Oxford-educated historian Farrell's sequel to 'Saucers, Swastikas and Psyops' delves into the creation of a breakaway civilisation by the Nazis in South America and other parts of the world. He discusses the advanced technology that they took with them at the end of the war and psychological war that they waged for decades on America and NATO.

A. G. Spalding was a key figure in the professionalization and commercialization of American sports. Co-founder of baseball's National League, owner of the Chicago White Stockings (later the Cubs), and founder of a sporting goods business that made him a millionaire, Spalding not only willed baseball to be our national pastime but also contributed to making sport a significant part of American life.

This biography captures the zest, flamboyance, and creativity of Albert Goodwell Spalding, a man of insatiable ego, a showman and entrepreneur, whose life illuminated the hopes and fears of 19th-century Americans. It is a vivid evocation of the vanished world of 19th-century baseball, recreating a time when it was transformed from a game played on unkempt fields to modern style.

From uttering a prayer before boarding a plane, to exploring past lives through hypnosis, has superstition become pervasive in contemporary culture? Robert Park, the best-selling author of "Voodoo Science," argues that it has. In "Superstition," Park asks why people persist in superstitious convictions long after science has shown them to be ill-founded. He takes on supernatural beliefs from religion and the afterlife to New Age spiritualism and faith-based medical claims. He examines recent controversies and concludes that science is the only way we have of understanding the world.

Park sides with the forces of reason in a world of continuing and, he fears, increasing superstition. Chapter by chapter, he explains how people too easily mistake pseudoscience for science. He discusses parapsychology, homeopathy, and acupuncture; he questions the existence of souls, the foundations of intelligent design, and the power of prayer; he asks for evidence of reincarnation and astral projections; and he challenges the idea of heaven. Throughout, he demonstrates how people's blind faith, and their confidence in suspect phenomena and remedies, are manipulated for political ends. Park shows that science prevails when people stop fooling themselves.

Compelling and precise, "Superstition" takes no hostages in its quest to provoke. In shedding light on some very sensitive--and Park would say scientifically dubious--issues, the book is sure to spark discussion and controversy.

The Secrets of Life series is written for everyone who, frankly, needs a spot of cheering up, and will provide conversation starters for years after reading! O'Connor's easy-going, conversational style brings an outsider's questioning eye to the great forces behind life. The second book in the four-part series debates the steps that led to us being so completely different to anything that had ever appeared before. If we really were just another kind of animal off the production line of life, then what were the revolutions that turbo-charged our abilities? How is it possible that we only arrived a fluttering of an eyelash ago compared to evolutionary time, yet we are now so completely dominant over everything else in life? Book Two also sets out to answer the questions around what we did that meant we could alter ourselves in an instant, and so avoid being stuck in an evolutionary niche like every other organism. Why, for example, was it such a huge step forward when we began to run? Why was the taming of fire arguably the most important thing we ever did? How did we manage to create the intelligence and insights that allowed us to make our own life decisions? Why was gossiping so critical? With the same writing approach that typified Book One, in How Did We Get To Be So Different? O'Connor sets out to answer these and other questions by summarising the views of the great biologists, anthropologists, and revolutionary theorists - and then adding some opinions of his own.. Example questions posed (and answered) in Book Two - How Did We Get To Be So Different? If we have a degree of control over our lives, then why were our rulers always so horrible- and why did we put up with them? Why do we copy each other so much, and yet we'd accept that others could be so unbelievably violent? How did fire make us so different? Where did the free will come from that let us override the drives of our animal pasts - something that no other organism had ever managed before in the long history of evolution? How did we develop language? Why was gossip so critical? How did printing and reading completely change our world?