Why We Die by Venki Ramakrishnan | Non-Fiction Book of the Month

Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago

Buy the book: blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Why-We-Die-by-Venki-Ramakrishnan/9781529369281

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Blackwell's Non-Fiction Book of the Month - March 2025

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How can science help us live better and longer? A groundbreaking exploration of longevity from Nobel Prize-winning biologist Venki Ramakrishnan.

We are living through an exciting revolution in biology. Giant strides are being made in our understanding of why we age, and why some species live longer than others. Will we soon be able to cheat disease and death and live for a very long time, possibly many times our current lifespan?

Why We Die shares the latest scientific understanding of what causes ageing and how we might prevent it. Ramakrishnan examines the cutting-edge efforts to extend the human lifespan by altering our natural biology, raising profound questions and unravelling mind-bending answers along the way. Does death serve a necessary biological purpose? What will it mean for us all if some people start living longer? And how can we increase our chances of living long, healthy and fulfilled lives?

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2024
A SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW SCIENTIST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST READ

Why We Die by Venki Ramakrishnan | Non-Fiction Book of the Month | Blackwells.co.uk

$Pan by Michael W. Clune | Blackwells.co.uk Buy your copy:https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Pan-by-Michael-W-Clune/9781529969894 Fiction Book of the Month - August 2026 A strange and brilliant teenagers first panic attacks send him down a rabbit hole in this wild, critically acclaimed debut. Nicholas has plenty of reasons to feel unstable. Hes fifteen, the child of divorced parents, living with his mostly absent dad in the bleak Chicago suburbs, and an outsider at school. Then, one day, he forgets how to breathe. The doctor calls it panic, but Nicholas suspects something stranger: that the Greek god Pan is trapped inside him. As his sense of reality fractures, Nicholas and his friends search for answers in art, music and literature, reaching beyond the limits of their lives. Thrilling, surprising and darkly funny, Pan explores the unsettling forces shaping our inner worlds. A stunning debut . . . Pan is remarkable for the honesty of its treatment of both mental illness and adolescence. It shows more successfully than any other book I’ve read how these can be experienced as black magic . . . When we close the book, we find ourselves in a larger world - Guardian Pan holds your attention as a sweet-and-sour tale of the no man’s land between childhood and adulthood . . . In this stylish and unsettling novel, the greatest fear is that inside your head is the only place to be - Observer A true original . . . A new Michael Clune book is a cause for celebration - Paul Murray Brilliant . . . Mind-bending, psychologically intricate, really thrilling - Lauren Groff Michael Clune writes lucid, shrewd, startling prose capable of laying bare pockets of human experience that might otherwise go without words. Pan proves his mesmeric ability to return our world and selves to us made strange and changed; there is no other writer like him - Maggie Nelson [Clune] is writing in the tradition of Proust, Sebald, Jenny Offill, Teju Cole and Nicholson Baker, writers whose eccentricities manifest in singular voices that are propulsive enough without pyrotechnic narratives. Like a great painter, Clune can show us the mind, the world, with just a few well-placed verbs . . . I could have read 300 pages of just this — Nicholas looking out the window and describing what he saw — and felt that I’d gotten my money’s worth - New York Times I steal language and ideas from Michael Clune - Ben Lerner #books #blackwells #author$

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