{"title":"Matt Ridley","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"genome-book-matt-ridley-9781857028355","title":"Genome","description":"The most important investigation of genetic science since The Selfish Gene, from the author of the critically acclaimed and best-selling The Red Queen and The Origins of Virtue.             The genome is our 100,000 or so genes. The genome is the collective recipe for the building and running of the human body. These 100,000 genes are sited across 23 pairs of chromosomes. Genome, a book of about 100,000 words, is divided into 23 chapters, a chapter for each chromosome. The first chromosome, for example, contains our oldest genes, genes which we have in common with plants.             By looking at our genes we can see the story of our evolution, what makes us individual, how our sexuality is determined, how we acquire language, why we are vunerable to certain diseases, how mind has arisen. Genome also argues for the genetic foundations of free will. While many believe that genetics proves biological determinism, Ridley will show that in fact free will is itself in the genes. Everything that makes us human can be read in our genes. Early in the next century we will have determined the function of every one of these 100,000 genes.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49504030949649,"sku":"GOR001230039","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49540177297681,"sku":"GOR001188691","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49556588953873,"sku":"GOR008681984","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49659551121681,"sku":"GOR001386275","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49733577343249,"sku":"NGR9781857028355","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50300519612689,"sku":"CIN185702835XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50302261723409,"sku":"CIN185702835XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50446272790801,"sku":"CIN185702835XA","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/185702835X.jpg?v=1751155300"},{"product_id":"how-innovation-works-book-matt-ridley-9780008334840","title":"How Innovation Works","description":"Ridley is spot-on when it comes to the vital ingredients for success Sir James Dyson                                   Building on his bestseller The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley chronicles the history of innovation, and how we need to change our thinking on the subject.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49504260784401,"sku":"GOR011474490","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49738462167313,"sku":"NGR9780008334840","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50558593171729,"sku":"CIN0008334846VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51615928713489,"sku":"GOR011845694","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51860582596881,"sku":"GOR011773289","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0008334846.jpg?v=1750779560"},{"product_id":"rational-optimist-book-matt-ridley-9780007267118","title":"The Rational Optimist","description":"Matt Ridley, acclaimed author of the classics Genome and Nature via Nurture, turns from investigating human nature to investigating human progress. In The Rational Optimist Ridley offers a counterblast to the prevailing pessimism of our age, and proves, however much we like to think to the contrary, that things are getting better.             Over 10,000 years ago there were fewer than 10 million people on the planet. Today there are more than 6 billion, 99 per cent of whom are better fed, better sheltered, better entertained and better protected against disease than their Stone Age ancestors.             The availability of almost everything a person could want or need has been going erratically upwards for 10,000 years and has rapidly accelerated over the last 200 years: calories; vitamins; clean water; machines; privacy; the means to travel faster than we can run, and the ability to communicate over longer distances than we can shout. Yet, bizarrely, however much things improve from the way they were before, people still cling to the belief that the future will be nothing but disastrous.             In this original, optimistic book, Matt Ridley puts forward his surprisingly simple answer to how humans progress, arguing that we progress when we trade and we only really trade productively when we trust each other.             The Rational Optimist will do for economics what Genome did for genomics and will show that the answer to our problems, imagined or real, is to keep on doing what we've been doing for 10,000 years – to keep on changing.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49506858860817,"sku":"GOR002289564","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49546913579281,"sku":"GOR002994518","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49643435000081,"sku":"GOR003591840","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50025582166289,"sku":"CIN0007267118VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50110339612945,"sku":"CIN0007267118G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50475004100881,"sku":"CIN0007267118A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0007267118.jpg?v=1750875359"},{"product_id":"evolution-of-everything-book-matt-ridley-9780007542475","title":"The Evolution of Everything","description":"‘If there is one dominant myth about the world, one huge mistake we all make … it is that we all go around assuming the world is much more of a planned place than it is.’             From the industrial revolution and the rise of China, to urbanisation and the birth of bitcoin, Matt Ridley demolishes conventional assumptions that the great events and trends of our day are dictated by those on high. On the contrary, our most important achievements develop from the ground up. In this wide-ranging and erudite book, Matt Ridley brilliantly makes the case for evolution as the force that has shaped much of our culture, our minds, and that even now is shaping our future.             As compelling as it is controversial, as authoritative as it is ambitious, Ridley’s deeply thought-provoking book will change the way we think about the world and how it works.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49509356437777,"sku":"GOR007548286","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49646793457937,"sku":"GOR011715919","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49729197670673,"sku":"NGR9780007542475","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50098244321553,"sku":"GOR007960223","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50227926008081,"sku":"CIN000754247XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52771224551697,"sku":"GOR011117641","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/000754247X.jpg?v=1751427303"},{"product_id":"how-innovation-works-book-matt-ridley-9780062916594","title":"How Innovation Works","description":"\u003cp\u003eBuilding on his national bestseller The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley chronicles the history of innovation, and how we need to change our thinking on the subject.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eInnovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society. Forget short-term symptoms like Donald Trump and Brexit, it is innovation itself that explains them and that will itself shape the 21st century for good and ill. Yet innovation remains a mysterious process, poorly understood by policy makers and businessmen, hard to summon into existence to order, yet inevitable and inexorable when it does happen.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eMatt Ridley argues in this book that we need to change the way we think about innovation, to see it as an incremental, bottom-up, fortuitous process that happens to society as a direct result of the human habit of exchange, rather than an orderly, top-down process developing according to a plan. Innovation is crucially different from invention, because it is the turning of inventions into things of practical and affordable use to people. It speeds up in some sectors and slows down in others. It is always a collective, collaborative phenomenon, not a matter of lonely genius. It is gradual, serendipitous, recombinant, inexorable, contagious, experimental and unpredictable. It happens mainly in just a few parts of the world at any one time. It still cannot be modelled properly by economists, but it can easily be discouraged by politicians. Far from there being too much innovation, we may be on the brink of an innovation famine.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eRidley derives these and other lessons, not with abstract argument, but from telling the lively stories of scores of innovations, how they started and why they succeeded or in some cases failed. He goes back millions of years and leaps forward into the near future. Some of the innovation stories he tells are about steam engines, jet engines, search engines, airships, coffee, potatoes, vaping, vaccines, cuisine, antibiotics, mosquito nets, turbines, propellers, fertiliser, zero, computers, dogs, farming, fire, genetic engineering, gene editing, container shipping, railways, cars, safety rules, wheeled suitcases, mobile phones, corrugated iron, powered flight, chlorinated water, toilets, vacuum cleaners, shale gas, the telegraph, radio, social media, block chain, the sharing economy, artificial intelligence, fake bomb detectors, phantom games consoles, fraudulent blood tests, faddish diets, hyperloop tubes, herbicides, copyright and even--a biological innovation--life itself.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49513043263761,"sku":"CIN0062916599G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49673815621905,"sku":"GOR010778443","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50416076652817,"sku":"CIN0062916599VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51444117864721,"sku":"GOR014283650","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0062916599.jpg?v=1751100594"},{"product_id":"rational-optimist-book-matt-ridley-9780007267125","title":"The Rational Optimist","description":"Shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction 2011.             Life is on the up.             We are wealthier, healthier, happier, kinder, cleaner, more peaceful, more equal and longer-lived than any previous generation. Thanks to the unique human habits of exchange and specialisation, our species has found innovative solutions to every obstacle it has faced so far.             In ‘The Rational Optimist’, acclaimed science writer Matt Ridley comprehensively refutes the doom-mongers of our time, and reaches back into the past to give a rational explanation for why we can – and will – overcome the challenges of the future, such as climate change and the population boom.             Bold and controversial, it is a brilliantly confident assertion that the 21st century will be the best for humankind yet.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49515241832721,"sku":"GOR002742152","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49558985539857,"sku":"GOR003374411","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49659725218065,"sku":"GOR005129355","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49727901335825,"sku":"NGR9780007267125","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49930495295761,"sku":"CIN0007267126VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49996583371025,"sku":"GOR008303619","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50097224679697,"sku":"CIN0007267126G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0007267126.jpg?v=1751289775"},{"product_id":"francis-crick-book-matt-ridley-9780007213313","title":"Francis Crick","description":"Acclaimed author Matt Ridley traces the colourful life of the man who discovered the structure of DNA, the building blocks of life.             Building on a biographical tradition that can be traced back to Aubrey's ‘Brief Lives’, Dr Johnson's ‘Lives of the Poets’ and Lytton Strachey's ‘Eminent Victorians’, this exciting and ground-breaking new series pairs great biographers, historians and novelists with iconic subjects, the writing bristling with original and distinctive points of view.             On 28 February 1953, Francis Crick walked into the Eagle pub in Cambridge and announced that he and his American colleague James Watson ‘had found the secret of life’. In fact, they had indeed done so. That morning, Crick and Watson had worked out the structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). They had discovered its 'double helix' form, one which could replicate itself, confirming theories that it carried life's hereditary information.             Matt Ridley's life of Crick begins with his birth in 1916 at the home of a shoe factory owner, his early explosive experiments at primary school and time developing torpedoes in the Navy. After his seismic DNA discovery, which won him the Nobel Prize before he'd even gained a PhD, the scientist's later work was rarely uncontroversial. From California, he proposed that life began when micro-organisms from another planet were dropped here by a spaceship sent to Earth, and maintained that the 'human soul' was entirely explicable in terms of brain activity. Matt Ridley's entertaining account traces the colourful and entirely original work behind one of mankind's greatest discoveries and displays the life of a scientist considered of the very first rank.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49518122467601,"sku":"GOR002430479","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49652375945489,"sku":"GOR002415701","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49657528877329,"sku":"GOR005663742","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52473831948561,"sku":"NLS9780007213313","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/000721331X.jpg?v=1751036521"},{"product_id":"evolution-of-everything-book-matt-ridley-9780007542482","title":"The Evolution of Everything","description":"We are taught that the world is a top-down place. Acclaimed author Matt Ridley shows just how wrong this is in his compelling new book.             We are taught that the world is a top-down place. Generals win battles; politicians run countries; scientists discover truths; artists create genres; inventors make breakthroughs; teachers shape minds; philosophers change minds; priests teach morality; businessmen lead businesses; environmentalists save the planet. Not just individuals, but institutions too: Goldman Sachs, the Communist Party, the Catholic Church, al Qaeda – these are said to shape the world.             This is more often wrong than right. ‘The Evolution of Everything’ is about bottom-up order and its enemy, the top-down twitch, the endless fascination human beings have for design rather than evolution, for direction rather than emergence. Top-downery is the source of most of our worst problems in the past – why Hitler won an election, why the sub-prime bubble happened, why Africa lingered in poverty when Asia did not, why the euro is a disaster – and will be the scourge of this century too.             And although we neglect, defy and ignore them, bottom-up trends still shape the world. The growth of technology, the sanitation-driven health revolution, the quadrupling of farm yields so that more land could be released for nature – these were largely emergent phenomena. So were the internet, the mobile-phone revolution and the rise of Asia.             In this wide-ranging, highly opinionated non-fiction narrative, Ridley draws on anecdotes from science, economics, history, politics and philosophy and examples drawn from the scientific literature, from historical narratives and from personal anecdotes.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49518841069841,"sku":"GOR006913589","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49979726168337,"sku":"CIN0007542488G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50495679987985,"sku":"GOR010956863","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50793354002705,"sku":"GOR007436078","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0007542488.jpg?v=1750875598"},{"product_id":"how-innovation-works-book-matt-ridley-9780008334819","title":"How Innovation Works","description":"‘Ridley is spot-on when it comes to the vital ingredients for success’ Sir James Dyson                                   Building on his bestseller The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley chronicles the history of innovation, and how we need to change our thinking on the subject.                         Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society. It is innovation that will shape the twenty-first century. Yet innovation remains a mysterious process, poorly understood by policy makers and businessmen alike.             Matt Ridley argues that we need to see innovation as an incremental, bottom-up, fortuitous process that happens as a direct result of the human habit of exchange, rather than an orderly, top-down process developing according to a plan. Innovation is crucially different from invention, because it is the turning of inventions into things of practical and affordable use to people. It speeds up in some sectors and slows down in others. It is always a collective, collaborative phenomenon, involving trial and error, not a matter of lonely genius. It still cannot be modelled properly by economists, but it can easily be discouraged by politicians. Far from there being too much innovation, we may be on the brink of an innovation famine.             Ridley derives these and other lessons from the lively stories of scores of innovations – from steam engines to search engines – how they started and why they succeeded or failed.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49522522554641,"sku":"GOR010911397","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49534185898257,"sku":"GOR011628232","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49666972352785,"sku":"GOR010610122","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50467733537041,"sku":"CIN0008334811G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51839592333585,"sku":"NGR9780008334819","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0008334811.jpg?v=1751257607"},{"product_id":"red-queen-book-matt-ridley-9780140167726","title":"The Red Queen","description":"Sex is as fascinating to scientists as it is to the rest of us. A vast pool of knowledge, therefore, has been gleaned from research into the nature of sex, from the contentious problem of why the wasteful reproductive process exists at all, to how individuals choose their mates and what traits they find attractive. This fascinating book explores those findings, and their implications for the sexual behaviour of our own species. It uses the Red Queen from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ – who has to run at full speed to stay where she is – as a metaphor for a whole range of sexual behaviours. The book was shortlisted for the 1994 Rhone-Poulenc Prize for Science Books.  ‘Animals and plants evolved sex to fend off parasitic infection. Now look where it has got us. Men want BMWs, power and money in order to pair-bond with women who are blonde, youthful and narrow-waisted … a brilliant examination of the scientific debates on the hows and whys of sex and evolution’ Independent.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49525511422225,"sku":"GOR001256838","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49526398845201,"sku":"GOR001345677","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49663164055825,"sku":"GOR001309964","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49728444334353,"sku":"NGR9780140167726","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50209059438865,"sku":"GOR008338377","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0140167722.jpg?v=1751429369"},{"product_id":"genome-book-matt-ridley-9780060894085","title":"Genome","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Ridley leaps from chromosome to chromosome in a handy summation of our ever increasing understanding of the roles that genes play in disease, behavior, sexual differences, and even intelligence. . . . . He addresses not only the ethical quandaries faced by contemporary scientists but the reductionist danger in equating inheritability with inevitability.\" -- \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe genome's been mapped. But what does it mean?\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003eMatt Ridley's \u003ci\u003eGenome\u003c\/i\u003e is the book that explains it all: what it is, how it works, and what it portends for the future\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eArguably the most significant scientific discovery of the new century, the mapping of the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genome--our complete set of DNA--raises almost as many questions as it answers. Questions that will profoundly impact the way we think about disease, about longevity, and about free will. Questions that will affect the rest of your life.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn this work of popular science, \u003ci\u003eGenome\u003c\/i\u003e offers extraordinary insight into the ramifications of this incredible breakthrough. By picking one newly discovered gene from each pair of chromosomes and telling its story, Matt Ridley recounts the history of our species and its evolution from the dawn of life to the brink of future medicine. From Huntington's disease to cancer, from the applications of gene therapy to the horrors of eugenics, Ridley probes the scientific, philosophical, and moral issues arising as a result of the mapping of the genome. It will help you understand what this scientific milestone means for you, for your children, and for humankind.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis landmark book in science writing illuminates:\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cul\u003e \u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eThe Human Genome Explained:\u003c\/b\u003e Journey through all twenty-three pairs of human chromosomes as Ridley unpacks the story and purpose of a single gene from each.\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eHuman Origins:\u003c\/b\u003e Discover how our DNA acts as a historical document, revealing the story of our species and its ancestors from the dawn of life.\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eGenes, Disease, and Free Will:\u003c\/b\u003e Explore the profound scientific and philosophical questions raised by our genetic code, from the roots of disease to the nature of free will.\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eThe Future of Medicine:\u003c\/b\u003e Gain extraordinary insight into the future of medicine, from the applications of gene therapy to the complex moral questions of eugenics.\u003c\/li\u003e \u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":49530150486289,"sku":"CIN0060894083A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49708939706641,"sku":"CIN0060894083G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50163331432721,"sku":"CIN0060894083VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50998831546641,"sku":"NIN9780060894085","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51757058064657,"sku":"GOR010778855","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52391406207249,"sku":"GOR004134070","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53136038789393,"sku":"GOR007739960","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53360518365457,"sku":"GOR004808859","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0060894083.jpg?v=1751131779"},{"product_id":"nature-via-nurture-book-matt-ridley-9781841157467","title":"Nature via Nurture","description":"Acclaimed author Matt Ridley's thrilling follow-up to his bestseller Genome. 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In this wide-ranging, highly opinionated non-fiction narrative, Ridley draws on anecdotes from science, economics, history, politics and philosophy and examples drawn from the scientific literature, from historical narratives and from personal anecdotes.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49612356616465,"sku":"GOR007723059","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49656877220113,"sku":"GOR007297881","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0007542496.jpg?v=1751289043"},{"product_id":"francis-crick-book-matt-ridley-9780061148453","title":"Francis Crick","description":"\u003cp\u003ePart of the acclaimed Eminent Lives series, Francis Crick is the first biography of the eminent scientist, co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA. Written by Matt Ridley, the award-winning author of the national bestseller Genome, Francis Crick traces his life from middle class mediocrity in the English Midlands through a lackluster education and six years designing magnetic mines for the Royal Navy to his leap into biology at the age of 31 and his enormous success, providing \"a considerably more complete and colorful portrait of Crick than has existed before.\" (New York Times)\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis landmark work in the history of science reveals the man behind the discovery:\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cul\u003e \u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eThe Race for the Double Helix:\u003c\/b\u003e Explore the intense partnership with James Watson and the competitive drive that led them to one of the 20th century's greatest scientific breakthroughs.\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eFrom Codebreaker to Code Cracker:\u003c\/b\u003e Discover Crick's surprising wartime years designing magnetic mines for the Royal Navy and how his scientific mind later turned to cracking the very code of life itself.\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eScience and Controversy:\u003c\/b\u003e Delve into the complex collaborations, including the pivotal and often-debated role of Rosalind Franklin's data in the DNA discovery.\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eLife After the Nobel:\u003c\/b\u003e Follow Crick's journey beyond DNA, from defining the \"Central Dogma\" of biology to his final decades tackling his second great mystery: the neurological basis of human consciousness.\u003c\/li\u003e \u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":49616816308497,"sku":"CIN0061148458A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49639680246033,"sku":"GOR005584634","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49926556647697,"sku":"CIN0061148458G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50998922674449,"sku":"NIN9780061148453","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52962106474769,"sku":"CIN0061148458VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0061148458.jpg?v=1751226632"},{"product_id":"nature-via-nurture-book-matt-ridley-9780060006785","title":"Nature Via Nurture","description":"\u003cp\u003eFollowing his highly praised and bestselling book \u003cem\u003eGenome: The Autobiography of a Species\u003c\/em\u003e in 23 Chapters, Matt Ridley has written a brilliant and profound book about the roots of human behavior. \u003cem\u003eNature via Nurture\u003c\/em\u003e explores the complex and endlessly intriguing question of what makes us who we are.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn February 2001 it was announced that the human genome contains not 100,000 genes, as originally postulated, but only 30,000. This startling revision led some scientists to conclude that there are simply not enough human genes to account for all the different ways people behave: we must be made by nurture, not nature. Yet again biology was to be stretched on the Procrustean bed of the nature-nurture debate. Matt Ridley argues that the emerging truth is far more interesting than this myth. Nurture depends on genes, too, and genes need nurture. Genes not only predetermine the broad structure of the brain, they also absorb formative experiences, react to social cues, and even run memory. They are consequences as well as causes of the will.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePublished fifty years after the discovery of the double helix of DNA, \u003cem\u003eNature via Nurture \u003c\/em\u003echronicles a revolution in our understanding of genes. Ridley recounts the hundred years' war between the partisans of nature and nurture to explain how this paradoxical creature, the human being, can be simultaneously free-willed and motivated by instinct and culture. \u003cem\u003eNature via Nurture\u003c\/em\u003e is an enthralling, up-to-the-minute account of how genes build brains to absorb experience.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49624821399825,"sku":"GOR005025901","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49640052785425,"sku":"GOR006156026","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50138685866257,"sku":"CIN0060006781VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52102572802321,"sku":"CIN0060006781G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":53369937821969,"sku":"CIN0060006781A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0060006781.jpg?v=1751449067"},{"product_id":"red-queen-book-matt-ridley-9780670843572","title":"The Red Queen","description":"Lewis Carroll's Red Queen had to keep running to stay in the same place. And so, argues the author, do the rest of us. Sexual reproduction makes no sense in conventional theories of evolution; simple cloning is much more efficient. But sex maintains a genetic flux within a species which enables disease to be successfully resisted. This book looks at recent changes in evolutionary biology and throws fresh light on seduction and sexism, beauty and polygamy, attraction and adultery - even intelligence itself. The author also wrote \"Warts and All\", about US presidential politics.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49634717040913,"sku":"GOR003889527","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49936581886225,"sku":"GOR002157196","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52898329755921,"sku":"GOR002407754","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0670843571.jpg?v=1750880855"},{"product_id":"best-american-science-writing-2002-book-matt-ridley-9780060936501","title":"The Best American Science Writing 2002","description":"If, as Matt Ridley suggests, science is simply the search for new forms of ignorance, then perhaps it follows that with science's advances come new questions. Will human genetic engineering become commonplace? Will human cloning ever be safe? Are there many universes? How much will the climate change during the coming century?\u003cem\u003eThe Best American Science Writing 2002\u003c\/em\u003e gathers top writers and scientists covering the latest developments in the fastest-changing, farthest-reaching scientific fields, such as medicine, genetics, computer technology, evolutionary psychology, cutting-edge physics, and the environment. Among this year's selections: In The Made-to-Order Savior, Lisa Belkin spotlights two desperate families seeking an unprecedented cure by a medically and ethically unprecedented means -- creating a genetically matched child. Margaret Talbot's A Desire to Duplicate reveals that the first human clone may very likely come from an entirely unexpected source, and sooner than we think. Michael Specter reports on the shock waves rippling through the field of neuroscience following the revolutionary discovery that adult brain cells might in fact regenerate (Rethinking the Brain). Christopher Dickey's I Love My Glow Bunny recounts with sly humor a peculiar episode in which genetic engineering and artistic culture collide. Natalie Angier draws an insightful contrast between suicide terrorists and rescue workers who risk their lives, and finds that sympathy and altruism have a definite place in the evolution of human nature, David Berlinski's What Brings a World into Being? ponders the idea of biology and physics as essentially digital technologies, exploring the mysteries encoded in the universe's smallest units, be they cells or quanta. Nicholas Wade shows how one of the most controversial books of the year, \u003cem\u003eThe Skeptical Environmentalist, \u003c\/em\u003e by former Greenpeace member and self-described leftist Bjorn Lomborg, debunks some of the most cherished tenets of the environmental movement, suggesting that things are perhaps not as bad as we've been led to believe. And as a counterpoint, Darcy Frey's profile of George Divoky reveals a dedicated researcher whose love of birds and mystery leads to some sobering discoveries about global warming and forcefully reminds us of the unsung heroes of science: those who put in long hours, fill in small details, and take great trouble.In the end, the unanswered questions are what sustain scientific inquiry, open new frontiers of knowledge, and lead to new technologies and medical treatments. The Best American Science Writing 2002 is a series of exciting reports from science's front lines, where what we don't know is every bit as important as what we know.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49650987303185,"sku":"GOR007324229","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50293140750609,"sku":"CIN0060936509G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51415405625617,"sku":"CIN0060936509VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0060936509.jpg?v=1751355962"},{"product_id":"down-to-earth-book-matt-ridley-9780255363457","title":"Down to Earth","description":"Dr Ridley is one of a number of environmentalists who are seeking to counter the inaccurate and misleading opinions of 'mainstream environmentalism'. This volume brings together a selection of 30 of Dr Ridley's 'Down to Earth' columns which appeared in The Sunday Telegraph.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49654740779281,"sku":"GOR013473742","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51350466986257,"sku":"GOR002946196","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0255363451.jpg?v=1750940312"},{"product_id":"how-innovation-works-book-matt-ridley-9780062916600","title":"How Innovation Works","description":"\u003cp\u003eBuilding on his national bestseller The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley chronicles the history of innovation, and how we need to change our thinking on the subject.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society. Forget short-term symptoms like Donald Trump and Brexit, it is innovation that will shape the twenty-first century. Yet innovation remains a mysterious process, poorly understood by policy makers and businessmen alike.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eMatt Ridley argues that we need to see innovation as an incremental, bottom-up, fortuitous process that happens as a direct result of the human habit of exchange, rather than an orderly, top-down process developing according to a plan. Innovation is crucially different from invention, because it is the turning of inventions into things of practical and affordable use to people. It speeds up in some sectors and slows down in others. It is always a collective, collaborative phenomenon, involving trial and error, not a matter of lonely genius. It happens mainly in just a few parts of the world at any one time. It still cannot be modeled properly by economists, but it can easily be discouraged by politicians. Far from there being too much innovation, we may be on the brink of an innovation famine.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eRidley derives these and other lessons from the lively stories of scores of innovations, how they started and why they succeeded or failed. Some of the innovation stories he tells are about steam engines, jet engines, search engines, airships, coffee, potatoes, vaping, vaccines, cuisine, antibiotics, mosquito nets, turbines, propellers, fertilizer, zero, computers, dogs, farming, fire, genetic engineering, gene editing, container shipping, railways, cars, safety rules, wheeled suitcases, mobile phones, corrugated iron, powered flight, chlorinated water, toilets, vacuum cleaners, shale gas, the telegraph, radio, social media, block chain, the sharing economy, artificial intelligence, fake bomb detectors, phantom games consoles, fraudulent blood tests, hyperloop tubes, herbicides, copyright, and even life itself.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49729505853713,"sku":"CIN0062916602VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49851885781265,"sku":"CIN0062916602G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50343321993489,"sku":"CIN0062916602A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51307459281169,"sku":"NIN9780062916600","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0062916602.jpg?v=1750736486"},{"product_id":"how-innovation-works-book-matt-ridley-9780008339074","title":"How Innovation Works","description":"‘Ridley is spot-on when it comes to the vital ingredients for success’ Sir James Dyson                                   Building on his bestseller The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley chronicles the history of innovation, and how we need to change our thinking on the subject.                         Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society. It is innovation that will shape the twenty-first century. Yet innovation remains a mysterious process, poorly understood by policy makers and businessmen alike.             Matt Ridley argues that we need to see innovation as an incremental, bottom-up, fortuitous process that happens as a direct result of the human habit of exchange, rather than an orderly, top-down process developing according to a plan. Innovation is crucially different from invention, because it is the turning of inventions into things of practical and affordable use to people. It speeds up in some sectors and slows down in others. It is always a collective, collaborative phenomenon, involving trial and error, not a matter of lonely genius. It still cannot be modelled properly by economists, but it can easily be discouraged by politicians. Far from there being too much innovation, we may be on the brink of an innovation famine.             Ridley derives these and other lessons from the lively stories of scores of innovations – from steam engines to search engines – how they started and why they succeeded or failed.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49788940943633,"sku":"GOR011040020","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50342169674001,"sku":"CIN0008339074G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51323993162001,"sku":"CIN0008339074VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0008339074.jpg?v=1751225623"},{"product_id":"rational-optimist-book-matt-ridley-9780007378906","title":"The Rational Optimist","description":"Matt Ridley, acclaimed author of the classics Genome and Nature via Nurture, turns from investigating human nature to investigating human progress. In The Rational Optimist Ridley offers a counterblast to the prevailing pessimism of our age, and proves, however much we like to think to the contrary, that things are getting better.             Over 10,000 years ago there were fewer than 10 million people on the planet. Today there are more than 6 billion, 99 per cent of whom are better fed, better sheltered, better entertained and better protected against disease than their Stone Age ancestors.             The availability of almost everything a person could want or need has been going erratically upwards for 10,000 years and has rapidly accelerated over the last 200 years: calories; vitamins; clean water; machines; privacy; the means to travel faster than we can run, and the ability to communicate over longer distances than we can shout. Yet, bizarrely, however much things improve from the way they were before, people still cling to the belief that the future will be nothing but disastrous.             In this original, optimistic book, Matt Ridley puts forward his surprisingly simple answer to how humans progress, arguing that we progress when we trade and we only really trade productively when we trust each other.             The Rational Optimist will do for economics what Genome did for genomics and will show that the answer to our problems, imagined or real, is to keep on doing what we've been doing for 10,000 years – to keep on changing.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49864474296593,"sku":"GOR005662285","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51587822125329,"sku":"GOR014338009","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0007378904.jpg?v=1751003894"},{"product_id":"red-queen-book-matt-ridley-9780026033404","title":"The Red Queen","description":"\u003cp\u003eReferring to Lewis Carroll's \u003cem\u003eRed Queen\u003c\/em\u003e from \u003cem\u003eThrough the Looking-Glass\u003c\/em\u003e, a character who has to keep running to stay in the same place, Matt Ridley demonstrates why sex is humanity's best strategy for outwitting its constantly mutating internal predators. \u003cem\u003eThe Red Queen\u003c\/em\u003e answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture -- including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty, and the disquieting fact that a woman is more likely to conceive a child by an adulterous lover than by her husband. Brilliantly written, \u003cem\u003eThe Red Queen\u003c\/em\u003e offers an extraordinary new way of interpreting the human condition and how it has evolved.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49888796246289,"sku":"CIN0026033402G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50588279505169,"sku":"GOR002305291","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51693140082961,"sku":"CIN0026033402VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":52620147589393,"sku":"CIN0026033402A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0026033402.jpg?v=1750972514"},{"product_id":"origins-of-virtue-human-instin-book-matt-ridley-9780670874491","title":"Origins of Virtue:Human Instin","description":"If, as Darwin suggests, evolution relentlessly encourages the survival of the fittest, why are humans compelled to live in cooperative, complex societies? In this fascinating examination of the roots of human trust and virtue, a zoologist and former American editor of the \u003cb\u003eEconomist\u003c\/b\u003e reveals the results of recent studies that suggest that self-interest and mutual aid are not at all incompatible. In fact, he points out, our cooperative instincts may have evolved as part of mankind's natural selfish behavior--by exchanging favors we can benefit ourselves as well as others.Brilliantly orchestrating the newest findings of geneticists, psychologists, and anthropologists, \u003cb\u003eThe Origins of Virtue\u003c\/b\u003e re-examines the everyday assumptions upon which we base our actions towards others, whether in our roles as parents, siblings, or trade partners. With the wit and brilliance of \u003cb\u003eThe Red Queen\u003c\/b\u003e, his acclaimed study of human and animal sexuality, \u003cb\u003eMatt Ridley\u003c\/b\u003e shows us how breakthroughs in computer programming, microbiology, and economics have given us a new perspective on how and why we relate to each other.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49889242120465,"sku":"CIN0670874493G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50410292478225,"sku":"CIN0670874493VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0670874493.jpg?v=1750847614"},{"product_id":"viral-book-matt-ridley-9780063139138","title":"Viral","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Chan and Ridley write with an urgency...that inspires gripping depictions of what viruses are, how infectious-disease laboratories work and wonderfully lucid descriptions of bats. . . . They powerfully recount how dangerous pathogens can both leak from a lab and emerge in nature.\" (\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e)\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eUnderstanding how Covid-19 started is crucial for the future of humankind. \u003ci\u003eViral\u003c\/i\u003e is the most incisive and authoritative book about the search for the source of the virus.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA new virus descended on the human species in 2019 wreaking unprecedented havoc. Finding out where it came from and how it first jumped into people is an urgent priority, but early expectations that this would prove an easy question to answer have been dashed. Nearly two years into the pandemic, the crucial mystery of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is not only unresolved but has deepened.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e In this uniquely insightful book, a scientist and a writer join forces to try to get to the bottom of how a virus whose closest relations live in bats in subtropical southern China somehow managed to begin spreading among people more than 1,500 kilometres away in the city of Wuhan. They grapple with the baffling fact that the virus left none of the expected traces that such outbreaks usually create: no infected market animals or wildlife, no chains of early cases in travellers to the city, no smouldering epidemic in a rural area, no rapid adaptation of the virus to its new host--human beings.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e To try to solve this pressing mystery, \u003ci\u003eViral\u003c\/i\u003e delves deep into the events of 2019 leading up to 2021, the details of what went on in animal markets and virology laboratories, the records and data hidden from sight within archived Chinese theses and websites, and the clues that can be coaxed from the very text of the virus's own genetic code.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e The result is a gripping detective story that takes the reader deeper and deeper into a metaphorical cave of mystery. 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Change in technology, language, morality, and society is incremental, inexorable, gradual, and spontaneous. It follows a narrative, going from one stage to the next, and it largely happens by trial and error--a version of natural selection. Much of the human world is the result of human action but not of human design: it emerges from the interactions of millions, not from the plans of a few.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDrawing on fascinating evidence from science, economics, history, politics, and philosophy, Matt Ridley demolishes conventional assumptions that the great events and trends of our day are dictated by those on high. On the contrary, our most important achievements develop from the bottom up. The Industrial Revolution, cell phones, the rise of Asia, and the Internet were never planned; they happened. Languages emerged and evolved by a form of natural selection, as did common law. 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They are consequences as well as causes of the will.             Published fifty years after the discovery of the double helix of DNA, ‘Nature via Nurture’ chronicles a new revolution in our understanding of genes. 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This book is a treat for bird lovers and evolutionary biologists alike.\" --Richard Dawkins, author of The Genetic Book of The Dead and The God Delusion\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe New York Times bestselling author of Genome and The Evolution of Everything revisits Darwin's revelatory theory of mate choice through the close study of the peculiar rituals of birds, and considers how this mating process complicates our own view of human evolution.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn all animals, mating is a deal. But few creatures behave as if sex is a simple, even mutually beneficial, transaction. Many more treat it with reverence, suspicion, angst, and violence. In the case of the Black Grouse, the bird at the center of Matt Ridley's investigation, the males dance and sing for hours a day, for several exhausting months, in an arduous and even deadly ritual called a \"lek.\" To prepare for the ordeal, they grow, preen and display fancy, twisted, bold-colored feathers. 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Though Darwin's theory was initially dismissed and buried for decades, recent scientific research has proven him newly right--there is a powerful evolutionary force quite distinct from natural selection: mate choice. In Birds, Sex and Beauty, Ridley reopens the history of Darwin's vexed theory, laying bare a century of disagreement about an idea so powerful, so weird, and so wonderful, we may have yet to fully understand its implications. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51421632790801,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51421633249553,"sku":"CIN0063342987VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51734395289873,"sku":"CIN0063342987G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52111402270993,"sku":"NIN9780063342989","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":52901981192465,"sku":"CIN0063342987LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0063342987.jpg?v=1750875932"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-matt-ridley.oembed?page=3","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}