Showing results by publisher "John Murray Press" in All Categories

From the creator of the wildly popular xkcd, What If? gives hilarious and informative answers to important questions you probably never thought to ask. Millions visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. Fans ask him a lot of strange questions. How fast can you hit a speed bump, driving, and live? When (if ever) did the sun go down on the British Empire? When will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than living?

The final book in the best-selling Ibis trilogy from the author of Booker-shortlisted Sea of Poppies. It is 1839, and tension has been rapidly mounting between China and British India following the crackdown on opium smuggling by Beijing. With no resolution in sight, the colonial government declares war. One of the vessels requisitioned for the attack, the Hind, travels eastward from Bengal to China, sailing into the midst of the First Opium War.

Welcome (back) to the mind-blowing world of What If? Unfazed by absurdity, Randall consults the latest research on everything from swing-set physics to airplane-catapult design to clearly and concisely answer his readers' questions. As he consistently demonstrates, you can learn a lot from examining how the world might work in very specific extreme circumstances. Filled with bonkers science, boundless curiosity, What If? 2 is sure to be another instant classic adored by inquisitive listeners of all ages.

Born just before the First World War, Elizabeth Pringle has been a familiar yet solitary figure on the Scottish island of Arran. A dutiful daughter, an inspirational teacher, a gardener. But did anyone really know her? When Elizabeth dies, her will contains a surprise. She has left her home and her belongings to someone who is all but a stranger, a young mother she watched pushing a pram down the road more than thirty years ago. Now it falls to Martha, the baby in that pram, to find out how her mother inherited the house in such strange circumstances, and in doing so, perhaps leave her own past behind.

Regarded as one of the finest journalists of her generation, Mamie Baird Magnusson's whole life was a celebration of words - words that she fought to retain in the grip of a disease which is fast becoming the scourge of the 21st century. Married to writer and broadcaster Magnus Magnusson, they had five children of whom Sally is the eldest.

Wherever we are, there are birds. And wherever there are birds, there is birdsong. It's always a pleasure (and a relief) to hear sounds that prove the world's still spinning: whether it's the sighing of migrating redwings on a damp October night, the twitter of swallows fresh in from South Africa in April, or the call of the cuckoo in May. Based on the scripts of BBC Radio 4's beloved year-long series, and distilling two lifetimes' knowledge, insight, and enthusiasm into this recording, Brett Westwood and Stephen Moss take you month by month through the year, and the changing lives of our favourite birds.

From the brilliant and innovative head of Google's people operations, the ultimate guide to attracting the most spectacular talent to your business and how to ensure that the best and the brightest succeed. Google receives more than 1,500,000 unique applications for jobs every year. This book shows you why. How to learn from your best employees - and your worst. Why you should hire only people who are smarter than you are.

You lead a busy life. You're constantly running between tasks, notebook in one hand, iPhone in the other. You've probably heard about the benefits of mindfulness and added 'start doing mindfulness' to your ever-growing to-do list, but frankly, who has time to meditate every day, chant in the lotus position, or read long books on finding inner calm? This brilliant handbook is packed with suggestions for ways to help you slow down, refocus, and practice a form of mindfulness that actually fits in with your hectic life.

Renowned historian Olivette Otele uncovers the untold history of Europeans of African descent, from Saint Maurice who became the leader of a Roman legion and Renaissance scholar Juan Latino, to abolitionist Mary Prince and the activist, scholars and grime artists of the present day. Tracing African European heritage through the vibrant, complex, and often brutal experiences of individuals both ordinary and extraordinary, she sheds new light not only on the past but also on questions very much alive today - about racism, identity, citizenship, power and resilience.

With an introduction from Prince William and contributions from Sir David Attenborough, Shakira Mebarak, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Naoko Yamazaki and Christiana Figueres, Earthshot shows us how, by working together, we can solve Earth’s greatest challenges.

Wendy Cope has long been one of the nation's best-loved poets, with her sharp eye for human foibles and wry sense of humour. For the first time, Life, Love, and the Archers brings together the best of her prose - recollections, reviews, and essays from the light-hearted to the serious, taken from a lifetime of published and unpublished work, and all with Cope's lightness of touch.

Learning can be much more fun - and former children's laureate, million-selling author, broadcaster, father of five, and all-round national treasure Michael Rosen wants to show you how. We live in a world surrounded by all the stuff that education is supposed to be about: machines, bodies, languages, cities, votes, mountains, energy, movement, plays, food, liquids, collisions, protests, stones, windows.

It is 2008, late capitalism is in crisis, and the great and the good are gathered at an Islington house party. Hosting proceedings are waspish Sherard Howe, scion of a publishing dynasty and owner of a left-wing magazine, and his wife, Daphne Depree, whose feminist work, The Third Sex is seen - to her increasing discomfort - as an intellectual cornerstone of the Blair era.