Measuring the World is a brilliant and gently comic novel by young Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann that conjures the lives of two geniuses of the Enlightenment.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, two young Germans set out to measure the world. One of them, the Prussian aristocrat Alexander von Humboldt, negotiates savanna and jungle, travels down the Orinoco, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores every hole in the ground. The other, the barely socialized mathematician and astronomer Carl Friedrich Gauss, does not even need to leave his home in Göttingen to prove that space is curved. He can run prime numbers in his head and cannot imagine a life without women, yet he jumps out of bed on his wedding night to jot down a mathematical formula.

Von Humboldt is known to history as the Second Columbus. Gauss is recognized as the greatest mathematical brain since Newton. Terrifyingly famous and more than eccentric in their old age, the two meet in Berlin in 1828. Gauss has hardly climbed out of his carriage before both men are embroiled in the political turmoil sweeping through Germany after Napoleon’s fall.

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 preconceptions. They have included some of the most charismatic, courageous, and idiosyncratic thinkers of all time.

In Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris uses his unique blend of rigorous research and captivating narrative skill to draw us into the lives and minds of these extraordinary figures, creating a landmark work of scientific history.

Tesla: Man Out of Time is a captivating biography by Margaret Cheney that delves into the brilliant and prescient mind of one of the twentieth century's greatest scientists and inventors, Nikola Tesla. Described as a madman by his enemies, a genius by others, and an enigma by nearly everyone, Tesla was a trailblazing inventor who created astonishing, sometimes world-transforming devices without theoretical precedent.

Tesla not only discovered the rotating magnetic field—the basis of most alternating-current machinery—but also introduced us to the fundamentals of robotics, computers, and missile science. Almost supernaturally gifted, flamboyant, and neurotic, Tesla was troubled by an array of compulsions and phobias yet fond of extravagant and visionary experimentations.

Admired by men as diverse as Mark Twain and George Westinghouse, and adored by scores of society beauties, Tesla was a popular man-about-town. From Tesla's childhood in Yugoslavia to his death in New York in the 1940s, Cheney paints a compelling human portrait and chronicles a lifetime of discoveries that radically altered—and continue to alter—the world in which we live.

This book provides an in-depth look at the seminal accomplishments of a scientific wizard and offers a thoughtful examination of the obsessions and eccentricities of the man behind the science.