In 2017, Dr Suzanne Koven published an essay describing the challenges faced by women doctors, including her own personal struggle with "imposter syndrome"-a long-held, secret belief that she was not clever enough or good enough to be a "real" doctor. Accessed nearly 300,000 times by readers around the world, Koven's Letter to a Young Female Physician has evolved into a work that reflects on her career in medicine, in which women still encounter sexism, pay inequity and harassment. Koven tells engaging stories about her pregnancy during a gruelling residency in the AIDS era; the illnesses of her son and parents during which her roles as a doctor, mother and daughter converged; and the twilight of her career during the COVID-19 pandemic. Letter to a Young Female Physician offers an indelible eyewitness account from a doctor, mother, wife, daughter, teacher and writer that will encourage readers to embrace their own imperfect selves.

'Sensational' SUNDAY TIMES NO. BESTSELLER 'Extraordinary...both exhilarating and alarming...fascinating' DAILY MAIL 'Wonderful...a testament to the tenacity of the human spirit' FINANCIAL TIMES Henry Marsh has spent four decades operating on the human brain. In this searing and provocative memoir following his retirement from the NHS, he reflects on the experiences that have shaped his career and life, gaining a deeper understanding of what matters to us all in the end.

Colonel Chris Hadfield has spent decades training as an astronaut and has logged nearly 4000 hours in space. During this time he has broken into a Space Station with a Swiss army knife, disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, and been temporarily blinded while clinging to the exterior of an orbiting spacecraft. The secret to Col. Hadfield's success-and survival-is an unconventional philosophy he learned at NASA: prepare for the worst-"and enjoy every moment of it."
In "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth," Col. Hadfield takes readers deep into his years of training and space exploration to show how to make the impossible possible. Through eye-opening, entertaining stories filled with the adrenaline of launch, the mesmerizing wonder of spacewalks, and the measured, calm responses mandated by crises, he explains how conventional wisdom can get in the way of achievement-and happiness. His own extraordinary education in space has taught him some counterintuitive lessons: don't visualize success, do care what others think, and always sweat the small stuff.
You might never be able to build a robot, pilot a spacecraft, make a music video or perform basic surgery in zero gravity like Col. Hadfield. But his vivid and refreshing insights will teach you how to "think" like an astronaut, and will change, completely, the way you view life on Earth-especially your own.

Extensively researched, this book traces the life and work of Abraham De Moivre as well as the state of probability and statistics in eighteenth-century Britain. It is the first extensive biography of De Moivre and is based on recently discovered material and translations, including some of De Moivre 's letters.

The book begins with discussions on De Moivre 's early life in France and his initial work in pure mathematics with some excursions into celestial mechanics. It then describes his fundamental contributions to probability theory and applications, including those in finance and actuarial science. The author explores how De Moivre 's wide network of personal and professional connections often motivated his research. The book also covers De Moivre 's contemporaries and his impact on the field. Written in a clear, approachable style, this biography will appeal to historians and practitioners of the art of probability and statistics in a wide range of applications, including finance and actuarial science.

In Bound by Muscle, Andrew Brown details the lives and achievements of two physiologists, Archibald Vivian Hill (1886-1977) and Otto Fritz Meyerhof (1884-1951). Hill and Meyerhof shared the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries related to metabolic changes underlying muscle activity. Bound by Muscle describes how Hill and Meyerhof's lives and careers intersected and diverged and how their work changed the course of biological science. Bound by Muscle is organized chronologically. The first four chapters consider Hill and Meyerhof's childhoods and early careers; subsequent chapters address the Nobel Prize nomination and award and how their lives were affected by the World Wars. Bound by Muscle details Hill and Meyerhof's scientific breakthroughs and professional accomplishments. The book also examines the historical context that shaped their work and how the two men differed. Hill embodied the pragmatic style of British science. He became an outspoken critic of fascism as well as an effective humanitarian. As a senior scientist, he played major roles in preparing Great Britain for World War II. In contrast, Meyerhof was shy and philosophical. A non-observant Jew, he was reluctant to leave his superb laboratory in Heidelberg as the Nazi threat became apparent. His dramatic eventual escape is described in detail for the first time. Throughout, Bound by Muscle reflects on how individual differences and historical events have shaped the trajectory of science.

From Snow White to Moana, from Pinocchio to Frozen, the animated films of Walt Disney Studios have moved and entertained millions. But few fans know that behind these groundbreaking features was an incredibly influential group of women who fought for respect in an often ruthless male-dominated industry and who have slipped under the radar for decades. In The Queens of Animation, bestselling author Nathalia Holt tells their dramatic stories for the first time, showing how these women infiltrated the boys' club of Disney's story and animation departments and used early technologies to create the rich artwork and unforgettable narratives that have become part of the American canon. As the influence of Walt Disney Studios grew---and while battling sexism, domestic abuse, and workplace intimidation---these women also fought to transform the way female characters are depicted to young audiences. With gripping storytelling, and based on extensive interviews and exclusive access to archival and personal documents, The Queens of Animation reveals the vital contributions these women made to Disney's Golden Age and their continued impact on animated filmmaking, culminating in the record-shattering Frozen, Disney's first female-directed full-length feature film.

'Birkhead has combined ingenuity and perseverance to produce an evocative portrait of a great pioneer in the scientific study of birds' Literary Review

Francis Willughby lived and thrived in the midst of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Along with his Cambridge tutor John Ray, Willughby was determined to overhaul the whole of natural history and impose order on its complexity. It was exhilarating, exacting and exhausting work. Yet before Willughby and Ray could complete their monumental encyclopaedia of birds, Ornithology, Willughby died. In the centuries since, Ray's reputation has grown, obscuring that of his collaborator. Now, for the first time, Willughby's own story and genius are given the attention they deserve.

Tim Birkhead celebrates how Willughby's endeavours set a standard for the way birds and natural history should be studied. Rich with glorious detail, The Wonderful Mr Willughby is a fascinating insight into a thrilling period of scientific history and a lively biography of a man who lived at its heart.

When John Napier published his invention of logarithms in 1614 he was announcing one of the greatest advances in the history of mathematics, and log tables were used universally until the mid 1970s. With his Rabdologia, an ingenious calculating tool composed of numbered rods which came to be known as 'Napier's Bones', he enabled people in the marketplace to do multiplication sums without knowing any multiplication tables. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about this most extrordinary man was that his great inventions were made without the stimulus of talking to other mathematicians in mainstream Europe. Working away in comparative isolation in a tower house in Scotland, Napier produced methods of calculation that literally changed lives all over the world. He is the father of the slide-rule and the grandfather of today's calculators. Despite his achievements, he remains curiously uncelebrated, and this absorbing story of his life aims to give John Napier his true status. This new edition has been redesigned in a new format and has a new cover.

How does a parent make sense of a child's severe mental illness? How does a father meet the daily challenges of caring for his gifted but delusional son, while seeking to overcome the stigma of madness and the limits of psychiatry? W. J. T. Mitchell's memoir tells the story--at once representative and unique--of one family's encounter with mental illness, and bears witness to the life of the talented young man who was his son. Gabriel Mitchell was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of twenty-one and died by suicide eighteen years later. He left behind a remarkable archive of creative work and a father determined to honor his son's attempts to conquer his own illness. Before his death, Gabe had been working on a film that would show madness from inside and out, as media stereotype and spectacle, symptom and stigma, malady and minority status, disability and gateway to insight. He was convinced that madness is an extreme form of subjective experience that we all endure at some point in our lives, whether in moments of ecstasy or melancholy or in the enduring trauma of a broken heart. Gabe's declared ambition was to transform schizophrenia from a death sentence to a learning experience, and madness from a curse to a critical perspective. Through vignettes and memories, by turns difficult, unsettling, and humorous, Mental Traveler shows how Mitchell was drawn into Gabe's quest for enlightenment within madness. Shot through with love and pain, this memoir holds many lessons for anyone struggling to cope with mental illness, and especially for parents and caregivers of those caught in its grasp.

"Ants are the most warlike of all animals, with colony pitted against colony," writes E.O. Wilson, one of the world's most beloved scientists, "their clashes dwarf Waterloo and Gettysburg." In Tales from the Ant World, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Wilson takes us on a myrmecological tour to such far-flung destinations as Mozambique and New Guinea, the Gulf of Mexico's Dauphin Island and even his parent's overgrown backyard, thrillingly relating his nine-decade-long scientific obsession with over 15,000 ant species. Animating his scientific observations with illuminating personal stories, Wilson hones in on twenty-five ant species to explain how these genetically superior creatures talk, smell, and taste, and more significantly, how they fight to determine who is dominant. Wryly observing that "males are little more than flying sperm missiles" or that ants send their "little old ladies into battle," Wilson eloquently relays his brushes with fire, army, and leafcutter ants, as well as more exotic species. Among them are the very rare Matabele, Africa's fiercest warrior ants, whose female hunters can carry up to fifteen termites in their jaw (and, as Wilson reports from personal experience, have an incredibly painful stinger); Costa Rica's Basiceros, the slowest of all ants; and New Caledonia's Bull Ants, the most endangered of them all, which Wilson discovered in 2011 after over twenty years of presumed extinction. Richly illustrated throughout with depictions of ant species by Kristen Orr, as well as photos from Wilsons' expeditions throughout the world, Tales from the Ant World is a fascinating, if not occasionally hair-raising, personal account by one of our greatest scientists and a necessary volume for any lover of the natural world.

A woman's fight to reclaim her body after a paralysis-inducing cycling accident In the early evening on October 1, 2003, Christina Crosby was three miles into a seventeen mile bicycle ride, intent on reaching her goal of 1,000 miles for the riding season. She was a respected senior professor of English who had celebrated her fiftieth birthday a month before. As she crested a hill, she caught a branch in the spokes of her bicycle, which instantly pitched her to the pavement. Her chin took the full force of the blow, and her head snapped back. In that instant, she was paralyzed. In A Body, Undone, Crosby puts into words a broken body that seems beyond the reach of language and understanding. She writes about a body shot through with neurological pain, disoriented in time and space, incapacitated by paralysis and deadened sensation. To address this foreign body, she calls upon the readerly pleasures of narrative, critical feminist and queer thinking, and the concentrated language of lyric poetry. Working with these resources, she recalls her 1950s tomboy ways in small-town, rural Pennsylvania, and records growing into the 1970s through radical feminism and the affirmations of gay liberation. Deeply unsentimental, Crosby communicates in unflinching prose the experience of "diving into the wreck" of her body to acknowledge grief, and loss, but also to recognize the beauty, fragility, and dependencies of all human bodies. A memoir that is a meditation on disability, metaphor, gender, sex, and love, A Body, Undone is a compelling account of living on, as Crosby rebuilds her body and fashions a life through writing, memory, and desire.

* Shortlisted for the RSL Christopher Bland Prize * Honest, intelligent and unsentimental, Patient 1 is a startling self-portrait written with wit and vulnerability, and a unique testament to the power of hope in the face of illness. Charlotte Raven had never heard of Huntington's Disease when, in her mid-thirties, she discovered that her father was suffering from the illness. Life for her and her young family would never be the same again. Patient 1 is her brutally candid account of coming to terms with this inherited neurodegenerative disease, which can manifest at any time in life for people who carry the faulty gene. As the illness began to take hold of Raven's body, mind and memory, she began to write. She wrote like her life depended on it - and in many ways she believed it did. Frank and fearless, Patient 1 is an act of self-preservation and a kind of reckoning: with the illness, with the person she once was, with the person she is now. In an afterword, Raven's doctor Ed Wild - one of the country's leading experts in Huntington's - explains how doctors and patients like Charlotte are working together in the hope of one day eliminating this disease altogether.

""Leonhard Euler and the Bernoullis" is a fascinating tale of the Bernoulli family and Euler's association with them. Successful merchants in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Bernoullis were driven out of Antwerp during the persecution of the Huguenots and settled first in Frankfurt, and then in Basel, where one of the most remarkable mathematical dynasties evolved with Jacob, Johann, and Daniel Bernoulli the most prominent among them. Euler, fortunate to have had Johann Bernoulli as a tutor, quickly rose to prominence in the academies of Berlin and St. Petersburg, and became the most prolific and profound mathematician that ever lived.

The story of these remarkable men, their great ambitions and dedication to their science-often against parental authority-is skillfully told by the author. Refreshing fictional dialogue is interspersed throughout into an otherwise accurate historical scenario. The book is intended for the young adult audience of middle school and early high school ages, but surely will also appeal to a general audience, with or without mathematical background."

--Walter Gautschi, Purdue University

All royalties, a minimum of GBP2.50 from the sale of each book, will be paid to NHS Charities Together (registered charity no. 1186569) to fund vital projects. When the UK went into lockdown in March 2020 to contain the spread of the Covid-19 virus, artist Tom Croft offered to paint an NHS key worker's portrait for free. Unsure how to help and offer his support, he wanted to capture and record the bravery and heroism of frontline workers who were risking their physical and mental health for our wellbeing. Tom suggested that other artists might want to do the same. He made his offer via video message on Instagram and was immediately contacted by Harriet Durkin, a nurse at the Manchester Royal Infirmary, who had contracted Covid-19 and, now recovered, was about to return to the frontline. Tom's portrait of Harriet, wearing PPE, was the first in what became a global art project. The response to the initiative was staggering and Tom personally paired up 500 artists and NHS workers in the first two weeks. When numbers reached the thousands, Tom set up a traffic light system so that artists and frontline workers could match themselves. Portraits in all mediums followed, from oils to pencil, sculpture to ceramic, mosaic to mural. This book presents a selection of these remarkable images. Some are by leading artists such as Alastair Adams and Mary Jane Ansell, and they are showcased here as both a celebration and a remembrance, in physical form, of the dedication of our NHS key workers. 'I just couldn't imagine what it must be like to have to put on your PPE and head into the frontline of the pandemic, so I wanted to try and thank NHS workers in some small way. We are indebted to them, so to be able to commemorate, celebrate and record their experiences through portraiture felt fitting. This collection will stand as a permanent record of their bravery in a time of national crisis.' Tom Croft

John Whitehurst was one of a select number of men of science living and working in the eighteenth century whose minds were as remarkable for their breadth as their talents were for their diversity. Although remembered today mainly as a notable clockmaker from Derby - the town in which he lived and worked for over forty years - Whitehurst was also an instrument maker, mechanical engineer, hydraulicist, home improver, meteorologist, the father of modern geology and he had a hand in the development of the steam engine. John Whitehurst FRS: Innovator, Scientist, Geologist and Clockmaker presents a brief life of this talented and engaging man, drawing together his varied attainments and describes his wide circle of acquaintances, many of whom were fellow members of the influential Lunar Society. Much that he achieved has left an intangible legacy, except, of course, his clocks and instruments. This side of Whitehurst has been described in great detail, as well as the clock-making of his family and his successors.Details are given of the many types of clocks that came from the Whitehurst workshops, from complex movements made for Matthew Boulton to simple hook-and-spike wall and watchmen clocks. The book's appendices include details on all known Whitehurst turret clocks and angle barometers, the firm's apprentices and its known numbered clocks. Since his death just over two centuries ago, his achievements have been largely neglected, and this book rehabilitates the reputation of a man whose ideas were of great importance in the development of scientific thought in the eighteenth century.

Paul Weinberg spent 30 years in the Emergency Room (or ER) as a medical doctor and has seen everything, Described as "a strange career" by the author, entry into the field is unrestricted and open to all who are brave (or foolish) enough to start into the stream without the knowledge of the tsunami ahead. The strangeness of the practice is apparent from the very first visit to a busy urban ER. The swarm of commotion and great vividness of the scene can be dizzying. The relentlessness of the torrent and its strange day and night rhythms can enthral and repel like no other practice or job. In turns shocking, sad and funny, this book contains remarkable tales, inside stories and the experiences of a doctor's career in ER. Emergency medicine in America is a critical asset to its healthcare system. The ER doctor is located at the interface of the public and the first point of healthcare. If a doctor is needed outside of office hours, nights, or holidays, if the patient is uninsured or has inadequate insurance, or is of such a social state that they might be unpleasant to be around, no one is turned away at the ER. In short, the life of the ER doc is one where no situation is off limits.

'Based on meticulous research in original sources ... Goodman illustrates vividly how adept [Banks] was ... Shining a light on individuals whose achievements are relatively uncelebrated' Jenny Uglow, New York Review of Books A bold new history of how botany and global plant collecting - centred at Kew Gardens and driven by Joseph Banks - transformed the earth. Botany was the darling and the powerhouse of the eighteenth century. As European ships ventured across the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans, discovery bloomed. Bounties of new plants were brought back, and their arrival meant much more than improved flowerbeds - it offered a new scientific frontier that would transform Europe's industry, medicine, eating and drinking habits, and even fashion. Joseph Banks was the dynamo for this momentous change. As botanist for James Cook's great voyage to the South Pacific on the Endeavour, Banks collected plants on a vast scale, armed with the vision - as a child of the Enlightenment - that to travel physically was to advance intellectually. His thinking was as intrepid as Cook's seafaring: he commissioned radically influential and physically daring expeditions such as those of Francis Masson to the Cape Colony, George Staunton to China, George Caley to Australia, William Bligh to Tahiti and Jamaica, among many others. Jordan Goodman's epic history follows these high seas adventurers and their influence in Europe, as well as taking us back to the early years of Kew Gardens, which Banks developed devotedly across the course of his life, transforming it into one of the world's largest and most diverse botanical gardens. In a rip-roaring global expedition, based on original sources in many languages, Goodman gives a momentous history of how the discoveries made by Banks and his collectors advanced scientific understanding around the world.

One day in 1996, the neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel took a call from his program officer at the National Institute of Mental Health, who informed him that he had been awarded a key grant. Also, the officer said, he and his colleagues thought Kandel would win the Nobel Prize. "I hope not soon," Kandel's wife, Denise, said when she heard this. Sociologists had found that Nobel Prize winners often did not contribute much more to science, she explained. In this book, Kandel recounts his remarkable career since receiving the Nobel in 2000-or his experience of proving to his wife that he was not yet "completely dead intellectually." He takes readers through his lab's scientific advances, including research into how long-term memory is stored in the brain, the nature of age-related memory loss, and the neuroscience of drug addiction and schizophrenia. Kandel relates how the Nobel Prize gave him the opportunity to reach a far larger audience, which in turn allowed him to discover and pursue new directions. He describes his efforts to promote public understanding of science and to put brain science and art into conversation with each other. Kandel also discusses his return to Austria, which he had fled as a child, and observes Austria's coming to terms with the Nazi period. Showcasing Kandel's accomplishments, erudition, and wit, There Is Life After the Nobel Prize is a candid account of the working life of an acclaimed scientist.

Hospital and Haven tells the story of an Episcopal missionary couple who lived their entire married life, from 1910 to 1938, among the Gwich’in peoples of northern Alaska, devoting themselves to the peoples’ physical, social, and spiritual well-being. The era was marked by great social disruption within Alaska Native communities and high disease and death rates, owing to the influx of non-Natives in the region, inadequate sanitation and hygiene, minimal law enforcement, and insufficient government funding for Alaska Native health care. Hospital and Haven reveals the sometimes contentious yet promising relationship between missionaries, Alaska Natives, other migrants, and Progressive Era medicine. St. Stephen’s Mission stood at the center of community life and formed a bulwark against the forces that threatened the Native peoples’ lifeways and lives. Dr. Grafton (Happy or Hap) Burke directed the Hudson Stuck Memorial Hospital, the only hospital to serve Alaska Natives within a several-hundred-mile radius. Clara Burke focused on orphaned, needy, and convalescing children, raising hundreds in St. Stephen’s Mission Home. The Gwich’in in turn embraced and engaged in the church and hospital work, making them community institutions. Bishop Peter Trimble Rowe came to recognize the hospital and orphanage work at Fort Yukon as the church’s most important work in Alaska.

'This terrific memoir... is utterly gripping' Mail on Sunday 'Read this book and be inspired to reach for the impossible' Brian Greene Many children dream of becoming an astronaut when they grow up, but when a six-year-old Mike Massimino saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon he knew what he wanted to do when he became an adult. But NASA rejected him; then when he applied again they turned him down because of his poor eyesight. For the next year he trained his eyes to work better and finally, at the third time of asking, NASA accepted him. So began Massimino's 18-year career as an astronaut, and the extraordinary lengths he went to to get accepted was only the beginning. In this awe-inspiring memoir, he reveals the hard work, camaraderie and sheer guts involved in the life of an astronaut; he vividly describes what it is like to strap yourself into the Space Shuttle and blast off into space, or the sensation of walking in space, as he did when he completed a mission to service the Hubble telescope. He also talks movingly about the Columbia tragedy, and how it felt to step into the Space Shuttle again in the aftermath of that disaster. Massimino was inspired by the film The Right Stuff, and this book is not only a tribute to those fellow astronauts he worked with, but also a stunning example of someone who had exactly those attributes himself.