Book extracts

In this extract from Be Who You Want: Unlocking the Science of Personality Change, cognitive neuroscientist Dr Christian Jarrett explains the situation-selection strategy.

In this edited extract from The Little Book of Cosmology, physicist Prof Lyman Page explains how our model of the Universe relies on just six parameters.

Can you solve these puzzles?

In this extract from Happiness Studies, happiness expert Tal Ben-Shahar explains the five different elements to wellbeing.

In this extract from Ten Patterns That Explain The Universe, science writer Brian Clegg explains how Richard Feynman's eponymous diagrams not only illustrate complex particle interactions, but can make calculations easier, too.

In this extract from In Search of Mycotopia, Doug Bierend explains how fungi are essential to all life on Earth.

In this extract from Locked In Time, palaeontologist Dean Lomax describes the battle that killed two mammoths 12,000 years ago.

If you dropped a single marble into the sea, how long would it take to reach the bottom? And what would it cross along the way? Follow the deep sea journey in this extract from The Brilliant Abyss.

How do birds navigate when they migrate for thousands of kilometres?

Help your children to learn about nature with this fun DIY activity, extracted from the book KEW: Grow, Forage and Make.

How did one curious child became the co-creator of one of the biggest tech companies in the world?

In this extract from Gynae Geek, Dr Anita Mitra explains one of the most common reasons why your period is irregular or absent.

Many of the UK's beaches are bursting with the remains of ancient life waiting to be found. Fossil-hunting is just one adventure you can enjoy from the book Slow Adventures.

In an extract of his acclaimed book Drugs without the hot air, David Nutt explains recent scientific discoveries – and how substances like LSD have influenced creative breakthroughs.

In this extract from We, Robots, we journey into the past, experience the present, and ponder the future of science fiction, and of artificial intelligence.

Step onto the planet Arrakis with this extract from Dune: The Graphic Novel, Brian Herbert's adaptation of his father's bestselling sci-fi adventure tale.

The friendship paradox says that your friends probably have more friends than you do, and it's likely the same for other social situations, such as number of sexual partners and social media followers.

In this extract from a new graphic novel on the history of humans, Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari, co-writer David Vandermeulen and illustrator Daniel Casanave take us back to our beginnings.

Cartographer and scientist at the British Antarctic Survey Peter Fretwell explains how ice contains history in this extract from Antarctic Atlas.

In this extract from Antarctic Atlas, cartographer Peter Fretwell reveals the four contenders for the fame of finding Antarctica.

In this extract from Janna Levin's Black Hole Survival Guide we take a trip across the event horizon of a black hole.

In this extract from Codebreaking: A Practical Guide, authors Elonka Dunin and Klaus Schmeh explain how to crack a coded message.

The QI Elves explain the part that gravity plays in making planets round, and why our Earth is carrying a little extra weight around the middle.