William Hartston

Like it or not, our lives are dominated by mathematics. Our daily diet of news regales us with statistical forecasts, opinion polls, risk assessments, inflation figures, weather and climate predictions, and all sorts of political decisions and advice backed up by supposedly accurate numbers. Most of us do not even pause and question such figures, even to ask what they...

Here are many, many things that nobody knows. Why are so many giraffes gay? Has human evolution stopped? Where did our alphabet come from? Can robots become self-aware? Can lobsters recognise other lobsters by sight? What goes on inside a black hole? Are cell phones bad for us? Why can't we remember anything from our earliest years? Full of the...

There are many, many things that nobody knows... Do animals have a sense of humour? Why do we have five fingers? What did Jesus do in his youth? Has human evolution stopped? Can robots become self-aware? What goes on inside a black hole? Bringing together The Things That Nobody Knows and Even More Things That Nobody Knows, this bumper volume...

How old is the sloth? How do sloths have sex? How did a sloth save Dublin? The answers to these questions, and more, are found in this wonderfully entertaining celebration of the sloth. Walking readers through the sloth's evolutionary history - from the prehistoric ground sloth to modern pygmy - William Hartston reveals the sloth's fascinating journey from maligned mammal...