WAdaptive Coloration in Animals is a 500-page textbook about camouflage, warning coloration and mimicry by the Cambridge zoologist Hugh Cott, first published during the Second World War in 1940; the book sold widely and made him famous.
WThe Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques is a reference book by Ralph Mayer (1895–1979). Intended by the author for use by professional artists, it deals mostly with the chemical and physical properties of traditional painterly materials such as oil, tempera, and encaustic, as well as solvents, varnishes, and painting mediums. It also has extensive coverage of ancillary activities such as stretching and preparing canvas, care and maintenance of tools, and conservation of older paintings.
WBerlin Embassy is a non-fiction book written by American diplomat William Russell (1915-2000) which was first published in late 1940. Russell, who worked at the American Embassy in Berlin, details his experiences of living and working in Nazi Germany between August 1939 and April 1940 during the early phases of the Second World War.
WThe Birth and Death of the Sun is a popular science book by theoretical physicist and cosmologist George Gamow, first published in 1940, exploring atomic chemistry, stellar evolution, and cosmology. The book is illustrated by Gamow. It was revised in 1952.
WDusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept is a 1940 autobiographical text by W. E. B. Du Bois that examines his life and family history in the context of contemporaneous developments in race relations.
WThe Encyclopedia of World History is a classic single-volume work detailing world history. The first through fifth editions were edited by William L. Langer.
WThe Great Trek: One of the Greatest Feats in Australian Exploration is a 1940 book by Ion Idriess about Francis and Alex Jardine's 1864 trek in the northern Cape York Peninsula, from Rockhampton to Somerset in 1864.
WJihad al-Akbar is the lectures of Imam Khomeini in Najaf, which was published in 1991 by the institute for compilation and publication of Imam Khomeini's works.
WHappy Days, 1880–1892 (1940) is the first of an autobiographical trilogy by H.L. Mencken, covering his days as a child in Baltimore, Maryland from birth through age twelve. It was followed by Newspaper Days, 1899–1906 (1941) and Heathen Days, 1890–1936 (1943).
WHeadhunters of the Coral Sea is a 1940 book by Ion Idriess about Jack Ireland and Will d'Oyly, two survivors of the 1834 wreck, the Charles Eaton.
WHow to Read a Book is a 1940 book by the philosopher Mortimer J. Adler. He co-authored a heavily revised edition in 1972 with the editor Charles Van Doren, which gives guidelines for critically reading good and great books of any tradition. The 1972 revision, in addition to the first edition, treats genres, inspectional and syntopical reading.
WThe Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination, also published under the title The Psychology of the Imagination, is a 1940 book by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, in which the author propounds his concept of the imagination and discusses what the existence of imagination shows about the nature of human consciousness.
WInside the Whale and Other Essays is a book of essays written by George Orwell in 1940. It includes the eponymous essay Inside the Whale.
WLightning Ridge is a 1940 book by Ion Idriess. It was an autobiographical account of part of his life, in particular his time opal mining in Lightning Ridge.
WThe Long Week-End is a social history of interwar Britain, written by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge. It was first published in 1940, just after the end of the period it treats.
WA Mathematician's Apology is a 1940 essay by British mathematician G. H. Hardy, which offers a defence of the pursuit of mathematics. Central to Hardy's "apology" — in the sense of a formal justification or defence — is an argument that mathematics has value independent of possible applications. Hardy located this value in the beauty of mathematics, and gave some examples of and criteria for mathematical beauty. The book also includes a brief autobiography, and gives the layman an insight into the mind of a working mathematician.
WMathematics and the Imagination is a book published in New York by Simon & Schuster in 1940. The authors are Edward Kasner and James R. Newman. The illustrator Rufus Isaacs provided 169 figures. It rapidly became a best-seller and received several glowing reviews. Special publicity has been awarded it since it introduced the term googol for 10100, and googolplex for 10googol. The book includes nine chapters, an annotated bibliography of 45 titles, and an index in its 380 pages.
WMemory Hold-the-Door is a 1940 autobiographical memoir by the Scottish writer John Buchan. It was published posthumously, Buchan having died in February of that year. In the United States the book was released under the title Pilgrim's Way.
WThe Merck Index is an encyclopedia of chemicals, drugs and biologicals with over 10,000 monograph on single substances or groups of related compounds published online by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
WThe New World Order is a non-fiction book written by H.G. Wells and was published by Secker & Warburg in January 1940. In The New World Order, Wells proposed a framework of international functionalism that could guide the world towards achieving world peace. To achieve these ends, Wells asserted that a socialist and scientifically planned world government would need to be formed to defend human rights.
WThe Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People is an ethnographical study by the British anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1902–73) first published in 1940. The work examined the political and familial systems of the Nuer people in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and is considered a landmark work of social anthropology. It was the first of three books authored by Evans-Pritchard on Nuer culture.
WAn Outline of Psychoanalysis is a work by Sigmund Freud. Returning to an earlier project of providing an overview of psychoanalysis, Freud began writing this work in Vienna in 1938 as he was waiting to leave for London. By September 1938, he had written three-quarters of the book, which were published together in 1940, a year after his death. James Strachey writes that while "the Outline must be described as unfinished ... it is difficult to regard it as incomplete," given its fairly comprehensive treatment of the subject matter.
WThe Problem of Pain is a 1940 book on the problem of evil by C. S. Lewis, in which Lewis argues that human pain, animal pain, and hell are not sufficient reasons to reject belief in a good and powerful God.
WSpécialités de la Maison is a cookbook containing more than 200 recipes by a wide array of early 20th Century celebrities and socialites. The book was originally published in 1940 under the direction of Anne Morgan in order to raise funds for her nonprofit organization, the American Friends of France, which sought to bring relief to the French population in wartime. Reprinted in 1949, Spécialités de la Maison includes recipes by Salvador Dalí, Christian Dior, Katharine Hepburn, Charlie Chaplin, and Helen Keller among other luminaries.
WTo the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History (1940) is a book by American critic and historian Edmund Wilson. The work presents the history of revolutionary thought and the birth of socialism, from the French Revolution through the collaboration of Marx and Engels to the arrival of Lenin at the Finlyandsky Rail Terminal in St. Petersburg in 1917.
WWhy England Slept is the published version of a thesis written by John F. Kennedy in his senior year at Harvard College. Its title is an allusion to Winston Churchill's 1938 book While England Slept, which also examined the buildup of German power. Published in 1940, Kennedy's book examines the failures of the British government to take steps to prevent World War II and its initial lack of response to Adolf Hitler's threats of war.