah Lehrer
The Diary of a Bookseller, by Shaun Bythell
The Digital Silk Road, by Jonathan E. Hillman
The Downfall of Money: Germany's Hyperinflation & the Destruction of the Middle Class, by F Taylor
The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth’s History, by D Beerling
The Emperor Far Away: Travels at the Edge of China, by David Eimer
The Emperor’s Feast, by Jonathan Clements
The End of the World: From Revelation to Eco-Disaster, by S Pearson; The Gecko’s Foot: How Scientists Are Taking a Leaf From Nature’s Book, by P Forbes
The Ends of the World, by Peter Brannen
The English Breakfast, by Kaori O'Connor
The English Lakes: A History, by Ian Thompson
The Epic City, by Kushanava Choudhury
The Essential Einstein: His Greatest Works, ed by Stephen Hawking
The Ethical Travel Guide, by Polly Pattullo
The Evolution-Creation Struggle, by Michael Ruse; Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life, by Nick Lane
The Fire, by Daniela Krien
The Firecracker Boys, by Dan O’Neill; The Transition Handbook, by Rob Hopkins
The Fish on Your Plate, by Paul Greenberg
The Flâneur, by Edmund White
The Flow, by Amy-Jane Beer
The Food History Reader, ed by Ken Albala
The Future of War, by Lawrence Freedman
The Garden of Eros, by John Calder
The Gardens of the British Working Class, by Margaret Willes
The Genetic Lottery, by Kathryn Paige Harden
The Getaway Car: A Donald E Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany, ed by Levi Stahl
The Glorious Art of Peace, by John Gittings
The Gospel of the Eels, by Patrik Svensson
The Grand Contraption, by David Park; The Cosmos: A Beginner’s Guide, by A Hart-Davis and P Bader
The Great Railway Bazaar, by Paul Theroux; The Archimedes Codex, by R Netz and W Noel
The Grid Book, by Hannah Higgins
The Hamburger, by Josh Ozersky
The Handshake, by Ella Al-Shamahi
The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben
The Hindu Bard, ed by M Gupta and A Whitehead
The History of Science Fiction, by Adam Roberts; When Computers Were Human, by David Alan Grier
The History of the Kiss! The Birth of Popular Culture, by M Danesi
The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon, by Leo Braudy
The Honoured Society: My Journey to the Heart of the Mafia, by P Reski
The Huguenots, by Geoffrey Treasure
The Infinity Puzzle, by Frank Close
The Invention of Paris, by Eric Hazan
The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West and the Fight Against Aids, by H Epstein; Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Revolutionary Structure, by A Gordon
The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution, by D Harkness
The Joy of Secularism, ed by George Levine
The Kingdom of Infinite Space, by Ray Tallis
The Land Where Lemons Grow, by Helena Attlee
The Last Generation: How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change, by Fred Pearce; Water Under Threat, by Larbi Bouguerra
The Last Lingua Franca: The Rise & Fall of the World's Languages, by N Ostler
The Library, by Andrew Pettegree & Arthur der Weduwen
The Life and Death of Planet Earth, by Ward & Brownlee; What Is Your Dangerous Idea?, ed by John Brockman
The Life and Death of Sherlock Holmes, by Mattias Boström
The Lion House, by Christopher de Bellaigue
The London Square: Gardens in the Midst of Town, by T. Longstaffe-Gowan
The London Square: Gardens in the Midst of Town, by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan
The Lost Boys, by Gina Perry
The Lost Café Schindler, by Meriel Schindler
The Louvre, by James Gardner
The Making of Home, by Judith Flanders
The Making of London, by Sebastian Groes
The Man Who Recorded the World, by John Szwed
The March of Unreason: Science, Democracy, and the New Fundamentalism, by Dick Taverne; In the Heart of the Amazon Forest, by Walter Henry Bates
The Matter of Everything, by Suzie Sheehy
The Measure of Manhattan, by Marguerite Holloway
The Mountains of California, by John Muir
The Mushroom at the End of the World, by Anna Tsing
The New York Nobody Knows, by William Helmreich
The Ocean at Home, by Bernd Brunner
The One Culture? A conversation about science, ed by Jay A. Labinger and Harry Collins
The Oxford Companion to the Photograph, ed by Robin Lenman
The Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations, by Bynum & Porter; The Google Story, by David Vise
The Parthenon, by Mary Beard
The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited, by Louisa Lim
The Pixels of Paul Cézanne, by Wim Wenders
The Plague, by Jacqueline Rose
The Planet in a Pebble, by Jan Zalasiewicz
The Poisonous Solicitor, by Stephen Bates
The Portable Atheist, ed by Christopher Hitchens; Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm since Hippocrates, by D. Wootton
The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess, by Andrei Codrescu
The Private Eye: Detectives in the Movies, by Bran Nicol
The Protestor's Handbook, by Bibi van der Zee
The Puzzle of Left-handedness, by Rik Smits
The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, by D Yergin
The Railways: Nation, Network and People, by Simon Bradley
The Ravenmaster, by Christopher Skaife
The Real Lolita, by Sarah Weinman
The Red Parts, by Maggie Nelson
The Revenge of Gaia, by James Lovelock; Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History, by Stephen Jay Gould
The Rise of Nuclear Fear, by Spencer R Weart
The Ruin of all Witches, by Malcolm Gaskill
The Running Hare, by John Lewis-Stempel
The Scramble for China, by Robert Bickers
The Sea: A Cultural History, by John Mack
The Secret State, by Peter Hennessy
The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, by Andrew Feinstein
The Shining, by Roger Luckhurst
The Situationists & the City, ed by Tom McDonough
The Social Life of Coffee, by Brian Cowan
The Spaces of the Modern City, ed by G Prakash & K Kruse; Consumed, by B Barber
The Spirit Level, by R Wilkinson & K Pickett
The SS Officer's Armchair, by Daniel Lee
The Story of Yoga, by Alistair Shearer
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas S Kuhn
The Telephone Gambit, by Seth Shulman
The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain, by Ian Mortimer
The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein, ed by Ze’ev Rosenkranz
The Trouble with City Planning, by K Ford
The Ultimate Book of Gangster Movies, by G Anastasia & G Macnow
The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life, by Richard Sennett
The Wagon and Other Stories from the City, by Martin Preib
The War of Nerves, by Martin Sixsmith
The Way We Die Now, by Seamus O’Mahony
The Women Who Saved the English Countryside, by Matthew Kelly
The Wood Age, by Roland Ennos
The Wood, by John Lewis-Stempel
The world in 2050, Hamish McRae
The Written World, by Martin Puchner
The Year of Living Danishly, by Helen Russell
The Zoo: The Wild & Wonderful Tale of the Founding of London Zoo, by I Charman
ThermoPoetics, by Barri J Gold
They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper, by Bruce Robinson
Things I have Withheld, by Kei Miller
Think Like an Anthropologist, by Matthew Engelke
Thirst: Water and Power in the Ancient World, by Steven Mithen
This Book is a Plant, Wellcome Collection
This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor, by Adam Kay
This Long Pursuit, by Richard Holmes
Thousand Mile Song, by David Rothenberg
Time on Rock, by Anna Fleming
Titian: The Last Days, by Mark Hudson
To Follow the Water: Exploring the Sea to Discover Climate, by D Murphy
Tormented Hope: 9 Hypochondriac Lives, by B Dillon
Traces Remain, by Charles Nicholl
Travels in the Reich, 1933-1945, ed by O Lubrich
Travels: Collected Writings, by Paul Bowles
Tripe, by Marjory Houlihan
Triumph of the City, by Edward Glaeser
Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age, by A Goldgar
Two Billion Cars, by D Sperling & D Gordon
Two Girls, One on Each Knee: The Puzzling, Playful World of the Crossword, by A Connor
Ultimate Questions, by Bryan Magee
Under the Sea-Wind, by Rachel Carson; The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, by EO Wilson
Understanding a Photograph, by John Berger, ed G Dyer
Universal Man: The Seven Lives of John Maynard Keynes, by R Davenport-Hines
Utopian Dreams, by Tobias Jones; After Atheism, by Mark Vernon
Vanessa Bell, by Frances Spalding
Vegetables: A Biography, by Evelyne Bloch-Dano
Venice is a Fish, by Tiziano Scarpa
Venice, ed by Heather Reyes
Wanderers: A History of Women Walking, by Kerri Andrews
Water Ways, by Jasper Winn
Watermark: An Essay on Venice, by Joseph Brodsky
We Own this City, by Justin Fenton
Weapons of Math Destruction, by Cathy O’Neil
What a Plant Knows, by Daniel Chamovitz
What Are You Looking At?, by Will Gompertz
What Is Populism?, by Jan-Werner Müller
What Makes Us Human?, ed by Charles Pasternak; Taking the Proverbial, by Geoff Rolls
What We Believe But Cannot Prove, ed by John Brockman; Space Race: The Battle to Rule the Heavens, by Deborah Cadbury
What We're Reading
What we’re reading: the Martin Beck novels
What’s Science Ever Done for Us?, by Paul Halpern; Zeppelin! Germany and the Airship, 1900-1939, by G. de Syon
When I Was Old, by Georges Simenon
When Languages Die, by K David Harrison
When Life Nearly Died, by M J Benton; Mind, Life and Universe, ed by L Margulis & E Punset
When London Was the Capital of America, by Julie Flavell
When the Lights Went Out: A History of Blackouts in America, by David Nye
When the Lights Went Out: What Really Happened to Britain in the 70s, by A Beckett
When the Sahara Was Green, by Martin Williams
Where Poppies Blow, by John Lewis-Stempel
Where the Stress Falls, by Susan Sontag
Why Does the World Exist? One Man's Quest for the Big Answer, by Jim Holt
Why Rebel, by Jay Griffiths
Why the Sky is Blue: Discovering the Color of Life, by Götz Hoeppe
Why Women Read Fiction, by Helen Taylor
Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees, by R Deakin; The Meaning of Life, by Terry Eagleton
William and Dorothy Wordsworth: ‘All in Each Other’, by Lucy Newlyn
William S Burroughs: A Life, by Barry Miles
Winchester in the spotlight: the city where Jane Austen died 200 years ago
Wine: A Cultural History, by John Varriano
Work, by James Suzman
World Film Locations: San Francisco, ed by Scott Harris
Writing a First Novel: Reflections on the Journey, by Karen Stevens
Writing from Ukraine, by Mark Andryczyk (editor)
Written Lives, by Javier Marías
Your Inner Fish, by Neil Shubin
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