A Reason for Everything" is a brilliant & surprising fusion of science & biography. It is a very human book about the Englishness of evolutionary theory & the lives & personalities
- often eccentric & controversial
- of those who made it. The idea of evolution by natural selection was first announced in Britain & it has until recently been defended in Britain more passionately than anywhere else. At the heart of the theory is the notion of adaptation to the environment. When 'adaptationists' look at living creatures they believe that each of their features has a purpose for which it has been shaped by selection. They tend to assume that there is actually a reason for everything. & for scientists after Darwin that has been an extremely productive assumption. A number of thinkers developed this idea to levels of sophistication undreamed of in Darwin's time. The most important were Ronald Aylmer Fisher J.B.S. Haldane John Maynard Smith Bill Hamilton & Richard Dawkins. Kohn writes with great insight about the families & the universities that helped shape these men & about their politics which ranged from the far right to the Communist Party. Fisher was a practising Christian; Dawkins is a famously militant atheist. Some were notoriously difficult & eccentric as people; their feuds often were (and are) stormy. He opens the book with a deft & moving portrait of Alfred Russel Wallace Darwin's contemporary & generous rival. "A Reason for Everything" is about far more than a narrow argument within biology. It is about Britain & natural history butterflies & snails impassioned beliefs & ideological struggles. Kohn writes with quiet humour & sympathy about how each of these individuals responded to a chilling & inspiring vision of nature."

...

As the pastor of an inner-city church in New York City Timothy Keller has compiled a list of the most frequently voiced doubts sceptics bring to his church as well as the most important reasons for faith. In THE REASON FOR GOD he addresses each doubt & explains each reason. Keller uses literature philosophy real-life conversations & reasoning to explain how faith in a Christian God is a soundly rational belief held by thoughtful people of intellectual integrity with a deep compassion for those who truly want to know the truth. ...

' Composed by a writer still with one foot in childhood & whose autism was at least as challenging & life-defining as our son's THE REASON I JUMP was a revelatory godsend. Reading it felt as if for the first time our own son was talking to us about what was happening inside his head.' Written by Naoki Higishida when he was only thirteen this remarkable book explains the often baffling behaviour of autistic children & shows the way they think & feel
- such as about the people around them time & beauty noise & themselves. Naoki abundantly proves that autistic people do possess imagination humour & empathy but also makes clear with great poignancy how badly they need our compassion patience & understanding. David Mitchell & his wife have translated Naoki's book so that it might help others dealing with autism & generally illuminate a little-understood condition. Like The Diving Bell & the Butterfly it gives us an exceptional chance to enter the mind of another & see the world from a strange & fascinating perspective. The book also features eleven original illustrations inspired by Naoki's words by the artistic duo Kai & Sunny.
...

Reason to Breathe" by Rebecca Donovan is a US bestselling phenomenon. An utterly addictive & heartbreaking novel that will leave readers breathless & desperate for more. All fans of Jodi Picoult & new adult author fiction such Colleen Hoover's " Slammed" Tammara Webber's " Easy" & Abbi Glines' " Vincent Boys" will love Rebecca Donovan's incredible writing. A must-read. A passionate love. A brutal betrayal. Unwavering hope. In a town where most people worry about what to be seen in & who to be seen with Emma Thomas would rather not be seen at all. She's more concerned with feigning perfection pulling down her sleeves to conceal the bruises. Emma doesn't want anyone to know how far from perfect her life truly is. When Emma unexpectedly finds love it challenges her to recognize her own worth
- but at the risk of revealing the terrible secret she's desperate to hide. Praise for " Reason to Breathe": " Emotionally intense & heart-achingly beautiful " Reason to Breathe" will linger long in your thoughts after you turn the last page". (Tracey Garvis-Graves " New York Times" bestselling author of " On the Island"). "USA Today" bestselling author Rebecca Donovan has been a writer most of her life but has just recently been deemed an author. Her debut novels " Reason to Breathe" & its sequel " Barely Breathing" have resonated with readers around the world. Rebecca is currently working on the third & final instalment of the " Breathing Series" " Out of Breath". She lives in a small town in Massachusetts USA."
...

Reassembling the Social is a fundamental challenge from one of the worlds leading social theorists to how we understand society & the social. Bruno Latours contention is that the word social as used by Social Scientists has become laden with assumptions to the point where it has become misnomer. When the adjective is applied to a phenomenon it is used to indicate a stablilized state of affairs a bundle of ties that in due course may be used to account for another phenomenon. But Latour also finds the word used as if it described a type of material in a comparable way to an adjective such as wooden or steely. Rather than simply indicating what is already assembled together it is now used in a way that makes assumptions about the nature of what is assembled. It has become a word that designates two distinct things: a process of assembling; & a type of material distinct from others. Latour shows why the social cannot be thought of as a kind of material or domain & disputes attempts to provide a social explanations of other states of affairs. While these attempts have been productive (and probably necessary) in the past the very success of the social sciences mean that they are largely no longer so. At the present stage it is no longer possible to inspect the precise constituents entering the social domain. Latour returns to the original meaning of the social to redefine the notion & allow it to trace connections again. It will then be possible to resume the traditional goal of the social sciences but using more refined tools. Drawing on his extensive work examining the assemblages of nature Latour finds it necessary to scrutinize thoroughly the exact content of what is assembled under the umbrella of Society. This approach a sociology of associations has become known as Actor-Network-Theory & this book is an essential introduction both for those seeking to understand Actor-Network Theory or the ideas of one of its most influential proponents. ...

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.. . Working as a lady's companion the heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Life begins to look very bleak until on a trip to the South of France she meets Maxim de Winter a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. She accepts but whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to the ominous & brooding Manderley the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. & the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding Mrs Danvers.. . Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the Other Woman. An international bestseller that has never gone out of print Rebecca is the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love & the struggle to find her identity. ...

Daphne du Mauriers haunting classic read by Emilia Fox Rebecca is widely regarded as Daphne du Mauriers finest novel. It tells the story of Manderley
- an exquisite house with gardens down to the sea its owner Max de Winter & his new young wife...and of course Rebecca.
...

Rebecca Randall is one of seven fatherless children but is full of fun & strange ideas. She leaves her family at Sunnybrook Farm & goes to live with her two aunts in Riverboro. There she goes to school for the first time embarks on a madcap scheme to sell soap nearly runs away befriends the kindly stagecoach driver Jeremiah Cobb & with ' Mr Aladdin' helps repair her family's fortunes. ...

On the twentieth anniversary of the death of Rebecca the hauntingly beautiful first wife of Maxim de Winter family friend Colonel Julyan receives an anonymous parcel. It contains a black notebook with two handwritten words on the title page -- Rebecca's Tale -- & two pictures: a photograph of Rebecca as a young child & a postcard of Manderley. Rebecca once asked Julyan to ensure she was buried in the churchyard facing the sea: if she ended up in the de Winter crypt she warned she'd come back to haunt him. Now it seems she has finally kept her promise. Julyan's conscience has never been clear over the official version of Rebecca's death. Was Rebecca the manipulative promiscuous femme fatale her husband claimed. Or the gothic heroine of tragic proportions that others had suggested. The official story the 'truth' has only had Maxim's version of events to consider. But all that is about to change.. . ...

The first book in Bernard Cornwell's bestselling series on the American Civil War. It is summer 1861. The armies of North & South stand on the brink of America's civil war. Nathanial Starbuck jilted by his girl & estranged from his family arrives in the capital of the Confederate South where he enlists in an elite regiment being raised by rich eccentric Washington Faulconer. Pledged to the Faulconer Legion Starbuck becomes a northern boy fighting for the southern cause. But nothing can prepare him for the shocking violence to follow in the war which broke America in two. ...