Cybernetics: or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future: The Ingenious Ideas That Drive Today's Computers

John MacCormick · 219 pages

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

Charles Petzold · 393 pages

What do flashlights, the British invasion, black cats, and seesaws have to do with computers? In CODE, they show us the ingenious ways we manipulate language and invent new means of communicating with each other. And through CODE, we see how this ingenuity and our very human compulsion to communicate have driven the technological innovations of the past two centuries. Using everyday objects an

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

James Gleick · 526 pages

From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long misunderstood "talking drums" of Africa, James Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed the very nature of human consciousness. He also provides portraits of the key figures contributing to the inexorable development of our modern understanding of information, including Charles Babbage, Ada Byron, Samuel Morse, Alan Tur

Linked: The New Science of Networks

Albert-Laszlo Barabasi · 294 pages

A cocktail party. A terrorist cell. Ancient bacteria. An international conglomerate. All are networks, and all are a part of a surprising scientific revolution. Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, the nations foremost expert in the new science of networks, takes us on an intellectual adventure to prove that social networks, corporations, and living organisms are more similar than previoulsy thought. Grasping

Einstein: His Life and Universe

Walter Isaacson · 704 pages

The first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. Biographer Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk--a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn't get a teaching job or a doctorate--became the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom an

The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography

Simon Singh · 402 pages

In his first book since the bestselling *Fermat's Enigma*, Simon Singh offers the first sweeping history of encryption, tracing its evolution and revealing the dramatic effects codes have had on wars, nations, and individual lives. From Mary, Queen of Scots, trapped by her own code, to the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the Allies win World War II, to the incredible (and incredibly simple) logisit

Quantum Computing Since Democritus

Scott Aaronson · 369 pages

Written by noted quantum computing theorist Scott Aaronson, this book takes readers on a tour through some of the deepest ideas of maths, computer science and physics. Full of insights, arguments and philosophical perspectives, the book covers an amazing array of topics. Beginning in antiquity with Democritus, it progresses through logic and set theory, computability and complexity theory, quantum

The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World

Edward Dolnick · 398 pages

An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise

John Robinson Pierce · 305 pages

The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas that Make Computers Work

W. Daniel Hillis · 164 pages

Daniel Hillis offers an easy-to-follow explanation of how data is processed that makes the operation of a computer seem as straightforward as those of a bicycle. Hillis proceeds from an outline of basic logic to clear descriptions of programming languages, algorithms and memory. He then takes readers in simple steps up to the most exciting developments in computing today - quantum computing, paral

The Grand Design

Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow · 200 pages

When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? What is the nature of reality? Is the apparent grand design of our universe evidence for a benevolent creator who set things in motion? Or does science offer another explanation? In The Grand Design, the most recent scientific thinking about the mysteries of the universe is presented, in language marked by both brilliance and simplicity. The G

A New Kind of Science

Stephen Wolfram · 1,197 pages

Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel

Michio Kaku · 340 pages

17 Equations that Changed the World

Ian Stewart · 342 pages

A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age

Daniel J. Levitin · 304 pages

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

Edward R. Tufte · 197 pages

The classic book on statistical graphics, charts, tables. Theory and practice in the design of data graphics, 250 illustrations of the best (and a few of the worst) statistical graphics, with detailed analysis of how to display data for precise, effective, quick analysis. Design of the high-resolution displays, small multiples. Editing and improving graphics. The data-ink ratio. Time-series, relat

Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible

Arthur C. Clarke · 256 pages

The Age of Spiritual Machines

Ray Kurzweil

Relativity: The Special and the General Theory

Albert Einstein · 158 pages

The present book is intended, as far as possible, to give an exact insight into the theory of Relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics. The work presumes a standard of education corresponding to that of a university matriculation examina

Complexity: A Guided Tour

Melanie Mitchell · 288 pages

What enables individually simple insects like ants to act with such precision and purpose as a group? How do trillions of individual neurons produce something as extraordinarily complex as consciousness? What is it that guides self-organizing structures like the immune system, the World Wide Web, the global economy, and the human genome? These are just a few of the fascinating and elusive question

The Ascent of Man

Jacob Bronowski · 448 pages

Traces the development of science and the discoveries that have made man unique among animal species.

Tomorrowland: Our Staggering Journey from Science Fiction to Science Fact

Steven Kotler · 284 pages

The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch

Lewis Dartnell · 340 pages

"How would you go about rebuilding a technological society from scratch? If our technological society collapsed tomorrow, perhaps from a viral pandemic or catastrophic asteroid impact, what would be the one book you would want to press into the hands of the postapocalyptic survivors? What crucial knowledge would they need to survive in the immediate aftermath and to rebuild civilization as quickly

How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World

Steven Johnson · 293 pages

"From the New York Times-bestselling author of Where Good Ideas Come From and Everything Bad Is Good for You, a new look at the power and legacy of great ideas. In this illustrated volume, Steven Johnson explores the history of innovation over centuries, tracing facets of modern life (refrigeration, clocks, and eyeglass lenses, to name a few) from their creation by hobbyists, amateurs, and entrepr