History & Philosophy

John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest infectious disease.

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science....

Not only can we not currently explain the origin of the universe, it is questionable we will ever be able to explain it. The notion that there are universes within particles, or that particles are conscious, is ascientific, as is the hypothesis that our universe is a computer simulation....

Exploring more than 80 of the world's most scientific theories and big ideas across the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, geology, and math, this audiobook offers a fascinating look at the history of science....

Bill Bryson has been an enormously popular author both for his travel books and for his books on the English language. Now, this beloved comic genius turns his attention to science...

A thrilling nonfiction tour of the cosmos that brings the universe down to Earth, from one of the all-time masters of science fiction....

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells - taken without her knowledge - became one of the most important tools in medicine....

Today's "machine-learning" systems, trained by data, are so effective that we've invited them to see and hear for us - and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Systems cull résumés until, years later, we discover that they have inherent gender biases.

Based on the newly released personal letters of Albert Einstein, Walter Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos....

In Air-Borne, award-winning New York Times columnist and author Carl Zimmer leads us on an odyssey through the living atmosphere and through the history of its discovery.

The science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology....

Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author Richard Rhodes reveals the fascinating history behind energy transitions over time - wood to coal to oil to electricity and beyond....

Bringing his cosmic perspective to civilization on Earth, Neil deGrasse Tyson shines new light on the crucial fault lines of our time—war, politics, religion, truth, beauty, gender, and race—in a way that stimulates a deeper sense of unity for us all....

For the millions of Americans who want spirituality without religion, Sam Harris’s new book is a guide to meditation as a rational spiritual practice informed by neuroscience and psychology....

An oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem....

Engaging, thought-provoking, and groundbreaking, The Immortal Mind shows here that some aspect of who we are is spiritual and immortal, transcending the physical body.

The New York Times best-selling author of Darwin’s Doubt presents groundbreaking scientific evidence of the existence of God, based on breakthroughs in physics, cosmology, and biology....

In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation....

One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind asks where the self comes from - and how our selves can exist in the minds of others....

From the masters of storytelling-meets-science, Patient Zero tells the long and fascinating history of disease outbreaks—how they start, how they spread, the science that lets us understand them, and how we race to destroy them before they destroy us....

From the world's leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest—a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery....

An exciting scientific adventure from the days of wooden ships and iron men, Longitude is full of heroism and chicanery, brilliance and the absurd....

Few biologists in the long history of that science have been as productive, as groundbreaking, and as controversial as the Alabama-born Edward Osborne Wilson. At 91 years of age, he may be the most eminent American scientist in any field....

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a magnificent treasury of the best short works of Richard P. Feynman....

Here for the first time, in rich human, political, and scientific detail, is the complete story of how the bomb was developed....

To his admirers, Luis W. Alvarez was the most accomplished, inventive, and versatile experimental physicist of his generation.

Discover the fascinating science behind unpredictability, complexity, and the hidden order within chaos. Understanding Chaos Theory is the definitive beginner’s guide to one of the most mind-bending concepts in modern science. From weather systems and traffic patterns to heart rhythms and financial markets, chaos theory reveals how small changes can produce massive effects—and why true predictability is often an illusion. Written in clear, accessible language, this book walks you through the origins, principles, and real-world applications of chaos theory without requiring a background ...

Intelligence is by far the most important human trait. This holds true at the level of individuals as well as at the level of nations. The average cognitive performance of their inhabitants is the most important determinant of the social, cultural, and economic development of nations. The article considers cognitive ability of nations from the perspective of psychometric intelligence research, international student assessment studies, and Piaget’s developmental psychology. Based on up-to-date data, the national IQ of 205 countries is estimated. Then it is shown that national IQs are ...

Today it's routine to take photos from an airplane window, use a camera underwater, watch a movie, or view an X-ray. But the photographic innovations more than a century ago that made such things possible were experimental, revelatory, and sometimes dangerous—and many of the innovators, entrepreneurs, and inventors behind them were memorable eccentrics. In Flashes of Brilliance, writer and photo editor Anika Burgess engagingly blends art, science, and social history to reveal the most dramatic developments in photography from its birth in the 1830s to the early twentieth century.

From Satellites to Side Streets: How GPS Transformed the World and Changed the World What began as a Cold War military project is now the invisible force powering your smartphone, your car, your farm equipment—and even your bank account. From Satellites to Side Streets tells the remarkable story of how the Global Positioning System (GPS) evolved from a secret Pentagon initiative into a global utility woven into every aspect of modern life. In this engaging and deeply researched book, author Kevin Shelton explores the origins, engineering, and astonishing reach of GPS. From battlefield ...