A Honeybee Heart has Five Openings and Buzz review – the wonders of bee life
A memoir of a life put back on track by beekeeping, and a hopeful study of bees in the wildEarly on in Helen Jukes’s A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings she ponders the increasing popularity of urban...
View ArticleIn brief: Turning the Tide on Plastic; A Long Island Story; A Life of My Own...
Lucy Siegle tackles our plastic habit, a McCarthy-era novel lacks pace, while Claire Tomalin tells her own engrossing storyContinue reading...
View ArticleWill computers be able to think? Five books to help us understand AI
From the limits of machine learning to a novel exploring human prejudices – Nick Harkaway shares his favourite books about artificial intelligenceThe problem with AI is that while it’s relatively easy...
View ArticleCopycats and Contrarians review – should we follow the herd?
What’s behind our tendency to go with the crowd, sensible thinking or emotion? And what are its dangers?No one likes to think of themselves as one of life’s sheep. And yet, Michelle Baddeley suggests,...
View ArticleAsperger’s Children by Edith Sheffer review – the origins of autism in Nazi...
In popular legend, Asperger was an Oskar Schindler figure who shielded his charges from euthanasia. The truth is more uncomfortableIn nursing homes across the Third Reich, children diagnosed with...
View ArticleThe Re-Origin of Species by Torill Kornfeldt review – bringing extinct...
The ‘de-extinction’ of vanished wild animals, from the woolly mammoth to the Pyrenean ibex, raises deep questions about our relationship to natureIt’s harder than you might think to make a dinosaur. In...
View ArticleBest ‘brainy’ books of this decade
Writers and experts select their favourite book on physics, feminism, medicine, health, economics, psychology and more• How the brainy book became a publishing phenomenonContinue reading...
View ArticleWhy there's a buzz about Helen Jukes' beekeeping memoir
Ground down by office work, the author took up beekeeping to find a new purpose … and love. She explains why honeybees are good counsellors ‘I was facing the bees, but I also ended up facing myself in...
View ArticleA Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings by Helen Jukes – review
A rootless millennial finds solace and purpose in beekeeping in this astonishing memoirThe cover of Helen Jukes’s beekeeping memoir, A Honeybee Heart has Five Openings, bears an endorsement from Helen...
View ArticleLife’s a breeze: a sailing trip in Scotland’s Hebrides
The newly announced Wainwright prizewinner finds whales, dolphins and the ‘most beautiful sound on earth’ as he sails the waters of western Scotland on a historic boatIt had been raining overnight but...
View ArticleThe Pebbles on the Beach: A Spotter’s Guide by Clarence Ellis review – a...
The geology of pebbles and the poetry of onshore phenomena in a beautifully produced guide, first published in 1954If you are the sort of person who feels soothed by the shipping forecast, you’ll love...
View ArticleBook clinic: which books best capture our relationship with animals?
Carl Safina’s educated anthropomorphism and Alex Preston’s vivid bird portraits are the wild stuff to illuminate our place in the natural worldWhich books best depict our relationship with other...
View ArticleShe Has Her Mother’s Laugh by Carl Zimmer; Genetics in the Madhouse by...
Two new studies of heredity expose bizarre anomalies – and popular myths – in our understanding of genesLydia Fairchild was 27 when she became pregnant with her fourth child in 2003. In order to apply...
View ArticleTides by Jonathan White review – getting to grips with the power of the ocean
A scintillating exploration of how ebb and flow influence our cultures and determine our fate, from the musings of Da Vinci to the effect of waves on time itselfI write this waiting for the tide to...
View ArticleCarl Zimmer: ‘We shouldn’t look to our genes for a quick way to make life...
The science writer and Yale professor on intelligence, the promise and dangers of gene editing, and how we get heredity wrongCarl Zimmer is a rarity among professional science writers in being...
View ArticleMelissa Harrison: ‘Fascism grows like a fungus’
The novelist on the political intrigue of 1930s Suffolk and how a Ladybird book rekindled her interest in the natural worldMelissa Harrison’s writing, whether in her novels, short stories or...
View ArticleThe Consolations of Physics: Why the Wonders of the Universe Can Make You...
From the Voyager mission to detecting the merging of black holes over a billion years ago, an argument for the pleasures of theoretical thinkingA physicist friend of mine once had a terrible spate of...
View ArticleBook clinic: which books can best help me deal with noxious colleagues?
From chin-stroking modern psychologists to Herman Melville, help is at hand in the battle to survive office politicsQ: Which books can show me how to protect myself from toxic colleagues? D, Hong...
View ArticleThe Consolations of Physics by Tim Radford – review
This stellar ‘love letter to physics’ looks at the wonders of the universe – and asks if they can make you a happier personThe space probe Voyager 1 was launched on 5 September 1977. Its identical...
View ArticleEscape to the country: Melissa Harrison on leaving London behind for 'Deep...
Fascinated by the thatched farmhouses and pretty churches, the novelist relocated to a 300-year-old cottage in Suffolk to write – and question a very white vision of EnglishnessIt is high summer, and...
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