How much salt is there in the ocean? What's so special about the number 86,400? Are there really more kangaroos than people in Australia? And just what did the number zero say to the number eight? Australia's funniest maths dude is back with a new, awesome activity book for young and eager minds. Crammed full of puzzles, games, facts and quizzes (not to mention heaps of stuff to draw, cut out, decipher and decode) Adam Spencer's Number Crunchers is the perfect book for curious kids aged 5 and up! Numbers have never been so cool!
After the runaway bestsellers Enormous Book of Numbers (2015) and Number Crunchers (2016), Australia's funniest maths dude is back with another bumper activity book for young and eager minds. Bursting with games, puzzles, quizzes - along with heaps of stuff to draw, cut out, decipher and decode - this is the perfect book for kids aged six and above. They won't believe numbers could be this much fun!
Our very own Sultan of STEM, Crusader of Calculus, Prince of Pi - Adam Barrington Spencer - is back in 2019 with more teasing, tantalising and tricky maths games, puzzles and quizzes for young and hungry minds. Scared of square roots? Petrified of Pythagoras? Frightened of factorials? Let Australia's funniest mathematician enthral and entertain as he demystifies numbers in this bumper new edition. Adam Spencer's Mini Book of Numbers follows on from the bestselling Enormous Book of Numbers (2015), Number Crunchers (2016), and The Number Detective (2018), and is guaranteed to keep kids aged 6-12 occupied for hours on end. Praise for Adam Spencer: 'The things Adam Spencer writes about should be taught in every school worldwide.' Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers. 'Even the page numbers will start to look fascinating once you've read this book!' Amanda Keller 'Every bright young mind in Australia should read Adam Spencer's Big Book of Numbers - and we oldies would benefit, too.' Peter FitzSimons
Who's smarter -- a four-year-old chimp or a four-year-old human? How much does it cost to stop a computer virus? And will you really become a billionaire at 31? The answers to all these questions -- as well as over 100 brainbusting and mind-bending number games, puzzles and quizzes -- are in Adam Spencer's The Number Games. It doesn't matter if you're 6 or 60, this fascinating adventure from 1 to 100 is the perfect way to exercise the grey matter, keep you on your toes ... and make you, well, generally AWESOME! So sharpen your pencils and get ready for this year's most exciting battle: Adam Spencer's The Number Games.
This is a specially formatted fixed-layout ebook that retains the look and feel of the print book. ‘Funny, yet with hidden depths – like its author.’ Brian Cox From the building blocks of life, to the games we play, the food we eat, and the marvels of space, Australia’s funniest mathematician is back with a fascinating snapshot of the world of numbers. What’s a ‘firkin’? Is a tardigrade animal, vegetable or mineral? How fast is Usain Bolt ... really? And what’s the record for the most lobster rolls eaten in 10 minutes? All these questions and more are answered in Adam Spencer’s World of Numbers. This is a book for young and old – for anyone who’s ever wondered how things work, who loves puzzles and numbers, or is just plain curious about the amazing world around us. After his bestselling Big Book of Numbers, Australia’s funniest and most famous mathematician is back by popular demand! Adam Spencer has been entertaining us for almost 20 years on triple j, ABC radio and television. You can find him on Twitter @adambspencer, on the web at adamspencer.com.au and on Facebook. Praise for Adam Spencer’s Big Book of Numbers ‘Funny, informative and, even better for dummies like me, all the answers are in the back.’ Wil Anderson ‘If you find this book boring, you should be in a clinic.’ John Cleese ‘Every bright young mind in Australia should read Adam Spencer’s Big Book of Numbers – and we oldies would benefit too.’ Peter FitzSimons ‘Even the page numbers will start to look fascinating once you’ve read this book!’ Amanda Keller
Adam Spencer's 12 Days of Christmas is a funny -- and distinctly Australian -- take on the classic Christmas carol. Featuring beautiful illustrations, it's the perfect way to celebrate the festive season, while learning to count at the same time! So join in the fun with everyone's favourite numbers guy as we count down the days till Christmas.
By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Selected by Time as One of the Ten Best Books of the Year | A New York Times Notable Book | Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post Book World, The Christian Science Monitor, Rocky Mountain News, and Kirkus Reviews | A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist | Winner of the ALA Alex Award | Finalist for the Costa Novel Award From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new. Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping” through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons. Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell’s subtlest and most effective achievement to date. Praise for Black Swan Green “[David Mitchell has created] one of the most endearing, smart, and funny young narrators ever to rise up from the pages of a novel. . . . The always fresh and brilliant writing will carry readers back to their own childhoods. . . . This enchanting novel makes us remember exactly what it was like.”—The Boston Globe “[David Mitchell is a] prodigiously daring and imaginative young writer. . . . As in the works of Thomas Pynchon and Herman Melville, one feels the roof of the narrative lifted off and oneself in thrall.”—Time
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time 'American writing, before and after Dreiser's time, differed almost as much as biology before and after Darwin,' said H. L. Mencken. Sister Carrie, Dreiser's great first novel, transformed the conventional 'fallen woman' story into a bold and truly innovative piece of fiction when it appeared in 1900. Naïve young Caroline Meeber, a small-town girl seduced by the lure of the modern city, becomes the mistress of a traveling salesman and then of a saloon manager, who elopes with her to New York. Both its subject matter and Dreiser's unsparing, nonjudgmental approach made Sister Carrie a controversial book in its time, and the work retains the power to shock readers today. 'Sister Carrie came to housebound and airless America like a great free Western wind, and to our stuffy domesticity gave us the first fresh air since Mark Twain and Whitman,' noted Sinclair Lewis. 'Dreiser enlarged, willy-nilly, by a kind of historical accident if you will, the range of American literature,' observed Robert Penn Warren. '[Sister Carrie] is a vivid and absorbing work of art.'
The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.
