Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World

On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks

Simon Garfield · 464 pages

Examines the pivotal relationship between mapping and civilization, demonstrating the unique ways that maps relate and realign history, and shares engaging cartography stories and map lore.

Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers

Simon Winchester · 492 pages

The New York Times best-selling author of The Men Who United the States traces the geological history of the Pacific Ocean to assess its relationship with humans and indelible role in the modern world.

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

Yuval Noah Harari · 544 pages

From the author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world. For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing head

Color: A Natural History of the Palette

Victoria Finlay · 448 pages

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

The Invention of Air

Steven Johnson · 254 pages

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 compelling narrative, a story of genius and violence and friendship in the midst of sweeping historical change th

The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance

Fritjof Capra · 329 pages

Leonardo da Vinci's pioneering scientific work was virtually unknown during his lifetime. Now acclaimed scientist and bestselling author Fritjof Capra reveals that Leonardo was in many ways the unacknowledged "father of modern science." Drawing on an examination of over 6,000 pages of Leonardo's surviving notebooks, Capra explains that Leonardo approached scientific knowledge with the eyes of an a

The Space Race

Deborah Cadbury

Prisoner's Dilemma

William Poundstone · 290 pages

Watching players bluff in a poker game inspired John von Neumann--father of the modern computer and one of the sharpest minds of the century--to construct game theory, a mathematical study of conflict and deception. Game theory was embraced at the RAND Corporation, the think tank charged with formulating military strategy for the atomic age, and in 1950 two RAND scientists discovered the "prisoner

The Day the Universe Changed: How Galileo's Telescope Changed the Truth

James Burke · 353 pages

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

Dava Sobel · 192 pages

The dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of one man's forty-year obsession to find a solution to the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day--"the longitude problem." Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day-and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailo

The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450

David C. Lindberg · 455 pages

The Ascent of Man

Jacob Bronowski · 448 pages

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

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Michael Pollan · 450 pages

What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't—which mushrooms should be avoided, for example, and which berries we can enjoy. Today, as

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

Edward Dolnick · 398 pages

Finding Zero: A Mathematician's Odyssey to Uncover the Origins of Numbers

Amir D. Aczel · 256 pages

"The invention of numerals is perhaps the greatest abstraction the human mind has ever created. Virtually everything in our lives is digital, numerical, or quantified. The story of how and where we got these numerals, which we so depend on, has for thousands of years been shrouded in mystery. Finding Zero is an adventure filled saga of Amir Aczel's lifelong obsession: to find the original sources

109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos

Jennet Conant · 448 pages

This book captures the drama of 27 perilous months at Los Alamos, a secret city cut off from the rest of society, ringed by barbed wire, where Oppenheimer and his young recruits lived as virtual prisoners of the U.S. government--freshly minted secretaries and worldly scientists contending with living conditions straight out of pioneer days, racing to build the first atomic bomb before Germany coul

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

The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World

Jenny Uglow · 608 pages

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Richard Rhodes · 886 pages

Here for the first time, in rich, human, political, and scientific detail, is the complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan. Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly -- or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the brig

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"--

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Jared Diamond · 592 pages

"In his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?" "As in Guns, G

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot · 381 pages

Coming of Age in the Milky Way

Timothy Ferris · 495 pages

From the second-century celestial models of Ptolemy to modern-day research institutes and quantum theory, this classic book offers a breathtaking tour of astronomy and the brilliant, eccentric personalities who have shaped it. From the first time mankind had an inkling of the vast space that surrounds us, those who study the universe have had to struggle against political and religious preconcepti