Thought you had it bad? In this book, you will be:Imprisoned by a sadistic logician.Challenged to raise dogs from the dead. Trapped on a burning island.And much more besides . . .Everything is at stake in this compendium of more than 150 ingenious puzzles, selected to reveal the wonderful diversity of brainteasers that have confounded and intrigued solvers for the last thousand years. You'll need to pit your wits against probability problems, wrestle with wordplay, grapple with geometry and scrabble for survival. Along the way you will discover stories of whip-smart thinkers, eccentric novelists and a poodle with allegedly supernatural powers. You will absorb fascinating and important mathematical ideas. Some solutions will rely on ingenuity, some will challenge you to spot hidden patterns, others call for extreme rationality. All will surprise,...

A passionate look at the history of the most popular sport - football - in the most romantic of countries - Brazil The Brazilian football team is one of the modern wonders of the world. At its best it exudes a skill, flamboyance and romantic pull like nothing else on earth. Football is how the world sees Brazil and how Brazilians see themselves. The game symbolises racial harmony, flamboyance, youth, innovation and skill, and yet football is also a microcosm of Latin America's largest country and contains all of its contradictions. Travelling extensively from the Uruguayan border to the northeastern backlands, from the coastal cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo to the Amazon jungle -Bellos shows how Brazil changed football and how football shaped Brazil. He tells the stories behind the great players, like Pele and Garrincha, between the great teams, like Corinthians and Vasco de Gama, and the great matches, as well as extraordinary stories from people and pitches all over...