Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science

Quantum Supremacy

Michio Kaku · 352 pages

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software

Steven Johnson · 288 pages

"Emergence is what happens when an interconnected system of relatively simple elements self-organizes to form more intelligent, more adaptive higher-level behavior. It's a bottom-up model, rather than being engineered by a general or a master planner; emergence begins at the ground level. Systems that at first glance seem vastly different - ant colonies, human brains, cities, immune systems - all

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

Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing

Neal Stephenson · 336 pages

"A collection of essays from #1 New York Times bestselling author Neal Stephenson"--

Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World

Christopher Steiner · 252 pages

The interaction of man and machine can make our lives easier. But what will the world look like when algorithms control our hospitals, our roads, our culture, and our national security? It used to be that to diagnose an illness, interpret legal documents, analyze foreign policy, or write a newspaper article you needed a human being with specific skills--and maybe an advanced degree or two. These d

The Age of Spiritual Machines

Ray Kurzweil

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet

Katie Hafner, Matthew Lyon · 304 pages

Twenty five years ago, it didn't exist. Today, twenty million people worldwide are surfing the Net. Where Wizards Stay Up Late is the exciting story of the pioneers responsible for creating the most talked about, most influential, and most far-reaching communications breakthrough since the invention of the telephone. In the 1960's, when computers where regarded as mere giant calculators, J.C.R.

The Future Is Now: Solving the Climate Crisis with Today's Technologies

Bob McDonald · 303 pages

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

Walter Isaacson · 560 pages

Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens. What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into di

Tubes: Behind the Scenes at the Internet

Andrew Blum · 304 pages

A travel book exploring the physical places and connections of the infrastructure of the Internet. Along the way, he explores data warehouses, meets some of the historical figures in the creation of the Internet and the people who keep everything humming along so we can get on with our virtual lives.

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

Randall Munroe · 312 pages

Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a large and passionate following. Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions. What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan · 457 pages

A prescient warning of a future we now inhabit, where fake news stories and Internet conspiracy theories play to a disaffected American populace “A glorious book . . . A spirited defense of science . . . From the first page to the last, this book is a manifesto for clear thought.”—Los Angeles Times How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway · 355 pages

"Merchants of Doubt " tells the story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades that link smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole.

A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness

Michael Pollan · 320 pages

The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date

Samuel Arbesman · 248 pages

"A new approach to uderstanding the ever-changing information that bombards us. Arbesman is an expert in scientometrics, literally the science of science--how we know what we know. It turns out that knowledge in most fields evolves in systematic and predictable ways, and understanding that evolution can enormously powerful"--

Periodic Tales: The Curious Lives of the Elements

Hugh Aldersey-Williams · 430 pages

"In the spirit of A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING, an energetic and wide-ranging book of discovery and discoverers, of exploitation and celebration, and of superstition and science, all in search of the ways the chemical elements are woven into our culture, history, and language"--

A Little History of Science

William F. Bynum · 272 pages

Science is wonderful. It tells us about the infinite reaches of space, the tiniest living organism, the human body and the history of our planet. Science has always been about making sense of the world and harnessing its power. From ancient Greek philosophers through Einstein and Watson and Crick to the computer-assisted scientists of today, men and women have wondered, examined, experimented, cal

A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention

Matt Richtel · 409 pages

From Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Matt Richtel, a brilliant, narrative-driven exploration of technology's vast influence on the human mind and society, dramatically-told through the lens of a tragic "texting-while-driving" car crash that claimed the lives of two rocket scientists in 2006. In this ambitious, compelling, and beautifully written book, Matt Richtel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning repor

Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools

Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, Jeffrey D. Ullman · 810 pages

This book covers topics related to the functionality and design of compilers, including: - Compiler structure - Lexical analysis (including regular expressions and finite automata) - Syntax analysis (including context-free grammars, LL parsers, bottom-up parsers, and LR parsers) - Syntax-directed translation - Type checking (including type conversions and polymorphism) -

The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn

Louisa Gilder · 443 pages

To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design

Henry Petroski · 247 pages

How did a simple design error cause one of the great disasters of the 1980s--the collapse of the walkways at the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel? What made the graceful and innovating Tacoma Narrows Bridge twist apart in a mild wind in 1940? How did an oversize waterlily inspire the magnificent Crystal Palace, the crowning achievement of Victorian architecture and engineering? These are some of th

Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World

Mark Miodownik · 272 pages

"Why is glass see-through? What makes elastic stretchy? Why does a paperclip bend? Why does any material look and behave the way it does?With clarity and humor, world-leading materials scientist Mark Miodownik answers all the questions you've ever had about your pens, spoons, and razor blades, while also introducing a whole world full of materials you've never even heard of: the diamond five times

The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor

John McPhee · 233 pages

Theodore Taylor was one of the most brilliant engineers of the nuclear age, but in his later years he became concerned with the possibility of an individual being able to construct a weapon of mass destruction on their own. McPhee tours American nuclear institutions with Taylor and shows us how close we are to terrorist attacks employing homemade nuclear weaponry.

The Ascent of Man

Jacob Bronowski · 448 pages

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