History & Philosophy

This book conveys every aspect of the Apollo missions with breathtaking immediacy and stunning detail....

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....

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...

How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Find out....

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....

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....

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....

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....

Elon Musk is both an illuminating and authorized look at the extraordinary life of one of Silicon Valley's most exciting, unpredictable, and ambitious entrepreneurs....

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

Every one of us contains a billion times more atoms than all the grains of sand in the earth’s deserts. If you weigh 150 pounds, you’ve got enough carbon to make 25 pounds of charcoal....

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

An essential analysis of the modern science and technology that makes our twenty-first century lives possible—a scientist's investigation into what science really does, and does not, accomplish....

The dramatic inside story of the first four historic flights that launched SpaceX - and Elon Musk - from a shaky startup into the world's leading-edge rocket company....

For over three decades, Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future. In his classic The Age of Spiritual Machines, he argued that computers would soon rival the full range of human intelligence at its best....

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.

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

If there is one belief that has united the left and the right, psychologists and philosophers, ancient thinkers and modern ones, it is the tacit assumption that humans are bad. It's a notion that drives newspaper headlines and guides the laws that shape our lives....

The author of the best seller The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch, explores the four most fundamental strands of human knowledge: quantum physics, and the theories of knowledge, computation, and evolution - and their unexpected connections....

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 disease.

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....

The authors of the best-selling Bold and The Rise of Superman explore altered states of consciousness and how they can ignite passion, fuel creativity, and accelerate problem solving....

Listeners learn the difference between how the world works at the quantum level, the cosmic level, and the human level - and then how each connects to the other....

A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality.....

Predicting society’s present addiction to technology, our challenges with data privacy, and the dramatic increase in drug overdoses and depression that have accompanied a technology-induced lack of purpose, The Unabomber’s vision of the future has become our reality....

“Even now, nearly a century after her death, Marie Curie remains the only female scientist most people can name,” writes Dava Sobel at the opening of her shining portrait of the sole Nobel laureate decorated in two separate fields of science—Physics in 1903 with her husband Pierre and Chemistry by herself in 1911. And yet, Sobel makes clear, as brilliant and creative as she was in the laboratory, Marie Curie was equally passionate outside it.

Hoof Beats transforms our understanding of both horses and humanity's ancient past and asks us to consider what our relationship with horses means for the future of humanity and the world around us.

In Charged, James Morton Turner unpacks the history of batteries to explore why solving "the battery problem" is critical to a clean energy transition. As climate activists focus on what a clean energy future will create the history of batteries offers a sharp reminder of what building that future will consume. With new insight on the consequences for people and communities on the front lines, Turner draws on the past for crucial lessons that will help us build a just and clean energy future, from the ground up.

Are we alone in the universe? It's a fundamental question for Earth-dwelling humankind. Are there other worlds like ours, out there somewhere? In Hidden in the Heavens, Jason Steffen, a former scientist on NASA's Kepler mission, describes how that mission searched for planets orbiting Sun-like stars—especially Earth-like planets circulating in Earth-like orbits.

How many times have we looked for something and found something else? A partner, a job, an object? The same thing often happens to scientists: they design an experiment and discover the unexpected, which usually turns out to be very important. This fascinating phenomenon is called serendipity, which takes its name from the mythical Serendip, a place from which, according to a Persian fable, three princes set off to explore the world, making chance discoveries along the way.

Il settore dei trasporti, in particolare quello su strada, è responsabile di un quarto delle emissioni di gas serra e i combustibili fossili che utilizza producono sostanze tossiche per l’uomo e per l’ambiente, oltre a essere soggetti a oscillazioni di prezzo per ragioni geopolitiche. La mobilità elettrica sta emergendo negli ultimi anni per dare una risposta efficace a questi e altri problemi, nella prospettiva di un pianeta sempre più decarbonizzato secondo gli obiettivi già stabiliti dai governi e dai trattati internazionali.

Los prestigiosos economistas Daron Acemoglu y Simon Johnson demuestran que el desarrollo técnico es indispensable para el avance de la democracia. El progreso no es un destino predeterminado, sino que depende de las elecciones que hagamos sobre la tecnología. Esta reflexión resulta muy pertinente en un mundo donde los avances digitales y la robótica amenazan a nuestros empleos y a nuestras democracias a través de la automatización excesiva, la recopilación masiva de datos y la vigilancia intrusiva.

Like many people, you’ve probably asked some of these questions when you were younger or maybe recently. Well, you will be pleasantly surprised to discover the interesting and maybe slightly bizarre origins of the strange things we do. In Wonder Why? Fascinating Stories, Curious Facts, and Answers About the Mysteries of Science, History, Pop Culture, and Traditions Around the World cover 55 of the most regularly asked questions with fascinating origin stories.

Conseguir una IA ética también es responsabilidad tuya La inteligencia artificial ha dejado de ser un argumento inquietante de las películas de ciencia ficción para convertirse en una cuestión tan real como urgente. Su evolución y los inevitables debates éticos que acarrea nos incumben a todos, pero suele delegarse esta responsabilidad en los propios directivos de las empresas tecnológicas, a menudo coaligados con quienes tienen intereses económicos. Abrumados por un mundo que no terminamos de entender y que intuimos atractivo y peligroso, miramos hacia otro lado.

La gran historia que transcurre entre la llegada del ordenador personal y la irrupción de la inteligencia artificial. A las puertas de un mundo dominado por la inteligencia artificial y las gafas de "realidad extendida", cabe preguntarse dónde empezó todo, cómo pasamos del pequeño garaje de Palo Alto en el que Hewlett y Packard revolucionaron la informática a un presente dirigido por los chips.