Penguin Books Australia

'Crossword addicts that we are, we were thrilled to learn that out habit is actually juicing our brainpower-or at least one particular brand of brainpower.  The Playful Brain . . . runs through everything from Sudoku to mazes to how pickpockets operate in order to explain the beneficial effects of puzzles on memory, perception, and cognition.'
- THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

You're building up your...

Reporting on in-depth research and interviews...

'The history, science, art, literature and everyday applications of all the elements from aluminium to zinc'
The Times
 
Everything in the universe is made of them, including you.
 
Like you, the elements have personalities, attitudes, talents, shortcomings, stories rich with meaning.
 

Creativity: It's singing the song that has never been sung and solving the problem that seems impossible. It's the free verse poem and the mathematical equation, the abstract painter and the patient inventor. It's the ability to see the world as it is, and then to imagine how it might be.

Jonah Lehrer is on a mission to unlock the mysteries of creativity and invention, starting at the source: inside...

The Conundrum is a mind-changing manifesto about the environment, efficiency, and the real path to sustainability.

A gripping, triumphant memoir about the power of addiction and its effect on the brain

A revelatory tale of science, adventure, and modern myth.

When the writer Donovan Hohn heard of the mysterious loss of thousands of bath toys at sea, he figured he would interview a few oceanographers, talk to a few beachcombers, and read up on Arctic science and geography. 'But questions can be like ocean currents: wade in too far, and they carry you away.' Hohn's accidental odyssey pulls him into...

A New York Times and BusinessWeek bestseller.

Most of us have no idea what's really going on inside our heads. Yet brain scientists have uncovered details every business leader, parent, and teacher should know—like that physical activity boosts your brain power.

How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget—and...

Plastic built the modern world. Where would we be without bike helmets, toothbrushes, babies bottles and pacemakers? But a century into our love affair with plastic, we're starting to realise it's not such a healthy relationship. Plastics draw on dwindling fossil fuels, leach harmful chemicals, litter landscapes, and destroy marine life. As journalist Susan Freinkel points out in this engaging and...

Since Plato, philosophers have described the decision-making process as either rational or emotional: we carefully deliberate or we 'blink' and go with our gut.  But as scientists break open the mind's black box with the latest tools of neuroscience, they're discovering this is not how the mind works.  Our best decisions are a finely tuned blend of both feeling and reason - and the precise...

When Jeff Goodell first encountered the term 'geo-engineering', he had a vague sense that it involved outlandish schemes to counteract global warming. As a journalist, he was deeply sceptical. But he was also intrigued. The planet was in trouble. Could geo-engineers help?

Original Skin is the grand and sweeping story of our largest organ — the exquisitely sensitive, constantly reactive, and staunchly protective human skin. Our skin is where we end and the rest of the cosmos begins, and our first port of call in understanding the way in which we each connect with the world.

The acclaimed science writer Jennifer Ackerman lends her keen eye and lively voice to this marvellous exploration of the human body. Taking us through a typical day, from the arousal of the senses in the morning to the reverie of sleep and dreams, Ackerman reveals the human form as we've never seen it: busy, cunning, and miraculous.

On average, a physician will interrupt a patient describing her symptoms within eighteen seconds. In that short time, many doctors decide on the likely diagnosis and best treatment. Often, decisions made this way are correct, but at crucial moments they can also be wrong – with catastrophic consequences. In this myth-shattering book, Jerome Groopman pinpoints the forces and thought processes...

'A moving tribute that beautifully evokes the struggles, the initial triumphs, the setbacks, the unexpected and often stunning achievemnets . . . [while] uncovering cognitive abilities in Alex that no one believed were possible.'
Publishers Weekly

On September 6, 2007, an African Grey parrot named Alex died prematurely at age thirty-one. His last words to his owner, Irene Pepperberg, were 'You be good...