The annual collection celebrating the finest Australian science writing of the year. Why are Sydney's golden orb weaver spiders getting fatter and fitter? Could sociology explain the recent upsurge in prostate cancer diagnoses? Why were Darwinites craving a good storm during 'The Angry Summer'? Is it true that tuberculosis has become deadlier over time? And are jellyfish really taking over the world? Now in its fourth year, this popular and acclaimed anthology steps inside the nation's laboratories and its finest scientific and literary minds. Featuring prominent authors such as Tim Flannery, Jo Chandler, Frank Bowden and Iain McCalman, as well as many new voices, it covers topics as diverse and wondrous as our 'lumpy' universe, the creation of dragons and the frontiers of climate science.

'Remarkable' Observer'A joy to read' Daily Telegraph'Soaringly beautiful' Sunday Times Magazine'Genuine and persuasive' GuardianAlexandra Heminsley thought she could swim. She really did. It may have been because she could run. It may have been because she wanted to swim; or perhaps because she only ever did ten minutes of breaststroke at a time. But, as she learned one day while flailing around in the sea, she really couldn't. Believing that a life lived fully isn't one with the most money earned, the most stuff bought or the most races won, but one with the most experiences, experienced the most fully, she decided to conquer her fear of the water. From the ignominy of getting into a wetsuit to the triumph of swimming from Kefalonia to Ithaca, in becoming a swimmer, Alexandra learns to appreciate her body and still her mind. As it turns out, the water is never as frightening once...

A lively, authoritative group portrait of some of the 20th century's most revered creative minds as they lived, loved, fought, and flourished in Paris during and after World War IIIn this fascinating tour of a celebrated city during one of its most trying, significant, and ultimately triumphant chapters, Agnes Poirier takes her readers through the lives of the poets, writers, artists, and politicians who converged in Paris between 1940 and 1950. She gives us the human stories behind some of the most celebrated works of the 20th century, from Richard Wright's Native Son to Albert Camus's The Stranger, along with the origin stories of now legendary movements, from Surrealism and Existentialism to the Theatre of the Absurd. We follow James Joyce and Saul Bellow as young men, peek inside Picasso's studio, and trail the many twists in Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir's epic, ever evolving love story. We watch the births and deaths of newspapers and...

Advertising is a business rooted in art, an art rooted in business, and it reached its peak in a specific place at a specific time: New York City at the end of the 1950s and through the '60s.AMC's award-winning drama Mad Men has garnered awards for its portrayal of advertising executives. This engaging, insightful narrative reveals, for the first time, the lives and work of the real advertising men and women of that era. Just as portrayed in the series, these creative people were the stars of the real Madison Avenue. Their innate eccentricity, vanity, and imagination meant their behavior and lifestyle was as candid and original as their advertising. They had it and they flaunted it. People like Bill Bernbach, George Lois, Ed McCabe, Mary Wells, Marion Harper, Julian Koenig, Steve Frankfurt, and Amil Gargano, and others, who in that small space, in that short time, created some of the most radical and influential advertising ever and sparked a revolution in the...

The bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed goes back undercover to do for America's ailing middle class what she did for the working poorBarbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage workers. Now, in Bait and Switch, she enters another hidden realm of the economy: the shadowy world of the white-collar unemployed. Armed with a plausible résumé of a professional "in transition," she attempts to land a middle-class job—undergoing career coaching and personality testing, then trawling a series of EST-like boot camps, job fairs, networking events, and evangelical job-search ministries. She gets an image makeover, works to project a winning attitude, yet is proselytized, scammed, lectured, and—again and again—rejected.Bait and Switch highlights the people who've done everything right—gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills, and built up impressive...

When people knocked on wood for good luck, Arthur Koehler actually knew why. He could explain the superstition dating back to ancient times when trees were held to be deities of the forest and simply tapping on them would invoke the aid of those higher powers to ward off evils…Koehler knew every tree in the world was distinct, just like every person. As he liked to say, "A tree never lies."And so the revelation came.He…began to write to his best contact, his superior at the New Jersey State Police, Capt. J.J. Lamb, the man leading the Lindbergh baby kidnapping investigation. He wanted to remind him of the original report he'd conducted on the ladder a year and a half earlier.Before there was CSI and NCIS, there was a mild-mannered forensic scientist whose diligence would help solve the twentieth century's greatest crime. Arthur Koehler was called the Sherlock Holmes of his era for his work tracing...

Winner of a Northern Writers AwardThese are the last days of Raoul Moat.Moat was the fugitive Geordie bodybuilder-mechanic who became notorious one hot July week when, after killing his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend, shooting her in the stomach, and blinding a policeman, he disappeared into the woods of Northumberland, evading discovery for seven days—even after TV tracker Ray Mears was employed by the police to find him. Eventually, cornered by the police, Moat shot himself.Andrew Hankinson, a journalist from Newcastle, re-tells Moat's story using Moat's words, and those of the state services which engaged with him, bringing the reader disarmingly close at all times to the mind of Moat. It is a reading experience unrelieved by authorial distance or expert interpretation. The narrative Hankinson has woven is entirely compelling, even if Moat's weaknesses are never far from sight, requiring the reader to work out where they should stand.

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