In Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights?, physicist and award-winning journalist Alex Hutchinson tackles dozens of commonly held beliefs and looks at just what research science has - and has not - proven to be true. This myth-busting book covers the full spectrum of exercise science and offers the latest in research from around the globe, as well as plenty of practical tips on using proven science to improve fitness, reach weight loss goals, and achieve better competition results.

An endurance athlete and coach reveals how the marathon transforms the lives of everyone who attempts it - and how it has helped his own family cope with serious adversity.

Writing from both the cutting edge of scientific discovery and the front-lines of elite athletic performance, National Magazine Award-winning science journalist Alex Hutchinson presents a revolutionary account of the dynamic and controversial new science of endurance.

More than a century ago, a woman ran in the very first modern Olympic marathon. She just did it without permission. Award-winning journalist Maggie Mertens uncovers the story of how women broke into competitive running and how they are getting faster and fiercer every day—and changing our understanding of what is possible as they go.

A Crack in Everything is the story of how black holes came in from the cold and took cosmic centre stage. As a journalist, Marcus Chown interviews many of the scientists who made the key discoveries, and, as a former physicist, he translates the most esoteric of science into everyday language. The result is a uniquely engaging audiobook that tells one of the great untold stories in modern science.

Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes listeners on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada.

On the playing field, natural talent isn’t enough—there’s a mental component that determines whether athletes win the race or wipe out before the finish line. But what separates standout sports stars from the rest? In a paradigm-shifting new theory, acclaimed sportswriter Matt Fitzgerald identifies two key traits behind athletic success: strict self-regulation over thoughts and emotions and an unquenchable psychological need to pursue victory—even when it means enduring extreme mental and physical suffering.

You become the best you can be by learning from others. That is how bowhunter and ultramarathoner Cameron Hanes approaches each day in his pursuit of greatness in this essential guide to finding success.

Welcome to the Barkley Marathons, a fever dream of an ultra event, inspired by a prison break, heralded by a conch blast, paid for in cigarettes and socks, and completed only by a select few. A race in which competitors haul themselves up mountains, through extreme weather conditions, beyond pain and exhaustion, mile after mile. Completed 60 miles? That’s just the fun run. In the Spell of the Barkley is a story of sporting obsession, exploring what drives individuals to challenge themselves at the limits of what is possible – and what it takes to succeed.

When Des woke up on April 16, 2018, the morning of the Boston Marathon, it was 39 degrees and raining, with high, gusty winds. The weather didn’t bother her. In fact, she thought it might be a blessing. She was far from peak form—recovering from illness and questioning her running future—and didn’t expect much of herself that day. But as she ticked off mile after mile in the brutal conditions, passing familiar landmarks on the course she knew and loved, something shifted. Opportunity unexpectedly presented itself. Des tapped into her inner strength and found a reason to race.

Growing up in the Canadian Rockies, the mountains have always been home for Jenny Tough. Travelling the world, she's always discovered commonalities with mountains—and mountain people. Her major project is to run solo and unsupported across a mountain range on every continent where indigenous mountain people live isolated from the outside, urban world. Running solo and unsupported comes with obvious logistical as well as physical challenges, but running is also a common language.

To be successful you need to be Weird, Selfish, Shameless, Obsessed, Nosy, Manipulative, Brutal, Reckless, and Bossy. And that takes courage. As a former Google leader and top career coach who chased an attractive stranger off the subway and later married him, Jenny Wood knows her way around courage. In this book, Wood shatters conventional wisdom about achieving your goals. She gives you permission to ditch your fear and chase after what you want, unapologetically.

Billionaire Wilderness takes you inside the exclusive world of the ultra-wealthy, showing how today's richest people are using the natural environment to solve the existential dilemmas they face. Justin Farrell spent five years in Teton County, Wyoming, the richest county in the United States and a community where income inequality is the worst in the nation. He conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews, gaining unprecedented access to tech CEOs, Wall Street financiers, oil magnates, and other prominent figures in business and politics.

Orphaned at just thirteen in a still-segregated Washington, D.C., George Raveling was introduced to a relatively unpopular sport—basketball—in high school. The rest, as they say, is history. Raveling went on to become one of the winningest coaches of all time, a mentor to legendary athletes, and a confidant of the sport’s greatest coaches, including Bob Knight and John Wooden. He convinced Michael Jordan to collaborate with Nike on the Air Jordan. He led the 1984 U.S. men’s Olympic team to their ninth gold medal.

We’ve been taught that resilience is the secret to navigating life’s most difficult moments. According to New York Times bestselling author and organizational psychologist Dr. Tasha Eurich, there is just one problem with this assumption. Scientifically, resilience isn’t an unlimited resource, especially with the growing pressure, uncertainty, and chaos we’re experiencing today. But what if, instead of merely “bouncing back” from stressors and setbacks, we could harness them for forward growth?

Writing from both the cutting edge of scientific discovery and the front-lines of elite athletic performance, National Magazine Award-winning science journalist Alex Hutchinson presents a revolutionary account of the dynamic and controversial new science of endurance.

In Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights?, physicist and award-winning journalist Alex Hutchinson tackles dozens of commonly held beliefs and looks at just what research science has - and has not - proven to be true. This myth-busting book covers the full spectrum of exercise science and offers the latest in research from around the globe, as well as plenty of practical tips on using proven science to improve fitness, reach weight loss goals, and achieve better competition results.

Striving is in our nature. We all want to perform at our best when it matters most. But in today's world, many of us feel lost, isolated, and overwhelmed. We're paralyzed by fear of failure and crippled by insecurities. We know we’re capable of more, yet no matter how hard we try, we feel stuck. We’ve been sold the wrong path to success and personal fulfillment. Renowned performance scientist and bestselling author Steve Magness reveals a new path to sustainable success.

In 2017, world-class ultrarunner Hillary Allen was at the top of her sport - and it felt like she was running on top of the world as she competed in Norway's Tromsø Skyrace. Allen was nearly halfway through the 50-kilometer race when she fell 150 feet off an exposed ridge, fracturing her back and breaking multiple ribs, both feet, and both of her lower arms. Beginning with the dramatic story of her accident and rescue, Out and Back: A Runner's Story of Survival Against All Odds recounts Allen's fight to return to the life she loves.

Adaptable takes us on a tour of the human body. In each chapter, we learn how our bodies navigate an uncertain world: how we grow and mature; how our brains develop and learn; how our hearts, lungs, and digestive systems deliver oxygen and nutrients; how we manage toxins, temperature, and water balance; how we move and reproduce; how our immune system keeps invaders at bay; and how we age and decline. Along the way, we learn how to take care of our remarkable bodies, and that the universe of healthy lifestyles is vast (we don’t need the latest fad diet or cleanse!).

What if our questions—the ones we ask about relationships, work, meaning, identity, and purpose—are not our tormentors, but our teachers? Inspired by 150-year-old advice from Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke and backed by contemporary science, Elizabeth Weingarten offers a fresh approach for dealing with these seemingly unsolvable questions. In her quest, Weingarten shares her own journey and the stories of many others, whose lives have transformed through a different, and better, relationship with uncertainty.

Science is how we understand the world. Yet failures in peer review and mistakes in statistics have rendered a shocking number of scientific studies useless—or, worse, badly misleading. Such errors have distorted our knowledge in fields as wide-ranging as medicine, physics, nutrition, education, genetics, economics, and the search for extraterrestrial life. As Science Fictions makes clear, the current system of research funding and publication not only fails to safeguard us from blunders but actively encourages bad science—with sometimes deadly consequences.

Stronger tells a story of breathtaking scope, from the battlefields of the Trojan War in Homer’s Iliad, where muscles enter the scene of world literature; to the all-but-forgotten Victorian-era gyms on both sides of the Atlantic, where women build strength and muscle by lifting heavy weights; to a retirement home in Boston where a young doctor makes the astonishing discovery that frail ninety-year-olds can experience the same relative gains of strength and muscle as thirty-year-olds if they lift weights.

On December 16, 1842, the US brig-of-war Somers dropped anchor in the New York Harbor at the end of a voyage intended to teach a group of adolescents the rudiments of naval life. But this routine exercise ended in catastrophe. Commander Alexander Slidell Mackenzie came ashore claiming he had prevented a mutiny that would have left him and his officers dead. Some of the thwarted mutineers were being held under guard, but three had already been hanged at sea.

The best-selling author of Born to Run now travels to the Mediterranean, where he discovers that the secrets of ancient Greek heroes are still alive and well on the island of Crete, and ready to be unleashed in the muscles and minds of casual athletes and aspiring heroes everywhere.

This small book indeed tells a big story. It is the story of capitalism–of how our market system developed. It is the story of the discipline of economics, and some of the key figures who formed it. And it is the story of how economic forces have shaped world history. Why didn’t Africa colonize Europe instead of the other way around? What happened when countries erected trade and immigration barriers in the 1930s? Why did the Allies win World War II? You’ll find answers to these questions and more in How Economics Explains the World.

The coauthors of the bestselling Peak Performance dive into the fascinating science behind passion, showing how it can lead to a rich and meaningful life while also illuminating the ways in which it is a double-edged sword. Here’s how to cultivate a passion that will take you to great heights—while minimizing the risk of an equally great fall.

Think of your most valuable skill, the thing you can reliably do under pressure to deliver results. How did you learn it? Whatever your job–plumber, attorney, teacher, surgeon–decades of research show that you achieved mastery by working with someone who knew more than you did. Formal learning—school and books—gave you conceptual knowledge, but you developed your skill by working with an expert.

Blending cutting-edge science with gripping storytelling, award-winning data journalist and competitive amateur athlete Henry Abbott reveals that we are on the cusp of a new era in sports medicine, built around the science of ballistic movements—leaping and landing—and the unique fingerprint of your body's physics. Abbott's inspiring narrative tells the story of sports scientist Dr. Marcus Elliott and the Peak Performance Project (P3), who use technology to study how athletes move and why they get hurt.

An intimate and expertly researched biography of little-known early CIA leader Frank Wisner, whose behind-the-scenes influence on Cold War policy—and hundreds of highly secret anti-Soviet missions—resonates with the international crises we see today.