The Universe: The book of the BBC TV series presented by Professor Brian Cox

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Straight from the pen of a scientist working with commercial spaceflight comes a memoir of getting into the air. Kellie Gerardi has worked with NASA, tested technology that would be sent to the International Space Station, and helped develop programmes for future space exploration. For more reading recommendations and free samples of new and popular books, sign up to our book club newsletter below.

Universe by DK, Martin Rees | Waterstones Universe by DK, Martin Rees | Waterstones

Even before I became a philosopher I was wondering about everything—life the universe and whatever else Douglas Adams thought was important when he wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe. As a philosopher, I’ve been able to spend my life scratching the itch of these questions. When I finally figured them out I wrote The Atheist’s Guide to Reality as an introduction to what science tells us besides that there is no god. In H ow History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories I apply much of that to getting to the bottom of why it’s so hard for us, me included, to really absorb the nature of reality. It is a weighty subject, incorporating everything from cosmology and atomic physics to quantum physics and philosophy, but astrophysicists Geraint Lewis and Luke Barnes have done a stellar job in explaining some extremely challenging concepts with style and panache. Cambridge University Press are mostly known for their academic titles, but this is firmly in the popular science mould, akin to the works of authors like Brian Greene or Sean Carroll. NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST, OBSERVER, NEW SCIENTIST, BBC FOCUS, INDEPENDENT AND WASHINGTON POSTHave you ever wondered why we can’t just make the world better? Sure, we’ve made enormous strides in agriculture and medicine over the past few centuries. We can generate electricity and move around the world in a day. We can feed and heal people. But why haven’t we just sat down and figured out the right way to live? Planned it all out on a clean sheet, like an architect. Where are we? Who are we? Do our beliefs, hopes and dreams hold any significance out there in the void? Can human purpose and meaning ever fit into a scientific worldview? If the end of the world really is imminent, perhaps we should start looking for another one. The obvious choices are the Moon or Mars, but there are lots of other places in the Solar System we could try, each with their own problems and opportunities. We could try floating above Venus in balloon cities, or living in caves inside our very own asteroid. There can be no better example that science does not stand still. I am therefore pleased to see that the author occasionally pauses to explain the ‘scientific method’ and why it is such a powerful and progressive tool compared to the alternative of mere philosophical musing. Indeed, Parsons delights in pointing out that a scientist when presented with damning evidence is duty bound to discard a favoured theory – even if it is their own!

Cosmic reads: four great books that explore the Universe we live in Cosmic reads: four great books that explore the Universe we live

Seeing Like a State is a book about why it’s impossible for ambitious programs of top-down control to succeed, and why they so often end up with millions of people dead. The world is always more complicated than the maps you make of it, and in a lot of situations, it turns out that complexity matters . You can’t design and build the perfect city. You have to grow it. This is by no means a frivolous book, but importantly, you don’t need a degree or to be an astronomy nerd to enjoy it or to wonder at the audacity of life. This is a book for anyone who has ever stared at the night sky and wondered what the grand design was (Sutter says there wasn’t one). As Sutter himself says, Your Place in the Universe is a book not just about physics and science, but also about our home, the Universe, and our human story. It is about how our knowledge and understanding has grown and developed, and how we have decoded and deciphered, faltered and often misunderstood. We may have occasionally got a little lost and gone down the odd blind alley, but Sutter sums up how, ultimately, we still continue to untangle our delightfully chaotic existence in the Universe.This book, by former Astronomy Now editor Paul Parsons, begins with an observation by Belgian cosmologist Georges Lemaître that “the Big Bang was a day without a yesterday”. Grappling with that mind-blowing concept perfectly sets up the reader for what follows. For fans of Jim Al-Khalili's The World According to Physics, this book is an accessible and engaging introduction to one of the Universe's most extraordinary phenomena.