How does one measure the imagination? Why are some cities such centres of innovation? Is the internet making us more or less imaginative? What kinds of classroom techniques increase the creativity of children? Does brainstorming work? Even the color of paint on the wall, or the location of a restroom, can have a dramatic impact on creativity. For too long, we’ve pretended that creativity is an impenetrable biological gift. As a result, we’ve clung to a series of myths about what creativity is and where it comes from. These myths aren’t just misleading — they also interfere with the imagination. That’s why, in addition to elegant experiments and important scientific studies, Imagine is filled with real life examples: Bob Dylan’s writing method and the drug habits of poets, an autistic surfer who invented a new surfing move, a website that solves seemingly impossible problems, and the offices of Pixar. Creativity shouldn’t seem like a process reserved for artists or inventors or other “creative types.” The human mind, after all, has the creative impulse hard-wired into its most essential programming code. This book is about how that happens. It is the story of how we imagine.  

The incredible story and miraculous work of a remarkable woman. Though she began life severely learning disabled, built herself a better brain and a brain training program that has helped thousands of others do the same.

Barbara Arrowsmith Young was born with severe learning disabilities. Undaunted, she used her few strengths to develop brain exercises to conquer her neurological deficits. She has gone on to change countless lives.

In the past five years, the idea that self-improvement can happen in the brain has caught hold and inspired hope. Now, thanks to brilliant pathbreakers such as Barbara, rather than worrying about how our brains shape us, we can focus on shaping our brains. Young's work is one of the first examples of the extensive practical application of "neuroplasticity." As the people on these pages change their brains, readers see how the brain works and what a profound impact improved mental capacity has on how we can participate in the world. Here her personal story is interwoven with fascinating accounts of the clinical mysteries and triumphant stories Barbara has encountered during her career. 

The Arrowsmith cognitive training program originated in Toronto in 1978, but is now being implemented in schools in Canada and the U.S. in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, Georgia, California, and South Carolina.

The Big Questions - Philosophy confronts the fundamental problems that have perplexed inquiring minds throughout history, and explains the answers of our greatest thinkers. In this book, renowned philosopher Simon Blackburn tackles 20 questions essential to our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in.
15 cm x 21 cm 208 page soft cover.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? What is the nature of reality? Is the apparent "grand design" of our universe evidence of a benevolent creator who set things in motion-or does science offer another explanation? In this startling and lavishly illustrated book, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow present the most recent scientific thinking about these and other abiding mysteries of the universe, in nontechnical language marked by brilliance and simplicity.

According to quantum theory, the cosmos does not have just a single existence or history. The authors explain that we ourselves are the product of quantum fluctuations in the early universe, and show how quantum theory predicts the "multiverse"-the idea that ours is just one of many universes that appeared spontaneously out of nothing, each with different laws of nature. They conclude with a riveting assessment of M-theory, an explanation of the laws governing our universe that is currently the only viable candidate for a "theory of everything": the unified theory that Einstein was looking for, which, if confirmed, would represent the ultimate triumph of human reason.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells-taken without her knowledge-became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they'd weigh more than 50 million metric tons-as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb's effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the "colored" ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta's small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia-a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo-to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta's family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family-past and present-is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family-especially Henrietta's daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother's cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn't her children afford health insurance? 
          
Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

The Big Questions - Physics confronts the fundamental problems that have perplexed inquiring minds throughout history, and explains the answers of our greatest thinkers. In this book, Michael Brooks demystifies 20 mind-stretching questions about quantum physics, relativity and the true nature of reality.
15 cm x 21 cm 208 page soft cover.

The Big Questions - The Universe confronts the fundamental problems that have perplexed inquiring minds throughout history, and explains the answers of our greatest thinkers. In this book, Suart Clark tackles the 20 key questions of astronomy, cosmology and existence itself.
15 cm x 21 cm 208 page soft cover.

The Big Questions - Mathematics answers the fundamental problems that have perplexed inquiring minds throughout history. Ranging from the first known numbers and Plato's ideal forms to chaos theory and Fermat's last theorem, this book confronts the 20 key questions at the heart of mathematics and our understanding of the world.
15 cm x 21 cm 208 page soft cover.

"Explore the fascinating machine that is our body in these 24 oversize charts!
These amazing images have been created with a new technique that comes the closest to achieving the ideal of anatomical representation - recreating visually the exact forms of the body and all its parts. This collection is derived from teh first, anatomically exact, three-dimensional, computer generated reconstruction of a human body.
Unlike traditional anatomical illustration, whichy had to rely on idealization and exaggeration to present anatomy in an understandable way, the original versions of the images in these charts are three-dimensional in their digital form. The ""virtual"" body they represent can be turned, opened, even passed through by the viewer. Systems can be viewed in isolation, like the pieces of a jigsaw, and put back together again to show their relationship with other systems. Regions can be ""dissected"" progressively, by peeling away layers or even ""seeing through"" aome tissues to reveal others underneath. The digital images allow you to view the specific subject of each chart in detail, while displyaing a ""ghost"" image of the surrounding area if it helps to better understand positions and relationships.
The Wall Chart of Human Anatomy features a fold-out format that can be paged through like a book, or opened up to its full length to show the dramatic full-body images and system charts in progression. It includes an informative introduction and a glossary of anatomical terms.
31 cm x 45 cm hardcover."

In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin explores the connection between music?its performance, its composition, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it?and the human brain. Drawing on the latest research and on musical examples ranging from Mozart to Duke Ellington to Van Halen, Levitin reveals:
? How composers produce some of the most pleasurable effects of listening to music by exploiting the way our brains make sense of the world
? Why we are so emotionally attached to the music we listened to as teenagers, whether it was Fleetwood Mac, U2, or Dr. Dre
? That practice, rather than talent, is the driving force behind musical expertise
? How those insidious little jingles (called earworms) get stuck in our heads

And, taking on prominent thinkers who argue that music is nothing more than an evolutionary accident, Levitin argues that music is fundamental to our species, perhaps even more so than language. This Is Your Brain on Music is an unprecedented, eye-opening investigation into an obsession at the heart of human nature.