Find out more from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

2. A Mind at a Time
Mel Levine
Recognizing each child's intellectual, emotional, and physical strengths--and teaching directly to these strengths--is key to sculpting "a mind at a time," according to Dr. Mel Levine. While this flashing yellow light will not surprise many skilled educators, limited resources often prevent them from shifting their instructional gears.

Find out more from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

3. Fast Food Nation
Eric Schlosser
On any given day, one out of four Americans opts for a quick and cheap meal at a fast-food restaurant, without giving either its speed or its thriftiness a second thought. Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems as American, and harmless, as apple pie. But the industry's drive for consolidation, homogenization, and speed has radically transformed America's diet, landscape, economy, and workforce, often in insidiously destructive ways.

Find out more from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

4. On the Shoulders of Giants
Stephen Hawking (Editor)
World-renowned physicist and bestselling author Stephen Hawking presents a revolutionary look at the momentous discoveries that changed our perception of the world with this first-ever compilation of seven classic works on physics and astronomy. His choice of landmark writings by some of the world's great thinkers traces the brilliant evolution of modern science and shows how each figure built upon the genius of his predecessors.

Find out more from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

5. A New Kind of Science
Stephen Wolfram
Physics and computer science genius Stephen Wolfram, whose Mathematica computer language launched a multimillion-dollar company, now sets his sights on a more daunting goal: understanding the universe. Wolfram lets the world see his work in A New Kind of Science, a gorgeous, 1,280-page tome more than a decade in the making. With patience, insight, and self-confidence to spare, Wolfram outlines a fundamental new way of modeling complex systems.

Find out more from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

6. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
Merriam-Webster
The 1998 10th edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary marks the 100th anniversary of this distinguished and popular reference standard, and this is more than just an interesting statistic--it means that Merriam-Webster brings years of experience and reams of citation files to the creation of this latest edition. Improving on their last dictionary, they've added more than 100 pictorial illustrations and supplemented the synonym paragraphs with examples.

Find out more from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

7. Guns, Germs, and Steel
Jared Diamond
Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas.

Find out more from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

8. The Art of War
Sun Tzu, Samuel B. Griffith (Introduction)
The Art of War is the Swiss army knife of military theory--pop out a different tool for any situation. Folded into this small package are compact views on resourcefulness, momentum, cunning, the profit motive, flexibility, integrity, secrecy, speed, positioning, surprise, deception, manipulation, responsibility, and practicality. Thomas Cleary's translation keeps the package tight, with crisp language and short sections.

Find out more from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

9. The Universe in a Nutshell
Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking, science's first real rock star, may be the least- read bestselling author in history--it's no secret that many people who own A Brief History of Time have never finished it. Hawking's The Universe in a Nutshell aims to remedy the situation, with a plethora of friendly illustrations to help readers grasp some of the most brain-bending ideas ever conceived.

Find out more from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

10. Seeing in the Dark
Timothy Ferris
If you've never heard of Stephen James O'Meara or Don Parker, then you've missed some of the most fascinating adventures in 20th-century astronomy. O'Meara was the first person to measure the length of a day on Uranus and to see radial "spokes" in Saturn's rings. (Most astronomers dismissed that discovery as illusionary, until Voyager got close enough to photograph them.) What's more remarkable, in an age of computer-enhanced CCD images, O'Meara made these observations visually, using only a small telescope and his own eyes.

Find out more from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.