Earth Sciences

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Organized chronologically, A History of the World in 500 Maps tells a clear, linear story, bringing together themes as diverse as religion, capitalism, warfare, geopolitics, popular culture and climate change. Meticulously rendered maps chart the sequence of broad historical trends, from the dispersal of our species across the globe to the colonizing efforts of imperial European powers in the 18th century, as well as exploring moments of particular significance in rich detail.

• Visualizes 7 million years of human history.
• Analyses cities and kingdoms as well as countries and continents.
• Features major technical developments, from the invention of farming in the Fertile Crescent to the Industrial Revolution.
• Charts the spread of major global religions, including Christianity and Islam.
• Explores the increasing interconnectivity of our world through exploration and trade.
• Investigates warfare and battles from across the ages, from Alexander the Great’s conquests to the D-Day offensive.

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**Shortlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award**
A FINANCIAL TIMES and NEW STATESMAN Book of the Year
A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK

‘A compelling narrative of the human story’ TIM MARSHALL, author of Prisoners of Geography

‘Lively, rich and exciting… full of surprises’ PETER FRANKOPAN, author of The Silk Roads
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Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium. They built our world, and they will transform our future.

These are the six most crucial substances in human history. They took us from the Dark Ages to the present day. They power our computers and phones, build our homes and offices, and create life-saving medicines. But most of us take them completely for granted.

In Material World, Ed Conway travels the globe – from the sweltering depths of the deepest mine in Europe, to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan, to the eerie green pools where lithium originates – to uncover a secret world we rarely see. Revealing the true marvel of these substances, he follows the mind-boggling journeys, miraculous processes and little-known companies that turn the raw materials we all need into products of astonishing complexity.

As we wrestle with climate change, energy crises and the threat of new global conflict, Conway shows why these substances matter more than ever before, and how the hidden battle to control them will shape our geopolitical future. This is the story of civilisation – our ambitions and glory, innovations and appetites – from a new perspective: literally from the ground up.

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Can you pin-point the last-known location of Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance?

Can you help Amelia Earhart circumnavigate the globe?

Are you the next Neil Armstrong?

In this unique puzzle book, the Royal Geographical Society brings over a century of maps and expertise to inspire your inner Livingstone and tantalise your budding Columbus. With hundreds of questions on 50 iconic explorers and a mix of mind-boggling maps, word games and trivia questions – it’s time to dust off your compass, pack your snow shoes and test your geographical skills against the most legendary adventurers ever to traverse the globe.

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Ten Maps that tell you everything your need to know about global politics – the million copy international bestseller

Geography shapes not only our history, but where we’re headed…

ON THE RUSSIA/UKRAINE CRISIS – What is driving Russia’s foreign policy? Why do Putin’s actions mirror those made in the past? Prisoners of Geography analyses the geographic weaknesses and historical invasions of Russia’s territories, exploring how they have ultimately shaped the decisions of its leaders past and present.

All leaders are constrained by geography. Their choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas and concrete. Yes, to follow world events you need to understand people, ideas and movements – but if you don’t know geography, you’ll never have the full picture.

If you’ve ever wondered why Putin is so obsessed with Crimea, why the USA was destined to become a global superpower, or why China’s power base continues to expand ever outwards, the answers are all here.

In ten chapters and ten maps, Prisoners of Geography looks at the past, present and future to offer an essential insight into one of the major factors that determines world history.

It’s time to put the ‘geo’ back into geopolitics.

‘Like having a light shone on your understanding… I can’t think of another book that explains the world situation so well. – Nicolas Lezard, Evening Standard

‘Sharp insights into the way geography shapes the choices of world leaders.’ – Gideon Rachman, Financial Times

Ten maps; ten chapters:

Russia * China * United States of America * Latin America * the Middle East * Africa * India and Pakistan * Europe * Japan and Korea * the Arctic

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THE TIMES BEST HISTORY BOOK OF 2023
A BOOK OF THE YEAR PICK FOR THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE AND FINANCIAL TIMES
A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK | AN INSTANT #2 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
‘Humanity has transformed the Earth: Frankopan transforms our understanding of history’ Financial Times
‘Vast, learned and timely work’ Sunday Times
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From the international bestselling author of The Silk Roads comes a major history of how a changing climate has dramatically shaped the development-and demise-of civilisations across time.

When we think about history, we rarely pay much attention to the most destructive floods, the worst winters, the most devastating droughts or the ways that ecosystems have changed over time.

In The Earth Transformed, Peter Frankopan, one of the world’s leading historians, shows that the natural environment is a crucial, if not the defining, factor in global history – and not just of humankind. Volcanic eruptions, solar activities, atmospheric, oceanic and other shifts, as well as anthropogenic behaviour, are fundamental parts of the past and the present. In this magnificent and groundbreaking book, we learn about the origins of our species: about the development of religion and language and their relationships with the environment; about how the desire to centralise agricultural surplus formed the origins of the bureaucratic state; about how growing demands for harvests resulted in the increased shipment of enslaved peoples; about how efforts to understand and manipulate the weather have a long and deep history. All provide lessons of profound importance as we face a precarious future of rapid global warming.

Taking us from the Big Bang to the present day and beyond, The Earth Transformed forces us to reckon with humankind’s continuing efforts to make sense of the natural world.
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‘This is epic, gripping, original history that leaps off the page’ Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireland
‘All Historians aiming to tell a narrative face the problem of when exactly to start it. Only Peter Frankopan would go back 2.5 billion years to the Great Oxidation Event’ Tom Holland

A 2023 HIGHLIGHT FOR: BBC NEWS * SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE * FINANCIAL TIMES * NEW EUROPEAN * GUARDIAN * NEW STATESMAN * THE TIMES * THE WEEK * WATERSTONES * BLACKWELL’S

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The introduction places Smith’s work in the context of earlier, concurrent and subsequent ideas regarding the structure and natural processes of the earth. The book is then organized into four geographical sections, each beginning with four sheets from the 1815 strata map, accompanied by related geological cross sections and county maps (1819–24), and is followed by displays of Sowerby’s fossil illustrations (1816–19) organized by strata. Interleaved between the sections are essays by leading academics that explore the aims of Smith’s work, its application in the fields of mining, agriculture, cartography, fossil collecting and hydrology, and its influence on biostratigraphical theories and the science of geology. Concluding the volume are reflections on Smith’s later work as an itinerant geologist and surveyor, plagiarism by his rival – President of the Geological Society, George Bellas Greenough – receipt of the first Wollaston Medal in 1831 in recognition of his achievements, and the influence of his geological mapping and biostratigraphical theories on the sciences, culminating in the establishment of the modern geological timescale.

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It’s time to spice up your home cooking and transform your dishes from bland and boring to punchy and flavoursome with this definitive guide to spices!

Taking the periodic table of spices as a starting point, this adventurous recipe book explores the science behind the art of making incredible spice blends to help you release the flavour in your dishes. Discover a spice book like no other from TV personality, food scientist and bestselling author, Dr Stuart Farrimond.

Spice profiles – organised by their dominant flavour compound – showcase the world’s top spices, with recipe ideas, information on how to buy, use, and store, and more in-depth science to help you release the flavours and make your own spice connections. There is also a selection of recipes using innovative spice blends, based on the new spice science, designed to brighten your palate and inspire your own culinary adventures.

Sure to get your taste-buds tingling, you can explore:

– An explanation of what spices are and how they’re produced.
– Which countries favour which spices and a bit of the history behind it.
– Dozens of spice blends you can make and what you can use it for.
– 52 exciting recipes from around the world which showcase each spice blend.
– A reference guide to look up each spice to understand how to use it.
– Colour-coded charts to help you learn the chemical compounds that make up the flavours.
– Instructions on how to design your own spice blends with photographic references without.

Great cooking goes beyond following a recipe – it’s knowing how to use the right combination of spices and herbs to get the greatest possible flavour from your dishes. From learning how the flavour compounds within spices work together to exploring the world’s top spices, this is the perfect cookbook for curious cooks and adventurous foodies. Whether you’re a fan of spice seeking to experiment with new flavour combinations, or simply a beginner-level home-cook looking to advance your knowledge on all things spice-related, this is a must-have volume also doubling up as a great coffee table book for the whole family to love.

Explore the world’s best spices, be inspired to make your own new spice blends, and take your cooking to new heights. You’ll turn to this beautiful and unique book time and again – to explore and innovate.

At DK, we believe in the power of discovery.

So why stop there? This series from DK is designed to help you perfect your cooking with practical instruction – and the science behind it. There are more cookbooks to discover from The Science of… series giving you the essentials to cook up a storm! Find the answers to your everyday cooking questions and get more out of your recipes with The Science of Cooking, paired together they make the ideal cookery gifts for your food-loving friends too!

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Remarkable Golf Courses encompasses the extremes of the sport – from the highest golf course in La Paz, Bolivia, to the lowest, in Death Valley, USA; from the most northerly in the Arctic Circle to the most southerly in Tierra del Fuego.

The many quirks of the golfing world are covered, such as the 18th green the other side of the River Lea which is serviced by an electric ferry, or the LA golf course that has its own funicular railway, or the floating golf hole in Idaho, where it’s not just the pin position that’s changed every day, it’s the distance from the shore!

Golf courses that feature neolithic standing stones (Scotland), Roman roads (England), and ruined medieval castles (Wales) take their place alongside the old temples of Delhi or a UNESCO World Heritage bridge that is used to link the 9th and 10th at Angkor Wat.

There are the beloved classic courses of St. Andrews, Carnoustie, Royal St. George and Westward Ho!. There are spectacular golf courses hewn out of the Nevada and Arizona desert, green oases in a cactus-strewn, rocky landscape, along with Hawaiian courses fringed by barren black lava flows. But nothing can beat the thrill in Guatemala of lining up your drive on an active volcano at the Fuego Maya course.

In comparison there are the traditional wind-blown Scottish links, such as the Machrie Hotel on the island of Islay which has the most blind greens on any course, or the remote Isle of Barra where greens are only accessible via a kissing gate.

Fancy swapping countries mid-round? You can at the Llanmymynech club in Wales. At the fourth hole golfers tee off in Wales and putt out on the green in England. Remarkable Golf Courses brings together some astonishing stories with some extraordinary photography.

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A brilliantly arresting historical work, John Lewis Gaddis’s The Cold War takes us as never before to the time when the world stood on the brink of destruction.

In 1945 war came to an end. But a whole new terror was only just beginning…

Here is the truth behind every spy thriller you’ve read: why America and the Soviet Union became locked in a deadly stalemate; how close we came to nuclear catastrophe; what was really going on in the minds of leaders from Stalin to Mao Zedong, Ronald Reagan to Mikhail Gorbachev, how secret agents plotted and East German holidaymakers helped the Berlin Wall fall. It is a story of crisis talks and subterfuge, tyrants and power struggles – and of ordinary people changing the course of history.

‘Gripping’
Len Deighton

‘Superb … brimful of racy incident’
Independent on Sunday

‘A lively and readable history’
The Times

‘Force 9 on the Richter scale’
Spectator

John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University, and ‘the dean of cold war historians’ (The New York Times). He is the author of numerous books, including Security and the American Experience, the book recently pressed on his cabinet and senior security staff by President Bush.

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Discover the history of the United Kingdom through maps

From Mappa Mundi to modern election maps, the United Kingdom has evolved rapidly, along with the ways in which it has been mapped. In this time, cartography has not only kept pace with these changes, but has often driven them. In this beautiful book, more than 90 maps give a visual representation of the history of Britain.

Every map tells a story and this book tells the incredible history of Britain through maps, and includes many famous examples of cartography, along with some that deserve to be better known. See the establishment of Great Britain, the British Empire expand, the impact of World Wars and the latest statistical mapping.

Maps include
• Rudge Cup (schematic map of western forts on Hadrian’s Wall), 2nd century AD
• Matthew Paris map of the Anglian Heptarchy (Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms), c. 1250
• Gough map of Britain, 1360
• Cambriae Typus, first published map of Wales, 1573
• Raven maps of the Ulster Plantations, 1622
• Enclosure map (eg of Norfolk, c. 1800)
• Booth Poverty Map of London, 1886
• Map of Beeching cuts to Britain’s railways, 1963
• Map of EU Referendum voting patterns, 2016

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