A mind-expanding, revolutionary journey across time that shows how our biology has determined human history for the first time. This book will change how you see the world.

We’re a wonder of evolution, capable of incredible feats. But we’re also deeply flawed. Our bodies and minds often break, fail, and hinder us. To be human is to live with this extraordinary contradiction. So, to understand the course humanity has taken – from prehistoric times through the age of empire and into the modern era – we must understand who, and what, we are.

Being Human is history made flesh. From the epidemic that brought Europe’s peasants freedom, to the health deficiency which gave rise to the world’s largest criminal organisation, to the cognitive biases that led to military catastrophes in Crimea and Iraq, we see how our unique nature shaped our relationships, economies and societies – and, importantly, how it continues to impact human progress today.

Being Human is history made flesh. It will change the way you see the world.

We are a wonder of evolution. Powerful yet dextrous, instinctive yet thoughtful, we are expert communicators and innovators. Our exceptional abilities have created the civilisation we know today.

But we're also deeply flawed. Our bodies break, choke and fail, whether we're kings or peasants. Diseases thwart our boldest plans. Our psychological biases have been at the root of terrible decisions in both war and peacetime.

This extraordinary contradiction is the essence of what it means to be human - the sum total of our frailties and our faculties. And history has played out in the balance between them. Now, for the first time, Lewis Dartnell tells our story through the lens of this unique, capricious and fragile nature. He explores how our biology has shaped our relationships, our societies, our economies and our wars, and how it continues to challenge and define our progress.

Our biology will change how you see the world. Lewis Dartnell explores how human biology has shaped relationships, societies, economies and wars across the globe

How did haemophilia bring down the Russian royal family? And scurvy give rise to the Mafia?

We are a wonder of evolution. Our exceptional abilities created life as we know it, but we're also deeply flawed. This extraordinary contradiction between our faculties and frailties is the essence of what it means to be human. And history has played out in the balance between them.

Here, Lewis Dartnell tells our story through the lens of this uniquely fragile nature for the first time. From cognitive biases to endemic diseases, he explores how human biology has shaped relationships, societies, economies and wars across the globe - and considers how, importantly, it continues to challenge and define our progress.

How would you go about rebuilding a technological society from scratch? If our technological society collapsed tomorrow what would be the one book you would want to press into the hands of the postapocalyptic survivors? What crucial knowledge would they need to survive in the immediate aftermath and to rebuild civilization as quickly as possible? Human knowledge is collective, distributed across the population. It has built on itself for centuries, becoming vast and increasingly specialized. Most of us are ignorant about the fundamental principles of the civilization that supports us, happily utilizing the latest-or even the most basic-technology without having the slightest idea of why it works or how it came to be. If you had to go back to absolute basics, like some sort of postcataclysmic Robinson Crusoe, would you know how to re-create an internal combustion engine, put together a microscope, get metals out of rock, or even how to produce food for yourself? Lewis Dartnell proposes that the key to preserving civilization in an apocalyptic scenario is to provide a quickstart guide, adapted to cataclysmic circumstances. The Knowledge describes many of the modern technologies we employ, but first it explains the fundamentals upon which they are built. Every piece of technology rests on an enormous support network of other technologies, all interlinked and mutually dependent. You can't hope to build a radio, for example, without understanding how to acquire the raw materials it requires, as well as generate the electricity needed to run it. But Dartnell doesn't just provide specific information for starting over; he also reveals the greatest invention of them all-the phenomenal knowledge-generating machine that is the scientific method itself. The Knowledge is a brilliantly original guide to the fundamentals of science and how it built our modern world.

Read the Sunday Times bestseller that reveals the Earth’s awesome impact on the shape of human civilisations.

‘Stands comparison with Sapiens… Thrilling’ Sunday Times

Human evolution in East Africa was driven by geological forces. Ancient Greece developed democracy because of its mountainous terrain. Voting behaviour in the United States today follows the bed of an ancient sea.

Professor Lewis Dartnell takes us on an astonishing journey into our planet’s past to tell the ultimate origin story. Blending science and history, Origins reveals the Earth’s awesome impact on the shape of human civilisations – and helps us to see the challenges and opportunities of the future.

If the world as we know it ended tomorrow, how would you survive? A nuclear war, viral pandemic or asteroid strike. The world as we know it has ended. You and the other survivors must start again. What knowledge would you need to start rebuilding civilisation from scratch? How do you grow food, generate power, prepare medicines, or get metal out of rocks? Could you avert another Dark Ages, or take shortcuts to accelerate redevelopment? Living in the modern world, we have become disconnected from the basic processes and key fundamentals of science that sustain our lives. Ingenious and groundbreaking, The Knowledge explains everything you need to know about everything, revolutionising your understanding of the world. 'A glorious compendium of the knowledge we have lost in the living...the most inspiring book I've read in a long time' Independent 'A terrifically engrossing history of science and technology' Guardian http://the-knowledge.org/

Astrobiology, the study of life and its existence in the universe, is now one of the hottest areas of both popular science and serious academic research, fusing biology, chemistry, astrophysics, and geology. In this masterful introduction, Lewis Dartnell explores its latest findings, and delves into some of the most fascinating questions in science. What actually is 'life'? Could it exist on other planets? Could alien cells be based on silicon rather than carbon, or need ammonia instead of water? Introducing some of the most extreme lifeforms on Earth - those thriving in boiling acid or huddled around deep-sea volcanoes - Dartnell takes us on a tour of the universe to reveal how deeply linked we are to our cosmic environment, and shows why the Earth is so uniquely suited for the development of life.

Any microbial life extant in the top meters of the martian subsurface is likely to be held dormant for long periods of time by the current permafrost conditions. In this potential habitable zone, a major environmental hazard is the ionising radiation field generated by the flux of exogenous energetic particles: solar energetic protons and galactic cosmic rays. The research reported here constitutes the first multidisciplinary approach to assessing the astrobiological impact of this radiation on Mars. A sophisticated computer model has been constructed to characterise this complex subsurface ionising radiation field and explore the influence of variation in crucial parameters such as atmospheric density, surface composition, and primary radiation spectra. Microbiological work has also been conducted to isolate novel cold-tolerant bacterial strains from the Dry Valleys environment of Antarctica, an analogue site to the martian surface, and determine their phylogenetic diversity and survival under high-dose gamma-ray exposure frozen at -80 C, a temperature characteristic of the martian mid-latitude permafrost."

Thought the science of the future was all hoverboards and space travel? Think again.

Every day, scientists come up with the ingenious solutions and surprising discoveries that will define our future. So here, Jim Al-Khalili and his crack team of experts bin the crystal ball and use cutting-edge science to get a glimpse of what's in store.

From whether teleportation is really possible (spoiler: it is), to what we'll do if artificial intelligence takes over, What's Next? takes on the big questions. And along the way, it'll answer questions like: Will we find a cure to all diseases? An answer to climate change? Will bionics make us into superheroes?

Touching on everything from genetics to transport, and nanotechnology to teleportation, What's Next? is a fascinating, fun and informative look at what's in store for the human race.