Consciousness & the beginnings of life

The Sentient Cell

Arthur S. Reber, František Baluška & William B. Miller Jr.

Could the beginnings of consciousness lie within individual cells? The authors explore awareness at the foundations of life, opening questions about how living things experience and respond to the world.

Critical thinking

Think Again

Adam Grant

What makes us hold on to an opinion, and what allows us to change it? Adam Grant explores the pleasure and difficulty of reconsidering what we think we know.

Making sense of evidence

The Art of Statistics

David Spiegelhalter

Numbers shape the stories we hear about the world. David Spiegelhalter looks at how we learn from data, recognise uncertainty and ask better questions about the claims put before us.

Imagination & invention

The Runaway Species

David Eagleman & Anthony Brandt

How does something new emerge from what already exists? A neuroscientist and a composer explore human creativity through art, science and invention, following the ways we reshape familiar ideas into unexpected possibilities.

Making room for creativity

The Creative Act: A Way of Being

Rick Rubin

Music producer Rick Rubin reflects on noticing, listening and giving ideas time to develop. A book about the creative possibilities in how we pay attention to everyday life.

Time & what matters

Four Thousand Weeks

Oliver Burkeman

There will always be more we could do than time to do it. Oliver Burkeman explores what accepting that might mean for our choices, our ambitions and the lives we actually want to live.

Small changes in everyday life

Tiny Habits

BJ Fogg

A practical look at making changes small enough to fit into an ordinary day. BJ Fogg explores how new habits can grow from the routines we already have.

Nature, folklore & memory

Autumn

Kate Mosse

Kate Mosse follows autumn through Sussex gardens, marshes and old stories, bringing together changing light, migrating birds, folklore and memory. For anyone who goes out for a walk and comes back with questions.

Curiosity & science

The Importance of Being Interested

Robin Ince

Scientific curiosity, humour and the pleasure of asking questions — without needing to be an expert first.

Other ways of sensing

An Immense World

Ed Yong

The animals around us share our surroundings, but their senses can give them very different worlds to live in.

Nature close to home

The Garden Jungle

Dave Goulson

A closer look at the small creatures in our gardens, and the things we can do to make room for them.

Everyday physics

Storm in a Teacup

Helen Czerski

Coffee stains, popcorn and fridge magnets lead into the physics at work all around us.

Walking & attention

The Living Mountain

Nan Shepherd

A short, thoughtful account of the Cairngorms, written by someone who kept returning and kept finding more to notice.

Finding our way

The Natural Navigator

Tristan Gooley

Reading direction in the landscape, from trees and rocks to the Sun and Moon, with science, history and folklore along the way.

Ability & opportunity

Range

David Epstein

An argument for trying different things, following varied interests and allowing abilities time to develop.

Questioning assumptions

The Scout Mindset

Julia Galef

What helps us look honestly at an idea, especially when we would quite like it to be true?

Gardens & wellbeing

The Well Gardened Mind

Sue Stuart-Smith

Gardening, personal experience and psychology come together in an exploration of what working with plants can mean to us.

Life through deep time

Otherlands

Thomas Halliday

A journey through ancient environments, reconstructing some of the very different worlds that existed before ours.

Music & the mind

The Music Instinct

Philip Ball

How we make sense of music, why it moves us, and what biology and culture each bring to what we hear.

Jung & the inner life

Modern Man in Search of a Soul

C. G. Jung

Jung’s own essays on psychology, dreams and meaning: an opportunity to meet his ideas in his own writing.

Invention & imagination

My Inventions and Other Writings

Nikola Tesla

Tesla’s own account of his life and working methods, including the machines he described building in his imagination.

Creativity & machines

The Creativity Code

Marcus du Sautoy

An exploration of creativity in art, music and mathematics, and what it might mean for a machine to be creative. First published in 2019.

A Loveliness of Ladybirds

Field Guide to the Ladybirds of Great Britain and Ireland

Helen Roy & Peter Brown · illustrated by Richard Lewington

A practical companion for identifying ladybirds and learning more about their habitats, ecology and recording.

The Web Across the Path

Britain’s Spiders

Lawrence Bee, Geoff Oxford & Helen Smith

A photographic field guide using appearance, webs, behaviour and habitat to help identify Britain’s spiders. Second edition.

Looking at the sky

The Cloudspotter’s Guide

Gavin Pretor-Pinney

Weather, stories and humour in a book about looking up and paying attention to the clouds passing overhead.

Trying something new

Beginners

Tom Vanderbilt

Learning unfamiliar skills as an adult, and finding room to enjoy being a beginner even when the first attempts are rather doubtful.

Paperback: a wait was listed when checked on 30 September. See Bookshop.org for current delivery options.

The ground beneath us

Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations

David R. Montgomery

Soil, erosion and human history: how we have changed the ground beneath us, and how it has shaped our lives.