The Human Brain

Susan Greenfield
Phoenix, 1997
Paperback. 222pp. illustrations

The brain is an extremely complex organ, and most books on the subject tend to be equally complex, and inaccessible. Here is a book that is written for non-scientists: an introduction to what lies within your skull.

"Greenfield's textbook for the lay person details almost everything there is to know about the stuff between your ears" - NEW SCIENTIST

Fermat's Last Theorum

Simon Singh
Fourth Estate, 1998
Paperback. 384pp. illustrations

The story of a mathematical riddle that confounded the world's greatest minds for 358 years, and how an Englishman, after years of secret toil and frustration, finally solved mathematics' most challenging problem.

Darwin's Worms

Adam Phillips
Faber, 1999
Paperback. 148pp.

"Darwin's Worms is a slim volume, and so might be mistaken for a slight one; but it isn't. It might even be the best book he has written yet. What Phillips is doing is monumental: he is helping us, via Freud, to learn to cope with death and loss, both of ourselves and our consoling myths" - NICHOLAS LEZARD, THE GUARDIAN

Genome The Autobiography of a Species

By picking one newly discovered gene from each of the 23 pairs of human chromosomes, and telling its story, Matt Ridley recounts the history of our species and its ancestors from the dawn of life to the brink of future medicine.

Scientists are working at unravelling the human genome at such speed that in the early years of this century the entire DNA of a human being will be available on CD-ROM. This will set in motion a scientific revolution as profound as the discovery that the earth goes round the sun.

On Giants' Shoulders Great Scientists and their Discoveries from Archimedes to DNA

Melvyn Bragg
Hodder & Stoughton, 1998
Paperback. 382pp. illustrations

The fascinating story of science unfolds in this account of the lives and extraordinary discoveries of twelve of its greatest figures - Archimedes, Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Faraday, Darwin, Poincare, Curie, Freud, Einstein, Crick and Watson. Exploring their impact and legacy with some of today's leading scientists and historians, Melvyn Bragg elucidates the core issues of science past and present, and conveys the excitement and importance of the scientific quest.

Almost Like A Whale The Origin of Species Updated

Steve Jones
Anchor, 2000
Paperback. 537pp.

Steve Jones is Professor of Genetics at University College London.

"A celebration of the unarguable rightness of Darwin's case, updated to take into account our century's advances, particularly in genetics..." - THE OBSERVER

The Language of the Genes

Steve Jones
HarperCollins, 1994
Paperback. 360pp.

Winner of the Rhone-Poulenc Prize for the Best Science Book of 1994.

"An absorbing and fascinating romp around the world of genetics" - JOHN GRIBBIN

The Blind Watchmaker

Richard Dawkins
Penguin, 1991 (first published in 1986)
Paperback. 358pp.

A brilliant and controversial book, now a classic, which demonstrates that evolution by natural selection - the unconscious, automatic, blind yet essentially non-random process discovered by Darwin - is the only answer to the biggest question of all: why so we exist?

Stardust The Cosmic Recycling of Stars, Planets & People

John Gribbin
Penguin, 2001
Paperback. 208pp. illustrations

Every one of us is made of stardust, explains John Gribbin in this dazzling book. Everything we see, touch, breathe and smell, nearly every molecule in our bodies, is the by-product of stars as they live and then die in spectacular explosions, scattering material across the universe which is recylcled to become part of us.

Is is only by understanding how stars are made and how they die that we can ever understand how we came into being. Taking us on an enthralling journey, Gribbin shows us the scientific breakthroughs in the quest for our origins among the stars. With the raw materials for creating life all around us, he concludes, it is impossible to believe that we are alone in the universe.

Aeons The Search for the Beginning of Time

Martin Gorst
Fourth Estate, 2001
Paperback. 320pp. illustrations

In the beginning was not the word but the date. But what date? from James Ussher's surprisingly enduring assertion in 1650 that time began at 6pm on Saturday 22 October 4004BC to the Hubble Space telescope's images of a world 13 billion years old, mankind's quest to establish the age of the earth has struck the root of our understanding of the universe, or the divine scheme of things. With a starry cast of eccentrics, mystics, scientists and visionaries, Aeons is the remarkable story of science, religion and philosophy, as ever locked in a tense struggle to define and explain the human condition.