Allen Lane

A gripping new drama in science ... if you want to understand how the concept of life is changing, read this' Professor Andrew Briggs, University of OxfordWhen Darwin set out to explain the origin of species, he made no attempt to answer the deeper question: what is life?For generations, scientists have struggled to make sense of this fundamental...

Part memoir, part reflection, this book brings to life central Europe during the last ten years of the Cold War. It begins in Trieste in 1979 where the resonances of the Habsburg Empire are still strong. The second part moves to the darker, claustrophobic world of Vienna in 1985, where the atmosphere of the Cold War seemed to infiltrate every brick...

'Entertaining and gripping . . . For those at the helm, the philanthropic plutocrats and aspiring "change agents" who believe they are helping but are actually making things worse, it's time for a reckoning with their role in this spiraling dilemma' Joseph Stiglitz, New York Times Book ReviewWhat explains the spreading backlash against the global...

Why should we never listen to people who explain rather than do? Why do companies go bust? How is it that we have more slaves today than in Roman times? Why does imposing democracy on other countries never work?The answer: too many people running the world don't have skin in the game. In his inimitable, pugnacious style, Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows...

Chopin's Piano begins in November 1838, when George Sand, her children and Frederick Chopin took a boat to Majorca for the winter. It describes their circumstances there, and how Chopin completed one of the most revolutionary works in the history of music - his Preludes - on 'a small Mallorquin piano' which he picked up when they arrived and carted...

In Trans-Europe Express, Owen Hatherley sets out to explore the European city across the entire continent, to see what exactly makes it so different to the Anglo-Saxon norm - the unplanned, car-centred, developer-oriented spaces common to the US, Ireland, UK and Australia. Attempting to define the European city, Hatherley finds a continent divided...