These books are, in short, pretty amazing.

The Very Short Introduction Series

There are already 200 in the ever expanding series, and they range from history, popular culture, philosophy and, well, even the meaning of life. It would take no more than a couple of hours to read one of these books, yet each one will leave you with a basic knowledge of the subject, whether it be Dreams, Dinosaurs or Deserts.

The simple and concise language, coupled with diagrams, time lines and pictures, convey the information in a way which our brain seems to snatch up rapidly. If you want to talk about a subject in your essay that you aren’t quite sure about, you can sound like you are more than acquainted with it in a very short space of time.

They cover almost every historical period, scientific subjects (epidemiology anyone?) and lots of uncomplicated philosophy. These aren’t just useful for work; they are a fascinating insight into some things that we would simply never learn anywhere else. Some of my favourite titles include A Very Short Introduction To: Cryptography, Intelligence, Chaos, Emotion, Free Will and Nothing. Yes, literally, Nothing.