The Science Factory has just sold a landmark new book on intelligence to Yale University Press. In THE REASON MACHINE: How Intelligence Happens, John Duncan, a Cambridge cognitive neuroscientist and fellow of the Royal Society, provides a first-hand account of the search for the biological basis of 'general intelligence' that reveals what we actually mean by intelligence, how and why it happens and what this can tell us about ourselves. The book is based on the author's widely publicized finding of a region in the frontal lobes of the brain that seems to be at the core of problem solving. World English rights were acquired in a pre-empt by Jean Black, who plans to publish the book in Autumn 2010.

On the eve of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Science Factory has done a deal for a long-awaited popular science book by one of the world's most distinguished evolutionary biologists. Blind since early childhood, Geerat Vermeij is a MacArthur Fellow and recipient of the National Academy of Sciences Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal for 'extracting major generalizations about biological evolution from the fossil record, by feeling details that other scientists only see'. In THE EVOLUTIONARY WORLD, he shows how the central tenets of evolution have implications for humanity ranging from education, religion and warfare to climate change, economic regulation and political incumbency. Joel Ariaratnam at Thomas Dunne Books acquired at auction world English language rights in the title, which will be published in Autumn 2009. 'It’s a book that I think will touch not just the brain but the imagination of readers: a far more powerful and rare experience than what one encounters in most popular science books – much like James Gleick's Chaos did to me all those years ago', says Joel.

The Frankfurt Book Fair 2008 catalogue is now available as a PDF download here. The fair runs from 15 to 19 October, and the Science Factory will be there representing its authors and projects at table C5 in the Literary Agents & Scouts Centre (LitAg), Hall 6.2.

Barnes & Noble have chosen Michael Brooks's 13 Things That Don't Make Sense for an online Spotlight Review this week. Paul Di Filippo describes the book as "a fascinating and humbling perspective on humanity's vaunted scientific wisdom", adding that the chapters are "arranged with beautiful logic". "Concise historical backstory and vivid portraits of researchers offer a true sense of the Great Work of science and the still-murky dark corners of its realm", he says. The book was published last month by Doubleday in the US, and will appear in the UK early next year.

Bella Shand at Granta has acquired world English rights in a book that provides a radically new view of meteorites and their role in the evolution of life on Earth. In Incoming: Or Why We Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Meteorite, the science writer Ted Nield shows that far from leading to pestilence, global holocaust and mass extinction, meteorites are coming to be seen as immensely useful messengers from the cosmos. Contrary to popular belief, he argues, scientists haven't identified the impact crater associated with the wipe-out of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago – lots besides meteorites were killing things off at the time. In fact, as Ted points out, new research is beginning to uncover the life-bringing aspects of meteorites. The latest evidence suggests, for example, that they may well have been responsible for one of our planet's greatest bursts in biodiversity, some 470 million years ago.