` Brilliant` Guardian ` Fascinating & often delightful` The Times SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter? In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science & a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself
- a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind`s fitful development from unruly clumps of seaborne cells to the first evolved nervous systems in ancient relatives of jellyfish, he explores the incredible evolutionary journey of the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous molluscs who would later abandon their shells to rise above the ocean floor, searching for prey & acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so
- a journey completely independent from the route that mammals & birds would later take. But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually `think for themselves`? By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots & comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind
- & on our own.


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` Brilliant` Guardian Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month (March) SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter? In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science & a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself
- a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind`s fitful development from unruly clumps of seaborne cells to the first evolved nervous systems in ancient relatives of jellyfish, he explores the incredible evolutionary journey of the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous molluscs who would later abandon their shells to rise above the ocean floor, searching for prey & acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so
- a journey completely independent from the route that mammals & birds would later take. But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually `think for themselves`? By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots & comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind
- & on our own.


...

What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter? In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science & a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself
- a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind`s fitful development from unruly clumps of seaborne cells to the first evolved nervous systems in ancient relatives of jellyfish, he explores the incredible evolutionary journey of the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous molluscs who would later abandon their shells to rise above the ocean floor, searching for prey & acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so
- a journey completely independent from the route that mammals & birds would later take. But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually `think for themselves`? By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots & comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind
- & on our own.


...

Paris, the City of Light. We think of it as the city of the Eiffel Tower & the Louvre, of white facades, discreet traffic & well-mannered exchanges. But there was another Paris, hidden from view & virtually extinct today
- the Paris of the working & criminal classes that shaped the city over the past two centuries. In the voices of Balzac & Hugo, assorted boulevardiers, barflies, rabble-rousers & tramps, Sante takes the reader on a vivid journey through the seamy underside of Paris: the improvised accommodations of the original bohemians; the flea markets, the rubbish tips, & the hovels. Featuring over 300 illustrations, The Other Paris is a lively tour of labour conditions, prostitution, drinking, crime, & popular entertainment, of the reporters, realiste singers, pamphleteers, serial novelists, & poets who chronicled their evolution. It upends the story of the French capital, reclaiming the city from the bon vivants & the speculators, & lighting a candle to the works & days of the forgotten poor.
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Let me take you down the thin cobblestoned streets of the Belgian border town of Bouillon. Let me take you down the alleys that lead into its past. To a town peopled with eccentrics, full of charm, menace & wonder. To the days before television, to Marie Bodard`s sweetshop, to the Nazi occupation & unexpected collaborators. To a place where one neighbour murders another over the misfortune of pigs & potatoes. To the hotel where the French poet Verlaine his lover Rimbaud, holed up whilst on the run from family, creditors & the law. This exquisite meditation on place, time & memory is an illicit peek into other people`s countries, into the spaces they have populated with their memories, & might just make you revisit your own in a new & surprising way. ...

Nine months after the Nazi occupation of Austria, 600 Jewish Children assembled at Vienna station to board the first of the Kindertransports bound for Britain. Among them was 10 year old Lore Segal. For the next seven years, she lived as a refugee in other people`s houses, moving from the Orthodox Levines in Liverpool, to the staunchly working class Hoopers in Kent, to the genteel Miss Douglas & her sister in Guildford. Few understood the terrors she had fled, or the crushing responsibility of trying to help her parents gain a visa. Amazingly she succeeds & two years later her parents arrive; their visa allows them to work as domestic servants
- a humiliation for which they must be grateful. In Other People`s Houses Segal evokes with deep compassion, clarity & calm the experience of a child uprooted from a loving home to become stranded among strangers.
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Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2016 We all depend on the finance sector. We need it to store our money, manage our payments, finance housing stock, restore infrastructure, fund retirement & support new business. But these roles comprise only a tiny sliver of the sector`s activity: the vast majority of lending is within the finance sector. So what is it all for? What is the purpose of this activity? & why is it so profitable? John Kay, a distinguished economist with wide experience of the financial sector, argues that the industry`s perceived profitability is partly illusory, & partly an appropriation of wealth created elsewhere
- of other people`s money. The financial sector, he shows, has grown too large, detached itself from ordinary business & everyday life, & has become an industry that mostly trades with itself, talks to itself, & judges itself by reference to standards which it has itself generated. & the outside world has itself adopted those standards, bailing out financial institutions that have failed all of us through greed & mismanagement. We need finance, but today we have far too much of a good thing. In Other People`s Money John Kay shows in his inimitable style what has gone wrong in the dark heart of finance.
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Travel writing is a genre monopolised by Westerners. For centuries the preserve of Europeans who reported on the ”exotic”, it sought to make sense of other landscapes & cultures, but almost exclusively through a European prism of references. This anthology, stretching from the fifth to the nineteenth centuries, introduces an entirely different tradition of travel writing
- the work of travellers from the world beyond Europe. Other Routes collects important primary work by travel writers from Asia & Africa in English translation. Encompassing spiritual journeys, the personal, ethnography, natural history, geography, cartography, navigation, politics, history, religion & diplomacy, it shows that Africans & Asians also travelled the world & left travel writing worth reading. An introduction by Tabish Khair discusses travel literature as a genre, the perception of travel & writing about travel as a European privilege, & the emergence of new writings that show that travel has been a human occupation that crosses time & culture. Selections include The Travels of a Japanese Monk (c. 838), Al-Abdari, The Disgruntled Traveller (c.1290), A Korean Official`s Account of China (1488), The Poetry of Basho`s Road (1689), Malabari: A Love-Hate Affair with the British (1890).
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From a renowned graphic artist & activist, an incredible portrait of life in Russia today ` Victoria Lomasko`s gritty, street-level view of the great Russian people masterfully intertwines quiet desperation with open defiance. Her drawings have an on-the-spot immediacy that I envy. She is one of the brave ones`
- Joe Sacco, author of Palestine What does it mean to live in Russia today? What is it like to grow up in a forgotten city, to be a migrant worker or to grow old & seek solace in the Orthodox church? For the past eight years, graphic artist & activist Victoria Lomasko has been travelling around Russia & talking to people as she draws their stories. She spent time in dying villages where schoolteachers outnumber students; she stayed with sex workers in the city of Nizhny Novgorod; she went to juvenile prisons & spoke to kids who have no contact with the outside world; & she attended every major political rally in Moscow. The result is an extraordinary portrait of Russia in the Putin years -- a country full of people who have been left behind, many of whom are determined to fight for their rights & for progress against impossible odds. Empathetic, honest, funny, & often devastating, Lomasko`s portraits show us a side of Russia that is hardly ever seen.
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Discover words to surprise, delight & enamor. Learn terms for the sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees, for dancing awkwardly but with relish, & for the look shared by two people who each wish the other would speak first. Other-Wordly is an irresistible gift for lovers of words & those lost for words alike. ...