A funny, savage appraisal of a totally automated American society of the future

The seeds of his [Vonnegut's] trademarks are here: a satirical eye on the world and deep love for humanity

One of the bravest persons alive

A terrific read, full of unexpected turns and details that counter many of the assumptions made about Manning at the time ... Opens like a Jason Bourne novel

Chelsea Manning is the biggest hero that ever lived

A heroine to millions

A searing personal element ... Although troubling to read, it manages to be uplifting as well

Harrowing ... affecting

A candidly told story from activist Chelsea Manning, which turns the tell-all confessional upside down. ... Chelsea moves through her life story with poignant, personal detail ... It's shocking to read what she's witnessed and triumphed over.

Forceful ... To those who see Manning as a hero, [her memoir] will only intensify that feeling, given all the hardships she has overcome. Those who see villainy may perhaps find their views tempered by sympathy

A compelling, taut account of what she experienced and a persuasive justification of how she behaved

She has inspired countless people around the world ... I regard Chelsea Manning as one of this generation's greatest heroes

Manning brought to light a number of human rights violations committed by the CIA and American military, many of which led to civilian deaths... but the crimes she exposed have never been investigated ... Many people view her as an American hero

[A] brilliantly told book

A full and expansive account of Manning's life, one which is often harrowing but funny and poignant too

Chelsea Manning, with huge courage, exposed crimes of US imperialism and at the same time went through a personal journey of liberation. She details it all in a new book, Readme.txt ... Her story is about resistantance to war - and also fighting to be free.

A masterclass in cell function that will leave you in awe of biology

This complex portrait illuminates cells' roles in immunity, reproduction, sentience, cognition, repair and rejuvenation

One of the most admired doctors in the world

A tour d'horizon of cell theory... part history lesson, part biology lesson and part reminder of how science itself actually proceeds

Brilliant

This complex portrait illuminates cells' roles in immunity, reproduction, sentience, cognition, repair and rejuvination, malfunctions such as cancer, and treatments such as blood transfusions, drawing on author Siddhartha Mukherjee's varied experience as an immunologist, stem-cell scientist, cancer biologist and medical oncologist

The book is, at root, a call for a more integrated biology ... What gives The Song of the Cell its persuasiveness in calling for that new vision is precisely that it comes from a clinician steeped in the traditions of genomic and cell biology, and who has seen both the power and limitations of those approaches to produce actual cures

What truly elevates the book are Mukherjee's accounts of his experiences as a clinician and the stories of the patients he has encountered. Some are moving, and all are reflective and insightful

Saladino's reporting is impressively thorough... he has visited a dizzying array of remote locations to gather the stories within these pages... I predict that Eating to Extinction will prove a valuable archive of these tales in the years to come.

A brilliantly written book, weaving together scientific, historical and environmental information with first-hand reporting, this is a powerful account of the threat to some of the world's most remarkable foods and the people who produce them

Stirring, surprising and beautifully written, Otherlands offers glimpses of times so different to our own they feel like parallel worlds. In its lyricism and the intimate attention it pays to nonhuman life, Thomas Halliday's book recalls Rachel Carson's Under the Sea Wind, and marks the arrival of an exciting new voice

Imaginative

This study of our prehistoric earth is "beyond cinematic", James McConnachie says. "It could well be the best book I read in 2022

It's phenomenally difficult for human brains to grasp deep time. Even thousands of years seem unfathomable, with all human existence before the invention of writing deemed 'prehistory', a time we know very little about. Thomas Halliday's book Otherlands helps to ease our self-centred minds into these depths. Moving backwards in time, starting with the thawing plains of the Pleistocene (2.58 million - 12,000 years ago) and ending up in the marine world of the Ediacaran (635-541 mya), he devotes one chapter to each of the intervening epochs or periods and, like a thrilling nature documentary, presents a snapshot of life at that time. It's an immersive experience, told in the present tense, of these bizarre 'otherlands', populated by creatures and greenery unlike any on Earth today

Each chapter of this literary time machine takes us further back in prehistory, telling vivid stories about ancient creatures and their alien ecologies, ending 550 million years ago

The largest-known asteroid impact on Earth is the one that killed the dinosaurs 65?million years ago, but that is a mere pit stop on Thomas Halliday's evocative journey into planetary history in Otherlands. Each chapter of this literary time machine takes us further back into the deep past, telling vivid stories about ancient creatures and their alien ecologies, until at last we arrive 550?million years ago in the desert of what is now Australia, where no plant life yet covers the land. Halliday notes the urgency of reducing carbon emissions in the present to protect our settled patterns of life, but adds: "The idea of a pristine Earth, unaffected by human biology and culture, is impossible." It's an epic lesson in the impermanence of all things

The world on which we live is "undoubtedly a human planet", Thomas Halliday writes in this extraordinary debut. But "it has not always been, and perhaps will not always be". Humanity has dominated the Earth for a tiny fraction of its history. And that History is vast. We tend to lump all dinosaurs, for example, into one period in the distant past. But more time passed between the last diplodocus and the first tyrannosaurus than has passed between the last tyrannosaurus and the present day. A mind-boggling fact. This is a glorious, mesmerising guide to the past 500 million years bought to life by this young palaeobiologist's rich and cinematic writing

A book that I really want to read but haven't yet bought - so I hope it goes into my Christmas stocking - is Otherlands: A World in the Making by Thomas Halliday. It sounds so amazing - a history of the world before history, before people. He's trying to write the history of the organisms and the plants and the creatures and everything else as the world grows from protozoic slime or whatever we emerged from. It sounds like an absolutely incredible effort of imagination. I think that Christmas presents should be books you can curl up with and get engrossed in and transported by - and Otherlands sounds like exactly that

But, of course, not all history is human history, Otherlands, by Thomas Halliday, casts its readers further and further back, past the mammoths, past the dinosaurs, back to an alien world of shifting rock and weird plants. It is a marvel