Showing titles in History & Philosophy

In The Glass Cage, bestselling author Nicholas Carr digs behind the headlines about factory robots and self-driving cars, wearable computers and digitized medicine, as he explores the hidden costs of granting software dominion over our work and our leisure. Even as they bring ease to our lives, these programs are stealing something essential from us.

Much of the world's landmass is already known. Deep sea and outer space are beyond most people's reach. It feels like there are fewer places left to discover. Psychedelics, on the other hand, reveal worlds that remain largely obscure. Altered states offer modern, 21st-century audiences boundless opportunities to explore what a human being can experience. In this book, I show you how to become a capable discovery-maker, sample-collecting naturalist, and rational thinker of visionary phenomena.

From the author's monthly Scientific American columns. An eclectic, inspiring collection exploring a broad range of scientific thought from best-selling author and celebrated skeptic Michael Shermer.

The world has never been so unstable. Now, more than ever, we need to understand our history, learn from our mistakes, and embrace science and technology as we push into the future. In his debut book, New Thinking: The Technology and Science That Transformed Our World, Dagogo Altraide of YouTube's ColdFusion breaks down the history of gamechanger breakthroughs in the world of science and technology that have shaped our modern world and will impact the future.   

Bestselling author Steven Johnson recounts—in dazzling, multidisciplinary fashion—the story of the brilliant man who embodied the relationship between science, religion, and politics for America’s Founding Fathers. The Invention of Air is a book of world-changing ideas wrapped around a...

When Isaac Newton died in 1727 without a will, he left behind a wealth of papers that, when examined, gave his followers and his family a deep sense of unease. Some of what they contained was wildly heretical and alchemically obsessed, hinting at a Newton altogether stranger and less palatable than the one enshrined in Westminster Abbey as the paragon of English rationality. These manuscripts had the potential to undermine not merely Newton's reputation, but that of the scientific method he embodied.

‘Sarah Cruddas is a gifted writer and Look Up is an inspired book. I am hopeful that we will never stop looking up.’ Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins Most of us have never been to space. To date, of the more than 100 billion humans that have ever existed, fewer than 600 humans have ever...

Almost daily, headlines announce newly discovered links between cancers and their genetic causes. Science journalist Jessica Wapner vividly relates the backstory behind those headlines, reconstructing the crucial breakthroughs, explaining the science behind them, and giving due to the dozens of researchers, doctors, and patients whose curiosity and determination restored the promise of a future to the more than 50,000 people diagnosed each year with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML).

Science and politics have collaborated throughout human history and science is repeatedly invoked today in political debates, from pandemic management to climate change. Leading policy analyst Geoff Mulgan here calls attention to the growing frictions caused by the expanding—and unsolicited—authority being heaped upon science. As science increasingly competes with politics, a defined plan of cooperation is urgently needed.

In every issue of modern society - from climate change to vaccinations, transportation to technology, health care to defense - we are in the midst of an unprecedented expansion of scientific progress and a simultaneous expansion of danger. At the very time we need them most, scientists and the idea of objective knowledge are being bombarded by a vast, well-funded, three-part war on science: the identity politics war on science, the ideological war on science, and the industrial war on science.

Michael Faraday: The Life and Legacy of the Influential 19th Century Scientist Who Pioneered Electromagnetism examines the life and work that made Faraday one of history’s most important scientists. You will learn about Michael Faraday like never before.

Tim Koeth peered into the crumpled brown paper bag; inside was a surprisingly heavy black metal cube. He recognized the mysterious object instantly—he had one just like it sitting on his desk at home. It was uranium metal, taken from the nuclear reactor that Nazi scientists had tried—and failed—to build at the end of World War II. This unexpected gift, wrapped in a piece of paper inscribed with a few cryptic but crucial lines, would launch Koeth, a nuclear physicist and professor, and his colleague Miriam Hiebert, a cultural heritage scientist, on an odyssey to trace the tale of these cubes.

The Sunday Times (UK) Best Science Book of 2014 A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2014 An NBC News Top Science and Tech Book of 2014 A Politics & Prose 2014 Staff Pick In the sixteenth century, Nicolaus Copernicus dared to go against the establishment by proposing that Earth...

What would it have been like to be an eyewitness to the Big Bang? In 2014, astronomers wielding BICEP2, the most powerful cosmology telescope ever made, revealed that they'd glimpsed the spark that ignited the Big Bang. Millions around the world tuned in to the announcement broadcast live from Harvard University, immediately igniting rumors of an imminent Nobel Prize. But had these cosmologists truly read the cosmic prologue or, swept up in Nobel dreams, had they been deceived by a galactic mirage?

The Essential Einstein: Public Writings presents a rich selection of Einstein's humanistic writings drawn from a diverse array of materials he sanctioned for publication during his lifetime. Distinct from previous collections, this incisive book presents previously excerpted works in their entirety, including key articles, lectures, and speeches.

AI is at the forefront of everyone's minds: from students and artists, to CEO's and service workers. But what exactly is AI, and how does it influence our everyday lives? And more than that, what does it mean for our future? Is there a way for us to retain our "humanness" in a world ever-reliant on tech? This groundbreaking book argues that the key technology we use to make strategic, political, and ethical decisions is flawed.

From fire to fallout, potions to polymers — this is the story of how we figured out what everything is made of. Chemistry 101 isn’t your high school textbook. It’s a walkthrough of how humans turned mystery into mastery. You’ll meet alchemists chasing gold, scientists splitting atoms, and modern chemists designing synthetic realities out of carbon and code. Packed with stories, structure, and the messy human drive to mix, burn, and bottle the universe, this book walks you through the wild history of reactions — from ancient smelting pits to lab-grown meat and CRISPR edits.

In The Arctic, Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall offer concise answers to the myriad questions that arise when looking at the circumpolar North. They focus on its peoples, politics, environment, resource development, and conservation to provide critical information about how changes there can, and will, affect our entire globe and all of its inhabitants. Dodds and Nuttall explore how the Arctic's importance has grown over time, the region's role during the Cold War, indigenous communities and their history, and the past and future of the Arctic's governance.

Tomasello assembles nearly three decades of experimental work with chimpanzees, bonobos, and human children to propose a new framework for psychological growth between birth and seven years of age. Becoming Human places human sociocultural activity within the framework of modern evolutionary theory and shows how biology creates the conditions under which culture does its work.

Every applicable government agency and almost all mainstream media outlets claim that chemtrails are merely a "conspiracy theory". They say that the lines in the sky are harmless condensation trails and that jet aircrafts have always produced emissions that can linger in the sky for hours as they spread out and form a hazy cloud-cover. They say that anybody who asserts that aircraft are routinely spraying us with toxic materials is crazy. If this is so, then why are we consistently seeing anomalously high levels of toxins in rainwater samples as well as in ambient air samples?