This has to be the strangest August ever, with climate-changed weather making itself felt all over the place. It is also strange because new books are in short supply. That said, the shelves are by no means bare. We have books to recommend to you on everything from octopus ethics and designing the universe to endometriosis and talking to computers. So, whatever you end up doing to refresh and recharge, we’ve got the book for you.

by Daniel Lieberman 

Meaty palaeo? Going veggie or vegan? Eating Mediterranean? Fasting, intermittently or otherwise? Low or high carbs? Enough – before we all lose the plot! Enter Daniel Lieberman, an evolutionary anthropologist at Harvard University who, says his publisher, “tackles this confusion head on with his trademark blend of lively storytelling and myth-busting science”.

As you would expect, Lieberman draws on evolutionary biology, anthropology and physiology to figure out how we are going so wrong. He travels all the way back, moving from what humans evolved to eat through to how fire, farming and industrialisation transformed our diets, and right up to today as we learn how to combine all that history with rigorous medical science. It will be fascinating to see what former New Scientist staffer Chris Simms makes of it in our review, to be published shortly.

by Jonathan Loh

To know where we are headed, it can help to have a reasonable grasp of where we have been. So, will some big-picture thinking from an independent scholar help? Jonathan Loh’s publishers call his book Life Story a “panoramic history of life, revealing the forces that have shaped our world – and could shape it again”. We move through the rise of Homo sapiens, from foragers to farmers, from the Bronze Age to the industrial revolution, through “hidden patterns linking genetics and language, organisms and states, ecosystems and economies, mass extinctions and civilisational collapse”.

Humans may dominate the planet, but, as machine intelligence gathers pace, is that supremacy only a phase? Loh is a biologist who has worked as a consultant to organisations such the United Nations Environment Programme and WWF on the conservation of biological and cultural diversity, so he should be well placed to build a deep chronicle of the past and lay out his big idea: culture as a form of life. What would that mean in terms of an AI future? We shall see…  

by Xiaochang Li

The idea of talking to machines has been an enduring human fantasy. Divination Engines is a bit of a wild card: author Xiaochang Li, an assistant professor in the department of communication at Stanford University in California, shows her readers how that dream “both fueled the demand for data and set the stage for today’s generative AI”. Sneak peaks reveal a book that is no easy read (brace for technical details), but one in which Li manages to explain the origins of what we call natural language processing, as well as the 20^th-century debates between computer scientists, linguists and communication engineers that shaped today’s technology.

She sets out to show how computer speech recognition advanced technology by de-emphasising linguistic meaning in favour of statistical prediction – that is, how researchers gradually abandoned systems that tried to understand human language in favour of workarounds that just predicted patterns in speech and text data. The rest is, as they say, history… and that’s before we even mention search engines, spam filters, content managers and the like. All this comes at the cost of needing more and more new data – forever! This will be a tough read for many of us, but one that’s worth the effort. Oh, and Kate Crawford, author of Atlas of AI, calls the book “a landmark in the critical history of artificial intelligence”.

by Catherine Heymans

No small ambition in this next book, either. Astrophysicist Catherine Heymans’s latest is, according to its subtitle, no less than a look at the “science of real and virtual worlds”. At its heart is that wonderful, death-defying question: could we be living in a computer simulation, and how would we even know? It all sounds fascinating, as Heymans, the astronomer royal for Scotland, takes us “on a humorous and mind-bending journey through the science of reality itself”.

From subatomic particles and the cosmic mysteries of dark matter to the secrets of the human senses, we are promised an exploration of “whether humanity could ever create a virtual universe as rich and diverse as our own – and what that means for our sense of self, free will and consciousness”. Not much going on here, then.

by Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi

This is one for all of us who love silvery-grey snow leopards, those fabulous and elusive beasts, which live in the rugged mountains of central Asia, camouflaged against the rocks and cliffs. For the past 20 years, scientist, conservationist and mountaineer Kulbhushansingh (Kullu) Suryawanshi has studied them in the wild, exploring every aspect of their lives from habitat to prey to population – sometimes living for months in the world’s toughest, most remote environments. Suryawanshi, we are promised, has “pioneered new research that shines fresh light on these charismatic and vulnerable animals, showing how their fate is entangled with the local people and how their survival is central to preserving an austere, delicate ecosystem”.

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by Lani Watson

There is something wonderful about books with a single letter as their main title. Q (and here’s the subtitle so we know what we’re talking about: The hidden power of questions in a world that wants answers) is all about the art and science of asking questions, as the only creature on Earth that does so in any formal sense. But we’re trained to look for answers, not how to ask questions – so much so, says author Lani Watson, that we live in an answer-rich, question-poor world.

Yet, as the publishers remind us,” from doctors’ surgeries to courtrooms to dating, the ability to ask questions determines our experiences. In a world obsessed by answers, asking better questions is powerful.”

That sounds very wise, and we should be in good hands: Watson is a philosopher and honorary fellow at the University of Edinburgh, UK, as well as a former research fellow at the University of Oxford. Plug into what her publishers call a “captivating narrative from the death of Socrates to the age of AI”, and you will soon learn how to think about the questions you ask and the ones you don’t.

by Richard Schweid

With octopus blooms suddenly appearing in many places, journalist Richard Schweid and publisher University of North Carolina Press could hardly have hit on a more provocative subject. Billed as a “gripping, on-the-ground investigation into the global race to farm octopus and the ethical firestorm it has ignited”, there is clearly a lot to chew on as we explore the “ethics and future of growing the world’s most intelligent invertebrate”.

Among the issues is the fact that, in 2021, the London School of Economics recognised invertebrates such as cephalopods (octopus, cuttlefish, squid) and decapods (crayfish, crabs, lobsters) as capable of experiencing pain, distress and happiness, finding that high-welfare farming of them would therefore be impossible. But the enormous international demand for octopus meat continues to grow, even as wild octopus populations decline. Fishers in the UK’s south-west are already experiencing problems as the vast number of octopuses eat their typical high-value catch: adult lobsters, brown edible crabs, scallops and the like. What to do instead? Eat the octopuses? Apparently, recipes are proliferating… a dilemma indeed.

by Evelyn Scott

This is no less than an exposé of medical misogyny, says the publisher of what looks like a forthright book about endometriosis, A Bloody Scandal: How medicine fails women in pain. There should be a huge market for it, given the sheer number who experience it (it is often said that 1 in 10 women do, but the real figure is probably higher), often in silence and for decades.

Author Evelyn Scott weaves in her own experience of the condition: she was just a teenager when she first had the symptoms of endometriosis. She shares 15 years during which she endured constant, agonising pain – and hopeless ineptitude when seeking support, ranging from dismissals on the grounds of hysteria to misdiagnoses. She felt completely isolated, until she discovered all the other women experiencing the same condition. Powerful stuff and, many will argue, long overdue.

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HOW could we talk about David Attenborough’s best documentaries without featuring the photo perhaps most associated with the broadcaster, whose 100th birthday is on 8 May?

Life on Earth, the groundbreaking 1979 series containing that iconic gorilla sequence, pictured above, introduced a wider audience to the calm narration and stunning nature shots for which Attenborough is known today. His many documentaries would go on to move from the ocean depths to the lives of plants, and from the distant past to the fight against climate change.

Read on to discover which made the biggest impact on our staff, and which they deem worth watching today.

(1979)

Life on Earth is special to me for so many reasons. There is that famous encounter with gorillas. It was also the first ambitious nature series of its kind – without its success, we might never have had the many great series that followed it. Then there’s the brilliant way Attenborough tells the story of deep time as he descends the Grand Canyon, and then back up again. There’s probably as much science here as in the rest of his programmes put together – I don’t think I’ve seen a better TV series on the evolution of life. OK, from today’s perspective it is a bit lectury at times, but who would you rather be lectured by?

Last but not least, for me, it has personal meaning, as I’m sure it does for many other people who saw it in their youth and were influenced by it. That wonky opening music by Edward Williams is just so evocative.

Michael Le Page, reporter

(1995)

Plants live on another plane of existence. Every morning, drooping wood anemones lift their heads and nod at the sun, while brambles grapple across the forest floor with slow aggression. Exploding pods launch seeds in a millisecond; on mountain tops, bristlecone pines gnarl into stumps over thousands of years.

Time-lapse and high-speed photography weren’t new when The Private Life of Plants was filmed, but this was the first series to use them at scale. They allowed Attenborough to explore the agency and the intelligence of flora like never before.

When I rewatch the series today, the lurid colour grade, bespoke plant-themed typeface and rudimentary CGI bring me as much joy as the plants’ private lives. I would also recommend the behind-the-scenes for the plants of Life, which lays bare the painstaking ingenuity of the film-makers who capture these other worlds.

Thomas Lewton, features editor

(2001)

As the first in-depth look at what is happening beneath the rarely explored waves, The Blue Planet astounded me when I first watched it. New species were discovered and extraordinary footage showed blue whales from the air, alien-looking creatures in the ocean depths and, most surprisingly, herring sperm as far as the eye could see.

I am still haunted 25 years later by watching a pod of orcas spend 6 hours hunting a grey whale calf to eat only its lower jaw and tongue. Attenborough’s narration is calm, clear and concise, unafraid to let the images and music hold our attention.

It may not have the glossy HD footage or drone shots of more recent series, but it changed the shape of nature documentaries.

It also blew my mind and sparked a life-long interest in the oceans. Without it, I wouldn’t have ended up at New Scientist!

Eleanor Parsons, magazine editor

(2006)

Those nighttime images of a massive pride of lions swarming over a fleeing young elephant have stayed with me ever since the first series was shown in 2006. The film-makers set out to create a spectacular, high-definition series, and boy did they achieve it.

The many notable moments in Planet Earth include a starving polar bear trying to catch walruses, eagles preying on cranes as they fly over the Himalayas, dolphins beaching themselves to hunt fish and bears climbing mountains to feast on moths. This is simply incredible television. Watch it now if you haven’t seen it. Watch it again if you have.

The second series, first shown in 2016, also made a notable departure. While Attenborough’s previous series all showed wildlife in pristine wildernesses, the last episode here, and in the third series (2023), is about animals living alongside people, from leopards and monkeys to falcons and otters.

I do think Attenborough has been right to aim to evoke wonder rather than despair in most of his programmes, but now there’s no denying we live on a much-changed planet.

Michael Le Page, reporter

(2011)

Wondrous and strange is the life that thrives at the very ends of Earth. Frozen Planet cast a loving eye over the inhabitants of the Arctic and Antarctica, hostile lands whose charms are apparent from the earliest moments of this excellent series. The narrative bounces back and forth from one pole to the other, treating us to scheming penguins, swimming snails, polar bears and a bison charging down wolves.

Among it all, the then 84-year-old David Attenborough, bundled up in a fetching array of parkas, makes the odd appearance as our all-terrain guide to these alien environments.

Casting a pall over proceedings, of course, were the advancing effects of climate change. The series’ seventh episode, “On Thin Ice”, was an explicit call for the world to do more to protect these magnificent ecosystems and those living in them, including humans.

The magic of Frozen Planet wasn’t just that it told us how global warming imperils the poles, it’s that it made us truly care about what we might be losing.

Bethan Ackerley, subeditor

(2020)

Like an ice core or tree ring, David Attenborough’s long and extraordinary life has come to be used as a yardstick for change. Socially, technologically and environmentally, the world of his youth was a far cry from the one we see today – and in this powerful film, Attenborough charts how we have degraded Earth’s ecosystems over his lifetime.

Released during the first year of the covid-19 pandemic, A Life on Our Planet was a timely warning from a man who has seen more of Earth’s wonders – like this turtle, pictured swimming over a coral reef – than perhaps anyone else alive. Its marriage of the personal and the political makes it a different beast from most Attenborough films. Climate change, biodiversity loss and rampant pollution all feature, as Attenborough sets out what a child born in 2020 may witness over their lifetime. It makes for bleak viewing, but, as is a hallmark of more recent Attenborough works, it also supplies plenty of solutions to the environmental crises we’re living through – if we’d only apply them.

Bethan Ackerley, subeditor

(2022)

Prehistoric Planet is far from the first programme to try to bring long-extinct animals back to life on the small screen, but it is the best so far. Of course, the programme-makers had to use their imagination to some extent, but the series has been praised by palaeontologists for its accuracy and naturalism.

The three series feature many of the most iconic animals of the past, but shows them in new ways – we see Tyrannosaurus rex swimming and mating, for instance. There are lots of smaller, lesser-known animals, too. For me, the real stars are not the dinosaurs but the pterosaurs, brought back to life in stunning detail.

The third series jumps forward in time to the recent glacial periods, featuring animals such as mammoths, sabre-toothed cats and many more. The content is just as brilliant, but Tom Hiddleston replaces David Attenborough as the narrator. It’s just not the same without him.

Michael Le Page, reporter

(2026)

This very late entry to the David Attenborough canon became an instant classic in my household, since it was shown on New Year’s Day. We’ve rewatched the extraordinary exploits of London’s wildlife many times.

Yes, this one-off urban showcase has the foxes and pigeons you would expect, but not as you would expect to see them: vixens viciously squaring off on the streets of Tottenham and pigeons intelligently commuting on the tube from Hammersmith are standout moments.

But the bigger surprises come from how much the city’s nature has changed in recent decades. Peregrine falcons now soar over the centre, ring-necked parakeets have conquered the parks, Aesculapian snakes dangle from the trees along the Regent’s Canal and, since covid lockdowns, large numbers of fallow deer have taken to roaming parts of Romford.

The programme tours a London that is familiar to locals but rarely seen on screen: the community gardens, cemeteries and suburban parks that make the city an outstanding place to live, even for the nature-lovers who sometimes wonder if a megacity is the right place for them.

Perhaps their lingering doubt will be extinguished by Attenborough’s own assertion that he wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

Penny Sarchet, managing editor