“A bright, shiny gift to popular-science collections.”―Booklist Trained as a musician, amateur scientist William Herschel found international fame after discovering the planet Uranus in 1781. Though...

The Extravagant Universe tells the story of a remarkable adventure of scientific discovery. One of the world's leading astronomers, Robert Kirshner, takes readers inside a lively research team on the...

Superconductivity--the flow of electric current without resistance in certain materials as temperatures near absolute zero--is one of the greatest discoveries of 20th century physics, but it can seem...

What is 'nothing'? What remains when you take all the matter away? Can empty space - a void - exist? This Very Short Introduction explores the science and the history of the elusive void: from...

In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, the bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman ("Elegant and scrupulous"—New York Times Book Review) and Krakatoa ("A mesmerizing...

Huxley's classic lecture on evolution, human nature, and the way to true happiness Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) was one of the most prominent evolutionists of the late nineteenth century. A close...

In this book the author, a cognitive scientist explains how the brain evolved to store and use information, allowing our ancestors to control their environment, and why we think and act as we do. He...

This authoritative edition was originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together an extensive collection of Bacon's writing...

Historians of science and Sinologists have long needed a unified narrative to describe the Chinese development of modern science, medicine, and technology since 1600. They welcomed the appearance in...

A unique compilation of logical teasers and lateral-thinking problems designed to stretch your brainpower and strengthen your mind.Riddles, paradoxes, and conundrums have been confusing and...

In a rented convent in Santa Fe, a revolution has been brewing. The activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics such as Murray Gell-Mann and Kenneth Arrow, and...

Teleportation, time machines, force fields, and interstellar space ships—the stuff of science fiction or potentially attainable future technologies? Inspired by the fantastic worlds of Star Trek,...

Subtle is the Lord is widely recognized as the definitive scientific biography of Albert Einstein. The late Abraham Pais was a distinguished physicist turned historian who knew Einstein both...

Exploring the central ideas of traditional metaphysics--such as the simplicity of nature, its comprehensibility, or its systematic integrity--this book analyzes looking at such notions from a...

In the early 1990s, a NASA-led team of scientists changed the way we view the universe. With the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) project, they showed that the microwave radiation that fills the...

In this technology-driven age, it's tempting to believe that science can solve every mystery. After all, science has cured countless diseases and even sent humans into space. But as Jonah Lehrer...

When does history begin? What characterizes it? This brilliant and beautifully written book dissolves the logic of a beginning based on writing, civilization, or historical consciousness and offers a...

Statistical ideas and methods underlie just about every aspect of modern life. From randomized clinical trials in medical research, to statistical models of risk in banking and hedge fund industries,...

Not just a few elite scientists, but Londoners from all walks of life--lawyers, prisoners, midwives, merchants--participated in the scientific community of Elizabethan times Bestselling author...

The surprising, little-known story of the scientific revolution that almost didn't happen: how cleric and scientific genius Nicolaus Copernicus's work revolutionized astronomy and altered our...