Part of the New Scientist series, this book investigates everything from what it's like to die, to exploding trousers and recycled urine.

Covers the author's famous blog, A Don's Life, that ran on the TLS website for over three years.

Offers a persuasive argument for the craft of perfume-making. This book describes 300 fragrances.

Charts the journey of one of the nation's accomplished authors as she revisits the conversations, libraries and bookshelves of the past that have informed a lifetime of reading and writing.

Presents a mix of games, puzzles, paradoxes, brainteasers, and riddles. This book mingles these with forays into ancient and modern mathematical thought, mathematical jokes, and inquiries into the great mathematical challenges.

In 1901, Josef Fischer accidentally discovered the Waldseemuller Map of 1507 - the first map to depict the world largely as we know it. This book tells the story of the voyagers and thinkers who created this remarkable map and ushered in the New World.

What does it mean to be awake? What exactly is therapeutic about retail therapy? From getting ready in the morning, through heading to work, going to a party, having sex and falling back to sleep, this book provides a commentary on what history's greatest philosophers have said about the meaning behind everything we do.

Takes readers on a journey through the days and nights of the UK's largest airport.

Based on research in little known archives, especially in Russia, this biography of Diaghilev (1872-1929) introduces a complex and powerful personality with boundless creative energy fully to life.

Jay Porter, a struggling personal injury attorney down on his luck, suddenly finds himself in a situation spiralling out of control. Jay knows a boat ride on the Bayou won't measure up to his wife's expectations of a birthday celebration, but it's all he can afford. Once a man of virtuous ideals, he is now just waiting for a break.

Features none other than HM the Queen who drifts accidentally into reading when her corgis stray into a mobile library parked at Buckingham Palace. Her reading naturally changes her world view and her relationship with people like the oleaginous prime minister and his repellent advisers. The consequence is surprising, mildly shocking and funny.

Presents the paradoxical confession of a libertine, who succumbs to the 'timeless and universal malady'.

Drawing on the lore of gangsters, hustlers, and hip-hop artists, as well as 50 Cent's business and artistic dealings, this book reveals how to become a master strategist and supreme realist. It offers advice on how to win in business - and in life.

Offers a frank and fascinating account of a geezer's life in the music business. This autobiography, of Jah Wobble, offers an insider's account of the beginning of punk rock. It includes his opinions of the great and good, from Malcolm Mcclaren to Peter Gabriel to Brian Eno to Iain Sinclair.

Takes you on a series of excursions down the curious byways of word history and meaning, mingling the fare with games, lists, tests, and quotes. This book helps you learn about the words that are never spoken and others that don't get written.

Argues that it was cooking that caused the extraordinary transformation of our ancestors from apelike beings to Homo erectus. This book explains that the habit of eating cooked rather than raw food permitted the digestive tract to shrink and the human brain to grow, helped structure human society, and created the male-female division of labour.

Two years ago, Eva Khatchadourian's son, Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker, and a popular algebra teacher. Because he was only fifteen at the time of the killings, he received a lenient sentence and is now in a prison for young offenders in upstate New York. How much is Eva's fault?

Contains rankings on numerous topics in subject areas as geography, population, business, the economy, trade, transport, finance, industry, demographics, the environment, society, culture and crime. This work also contains facts on more than 200 topics, data on more than 180 countries and profiles of more than 65 of the world's major economies.

Following the phenomenal success of Does Anything Eat Wasps? and the even more spectacularly successful Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? , this collection includes a bumper crop of wise and wonderful answers.

Contains chapters that include Street Life, Earning a Living: Baker, Banker and Garum Maker (who ran the city), and The Pleasure of the Body: Food, Wine, Sex and Baths. This book offers an insight into the workings of a Roman town.