This month-by-month guide to growing your own is a perfect stocking-filler

Will delight every gardener

Everyone’s favourite space captain and all-round hero NASA astronaut

Kelly brings life in space alive — the wonder and awe of it, and also the jagged edges, the rough parts of living in confined quarters in an alien element, far from everything familiar and beloved

Endurance has a winning modesty and a bone-dry wit

Fascinating reading

Scott Kelly’s saga is a deeply absorbing and vivid look at a year in space and the many trials and rigors of living weightless inside a football field-sized machine traveling at 17,000 miles per hour. But ENDURANCE satisfies far more than the reader’s technological curiosities; it is replete with humor, thrills, surreal details, and recurring moments of ordinary humanity that turn Kelly’s tale into a loving tribute to the pioneering individuals who risk all to shepherd man’s exploration of the vast beyond.

Hello World is an action-packed, quick read during which you will be outraged, provoked, and challenged. The numerous, meticulously researched examples reveal the astonishing new world we're living in, one where secret decisions with ambiguous goals are deciding our individual and collective fates. Welcome to the modern world of big data, you're quite possibly screwed.

Hello World is a brisk and friendly guidebook to the algorithms all around us

Editor's Choice: consistently illuminating

Fascinating and funny. I learned something on every page.

Hannah Fry is one of the best explainers on the planet. In Hello World she examines the ups and downs of living with algorithms everywhere, online and off, in our homes and workplaces, hospitals and supermarkets. She takes a serious subject and leavens it delightfully with her clear writing and captivating stories, and her trademark sense of humour and fun.

Books of the Year

Books of the Year
This short, sharp book on the power and dangers of algorithms offers one of the clearest explanations of a complex subject

Books of the Year
A perky, brief introduction to big data and algorithmic crunching…enjoyably sceptical

Books of the Year
Hannah Fry’s is the most readable, lively and sensible account, neither catastrophising nor pumped with boosterism

Hello World is an illuminating book on the ethical issues around data. Mathematician and presenter Hannah Fry leads us through the not-too-distant worlds of AI politics, healthcare and culture, probing the complex roles of data and algorithms through a range of eye-opening examples. ‘AI’ is a much-used but oft-misunderstood term, and here Fry lays out its impact with ease - 'Best Books of 2018'

Top science writing

She is doing to maths what Brian Cox has done for physics

Hannah Fry is quickly becoming the David Attenborough of maths.

Dazzling... There is nothing about Gene that is less than nuanced.

A magnificent synthesis of the science of life, and forces all to confront the essence of that science as well as the ethical and philosophical challenges to our conception of what constitutes being human

Wise and lucid...excellent

A tourist guide to the new Africa, the human genome… Mukherjee gives an exhaustive account of the development of the modern science of inheritance… Mukherjee does a good job of cutting away the web of ambiguity and complexity’

Written with the rollicking enthusiasm of sports journalism… Mukherjee has an ear for his subject’s rhetorical brilliance.

Meticulous… Carefully constructed, deliberate prose.

Makes a compelling case that our ability to harness the medical benefits of genomic science while avoiding its hazards promises to be among the defining challenges of the 21st century.

Mukherjee has done readers an admirable service, by turning one of the most important scientific sagas – arguably the most important – in history into a tale that is too good not to know

Rather wonderful book… All-encompassing and eye-opening and moving and amusing, at times, and endlessly fascinating and truly brilliant… As long as intelligent, empathetic, thoughtful people like himself are to the forefront, it should turn out alright.

An accessible and beautifully written overview of the complex field of genetics by the Indian-born doctor. It’s compellingly personal and provocative, too.

Mukherjee views his subject panoptically from a great and clarifying height, yet also intimately.

Dr Mukherjee uses personal experience to particularly good effect… He writes tenderly.

[A] Magisterial historical survey.

Mukherjee has a gift for making gripping, vivid narrative out of the cataclysmic but largely invisible drama of molecular biology.

Compelling

Fascinating, complex and accessible.

Intimate, insider’s account of the role that genetics.

A tourist guide to the twenty-first century’s uncharted continent, the human genome... Gives a full and lively account of the development of the subject... He has talked to many of the main players and gives deep insights into their moments of discovery... Mukherjee does a good job of cutting away the web of ambiguity and complexity that scientists have woven.

A daring and highly personal voyage into the future of genetic research

The Gene’s dominant traits are historical breadth, clinical compassion, and Mukherjee’s characteristic graceful style… Mukherjee writes eloquently

A fine read, with many fine stories.

[It is] accessible and beautifully written… It’s compellingly personal and provocative, too.

The Gene is a staggeringly impressive piece of writing… [It] takes us on a fascinating journey through the world of genetics… Written with a clarity that brings the most complex concepts to life… An accessible, gripping and thought-provoking read. In short, this book is a masterpiece and you should read it.

An essential read.

Inspiring and tremendously evocative

A fascinating read

You may think this book is not for you. Thing again… My only caution would be not to recommend it to too many people… So whether you’re a teacher or parent attempting to inspire…or you simply want an erudite anecdote, this book is for you. It’s a dazzling example of scientific story-telling and definitely my book of the year.

An epic 150-year, 500-plus page journey of genetic discovery… [An] excellent and authoritative account.

This is a brilliantly readable celebration of the science and scientists who have transformed out understanding of what it means to be human.

The Gene is a truly impressive achievement… Mukherjee has created a masterwork of the history of the gene and its study. In this popular science book, scientist and non-scientist readers alike will feel they have a true understanding of the history, biology and ethics of genetics.

He deftly lays out a history of the gene… One of the great science books of the decade with an engagingly enthusiastic personality at its heart.

[A]superbly written tale.

Mukherjee writes with clarity and passion… This should prove a fascinating read for anyone interested in understanding how far the study of the gene has taken us, particularly with respect to medicine, and where the future may lie.

Ambitious and honest, The Gene sheds light on both our past and future.

Mukherjee’s text brims with potential… Surely The Gene has to be the new bible for a new generation of aspiring biologists, biochemists and, frankly, thinking people? So whether you’re a teacher or parent attempting to inspire a reluctant teen to get excited about science, or you simply want an erudite anecdote, this book is for you. It’s a dazzling example of scientific story-telling, and definitely my book of the year.

If you want a good overview of the history of the gene, you can’t go wrong starting here.

A provocative and engaging [read].

Mukherjee’s prose tends to be lavish, but this befits the weighty topic, and his explanatory style is clear yet enveloping… Compelling scientific and medical storytelling… A spectacular effort from an author I hopes has plenty more tales to tell.

An essential guide to biology.

A brilliant, chunky, study of genes.

This book captures the progression from that intuitive sense of genetics to its birth as a veritable science and, for better or for worse, its evolution into a powerful tool… The book ends not with a conclusion, but with a feeling of anticipation… In many ways, The Gene is a call for caution and for a thoughtful consideration of the possibilities that progress may bring… When genes become tools, what will those tools be used for? As we try to answer that question, Mukherjee’s book asks us to carefully look back before we continue to move forward

A comprehensive – and gripping – history of the gene