Our relentless drive to create makes us unique among living creatures What is special about the human brain that enables us to innovate? Why don't cows choreograph dances? Why don't squirrels build elevators to their treetops? Why don't alligators invent speedboats? Weaving together the arts & sciences neuroscientist David Eagleman & composer Anthony Brandt explore the need for novelty the simulation of possible futures & the social components that drive the inventiveness of our species Taking us on a tour of human creativity from Picasso to concept cars to umbrellas to lunar travel Brandt & Eagleman explore the cognitive software that generates new ideas & illuminate the key facets of a creative mentality Through understanding our ability to innovate
- our most profound mysterious & deeply human capacity
- we can meet the challenge of remaking our constantly shifting world

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This series of short stories has been written with the help of a language expert for young children who are just beginning to read ...

Meet Samuel Blink He's been sent to Norway to live with an aunt & uncle he never knew he had He has just started at a new school where no one wants to be his friend He is forced to eat Aunt Eda's horrible stinky brown cheese But just when Samuel thinks life couldn't get any worse he finds a troll under the bed A smelly grotesque lumpy-faced bulbous-nosed smelly one-eyed troll who's escaped from the terrifying Shadow Forest next to Aunt Eda's cottage (Did I mention smelly?) A troll now being hunted down by an evil creature who likes to kidnap & tortures trolls & children & who is heading towards Samuel's house right now ...

Please note this is a region 2 DVD & will require a region 2 or region free DVD player in order to play Kristen Stewart (The Twilight Saga Adventureland) & Dakota Fanning (The Twilight Saga Coraline) star as Joan Jett & Cherie Currie in The Runaways the music-fuelled coming of age story of the groundbreaking all girl 1970s rock band that paved the way for future generations of female musicians Plucked from obscurity by rock impresario Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon Revolutionary Road) raven-haired rocker Joan the rebellious Cherie & their band become an outrageous sensations thanks to their tough image & raw talent But their fast drug-fuelled lifestyle soon catches up with the teenage girls as success starts to cloud their judgments Actors Kristen Stewart Dakota Fanning Michael Shannon Riley Keough Tatum O& Neal Stella Maeve Scout Taylor-Compton & Riley Keough Director Floria Sigismondi Certificate 15 years & over Year 2010 Screen Widescreen 2351 Anamorphic Languages English
- Dolby Digital (51) Subtitles English for the hearing impaired Duration 1 hour & 46 minutes (approx)
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THE PENULTIMATE NOVEL IN THE CHINA SERIES FROM THE RICHARD & JUDY MILLION-SELLING AUTHOR OFTHE BLACKHOUSETHE SUFFERERA prodigious Chinese swimmer kills himself on the eve of the Beijing Olympics Days later a champion weightlifter suffers a fatal heart attack prior to competition THE LISTENERDetective Li Yan senses a conspiracy surrounding the fatalities & finds a female athlete willing to talk But she will only trust one person Li's fiancee Margaret Campbell THE RUNNERWhen Campbell's contact herself vanishes the gun is fired on a race against time & Li must now outrun & outwit an enemy bent on pushing him beyond endurance ...

The Sunday Times Bestseller
- SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2017 Traditional ploughland is disappearing Seven cornfield
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It's not just a game when you're running for your life Every night they tuned in to the nation's favourite prime-time TV game show They all watched from the sprawling slums to the security-obsessed enclaves of the rich They all watched the ultimate live death game as the contestants tried to bet not the clock but annihhilation at the hands of the Hunters Survive thirty days & win the billion dollar jackpot
- that was the promise But the odds were brutal & the game rigged Best score so far was eight days And now there was a new contestant the latest running man staking his life while a nation watched
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The Birds & the Bees series was designed for Vintage Classics by Timorous Beasties the Scottish studio famous for their designs inspired by the natural world Beginning in summer with clouds of breeding seabirds in Shetland & ending with nightjars like giant moths in the heart of England Tim Dee maps his encounters with birds over four decades of tracking them around the world He tells of familiar but near-global birds like sparrows starlings & ravens & exotic species like electrically coloured hummingbirds in California & bee-eaters in Africa Dee restores us to the primacy of looking & takes us outside again & again to marvel at what is flying above us ...

Barley Blair is not a Service man he is a small-time publisher a self-destructive soul whose only loves are whisky & jazz But it was Barley who one drunken night at a dacha in Peredelkino during the Moscow Book Fair was befriended by a high-ranking Soviet scientist who could be the greatest asset to the West since perestroika began & made a promise Nearly a year later his drunken promise returns to haunt him A reluctant Barley is quickly trained by British Intelligence & sent to Moscow to liaise with a go-between the beautiful Katya Both are lonely & disillusioned Each is increasingly certain that if the human race is to have any future all must betray their countries In his first post-glasnost spy novel le Carre captures the effect of a slow & uncertain thaw on ordinary people & on the shadowy puppet-masters who command them ...

The Russian Civil War of 1917-1920 out of which the Soviet Union was born was one of the most significant events of the twentieth century The collapse of the Tsarist regime & the failure of the Kerensky Provisional Government nearly led to the complete disintegration of the Russian state This book however is not simply the story of that collapse & the rebellion that accompanied it but of the painful & costly reconstruction of Russian power under a Soviet regime Evan Mawdsley's lucid account of this vast & complex subject explains in detail the power struggles & political manoeuvres of the war providing a balanced analysis of why the Communists were victors This edition

Includes:: illustrations a new preface & an extensively updated bibliography

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