Foyles

The Vanishing Face of Gaia
James Lovelock

Lovelock's previous book, The Revenge of Gaia, served a final warning that Mother Earth had taken as much abuse as it could before ecosystems began to change and collapse irrevocably. Now, he contends, we have passed the tipping point, having done too little, too late. With water shortages and natural disasters about to become a way of life, he outlines how we must adapt so that our civilisation might still survive.

List Price: £9.99
Online Price: £7.49
Online Saving: £2.50 (25%)
Buy Now More Information

Not Exactly
Kees Van Deemter

Very few things in life are clear-cut. We categorise things in ways which are often very subjective. Van Deemter examines our propensity for choosing arbitrary categories, before revealing that the world rarely allows such convenient definitions: biological species may not be so discrete, grammar and logic may be ambiguous. This fuzziness is resulting in new techniques in computer modelling and may be the key to artificial intelligence.

List Price: £16.99
Online Price: £12.74
Online Saving: £4.25 (25%)
Buy Now More Information

The Strangest Man
Graham Farmelo

The winner of this year's Costa Biography Award is an account of the life of Paul Dirac, one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century. A Nobel Physics Laureate, he unravelled many of the mysteries of quantum mechanics. His reticence and inability to communicate or empathise alienated him from colleagues and family members, although his social ineptitude did not preclude love. Farmelo's biography blends a moving human story with an account of his achievements.

List Price: £9.99
Online Price: £7.49
Online Saving: £2.50 (25%)
Buy Now More Information

Antimatter
Frank Close

One of the functions of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is the creation of antimatter, mirror particles where left becomes right and positive becomes negative. The understanding of antimatter at a quantum level is beginning to shed light on the history and structure of the universe. (As meetings between matter and antimatter result in the annihilation of both, we keep this book next to the same author's Nothing, just to be on the safe side!)

List Price: £7.99
Online Price: £5.99
Online Saving: £2.00 (25%)
Buy Now More Information

What's Next

Eighteen young scientists, working in the vanguard of their respective fields, offer their predictions - chaos theory notwithstanding - for the future of science. They consider humanity's possible extinction or evolution, the limits of genetic manipulation, the modification or erasure of memories, the true nature of dark energy and how we might cope in climate change's worst-case scenarios.

List Price: £14.99
Online Price: £11.24
Online Saving: £3.75 (25%)
Buy Now More Information