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Counting: Humans, History and the Infinite Lives of Numbers
Coming soon
Benjamin Wardhaugh (Author), TBD (Narrator)
Audiobook
It's a Gas: The Magnificent and Elusive Elements that Expand Our World
Brought to you by Penguin. The secret life of gases - the strange, elusive and fascinating substances that shape our world, from the author of the best-selling, prize-winning Stuff Matters ****** Why are most gases invisible, odourless and tasteless? Why do some poison us and others make us laugh? And why do some power our engines while others make drinks fizzy? Gases illuminate the gap between the known and unknown worlds. It is their vivid intangibility, and yet their powerful role in our lives, which make them so fascinating. Taking us back to that exhilarating -- and often dangerous -- moment when scientists tried to work out exactly what it was they'd discovered, we see gases as the formative substances of our modern world. From how nitrous oxide and chloroform get into our bloodstream and affect our neural pathways to the gases that make plants grow and flowers smell through to the carbon-fuelled climate crisis, Mark Miodownik masterfully reveals this invisible world through his unique brand of scientific storytelling. With Miodownik as our guide, it transpires that each of these weird and wonderful substances has its own personality, giving a human angle to this fact-filled delight of a book. 'A witty, smart writer who has a great talent' Bill Gates ©2023 Mark Miodownik (P)2023 Penguin Audio
Mark Miodownik (Author), TBD (Narrator)
Audiobook
Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI
Brought to you by Penguin. Machine-learning systems are making life-altering decisions for us: approving mortgage loans, determining whether a tumour is cancerous, or deciding whether someone gets bail. They now influence discoveries in chemistry, biology and physics - the study of genomes, extra-solar planets, even the intricacies of quantum systems. We are living through a revolution in artificial intelligence that is not slowing down. This major shift is based on simple mathematics, some of which goes back centuries: linear algebra and calculus, the stuff of eighteenth-century mathematics. Indeed by the mid-1850s, a lot of the groundwork was all done. It took the development of computer science and the kindling of 1990s computer chips designed for video games to ignite the explosion of AI that we see all around us today. In this enlightening book, Anil Ananthaswamy explains the fundamental maths behind AI, which suggests that the basics of natural and artificial intelligence might follow the same mathematical rules. As Ananthaswamy resonantly concludes, to make the most of our most wondrous technologies we need to understand their profound limitations - the clues lie in the maths that makes AI possible. ©2024 Anil Ananthaswamy (P)2024 Penguin Audio
Anil Ananthaswamy (Author), TBD (Narrator)
Audiobook
Twelve Trees: The Deep Roots of Our Future
Twelve amazing species of trees that can teach us about our past, present and future. In Twelve Trees, professor Daniel Lewis takes us around the world - from Australia to the United States, from Easter Island and Mexico to Cameroon - and introduces us to twelve tree species that epitomise the many threats faced by our planet, from climate change, poachers and parasites, to fungi and even elephants. He celebrates their many strengths in the face of adversity, and their enduring abilities to survive - and even thrive - in an increasingly dangerous planet. Trees are essential to all of our lives - and they need our help. In this incredible tribute to the noble tree, Lewis dives deep into the cutting-edge science and inspiring community efforts helping to keep them alive. Saving the tree, as he argues, means the saving of humanity. Beautifully written and informative, Twelve Trees is a heartwarming and enlightening guide to some of our most fascinating trees - and why we should be working harder to protect them.
Daniel Lewis (Author), TBD (Narrator)
Audiobook
Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere
Coming soon
Rob Jackson, Robert B. Jackson (Author), TBD (Narrator)
Audiobook
Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race that Could Break the World
It took Facebook four years to reach 100 million users. ChatGPT, released in November 2022, did it in two months. The simple text box was unlike anything experienced before. It could craft poems, write screenplays and letters of condolence, and tell jokes. It told one writer that it was in love with him and another that it had spied on Microsoft's programmers through their webcams. But this is just the beginning. Things are going to get much, much worse, as Google and Microsoft compete to monetize this rapidly evolving technology. The danger isn't that humanity is going to be eliminated as in Terminator or The Matrix; no, the danger is that these untested, rapidly evolving technologies will undermine our way of life more insidiously, sucking value out of our economy, replacing high-level creative jobs and enabling a new, terrifying era of disinformation. It was never meant to be this way. The founders of the two companies behind the most advanced AIs in existence - San Francisco-based OpenAI and London-based DeepMind - started their journeys determined to solve humanity's greatest problems. But they couldn't develop their technologies without huge amounts of money and that much money comes with obligations - the kind that Google and Microsoft plan to make back a hundred-fold. Supremacy is the astonishing, untold, behind-the-scenes story of the battle between these two AI companies, their struggles to use their tech for good, and the dangerous direction that they're now going in. It's a story of manipulation, exploitation, secrecy and perhaps the greatest invention in technological history - but, above all, it's a story of ruthless, relentless human progress, and how it will impact all of us for years to come.
Parmy Olson (Author), TBD (Narrator)
Audiobook
Every Kind of People: A Journey into the Heart of Care Work
Brought to you by Penguin. A luminous, uplifting and deeply moving memoir by a care worker, told through her funny, heartbreaking, sometimes frustrating, and always eye-opening encounters with the often overlooked and marginalised people she cares for. 'Being as close as this to someone is a uniquely precious place to be. It is a place where secrets are revealed and fears are shared and outrageous jokes are made that could not be told to anyone else. It is a coal face of human experience' Kate never expected to become a home care worker. But when she left her senior role in the NHS, burnt-out and disheartened, she thought caring for people in their own homes would be a simpler job. But despite being determined not to become too involved with her 'customers', she soon found herself developing firm friendships, forging deep connections and bearing witness to the extraordinary drama to be found in ordinary lives. With energy, compassion and clarity her memoir gives an astonishing insight into this unsung - and often maligned - profession, and into the hidden lives of the housebound and infirm. From Beryl who screams like a banshee whenever Kate tries to wash her, but collapses in giggles when her toes are tickled, to bawdy Mr Radbert who 'promised to give me his car when he can remember where he left it'. Every Kind of People is clear-eyed about the challenges facing the NHS and the care system. But it is above all a celebration of humanity and of the life-changing impact of caring, on those who offer it and those who receive it. ©2024 Kathryn Faulke (P)2024 Penguin Audio
Kathryn Faulke (Author), TBD (Narrator)
Audiobook
On a Sea of Glass: The Life and Loss of the RMS Titanic
On the night of 14/15 April 1912, a supposedly unsinkable ship, the largest and most luxurious vessel in the world at the time, collided with an iceberg and sank on her maiden voyage. Of the 2,208 people on board, only 712 were saved. The rest either drowned or froze to death. How could this 'unsinkable' vessel sink and why did so few of those aboard survive? The authors bring the tragedy to life, telling the story of the ship's design, construction, and maiden voyage. The stories of individuals who sailed on her, many previously known only as names on yellowing passenger and crew lists, are brought to light using rarely seen accounts of the sinking. The stories of passengers of all classes and crewmembers alike, are explored. They tell the dramatic stories of lives lost and people saved, of the rescue ship Carpathia, and of the aftermath of the sinking. Despite the tragedy, the sinking of the Titanic led to untold numbers of lives being saved due to new regulations that came into force after the tragedy. This book is an accurate and engrossing a telling of the life of the White Star Line's Titanic. Made special by the use of so many rare survivor accounts from the eyewitnesses to that night to remember, the narrative places listeners in the middle of the maiden voyage and brings the tragic sinking to life as never before.
Bill Wormstedt, J. Kent Layton, Tad Fitch (Author), Tom Perkins (Narrator)
Audiobook
The Air They Breathe: A Pediatrician on the Frontlines of Climate Change
A timely, revelatory first look into the impact climate change has on children—the greatest moral crisis humanity faces today—by a pediatrician in the fastest warming city in America. Wildfires, hurricanes, and heat waves make headlines. But what is happening in Debra Hendrickson's clinic tells another story of this strange and unsettling time. Hendrickson is a pediatrician in Reno, Nevada—the fastest warming city in the United States, where ash falls like snow during summer wildfires. In The Air They Breathe, Dr. Hendrickson recounts patients she's seen who were harmed by worsening smoke, smog, and pollen; two boys in Arizona, stricken by record-setting heat while hiking; children who fled for their lives from Hurricane Harvey and the Tubbs Fire; and a little girl whose life was forever altered by the Zika virus outbreak in 2016. The climate crisis is a health crisis, and it is a health crisis, first and foremost, for children. Children's bodies are interwoven with and shaped by their surroundings. As the planet warms and their environment changes, children's health is at risk. The youngest are especially vulnerable because their brain, lungs, and other organs are forming and growing every day, and because their physiology is so different from that of adults. Childhood has always been a risky period of life; throughout history, babies and children have met peril, from polio to famine, from cyclones to war. Yet they have never quite had to face, in quite this way, the potential loss of the future itself. The Air They Breathe is not just about the health impacts of global warming, but something more: a soul-stirring reminder of our moral responsibility to our children, and their profound connections to this unique and irreplaceable world.
Debra Hendrickson (Author), Megan Tusing, TBD (Narrator)
Audiobook
Too Far on a Whim: The Limits of High-Steam Propulsion in the US Navy
In Too Far on a Whim, Tyler A. Pitrof presents a high-spirited revision of the US Navy's commitment to high-steam propulsion systems, the mainstay of its World War II fleets. Pitrof's research persuasively demonstrates that in its war against the Imperial Japanese Navy, the US Navy succeeded despite its high-steam propulsion systems rather than because of them. War with an aggressive Japan and a resurgent Germany loomed in the dark days of the late 1930s. Rear Admiral Harold G. Bowen Sr., head of the US Navy's Bureau of Engineering, advanced a radical vision: a new fleet based on high-steam propulsion, a novel technology that promised high speeds with smaller engines and better fuel efficiency. The official record of high-steam technology's subsequent performance has relied heavily on Bowen's own memoir, in which he painted high-steam innovation in heroic colors. Pitrof's empirical review of primary sources such as maintenance records illuminates the opposite. Pitrof provides an account that extends far beyond technology and into matters of naval hierarchies and bureaucracy, strategic theory, and ego. To Far on a Whim is a landmark for those interested in naval history and technology.
Tyler A. Pitrof (Author), Eric Jason Martin (Narrator)
Audiobook
Love Triangle: The Life-changing Magic of Trigonometry
Brought to you by Penguin. Why do mobile phones work when you're on a train? What happens when you pull a pop song apart into pure sine waves and play it back on a piano? And what did mathematicians have to do with the great pig stampede of 2012? The answer to each of these questions can be found in the triangle. Humans have been using triangles for thousands of years to build structures, measure the earth, make music, paint vanishing points, pot snooker balls and much, much more. But trigonometry is not a thing of the past - triangles underpin all of modern data technology. When someone Snapchats a photo, the light travels into the camera as electromagnetic sine waves, Fourier analysis compresses the image and then trigonometry is used to send the data to someone else's phone; when you listen to a track on Spotify, triangles remove the sounds which a human ear can't perceive and reassemble the song so that it's small enough to stream. Triangles are the hidden pattern beneath the surface of the contemporary world. Join Matt Parker, stand-up comedian and author of the first ever maths book to be a No. 1 bestseller, as he uncovers the secrets of trigonometry and shares extraordinary stories about the mathematicians, philosophers and engineers who dared to take triangles seriously. © Matt Parker 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2024
Matt Parker (Author), TBD (Narrator)
Audiobook
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