For millennia humanity has gazed in wonder at the night sky, tracked the motions of the planets and attempted to explain our place in the Universe. But only in our own time has the true scale, the astonishing variety and the remarkable strangeness of the cosmos come clearly into focus. The pace and sophistication of recent scientific discovery has been breathtaking, but breakthroughs are often difficult to understand and their impact is hard to fully appreciate. In 50 Ideas You Really Need to Know: Universe, Joanne Baker clearly and concisely explains all of the essential concepts, major discoveries and the very latest thinking in astrophysics, including: the basic principles of astronomy -from heliocentrism to Newton's theory of optics; the constituent parts of the Universe, its creation and evolution; the key concepts of cosmology including the theory of relativity, supermassive black holes and 'multiverses'; the very latest developments in our understanding of quasars, exoplanets and astrobiology. From dwarf planets to dark energy; and from the Big Bang to the death of stars, this book is the perfect introduction to the cutting-edge science that is shaping our understanding of our place in the Universe and that could lead to the next great discovery - the detection of life beyond Earth

Despite frequent prognostications regarding the 'death of God' and the triumph of secular materialism, religion remains a central component in the lives of most people around the world. There are currently thought to be 2 billion Christians, 1.2 billion Muslims, 800 million Hindus, along with some 700 million followers of other religions. 50 Religious Ideas You Really Need to Know offers a clear path through the conceptual and denominational thickets of global religion. Award-winning religious affairs correspondent Peter Stanford begins with an examination of sacred texts, the divine principle and good and evil, before moving on to a discussion of the different traditions within Christianity, Islam, Judaism and the myriad customs of the East. Contents: The Divine Principle, Baptists, Buddha's teachings, Sacred Texts, Presbyterians, Dhama, Good and Evil, Sects and cults, Forms of Buddhism, Life and Death, Rapture, Confucianism, Golden Rule, God & Torah, Taoism, Rites and Rituals, Anti-Semitism, Shintoism, Life of Christ, Kabbalah, Missionary impulse, God and Mammon, Being Jewish, Just War, Reformation,Mohammed, Church and State, Papacy, Pillars of Islam, Spirituality, Guilt and Misogyny, Shari'ah law, Fundamentalism, Holy Spirit, Sunni & Shia, Darwinist challenge, Saints and sinners, Sufism, People and Creation, Orthodoxy, Islamism, The poor, Lutheranism, Hindu trinity, Seaof faith, Anglicanism, Sansara, Methodism, Sikhs & Jains.

This latest book in the bestselling '50 Ideas' series is a wonderfully accessible overview of the only place we know of in the universe that is capable of sustaining life. Expert popular science writer Martin Redfern covers all the natural processes of the Earth: climate, ocean currents, air currents, the elements, plate tectonics, fossils, the evolution of life, volcanology, sea levels and the ultimate fate of the Earth. The 50 Ideas featured include: Geological formation; Rock layers;Formation of the atmosphere; Plate tectonics; Continental rifts; Volcanology; Simple life; Multi-cellular life; Snowball Earth; Gondwana and Pangea; Sexual selection; Complex life; The Cambrian revolution; The dinosaurs; Avalonia; The sauropod puzzle; End of the Mesozoic; The Cenozoic recovery; The Great Warming; The 'Great Flood'; The Holocene; Biodiversity and The fate of the Earth.

Іn 50 Ideas You Really Need to Know: Management Edward Russell-Walling demystifies the management concepts that any budding entrepreneur needs to grasp. In fifty bite-sized topics he expounds the wisdom of well-known business gurus, from Peters and Porter to Welch and Gates. Helpful theories and tools such as Ansoff's Product/Market grid, the 4Ps, Boston Matrix, are clearly and simply explained. Russell-Walling also expands on management ideas such as branding, outsourcing, supply and demand, and covers the latest commercial concepts from the online world.

50 Science Ideas You Really Need to Know is your guide to the biggest questions and deepest concepts from across the whole of science. What was the Big Bang? How did life on Earth arise? What does quantum mechanics tell us about the universe? Is true artificial intelligence possible? And does life exist on other planets? Moving from the basics of atoms and molecules, Newton's laws of physics and the building blocks of life to the cutting edge of nanotechnology, Einstein's theories of relativity and cloning, this book makes the many worlds of science accessible and illuminating. Featuring fifty concise, insightful and illustrated essays covering physics and astronomy, Earth and life sciences, chemistry and materials, psychology and computing, and exploring the ways they connect with each other and impact on our lives, 50 Science Ideas You Really Need to Know is the ideal introduction to the questions which fascinate us all.

People often complain that in history lessons at school they were taught just a few topics - the Romans, the Tudors, the Nazis - and how they have no idea at all about what happened in between. To remedy this, World History: 50 Key Milestones You Really Need to Know offers brief and stimulating outlines of key developments in the history of the world, from the beginning of agriculture 10,000 years ago to the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11. Ian Crofton, the author of several books of popular history including The Kings and Queens of England, Traitors and Turncoats and History Without the Boring Bits, brings his lively style to bear in a series of essays ranging from ancient Egypt to modern China, from the Vikings and the Mongols to the French Revolution and the Cold War. Each essay is accompanied by a detailed time line of dates and events, and the flavour of the period concerned is brought to life by selected contemporary quotations from figures as diverse as Aristotle, Ashoka, Saladin, Christopher Columbus, Martin Luther, Suleiman the Magnificent, Galileo, Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, Mary Wollstonecraft, Napoleon, Lincoln, Lenin and Winston Churchill. In addition, box features throw light on a range of related topics, from the Nazca Lines to Renaissance man, from Confucianism and the state to Alexander the Great's horse, from Islamic science and the Barbary corsairs to the Enigma code and the atomic bomb.