Biography

Bill Gates is one of the most transformative figures of our age. In Source Code he takes us back to his beginnings.

He describes with candour his childhood in Seattle, the centrality of family – his close relationship with his card-playing grandmother and his demanding but caring parents – his struggles to fit in, his rebelliousness, his first deep friendships and the impact of losing his closest friend.

We see Gates’s extraordinary mind developing, the restless teenager who discovered a love of coding and computing at the dawn of a new era and felt that ‘by applying my brain, I could solve even the world’s most complex mysteries’. We see the earliest signs of his phenomenal business acumen, which led him to drop out of Harvard at the age of 20 to devote all his energies to Microsoft, the company he started with his childhood friend Paul Allen. He writes about his first involvement with three Steves – Jobs, Wozniak and Ballmer – who would play a crucial role in so much that followed.

The book ends in the late 1970s when Microsoft, still with only a dozen employees, signed its first deal with Apple. The deals would go on and Microsoft would grow unimaginably. Yet Gates never forgot his mother’s reminder that he was merely a steward of any wealth that he gained. This warm and inspiring book, Bill Gates’ origin story, allows readers to understand his energy and ambition – and to see how he sets himself in the world.

One of the comedy world's brightest new voices, Trevor Noah is a light-footed but sharp-minded observer of the absurdities of politics, race and identity, sharing jokes and insights drawn from the wealth of experience acquired in his relatively young life. As host of the US hit show The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, he provides viewers around the globe with their nightly dose of biting satire, but here Noah turns his focus inward, giving readers a deeply personal, heartfelt and humorous look at the world that shaped him.

Noah was born a crime, son of a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother, at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents' indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the first years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, take him away.

A collection of eighteen personal stories, Born a Crime tells the story of a mischievous young boy growing into a restless young man as he struggles to find his place in a world where he was never supposed to exist. Born a Crime is equally the story of that young man's fearless, rebellious and fervently religious mother - a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence and abuse that ultimately threatens her own life.

Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Noah illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and an unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a personal portrait of an unlikely childhood in a dangerous time, as moving and unforgettable as the very best memoirs and as funny as Noah's own hilarious stand-up. Born a Crime is a must read.

At 36, Naomi Watts was at the height of her fame when suddenly she started experiencing symptoms she couldn’t explain – dry, itchy skin, raging hormones, night sweats – leaving her lost and confused, only to learn that she was going through menopause.

It is estimated that 13 million women in the UK are currently dealing with menopause symptoms, and yet the very word 'menopause' continues to be associated with stigma and confusion. With so little information, many women feel unprepared, uninformed and – because of the varying ages it begins – deeply alone when the time comes. This is the book Naomi Watts wishes she had when she first started experiencing symptoms. Like sitting down over coffee and having an intimate chat with the girls, Dare I Say It blends stories from Naomi and her friends with humour and expert advice, to take the stigma out of menopause and ageing.

Answering questions such as: What’s HRT and should I be on it? Will I ever sleep again? What happened to my libido? Do I need 18 serums for my ageing skin? Whose body is this anyway? Naomi Watts shares the most up-to-date learnings on how to manage menopause symptoms and tackle the physical and emotional challenges we encounter as we age. Irreverent, bold and funny, Dare I Say It is the companion every woman needs to inhabit the best version of themselves.

For two years, Isaacson had unprecedented access to Musk, his workplaces, his family, friends, coworkers and adversaries – nothing was off-limits.

Musk’s journey from humble beginnings to one of the wealthiest people on the planet is a thrilling, mind-bending story and nobody could tell it better. Filled with amazing tales of triumph and turmoil, and lessons about leadership and business, it ultimately addresses the question everyone wants to ask: why is Elon Musk so successful?

This book includes over 100 integrated black and white images.

A book that enlightens the life of Ahmed H Zewail from his early childhood to his days at CalTech. Born in Damanhur, Egypt, Ahmed H Zewail grew up with his family, studied at a local primary school and eventually graduated from Alexandria University. After completing his schooling, he went on to teach chemistry to undergraduates at the University of Alexandria. His contributions are not only to science but also to society. As a pioneer scientist, he returned to Egypt and had his fingerprints on all the initiatives to encourage scientific research and to upgrade the scientific and technological capabilities of his countrymen. He founded the Zewail City for Science and Technology — a non-profit educational institution for research and innovation in Cairo. A Nobel Prize winner, inventor of the ground-breaking four dimensional microscopy, and together with his other accolades, Ahmed H Zewail is one of the greatest scientists this century has produced. His foresight for the development of both the scientific and cultural fields in Egypt has made him a brilliant jewel for Egypt and the world.

'If you were gonna rob a bank, and you saw the vault door there, left open, what would you do? Would you wait around?

Ever since he was a kid, kicking broken footballs on the streets of East London in the shadow of Canary Wharf's skyscrapers, Gary wanted something better. Something a whole lot bigger.

Then he won a competition run by a bank: 'The Trading Game'. The prize: a golden ticket to a new life, as the youngest trader in the whole city. A place where you could make more money than you'd ever imagined. Where your colleagues are dysfunctional maths geniuses, overfed public schoolboys and borderline psychopaths, yet they start to feel like family. Where soon you're the bank's most profitable trader, dealing in nearly a trillion dollars. A day. Where you dream of numbers in your sleep - and then stop sleeping at all.

But what happens when winning starts to feel like losing? When the easiest way to make money is to bet on millions becoming poorer and poorer - and, as the economy starts slipping off a precipice, your own sanity starts slipping with it? You want to stop, but you can't. Because nobody ever leaves.

Would you stick, or quit? Even if it meant risking everything?

Discover the incredible life story of Barack Obama, the first African American president of the USA.

Barack Obama is famous for his meteoric rise to the presidency of the most powerful country in the world - the USA. This is the story of how he realized his dreams - a story of success, resilience, and perseverance that enabled him to become one of the most admired leaders the world has ever seen. In this children's biography, discover Barack's fight against racial and social injustices, hardships and setbacks in his early career, and his personal happiness when marrying Michelle. From his unsettled early childhood, where he witnessed his parents' divorce and criss-crossed the globe between Indonesia and Hawaii, through to his struggle to find a meaningful first job as a young man, Barack's journey is remarkable, unpredictable, and a gripping true story to inspire young readers..

This popular biography series from DK goes beyond the basic facts to tell the true life stories of history's most interesting and inspiring people. Full-colour photographs and hand-drawn illustrations complement age-appropriate, narrative text to create an engaging book children will enjoy reading - and a series they'll want to collect.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD
CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY APPLE, AMAZON, THE TIMES AND FINANCIAL TIMES

Epic feats. Epic failures. An epic story.

Walter Isaacson charts Elon Musk’s journey from humble beginnings to one of the wealthiest people on the planet – but is Musk a genius or a jerk?
 
From the author of Steve Jobs and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate story of Elon Musk, the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era – a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter.

When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue and charismatic fantasist.

His father’s impact on his psyche would linger. He developed into a tough yet vulnerable man-child with an exceedingly high tolerance for risk, a craving for drama, an epic sense of mission, and a maniacal intensity that was callous and at times destructive.

At the beginning of 2022 – after a year marked by SpaceX launching thirty-one rockets into orbit, Tesla selling a million cars, and him becoming the richest man on earth – Musk spoke ruefully about his compulsion to stir up dramas. ‘I need to shift my mindset away from being in crisis mode, which it has been for about fourteen years now, or arguably most of my life,’ he said.

It was a wistful comment, not a New Year’s resolution. Even as he said it, he was secretly buying up shares of Twitter, the world’s ultimate playground. Over the years, whenever he was in a dark place, his mind went back to being bullied on the playground. Now he had the chance to own the playground.

For two years, Walter Isaacson had unprecedented access. He shadowed Musk, attended his meetings, walked his factories with him and spent hours interviewing him, his family, friends, coworkers and adversaries. The result is the revealing inside story, filled with amazing tales of triumphs and turmoil, that addresses the question: are the demons that drive Musk also what it takes to drive innovation and progress?

The book includes over 100 integrated black and white images.

'This is a rip-roaring read, full of derring-do and sometimes comic, often foolhardy bravery. [Jenny] sounds an absolute hoot, and her book is never anything less' – Daily Mail

‘A fascinating and quirky take on how easily we can be hoodwinked and hacked. Next time you hear anyone complain about the cost of cyber-protection, hand them a copy of People Hacker. It could save them a fortune’ – The Times

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'From an early age, locked doors, high fences and the secrets kept by businesses, buildings and people, fascinated me. I wanted to find out what they wanted to hide away.'

A burglar for hire, con-artist and expert in deception and physical infiltration – Jenny Radcliffe is a professional people hacker. After being schooled in the art of breaking and entering by her family, she became an expert social engineer, doing an insider’s job to exploit the flaws and weaknesses in top-grade security operations.

In People Hacker, Jenny reveals how she uses her inimitable blend of psychology, stagecraft and charm to gain access to top-grade private and commercial properties. From the back streets of Liverpool to the City of London's Square Mile, across rooftops, cellars and staircases in Europe to the mansions of gangsters in the Far East, Jenny has risked it all to earn the title ‘People Hacker’.

This is Jenny insider’s account of how her working-class upbringing, northern sense of humour and femininity in a male-dominated industry all helped her to become one of the most sought-after social engineers in the world. Told in her trademark colourful style, and packed full of stories of the crazy and dangerous situations she has found herself in along the way, Jenny shines a light on the security mistakes we all make – and how to avoid them.