Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands to rethink their beliefs about life.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has attracted one of the world’s largest online followings with his fascinating, widely accessible insights into science and our universe. Now, Tyson invites us to go behind the scenes of his public fame by unveiling his candid correspondence with people across the globe who have sought him out in search of answers. In this hand-picked collection of 100 letters, Tyson draws upon cosmic perspectives to address a vast array of questions about science, faith, philosophy, life, and of course, Pluto.

How the Earth Works takes you on an astonishing journey through time and space. In 48 lectures, you will look at what went into making our planet - from the big bang, to the formation of the solar system, to the subsequent evolution of Earth.

Hilarious, fascinating, and a roller coaster of dizzying, historical what-ifs, Napoleon's Hemorrhoids is a potpourri for serious historians and casual history buffs. In one of Phil Mason's many revelations, you'll learn that Communist jets were two minutes away from opening fire on American planes during the Cuban missile crisis, when they had to turn back as they were running out of fuel. You'll discover that before the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon's painful hemorrhoids prevented him from mounting his horse to survey the battlefield.

Chemistry and Our Universe: How It All Works is your in-depth introduction to this vital field, taught through 60 engaging half-hour lectures that are suitable for any background or none at all. Covering a year’s worth of introductory general chemistry at the college level, plus intriguing topics that are rarely discussed in the classroom, this amazingly comprehensive course requires nothing more advanced than high-school math. Your guide is Professor Ron B. Davis, Jr., a research chemist and award-winning teacher at Georgetown University.

Welcome to the Universe is a personal guided tour of the cosmos by three of today's leading astrophysicists. Inspired by the enormously popular introductory astronomy course that Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, and J. Richard Gott taught together at Princeton, this book covers it all - from planets, stars, and galaxies to black holes, wormholes, and time travel.

From launchpad explosions to a pernicious cricket infestation to the demanding management style of Musk himself, the rise of SpaceX was beset with challenges and far from inevitable. Find out how the startup beat the odds and flew high enough to outpace their rivals... and where they're going next.

How do today's most successful tech companies - Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla - design, develop, and deploy the products that have earned the love of literally billions of people around the world? Perhaps surprisingly, they do it very differently from the vast majority of tech companies. In Inspired, technology product management thought leader Marty Cagan provides listeners with a master class in how to structure and staff a vibrant and successful product organization and how to discover and deliver technology products that your customers will love.

In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.

In this illuminating audiobook, Tyson and coauthor James Trefil, a renowned physicist and science popularizer, take on the big questions that humanity has been posing for millennia - How did life begin? What is our place in the universe? Are we alone? - and provide answers based on the most current data, observations, and theories.

The viruses keep coming, the climate is warming, and the Earth is rewilding. Our human family has no playbook to address the mayhem unfolding around us. If there is a change to reckon with, argues the renowned economic and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin, it’s that we are beginning to realize that the human race never had dominion over the Earth and that nature is far more formidable than we thought, while our species seems much smaller and less significant in the bigger picture of life on Earth, undermining our long-cherished worldview.

If the history of the Earth were compressed down to a year, our species would arise in the last thirty minutes or so of the final hour. But life itself is not such a late arrival: It has existed on Earth for something like 3.7 billion years—most of our planet’s history and over a quarter of the age of the universe (as far as we can tell). What have these organisms—bacteria, animals, plants, and the rest—done in all this time? In Living on Earth, the philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith proposes a new way of understanding how the actions of living beings have shaped our planet.

Zu lange haben wir Menschen eine dem Wesen unserer Existenz widersprechende Zivilisation und Infrastruktur aufgebaut, warnt der weltweit führende Ökonom und Vordenker Jeremy Rifkin. Denn jetzt rebelliert die Hydrosphäre unseres Planeten und ist dabei, unsere Spezies und unsere Mitgeschöpfe im Zuge des Klimawandels in ein Massensterben zu stürzen, während sie nach einem neuen Gleichgewicht sucht. Rifkin fordert uns auf, unseren Platz im Universum ganz neu zu definieren.

Bestselling author and renowned economic and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin delivers the political narrative, technical framework, and economic plan for the debate now taking center stage across America. The concurrence of a stranded fossil fuel assets bubble and a green political vision opens up the possibility of a massive global paradigm shift into a post-carbon ecological era, hopefully in time to prevent a temperature rise that will tip us over the edge into runaway climate change.

In this provocative new book, Rifkin argues that the coming together of the Communication Internet with the fledgling Energy Internet and Logistics Internet in a seamless twenty-first-century intelligent infrastructure—the Internet of Things—is boosting productivity to the point where the marginal cost of producing many goods and services is nearly zero, making them essentially free.

In his lifetime, Mark Antony was a famous man. Ally and avenger of Julius Caesar, rhetorical target of Cicero, lover of Cleopatra, and mortal enemy of Octavian (the future emperor Augustus), Antony played a leading role in the transformation of the Roman world. Ever since his and Cleopatra's demise at the hands of Octavian, he has remained famous, or infamous, a figure of recurring fascination. A Noble Ruin delivers a complex and captivating portrait of Mark Antony that offers a fresh perspective on the fall of the Roman Republic.

In this inspiring culmination of Diana Beresford-Kroeger’s life’s work as botanist, biochemist, biologist and poet of the global forest, she delivers a challenge to us all to dig deeper into the science of forests and the ways they will save us from climate breakdown—and then do our part to plant and protect them.

This book reveals how statistics and probability are fundamental to our everyday lives—from advertisements to public opinion polls, weather forecasts to government policies, scientific research to stock market information. Haim Shapira then presents a myriad of anecdotes, riddles, case studies and practical exercises in his trademark witty voice to guide the listner through the importance of statistics and probability in everyday life.

How does a mere molecule—a chemical structure—become a drug? And how do we know that it works safely? In a one-trillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry with high-stakes profits and perils, battles are raging every day to successfully bring a molecule to its birth: an FDA-approved medicine. In Race for a Remedy, Makhdum Ahmed, MD, an internationally renowned expert in cancer treatment and drug development, takes listeners behind the scenes of the fascinating and intense world of cancer drug development.

Follow the Science recounts, in exacting detail, how far the pharmaceutical industry and its supporters in medicine, media, and government will go to protect their profits. Attkisson provides shocking examples that reveal the disturbing callousness our government, public health officials, and top researchers are capable of when it comes to the most vulnerable among us. And she explains, in a graphic sense, how some of the most trusted within our society are willing to commit life-threatening ethics violations.