A Brief History of Love

Is love about chemistry or do biology, evolution and psychology all have a part to play?

 

Love is one of the most complex and confusing emotions in the human experience. It consumes so much of our lives and yet we don’t truly understand it – what it is on a biological, chemical and evolutionary level. This book takes you on a fascinating journey to explore the science of love, looking closely at the interplay between genes, hormones, emotions and relationships.

 

Discover everything you need to know about why you are attracted to certain people, the brain’s role in your emotions, how to pick “the one” and how to preserve that love over time. Learn how to have better, healthier and more loving relationships by understanding the inner workings of love in your body.

You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song

If you want to know anything about how music surfaces today, how to find it, or how to create it, you will find what you need right here.’ Joseph Menn, Washington Post writer

 

For the first time in history, almost every song ever recorded is available instantly. Everywhere.

 

This book charts what music’s dazzling digital revolution really means for fans and artists. As a former data guru at the world’s biggest streaming service, Spotify, Glenn McDonald reveals:

 

What the tech giants know about you
How they serve up your next song
Whether fans can cheat the algorithm
Whether jazz is dead and ASMR is the new punk
Your chances of becoming a rock star

 

Having analysed the streams of 500 million people, McDonald explores what the data tells us about music and about ourselves, from the secrets of russelåter in Norway to Christmas in the Philippines. Statistically, you have not yet heard your lifetime’s favourite song. This book will take you on a voyage of discovery through music’s fast-flowing new waters.

 

10 bonus playlists of wonder included!

How AI Ate The World

‘An excellent starter for those who want to gain an insight into how AI works and why it’s likely to shape our lives.’
The Daily Telegraph

 

‘This book is a wild, brilliant ride through centuries of thinking about and decades of developing machines that can learn.’
Ciaran Martin, former CEO, the UK National Cyber Security Centre

 

Artificial intelligence will shake up life in the 2020s as dramatically as the internet did in the 2000s.

 

This accessible, up-to-date book charts Al’s rise from its origins in the Cold War to its increasing impact on us today and in the coming years. Journalist Chris Stokel-Walker (TikTok Boom and YouTubers) meets the Silicon Valley innovators making rapid advances in ‘large language models’ of machine learning like Google’s Bard and ChatGPT and reveals the extraordinary plans they have for them.

 

And he explores the dark side of Al by talking to workers who have lost their jobs to chatbots and to futurologists worried that we are unwittingly creating a force that could destroy humankind.

 

How Al Ate the World answers all the key questions, such as how Al will transform the way we live and work; the professions that will ultimately win and lose; and whether the likes of Elon Musk are right to warn about a looming threat to humanity. This is a pithy ‘start here’ guide for anyone who wants to know more about the next big technology that will govern our lives, whether we like it or not.