STUMBLING ON HAPPINESS with DANIEL GILBERT

Smart, witty and highly accessible Stumbling on Happiness brilliantly describes just what science can tell us about the uniquely human obsession with The Future (and how likely we are to enjoy it when we get there…)

Most of us believe that we are steering our lives towards the best of all possible futures, only to find that tomorrow rarely turns out as we planned. Why? As Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains, when people try to envisage what the future holds for them, they make some basic and consistent mistakes. Just as our memory plays tricks on us when we look backwards in time, so imagination plays its own tricks as we try to look forwards.

Drawing on cutting-edge research (and his own hard-won insight) Gilbert shakes, persuades, teases, goads and jokes us into accepting the fact that Happiness is not really what, who or where we thought it was…

Check out a profile and video of the author on The Edge, visit the author’s Hedonic Psychology lab at Harvard, or simply buy it online now.

SPECIMEN DAYS by Pulitzer Prize-Winner MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM

Part ghost-story, part contemporary thriller and part science fiction, Specimen Days forms a powerful triptych of American life past, present and future.  

Set against a backdrop of the city that never sleeps, this beautiful book follows three characters through a series of very different incarnations to examine the relationship between technological progress and social decline.

From the dark side of the Industrial Revolution and a young boy haunted by the belief that his brother's spirit is trapped inside the machine that killed him, through the devastation caused by 9/11, to a New York of tomorrow that has ceased to be a living city; the author of The Hours has created a strange and compelling world. A world of poetry and pain, just like our own, only more so.   

Read an extract here, check out our interview with the author, or simply buy it online now.

THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS by CONN & HAL IGGULDEN

Conn Iggulden (author of the bestselling Emperor series) and his brother Hal have come up with a gem of a book that comprises everything they really wish they’d been taught, like how to make a decent waterbomb, a working bow and arrow, and a go-cart that actually, well, goes; how to identify constellations and dinosaurs; and tips for teaching your dog (old or young) new tricks. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, as any good adventure scout would say.  

Bursting with adventure, mischief and nostalgia, the Dangerous Book For Boys is the gift every boy (from eight to eighty) secretly wishes to receive.

Boy or girl, put your inner grubby-kneed tyke to the test in our Dangerous Book for Boys Quiz, read an extract here or buy online at the amazing price of £11.38 (r.r.p. £18.99)