A clear and extremely readable guided tour of the pandemic... This book represents an extremely timely contribution... If journalists, politicians and the public were all provided with a copy then the debate would be vastly better informed, with much more light than heat

Cuts through the noise and disinformation about the pandemic... In single well-evidenced sentences [Spiegelhalter] and Masters can pronounce on months-long conflicts... Reading it, it feels as though there are adults in the room

Fascinating

A valuable overview of COVID-19 statistics and how to navigate them. Rather than just quoting numbers, Spiegelhalter and Masters discuss how to think about epidemic data... No doubt many books will be written on the COVID-19 pandemic... But if they want to get the statistics straight, their authors may want to read Covid by Numbers first

I couldn't imagine a better guidebook for making sense of a tragic and momentous time in our lives. Covid by Numbers is comprehensive yet concise, impeccably clear and always humane

A clear, concise statistical journal of the plague year. If you want to understand the numbers behind the virus that stopped the world, you ought to read this book

Fantastic and wonderfully readable. A much needed antidote to the often murky and misinterpreted world of Covid data, explained in a straightforward and clear way - yet always remembering the humanity the data represents

A lucid and riveting narrative of the fundamentals-what Wilczek calls 'the central messages of modern physics,' which are not just facts about how the world works but also 'the style of thought that allowed us to discover them.

Mr. Wilczek's prose pulses with enthusiasm for its subject

The universe at its grandest and most minuscule is explored in this beguiling meditation on physics. . . a stimulating and very readable scientific tour of the cosmos.

...breathtaking feat . . . the narrative is a mind-bender of the first order-in the best way possible-but what makes it so engrossing is that the author does far more than just present the facts and speculations, however fascinating; on every page, readers will glean his exhilaration and joy in discovery . . . Another winner from Wilczek, who invites us to be born again into a richer, deeper understanding of the world.

This is a book about deep ideas, not passing fancies. It will teach you profound principles, not dry lists of facts. It's a rare treat indeed to get a glimpse into the mind of one of the world's leading physicists, presented in an engaging style that will be enjoyed by anyone at all.

How is the universe put together? Beneath the bewildering clamor of the world around us, there lies a hidden realm of subtle mathematical beauty, a bedrock of fundamental principles in which all of nature is grounded. Few living scientists have accomplished more than Frank Wilczek in helping unveil that deeper layer of existence. With poetry and fervor, Wilczek takes us on a breathtaking journey to the frontiers of physics, and reminds us of just how privileged we human beings are to glimpse the foundations of reality.

A delightful book . . . Frank Wilczek is that rare creature: a first-class scientist who is also an extremely talented communicator. . . Wilczek constantly finds fresh ways to present such ideas, so that you emerge with new insight into what they mean. . . . Fundamentals is, then, not only an exceptional piece of science communication but also a deeply humanistic book

Fundamentals is an engaging account of the history of humankind's understanding of reality, told by one of the key contributors to recent parts of that story. Wilczek's grasp on the physics he relates is comprehensive and authoritative; he conveys technicalities with a rare combination of accuracy and accessibility . . . Wilczek provides an exceptionally clear guide to the state of physical knowledge in the early 21st century, much in the spirit of the sort of explanation that the ancient Greeks desired

It's hard to imagine a better tour of fundamental physics than the one I got from Frank Wilczek here. Loved it

A lyrical travelogue documenting the decline of the great boreal forests that encircle the north of the globe, and the cultures that depend on them... A grim and thought-provoking read.

Beautiful and affecting.

A sobering account... The Treeline is a powerful reminder of the far-off impacts of global warming.

[An] excellent read.

The Treeline is wise and considered, offering both klaxon warning about the state of the earth and beautiful hymn to its interdependencies.

Maggie Nelson writes with a luminosity that is, upon opening any one of her books, immediately enlivening.

A patient and astringent analysis of what we owe each other and what we owe ourselves, and how to balance the two demands.

One of the most electrifying writers at work in America today.

Otherlands is one of those rare books that's both deeply informative and daringly imaginative. It will change the way you look at the history of life, and perhaps also its future

This stunning biography of our venerable Earth, detailing her many ages and moods, is an essential travel guide to the changing landscapes of our living world. As we hurtle into the Anthropocene, blindly at the helm of this inconstant planet, Halliday gives us our bearings within the panorama of deep time. Aeons buckle under his pen: the world before us made vivid; the paradox of our permanence and impermanence visceral. Wonderful

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