Mathematics & Science Books

The ultimate question is no longer "who am I" or "why am I here." These questions were answered in the earliest civilizations by philosophers and priests. Today we live in an age of such rapid advances in technology and science that the ultimate question...

Part conspiracy theory, part popular science, Genes, Giants, Monsters and Men explores the possibility that the history of the human race is not as simple as has been taught in textbooks. Farrell considers how the religious stories that have often been...

World Literature Today Editor's Pick "Enchanting. . . . The Poetic Species is a wonderful read in its entirety, short yet infinitely simulating." -MARIA POPOVA, Brain Pickings In this shimmering conversation (the outgrowth of an event co-sponsored by the...

"One of the best critiques of current mathematics education I have ever seen."-Keith Devlin, math columnist on NPR's Morning EditionA brilliant research mathematician who has devoted his career to teaching kids reveals math to be creative and beautiful...

Seastars are some of the most beautiful and intriguing animals living in our oceans. Their shapes, diversity of colours, sizes and surface patterns are unique and amazing. Found from the deep sea to the shallow waters of intertidal areas, these 'stars of...

This is the ultimate identification guide to the nightjars, potoos, frogmouths, Oilbird, and owlet-nightjars of the world. Covering all 135 known species of these elusive and cryptically plumaged birds, this illustrated guide features more than 580...

The story of Professor Ghillean Prance, from his earliest days as a young scientist at Oxford, to expeditions across the Amazon searching for new species of plants, facing upturned boats and plane crashes en route, to Director of Kew (1988- 1999). Now a...

Plants for Food and Medicine, the proceedings of the 1996 Economic Botany and the International Society of Ethnopharmacology Conference. Explores the commercial and scientific potential of plants for the food, health and drug industries. It focuses on...

Since 1621, and the foundation of the Oxford Botanic Garden, Oxford has built up an outstanding collection of plant specimens, botanical illustrations and rare books on plant classification, collecting and plant biology. These archives, and the living...

What is life? This was a question of particular concern for Mary Shelley and her contemporaries. But how did she, and her fellow Romantic writers, incorporate this debate into their work, and how much were they influenced by contemporary science,...

Martin Lister, royal physician and fellow of the Royal Society, was an extraordinarily prolific natural historian with an expertise in shells and molluscs.Disappointed with the work of established artists, Lister decided to teach his daughters, Susanna...

The Kew Temperate Plant Families Identification Handbook brings together the combined knowledge of Kew experts in a guide to the commonly encountered plants of temperate regions.The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a centre of expertise for cultivating a...

This is the first book to reveal artworks made using the world's brightest colour Pure Structural Colour, recently derived from the metallic-like colours of Pollia berries, hummingbirds and butterflies.Pure Structural Colour is a mimic of the type of...

*Winner of the NSW Premier's History Award - General History*Roses, jasmine, fuchsia, chrysanthemums, and rhododendrons bloom in gardens across the world, and yet many of the most common varieties have root in Asia. How is this global flowering...

The genus Aloe is arguably one of Africa's most iconic and valued plant genera. It is immensely popular among succulent plant collectors and horticulturalists, and is also the source of several commercially used natural products.The aloe names book...

Preliminary List of the Compositae in Northeastern Brazil is the fourth title to be published in this series. Many specimens from this plant family were deposited at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew for historical reasons and others have been added to the...

Madagascar is a world hot-spot for orchids. The largest family of flowering plants on the island, almost 1000 species make up some 10% of Madagascar's flora; 90% of them are endemic. They occur in almost every habitat, from coastal and montane forests to...

Ethiopia's orchids are sparsely represented in herbaria and their biology, ecology and conservation status remains poorly understood. With detailed descriptions, keys, line drawings, distribution maps and colour photographs, this field guide is an...

A checklist of the Legumes of South Asia.

Following the format of previous checklists, there isan alphabetical listing of all names in current usage,an alphabetical listing by accepted name and analphabetical listing by country of distribution.

Described by William Morris as 'Most Unimaginably Strange', the landscape of Iceland has fascinated and inspired travellers, scientists, artists and writers throughout history. This book provides a contemporary understanding of the landscape as a whole,...

The space race was perhaps the greatest technological contest of the 20th century. It was a thrilling era of innovation, discovery and exploration, as astronauts and cosmonauts were launched on space missions of increasing length, complexity and danger...

This book is a vision of biology set within the entire timescale of the universe. It is about the timing of life, from microsecond movements to evolutionary changes over millions of years. Human consciousness is riveted to seconds, but a split-second...

While concerns about climate change have focused negative attention on the coal industry in recent years, as descendants of the industrial revolution we have all benefitted from the mining of the black seam. Coal has influenced significantly the course...

Elegant and beautiful, rich in history and supremely useful, the ash tree has played an extraordinary yet largely unrecognised part in shaping both our natural environment and the material culture and beliefs of millions of people around the world. Ash...

Fear and fascination set wasps apart from other insects. Despite their iconic form and distinctive colours, they are surrounded by myth and misunderstanding. Often portrayed in cartoon-like stereotypes bordering on sad parody, wasps have an unwelcome and...

Polar bears are truly majestic animals: the largest land-dwelling carnivore on earth, they can measure up to 3 metres in length, and weigh up to 700 kilograms. They are also iconic in other ways - a symbol of the climate change debate, with their...

The last of the five naked-eye planets discovered in ancient times, Mercury has long been an elusive, enigmatic world. As seen from the Earth, it never emerges far from the Sun, and astronomers in the telescopic era found it challenging to work out such...

At once reptilian and avian, dinosaurs enable us to imagine a world far beyond the usual boundaries of time, culture and physiology. We have envisioned them in diverse and contradictory ways, reflecting, in part, our changing conceptions of ourselves...

This book is a self-contained treatment of all the mathematics needed by undergraduate and masters-level students of economics. Building up gently from a very low level, the authors provide a clear, systematic coverage of calculus and matrix algebra. The...

Learn to fold incredible geometric origami models from 'The Queen of Modular Origami!'In this book, Tomoko Fuse -Japan's most famous living origami artist - shows you how to create amazing polyhedral models using the techniques...

From its roots in ancient Greek herbal medicine, the popular spirit we now know as gin was established by the Dutch in the sixteenth century as a juniper-infused tincture to cure fevers. It gained notoriety during the London 'gin craze' in the eighteenth...

A magnificent new collection of 60 sculptural paper models from a mathematical origami master!Master origami folder and author Jun Maekawa is known for developing innovative new methods of folding origami based on fundamental mathematical principles. In...

Modern-day fly fishing, like much in life, has become exceedingly complex, with high-tech gear, a confusing array of flies and terminal tackle, accompanied by high-priced fishing guides. This book reveals that the best way to catch trout is simply, with...

The emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences, as revealed through images in scientific atlases-a story of how lofty epistemic ideals fuse with workaday practices.Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In...

Trees of New Guinea is the essential companion to anyone studying or working in the region, including botanists, conservation workers, ecologists and zoologists.The island of New Guinea is the most oristically diverse island in the world with an...

A novelist and a neuroscientist uncover the secrets of human memory.What makes us remember? Why do we forget? And what, exactly, is a memory?With playfulness and intelligence, Adventures in Memory answers these questions and more, offering an...

In 2000, archaeologist Paul Gething rediscovered a sword. An unprepossessing length of rusty metal, it had been left on a shelf for thirty years. But Paul had a suspicion that the sword had more to tell than appeared, so he sent it for further tests...

A big-hitting historical analysis of technology which uses the computer as a can-opener to expose the inequality innate in capitalismCapitalism likes us to believe in the steady, inevitable march of progress, from the abacus to the iPad. But the...

Common and exotic, glamorous and ferocious, sociable and sullen: zebras mean many things to many people. The extraordinary beauty of their striped coats makes them one of the world's most recognisable animals. They have been immortalised in paint by...

For millennia corals were a marine enigma confounding classification and occupying a space between the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Ultimately their animal and symbiotic natures were recognized, and they remain the focus of intense fascination and...

The rainbow is a compelling spectacle in nature - a rare bridge between subjective experience and objective reality, and no less remarkable as a cultural phenomenon. A symbol of the Left since the German Peasants' War of the 1520s, it has been adopted by...

In its pure form carbon can be the soft graphite in a pencil or an immensely hard diamond. It is the basic building block of most of the cells in our bodies. Carbon attracts, and one of the most crucial relationships it forms is with oxygen, producing...

Mushrooms are loved, despised, feared, and misunderstood. They havebeen a familiar part of nature throughout human history and occupy a specialplace in our consciousness. Nicholas P. Money introduces the mythologyand science of the spectacular array of...

Ideas about numbers, magnitudes and frequencies shape and give texture to almost everything we feel, say, dream and do. In Living by Numbers, Steven Connor explores the many ways in which we live in, and by, a world of numbers...

Traditional biographies of Watt have concentrated on the steam engine, but in this book Ben Russell tells a richer story, exploring the processes by which ephemeral ideas were transformed into tangible artefacts and the multifaceted world of production...

Finalist for the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction Alberta Literary AwardsAn in-depth look at the people and the science behind our attempts to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere with direct air capture.Drawing on interviews with stakeholders...

In this compelling whodunnit, Elaine Dewar reads the science, follows the money, and connects the geopolitical interests to the spin.When the first TV newscast described a SARS-like flu affecting a distant Chinese metropolis, investigative journalist...