Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  Our Senses - An Immersive...

  Rob DeSalle

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  Over the past decade neuroscience has uncovered a wealth of new information about our senses and how they serve as our gateway to the world. This splendidly accessible book explores the most intriguing findings of this research. With infectious enthusiasm, Rob DeSalle illuminates not only how we see, hear, smell, touch, taste, maintain balance, feel pain, and rely on other less familiar senses, but also how these senses shape our perception of the world aesthetically, artistically, and musically. 
  DeSalle first examines the question of how perception and consciousness are formed in the brain, setting human senses in an evolutionary context. He then investigates such varied themes as supersenses and diminished senses, synesthesia and other cross-sensory phenomena, hemispheric specialization, diseases, anomalies induced by brain injuries, and hallucinations. Focusing on what is revealed about our senses through the extraordinary, he provides unparalleled insights into the unique wonders of the human brain.

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  Of Ice and Men - How We've Used...

  Fred Hogge

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  An exploration of humanity’s relationship with ice since the dawn of civilization, Of Ice and Men reminds us that only by understanding this unique substance can we save the ice on our planet—and perhaps ourselves. 
   
  Ice tells a story. It writes it in rock. It lays it down, snowfall by snowfall at the ends of the earth where we may read it like the rings on a tree. It tells our planet’s geological and climatological tale. 
   
  Ice tells another story too: a story about us. It is a tale packed with swash-buckling adventure and improbable invention, peopled with driven, eccentric, often brilliant characters. It tells how our species has used ice to reshape the world according to our needs and our desires: how we have survived it, harvested it, traded it, bent science to our will to make it—and how in doing so we have created globe-spanning infrastructures that are entirely dependent upon it. 
   
  And even after we have done all that, we take ice so much for granted that we barely notice it. 
   
  Ice has supercharged the modern world. It has allowed us to feed ourselves and cure ourselves in ways unimaginable two hundred years ago. It has enabled the global population to rise from less than 1 billion to nearly 7½ billion—which just happens to cover the same period of time as humanity has harvested, manufactured, and distributed ice on an industrial scale. 
   
  And yet the roots of our fascination with ice and its properties run much deeper than the recent past.

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  Artificial Intelligence - Modern...

  Yorick Wilks

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  Artificial intelligence has long been a mainstay of science fiction, and, increasingly, it feels as if AI is entering our everyday lives, with technology like Apple’s Siri now prominent and self-driving cars almost upon us. But what do we actually mean when we talk about AI? Are the sentient machines of 2001 or The Matrix a real possibility, or will real-world artificial intelligence look and feel very different? What has it done for us so far? And what technologies could it yield in the future? AI expert Yorick Wilks takes a journey through the history of artificial intelligence up to the present day, examining its origins, controversies, and achievements, as well as looking into just how it works. He also considers the future, assessing whether these technologies could menace our way of life and how we are all likely to benefit from AI applications in the years to come.

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  The Jay The Beech and the...

  Richard Smyth

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  'Generous, moving and alive. A gift' - Tim Dee, author of Greenery
  'Intelligent, thought-provoking and always, always interesting' - Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment
  'Smyth writes with warmth and engaging perception about our relationship and understanding of the natural world on our doorsteps' - Jon Dunn, author of The Glitter in the Green
  'Fresh and tender and playful' - Patrick Galbraith, author of In Search of One Last Song
  Weren't they richer, rock pools, wasn't the seashore busier, when I was a kid?
  
  Richard Smyth had always been drawn to the natural world, but when he became a father he found a new joy and a new urgency in showing his kids the everyday wild things around them. As he and his children explore rockpools in Whitley Bay, or the woods and moors near his Yorkshire home, he imagines the world they might inhabit as they grow up.
  
  Through different objects discovered on their wanderings - a beech leaf, a jay feather, a limpetshell - Smyth examines his own past as well as that of the early natural historians, weaving together history, memoir, and environmentalism to form a new kind of nature writing: one that asks both what we have lost, and what we have yet to find.

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  On the Water - A Fishing Memoir

  Guy de la Valdene

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  On the Water is a gorgeously written collection of essays that all take place on or near the water and pay tribute to the flora and fauna associated with those ecosystems. There are essays about the finer points of tickling rainbow trout in the streams of Normandy, and of eagles and ospreys fishing for bass while barely breaking the surface of the water. There are stories of droughts and floods, of dogs and boats, of worms and rattlesnakes, and even of catching and cooking soft-shell turtles that taste like osso-bucco.There is fishing and diving in the Bahamas, tarpon fishing in the Florida Keys, and fly fishing for sailfish in Central America. And there are larger-than-life personalities that are bigger than the fish tales they tell! On the Water is a finely honed and well crafted collection of tales for the true sportsman and makes for a perfect companion volume to la Valdene's celebrated collection of essays on hunting.

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  A Wood Called Bourlon - The...

  William Moore

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  After the great victory in the famous tank battle at Cambrai in 1917 the church bells, having been silent for three years, rang out joyously all over Britain  But within ten days triumph turned to disaster.  How did this hapPen & why?William Moore, a distinguished First World War historian, attempts to explain what went wrong.  All the advantages gained were thrown away; thousands of British troops were captured and hundreds of guns were lost.  Seventy years after these events Mr Moore has studied the evidence (much of it previously unpublished) contained in the inevitable enquiry that followed the disaster and he seeks to answer a number of questions.  Was Field-Marshal Haig really as dour as he has been portrayed or was he a reckless gambler and was General Byng, whose troops and guns were captured, really a brilliant planner or a haughty aristocrat dedicated to proving that cavalry still had a place on the battlefield?  And why were they both obsessed with capturing Bourlon Ridge on which stood the sinister Bourlon Wood?  A Highland Division, a Welsh Brigade, a Yorkshire Division (twice), the Guards, Ulstermen, Lancashire-men, Londoners and Midlanders- all were drawn into the maelstrom in an attempt to consolidate the Cambrai victory  They failed.  It was left to the Canadians to carry the Bourlon position in one of the finest feats of arms of the Great War.  The British are always reputed to take a perverce interest in their own military blunders.  This strange episode is one that most people have been happy to forget.  All those involved in hight places sought to make excuses; some indulged in a profound exercise of duplicity implying that the soldiers themselves were to blame.  Mr Moor's book throws new light on a dark episode in British Military History.

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