Books
I have published five books:
- Life in the Universe: A Beginner’s Guide (OneWorld Publications; 2007)
- My Tourist Guide to the Solar System (Dorling Kindersley; 2012)
- The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch (Penguin Random House; 2014)
- Origins: How the Earth Made Us (Penguin Random House; 2019)
- Being Human: How our Biology shaped World History (Penguin Random House; 2023)
Both The Knowledge and Origins were Sunday Times bestsellers. The Knowledge was also The Times ‘New Thinking’ Book of the Year, and Origins was a Sunday Times top history book of the year and a Waterstones ‘Best of 2019’ book.
… and my PhD thesis (UCL; 2007) has been been reprinted by academic publishers as Martian Death Rays.
I’ve also contributed sections or chapters to several other books:
- 100 Ideas that Changed the World, Jheni Osman (BBC Books, 2011)
- Big Questions in Science, Mun Keat Looi, Hayley Birch and Colin Stuart (Andre Deutsch Ltd, 2013)
- Aliens: The World’s Leading Scientists on the Search for Extraterrestrial Life, ed. Jim Al-Khalili (Profile Books, 2016)
- What’s Next?: Even Scientists Can’t Predict the Future – or Can They?, ed. Jim Al-Khalili (Profile Books, 2017)
- Expanding Worldviews: Astrobiology, Big History and Cosmic Perspectives, ed. Ian Crawford (Springer, 2021)
- Astrobiology and Society in Europe Today, ed. Capova, Persson, Milligan, Dunér (Springer, 2018)
- Research Advances in Astronomy, ed. Nadine Mehler (Nova, 2018)
