Ostatní non-fiction

When James Bowen found an injured, ginger street cat curled up in the hallway of his sheltered accommodation, he had no idea just how much his life was about to change. James was living hand to mouth on the streets of London and the last thing he needed was a pet. Yet James couldn't resist helping the strikingly intelligent tom cat, whom he quickly christened Bob. He slowly nursed Bob back to health and then sent the cat on his way, imagining he would never see him again. But Bob had other ideas. Soon the two were inseparable and their diverse, comic and occasionally dangerous adventures would transform both their lives, slowly healing the scars of each other's troubled pasts. A Street Cat Named Bob is a moving and uplifting story that will touch the heart of anyone who reads it.

Featuring Latinate and Celtic words, weasel words and nonce-words, ancient words ('loaf') to cutting edge ('twittersphere') and spanning the indispensable words that shape our tongue ('and', 'what') to the more fanciful ('fopdoodle'), Crystal takes us along the winding byways of language via the rude, the obscure and the downright surprising. In this unique new history of the world's most ubiquitous language, linguistics expert David Crystal draws on words that best illustrate the huge variety of sources, influences and events that have helped to shape our vernacular since the first definitively English word was written down in the fifth century ('roe', in case you are wondering).

Britain's favourite writer of narrative non-fiction Bill Bryson travels back in time to a forgotten summer when America came of age, took centre stage, and, in five eventful months, changed the world for ever. In the summer of 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest of the time), a semi-crazed sculptor with a mad plan to carve four giant heads into an inaccessible mountain called Rushmore, a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and a youthful aviator named Charles Lindbergh who started the summer wholly unknown and finished it as the most famous man on earth. (So famous that Minnesota considered renaming itself after him.) It was the summer that saw the birth of talking pictures, the

"1,000 Unforgettable Senior Moments in History", of which we could remember only 249, is filled with excruciatingly embarrassing and totally true stories of major mental lapses and famous acts of forgetfulness. How about President Jimmy Carter leaving the codes needed to launch a nuclear missile strike in a suit sent to the dry-cleaners? Or Ralph Waldo Emerson forgetting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's name at Longfellow's funeral? Did you know that Rod Stewart's "Maggie Mae" was inspired by Stewart's first love, a woman whose full name he can longer recall. Sir Isaac Newton, Harpo Marx, Toscanini, Pope John XXIII - they've all had it worse than you.

Ever been lost for words abroad? When you want to get your point across in a foreign language there is only one way to do it: by swearing your arse off! Impress the world with a stream of multi-lingual profanity from this little book.

Every significant choice, every important decision we make, is determined by our perception of time. This is the most influential force in our lives, yet we are virtually unaware of it. In this fascinating book, the award-winning past president of the American Psychological Association, Philip Zimbardo, and his co-author, John Boyd, show how: the way you perceive time is as unique as your fingerprints; these individual time perspectives shape your life, and the world around you; you can change the way you perceive time, so you get the most out of every minute; and, if you don't, the power of time in the modern world is so immense that it will take its toll on you. "The Time Paradox" is a highly readable, stimulating look at a subject that absorbs us all.

Go anywhere in the world today and you'll see or hear English in some form. It may not necessarily be the Queen's English that you're hearing, but it is, nevertheless, a form of universally recognised English - it is Globish. In his wonderfully witty and informative new book, Robert McCrum explores the curious history, vivacity and endurance of English and ponders why, while British and American empires have waxed and waned, the English language, freer from its moorings like never before, has quietly taken over the world.