Sixth Form Recommended Reading

Genome by Matt Ridley

How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker

Why we sleep Matthew Walker

The most important investigation of genetic science since The Selfish Gene, from the author of the critically acclaimed and best selling The Red Queen and The Origins of Virtue. The genome is our 100,000 or so genes. The genome is the collective recipe for the building and running of the human body. These 100,000 genes are sited across 23 pairs of chromosomes. Genome, a book of about 100,000 words, is divided into 23 chapters, a chapter for each chromosome. The first chromosome, for example, contains our oldest genes, genes which we have in common with plants.

Sleep is one of the most important aspects of our life, health and longevity and yet it is increasingly neglected in twenty-first century society, with devastating consequences: every major disease in the developed world - Alzheimer's, cancer, obesity, diabetes - has very strong causal links to deficient sleep. Drawing upon 20 years of research and looking at creatures from across the animal kingdom as well as major human studies, Why really happens during REM sleep to how caffeine and alcohol affect sleep and why our sleep patterns change across a lifetime, transforming our appreciation of the extraordinary phenomenon that safeguards our existence. We Sleep delves into everything from what

Why do we laugh? What makes memories fade? Why do fools fall in love? Why do people believe in ghosts? How do we recognize a face? How the Mind Works explores every aspect of our brains, showing that our minds are not a mystery, but rather a system designed by natural selection over years of human evolution.

Whether looking at optical illusions or

religion, Mozart or films, Stephen Pinker offers us a new way of understating ourselves.