Books

Michael Rosen’s Book of Play

Why play really matters, and 101 ways to get more of it in your life

Why play really matters, and 101 ways to get more of it in your life.

The Spectacle of Illusion

Magic, the paranormal and the complicity of the mind

Professional magician-turned-psychologist Matthew Tompkins traces the evolution of the arts of magic and illusion from the 18th century onwards.

The Making of You

A Journey from Cell to Human

The inside story of the making of you.

Shapeshifters

On medicine & human change

To be alive is to be in perpetual change. This book considers the transformations in mind and body that span the arc of human life.

Chasing the Sun

The new science of sunlight and how it shapes our bodies and minds

The new science of sunlight and how it shapes our bodies and minds.

Beneath the Skin

Great writers on the body

Fifteen talented writers each explore a different body part in this funny and moving collection.

Schadenfreude

The joy of another's misfortune

A hilarious quest to understand life's ultimate guilty pleasure – in a beautiful gift package.

Living with Buildings and Walking with Ghosts

On health and architecture

One of Britain's finest writers explores the relationship between our health and the buildings that surround us.

This is a Voice

Your voice is a powerful instrument. But do you know how to look after it? Or how to get the best out of it?

Medieval Bodies

Life, death and art in the Middle Ages

Brings together medicine, art and social history to reveal what life was really like in the Middle Ages.

Sound

A story of hearing lost and found

Draws on the extraordinary experience of losing your hearing and, as Bella Bathurst eventually did, getting it back.

Ayurvedic Man

Encounters with Indian medicine

An exquisite treasury of illustrations and objects, this book presents a visual history of some of the earliest medical systems and healing practices in the world.

In the Bonesetter’s Waiting Room

Travels through Indian medicine

Aarathi Prasad investigates how Indian medicine came to be the way it is.

Graphic Warnings

25 vintage postcards showcase the wit of 20th-century public health campaigns and their iconic graphic design.

A Heavy Reckoning

War, medicine and survival in Afghanistan and beyond

Explores the modern reality of medicine and injury in wartime, giving insights into the limits of human life.

The Smile Stealers

The fine and foul art of dentistry

A gruesome yet captivating look at the evolution of dentistry: from extracting rotting teeth to the pursuit of the perfect smile.

The Voices Within

A wide-ranging consideration of the voices in all our heads, examining how we think and what this means for our sense of self.

Eat Me

A natural and unnatural history of cannibalism

A dark, fascinating and endlessly curious exploration of human and animal cannibalism.

A Practical Course in Personal Magnetism

The Victorian guide to health, happiness, power and success

Unleash your charisma the Victorian way through the power of electric currents, with this forgotten precursor to today’s self-help classics.

Animal. Vegetable. Mineral.

Organising Nature: A picture album

Celebrates the beauty and strangeness of ordering systems used to classify nature in the 18th and 19th centuries.