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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Future Is Now: Solving the Climate Crisis with Today's Technologies
Bob McDonald · 303 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 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
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.
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 Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn
Louisa Gilder · 443 pages
Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time
Peter Galison · 256 pages
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
James Gleick · 532 pages
A gem of a book, about the life and mind of one of the most influential and iconoclastic characters in 20th century physics. Really a pleasure to read.
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
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
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 Industries of the Future
Alec J. Ross · 304 pages
"Leading innovation expert Alec Ross explains what's next for the world, mapping out the advances and stumbling blocks that will emerge in the next ten years--for businesses, governments, and the global community--and how we can navigate them. While Alec Ross was working as Hillary Clinton's Senior Advisor on Innovation, he traveled to forty-one countries. He visited some of the toughest places in
Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon
Steve Sheinkin · 266 pages
In December of 1938, a chemist in a German laboratory made a shocking discovery: When placed next to radioactive material, a Uranium atom split in two. That simple discovery launched a scientific race that spanned 3 continents. In Great Britain and the United States, Soviet spies worked their way into the scientific community; in Norway, a commando force slipped behind enemy lines to attack German
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
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
In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
Steven Levy · 424 pages
Written with full cooperation from top management, including cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, this is the inside story behind Google, the most successful and most admired technology company of our time, told by one of our best technology writers. Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indi
A Brief History of Time
Stephen Hawking · 209 pages
Stephen Hawking's ‘A Brief History of Time* has become an international publishing phenomenon. Translated into thirty languages, it has sold over ten million copies worldwide and lives on as a science book that continues to captivate and inspire new readers each year. When it was first published in 1988 the ideas discussed in it were at the cutting edge of what was then known about the universe. I
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"--
Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World
Simon Garfield · 232 pages
Explains how English chemist William Perkin accidentally discovered a way to mass-produce color in a factory in 1856, and discusses how his discovery of the color mauve changed the fashion industry.
The Ascent of Man
Jacob Bronowski · 448 pages
Traces the development of science and the discoveries that have made man unique among animal species.
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
Tomorrowland: Our Staggering Journey from Science Fiction to Science Fact
Steven Kotler · 284 pages
Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science
Michael Nielsen · 272 pages
"In Reinventing Discovery, Michael Nielsen argues that we are living at the dawn of the most dramatic change in science in more than 300 years. This change is being driven by powerful new cognitive tools, enabled by the internet, which are greatly accelerating scientific discovery. There are many books about how the internet is changing business or the workplace or government. But this is the firs