the best, most elegant, and most sparkling of such books on my shelf at the moment is Richard Godwin's The Spirits: A Guide to Modern Cocktailing. It's one thing to mix drinks, but another to know their joy by heart, and the author serves up truths like the veritable philosopher of the art form. Not many books, and certainly not the Bible, can offer to save your marriage, but The Spirits might do that and a little more.

Simple to navigate and fun to read, it's the only book I reach for on a Friday evening. The weekend starts here.

I truly love this book. No one writes about drinks like Richard Godwin - I enjoy his prose as much as anything in the glass.

Richard is a charming and fantastically engaging guide, and this marvellous book captures all that great and glamorous about drinking well-made drinks.

The Spirits is debonair, indispensable and easy enough to use after a few.

In this humorous, amateur guide to cocktailing, London journalist Richard Godwin offers a wealth of modern and classic recipes

This is the ultimate in cocktail books

The Spirits is much more than mere drinks recipes: it is thoughtful, well-researched, witty, well-written and even inspirational

Richard Godwin knows how to take the nonsense out and put the pleasure back into cocktail-making. Intelligent, humorous, crammed full of recipes and knowledge- my new ‘little black book’ guide to cocktailing at home

Informative recipes blended with whimsy and anecdote are given a dash of fun, and finished with a twist of brilliantly wry humour

A pleasing account of the art of the cocktail...Life enhancing

If you’re going to buy one cocktail book, you can’t go far wrong with this one

Richard Godwin is such a smart, funny and intoxicating drinks writer. And The Spirits - accessible, authoritative and crisply written - is the perfect companion for cocktail-curious drinkers looking to seriously up their game.

'The Spirits is the best all-rounder... this stylish recipe book covers a lot of ground with hilarious anecdotes, essential recipes and easy to follow methods'

easily the best account of that multi-faceted genius

The indefatigable one-legged artist and abolitionist Josiah Wedgwood personified the optimism of Georgian Britain. Hunt brings him brilliantly to life.

Josiah Wedgwood was "the Steve Jobs" of the 18th century, according to Tristram Hunt, the historian and V&A director. Wedgwood, of modest background but expansive inventive genius, turned a Staffordshire pottery firm into a global company, one that showed that Britain could make high-quality porcelain, a high-demand product in the new age of tea drinking. Not bad for a man who couldn't turn a wheel because childhood disease disabled one of his legs. He was nicknamed "Owd Wooden Leg" by his workers - and referred to the day he lost his limb as "Saint Amputation Day".

Tristram Hunt, in The Radical Potter, underlines brilliantly the consumerism and politics of the age in the character of Josiah Wedgwood, in whom we can see all the energy of the era - the campaign for abolition, the birth of international trade, the stirrings of the industrial revolution, the combination of mass production and aesthetic sense.

Where Rooted ploughs its own shining furrow in its humanity ... but also the gathered, inspirational stories of farmers trying to do better and greener.

A wonderful volume on the whole Apollo program. As a geologist who worked closely with the astronauts and taught them how to photograph the Moon during the Apollo missions, I was amazed at the detail and clarity of these remastered versions Andy has produced, 50 years later. Also impressive is the research to produce such an accurate record. The information along with each photograph helps tell the story of the program in such an immersive way. He really has done a great deal for the legacy of the Apollo program

A handsome volume. . . The digitally restored images in Apollo Remastered bring NASA's moon voyages to life as never before

In Mission Control, imagination pieced together grainy television images, crew voice reports and the flight plan, to portray mission events. Now, for the first time, APOLLO REMASTERED brings the glory of Apollo and the explorers into sharp focus. 50 years later, I can finally look over the shoulder of Mike Collins and Al Bean and see what they saw. I become part of the experience, as if I were a member of the crew.

Apollo Remastered is a fine collection of remastered photographs that depicts the real essence of the Apollo program. It brought back many memories of my time during the missions - an incredible book that will surely be enjoyed for many generations to come

Using cutting edge enhancement techniques, Andy Saunders has created the highest quality Apollo photographs ever produced. He's also produced the first ever clear image of the first man on the Moon, Neil Armstrong. It's not surprising that his new book, Apollo Remastered has become a Sunday Times bestseller; showcasing photographs that are literally out of this world

Read this book (praise for: The Sixth Extinction)

Elizabeth Kolbert's cautionary tale, The Sixth Extinction, offers us a cogent overview of a harrowing biological challenge. The reporting is exceptional, the contextualizing exemplary (praise for: The Sixth Extinction)

The Sixth Mass Extinction is the biggest story on Earth, period, and Elizabeth Kolbert tells it with imagination, rigor, deep reporting, and a capacious curiosity about all the wondrous creatures and ecosystems that exist, or have existed, on our planet. The result is an important book full of love and loss (praise for: The Sixth Extinction)

Fascinating

In Under a White Sky...Elizabeth Kolbert...[combines] curiosity with an acerbic wit to explore humanity's obsession with controlling nature... Kolbert's skill is in presenting compelling stories from the Anthropocene and letting us judge for ourselves