September 8, 1900, began innocently in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas. Even Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau, failed to grasp the true meaning of the strange deep-sea swells and peculiar winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston found itself submerged in a monster hurricane that completely destroyed the town and killed over six thousand people, marking the greatest natural disaster in American history.

Isaac Cline found himself the victim of a devastating personal tragedy. Using Cline's own telegrams, letters, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the science of hurricanes, Erik Larson builds a chronicle of one man's heroic struggle and fatal miscalculation in the face of a storm of unimaginable magnitude.

Meticulously researched and vividly written, Isaac's Storm is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets the great uncontrollable force of nature. This book serves as a powerful reminder of the unpredictable might of hurricanes and the limits of human understanding.

From the bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia: discover Malcolm Gladwell's breakthrough debut and explore the science behind viral trends in business, marketing, and human behavior. The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas. “A wonderful page-turner about a fascinating idea that should affect the way every thinking person looks at the world.” —Michael Lewis

Douglas Hofstadter's book is concerned directly with the nature of "maps" or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence.

Gödel, Escher, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.

A landmark volume in science writing by one of the great minds of our time, Stephen Hawking’s book explores such profound questions as: How did the universe begin—and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unending—or are there boundaries? Are there other dimensions in space? What will happen when it all ends?

Told in language we all can understand, A Brief History of Time plunges into the exotic realms of black holes and quarks, of antimatter and “arrows of time,” of the big bang and a bigger God—where the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected. With exciting images and profound imagination, Stephen Hawking brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of creation.

In the final book of his astonishing career, Carl Sagan brilliantly examines the burning questions of our lives, our world, and the universe around us. These luminous, entertaining essays travel both the vastness of the cosmos and the intimacy of the human mind, posing such fascinating questions as how did the universe originate and how will it end, and how can we meld science and compassion to meet the challenges of the coming century?

Here, too, is a rare, private glimpse of Sagan's thoughts about love, death, and God as he struggled with fatal disease. Ever forward-looking and vibrant with the sparkle of his unquenchable curiosity, Billions & Billions is a testament to one of the great scientific minds of our day.

How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions.

Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.

Thomas S. Kuhn's classic book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a landmark in intellectual history. It reshaped our understanding of the scientific enterprise and human inquiry in general. Kuhn challenged long-standing assumptions about scientific progress, arguing that transformative ideas don’t arise from the gradual process of experimentation and data accumulation, but instead occur outside of "normal science."

His ideas on how scientific revolutions bring order to the anomalies that amass over time in research experiments are still instructive in today’s biotech age. This essential work includes an insightful introduction by Ian Hacking, which clarifies terms popularized by Kuhn, including "paradigm" and "incommensurability," and applies Kuhn’s ideas to the science of today.

This edition is newly designed with an expanded and updated index, providing important background information as well as a contemporary context.

Darwin's Dangerous Idea is a groundbreaking and accessible book by Daniel C. Dennett, a renowned philosopher and cognitive scientist. Dennett focuses his unerringly logical mind on the theory of natural selection, demonstrating how Darwin's great idea transforms and illuminates our traditional view of humanity's place in the universe.

Dennett vividly describes the theory itself and extends Darwin's vision with impeccable arguments to their often surprising conclusions. He challenges the views of some of the most famous scientists of our day, offering a powerful defense of evolutionary thinking.

This work explores every aspect of evolutionary theory, showing why it is fundamental to our existence and affirms our convictions about the meaning of life. Dennett's engaging style makes the complex subject matter accessible and compelling for any thinking person.

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 bright glare of Trinity, there was a span of hardly more than twenty-five years. What began as merely an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the Manhattan Project, and then into the Bomb with frightening rapidity, while scientists known only to their peers — Szilard, Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and von Neumann — stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight.

Richard Rhodes takes us on that journey step by step, minute by minute, and gives us the definitive story of man's most awesome discovery and invention.

A Natural History of the Senses is a vibrant celebration of our ability to smell, taste, hear, touch, and see. Poet, pilot, naturalist, journalist, essayist, and explorer, Diane Ackerman weaves together scientific fact with lore, history, and voluptuous description. The resulting work is a startling and enchanting account of how human beings experience and savor the world.

This book is at once an ingenious exploration of the physical processes underlying our perceptions and an eloquent ode to life—a rare combination of science and poetry. Ackerman's lusciously written grand tour of the realm of the senses includes conversations with an iceberg in Antarctica and a professional nose in New York, along with dissertations on kisses and tattoos, sadistic cuisine, and the music played by the planet Earth.

Join Ackerman in this delightful journey that gives the reader the richest possible feeling of the worlds the senses take in.

Exploring the world of plants and its relation to mankind, as revealed by the latest discoveries of scientists, The Secret Life of Plants includes remarkable information about plants as lie detectors and ecological sentinels. It describes their ability to adapt to human wishes, respond to music, possess curative powers, and communicate with humans.

Authors Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird suggest that the most far-reaching revolution of the 20th century — one that could save or destroy the planet — may come from the bottom of your garden.

According to The Secret Life of Plants, plants and humans inter-relate, with plants exhibiting empathetic and spiritual relationships and showing reactions interpreted as demonstrating physical-force connections with humans. As my students say, ‘Hey, wow!’

Dr. Carl Sagan takes us on a great reading adventure, offering his vivid and startling insights into the brains of humans and beasts, the origin of human intelligence, the function of our most haunting legends, and their amazing links to recent discoveries.

Explore topics such as:

• The pain of human childbirth
• The reason for sleeping and dreaming
• Chimpanzees communicating in sign language
• The definition of death and cloning
• Computers and intelligent life on other planets

In some lost Eden where dragons ruled, the foundations of our intelligence were laid. Carl Sagan takes us on a guided tour of that lost land, making this book a fascinating, entertaining, and masterful read.

Famous the world over for the creative brilliance of his insights into the physical world, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman also possessed an extraordinary talent for explaining difficult concepts to the nonscientist.

QED - the edited version of four lectures on quantum electrodynamics that Feynman gave to the general public at UCLA as part of the Alix G. Mautner Memorial Lecture series - is perhaps the best example of his ability to communicate both the substance and the spirit of science to the layperson.

The focus, as the title suggests, is quantum electrodynamics (QED), the part of the quantum theory of fields that describes the interactions of the quanta of the electromagnetic field - light, X rays, gamma rays - with matter and those of charged particles with one another. By extending the formalism developed by Dirac in 1933, which related quantum and classical descriptions of the motion of particles, Feynman revolutionized the quantum mechanical understanding of the nature of particles and waves.

And, by incorporating his own readily visualizable formulation of quantum mechanics, Feynman created a diagrammatic version of QED that made calculations much simpler and also provided visual insights into the mechanisms of quantum electrodynamic processes.

In this book, using everyday language, spatial concepts, visualizations, and his renowned "Feynman diagrams" instead of advanced mathematics, Feynman successfully provides a definitive introduction to QED for a lay readership without any distortion of the basic science.

Characterized by Feynman's famously original clarity and humor, this popular book on QED has not been equaled since its publication.

Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life.

Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Urras, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change. The Dispossessed is a penetrating examination of society and humanity—and one man's brave undertaking to question the unquestionable and ignite the fires of change.

The Ascent of Man is a celebrated work by Jacob Bronowski that traces the development of science as an expression of the unique gifts that make humans preeminent among animals. This book, a companion to the acclaimed BBC series, offers a fresh perspective on both science and civilization.

Bronowski's exciting and richly illustrated investigation takes readers on a journey through Western intellectual history, visiting places like Easter Island, the Alhambra, Newton's library, and the caves of Altamira. Here, he explores the qualities of thought and imagination that have driven humanity to analyze the physical world and its inherent laws and structures.

From the harvest of the seasons to the music of the spheres, and from the majestic clockwork to the ladder of creation, Bronowski weaves a compelling narrative of human invention. This work is a celebration of our ability to understand and control nature, from the flint tool to geometry, agriculture to genetics, and from alchemy to the theory of relativity.

2001: A Space Odyssey is a classic work of science fiction that remains an influential part of the genre fifty years after its original publication. The story begins with the discovery of a black monolith on the moon, an event that leads humanity to send a manned expedition deep into the solar system in hopes of establishing contact with an alien intelligence. As the crew embarks on their momentous journey, they encounter unforeseen and inexplicable disasters.

Arthur C. Clarke's novel is not only compelling and prophetic but also addresses the perennial question of mankind's place in the universe. With Clarke's extensive knowledge of physics and astronomy, the narrative is both scientifically informed and richly imaginative, offering readers a gripping adventure that extends to the very limits of time and space.

Relativity: The Special and the General Theory is an accessible version of Einstein's masterpiece of theory, written by the genius himself. According to Einstein, this book is intended "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."

When he wrote the book in 1916, Einstein's name was scarcely known outside the physics institutes. Having just completed his masterpiece, The General Theory of Relativity—which provided a brand-new theory of gravity and promised a new perspective on the cosmos as a whole—he set out at once to share his excitement with as wide a public as possible in this popular and accessible book.

This edition of Relativity features a new introduction by bestselling science author Nigel Calder, enhancing the experience for modern readers.

Foundation and Empire is the second novel in Isaac Asimov's classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series. The epic saga continues as the Foundation, led by its founding father, the psychohistorian Hari Seldon, and utilizing superior science and technology, has survived the greed and barbarism of its neighboring warrior-planets.

Now the Foundation faces a new challenge. The Empire, once the mightiest force in the Galaxy, is in its death throes, yet it remains a significant threat. An ambitious general, intent on restoring the Empire's glory, directs the Imperial fleet towards the Foundation, placing the planet of scholars and scientists in peril.

The situation becomes even more dire with the appearance of a mysterious entity known as the Mule, who possesses powers beyond anything previously known to humanity. The Mule's capabilities are beyond human comprehension, and it remains unclear who—or what—the Mule truly is. As the darkness threatens to overwhelm the light, the courage of a few may be all that stands between humanity and annihilation.

With nail-biting suspense and nonstop action, Foundation and Empire explores humanity's perpetual struggle against the forces of chaos and the brave efforts to maintain enlightenment and civilization amidst the vast and tumultuous sea of stars.

Second Foundation is the third book in Isaac Asimov's classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series. The novel narrates the story of a secretly developed Second Foundation, which exists to protect the first from the threats of a deadly mutant and a corrupt First Foundation seeking control of the galactic empire.

The fate of the Foundation rests upon young Arkady Darell, a fourteen-year-old girl burdened with a terrible secret. As the scientists prepare for a final showdown with the Mule, the survivors of the First Foundation embark on a desperate search. They, too, wish to find and destroy the Second Foundation before it has the chance to destroy them.

Unforgettable and thought-provoking, Second Foundation is a tale of adventure and ideas that spans the Galaxy. It is a powerful narrative about humankind's struggle to preserve the fragile light of wisdom against the threat of its own dark barbarism.

The first novel in Isaac Asimov's classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series—For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future—to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years.

To preserve knowledge and save humankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire—both scientists and scholars—and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.

The Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov are among the most influential in the history of science fiction, celebrated for their unique blend of breathtaking action, daring ideas, and extensive worldbuilding. In Foundation, Asimov has written a timely and timeless novel of the best—and worst—that lies in humanity, and the power of even a few courageous souls to shine a light in a universe of darkness.

Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine” (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history's keenest observers of human nature and civilization.

Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New World also speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

“Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English.” —Chicago Tribune

Un mundo feliz es un clásico de la literatura del siglo XX, una sombría metáfora sobre el futuro. La novela describe un mundo en el que finalmente se han cumplido los peores vaticinios: triunfan los dioses del consumo y la comodidad y el orbe se organiza en diez zonas en apariencia seguras y estables. Sin embargo, este mundo ha sacrificado valores humanos esenciales, y sus habitantes son procreados in vitro a imagen y semejanza de una cadena de montaje.

Nas escadarias do Museu Egípcio, em pleno Cairo, Tomás Noronha é abordado por uma desconhecida. Chama-se Ariana Pakravan, é iraniana e traz consigo a cópia de um documento inédito, um velho manuscrito com um estranho título e um poema enigmático.

O inesperado encontro lança Tomás numa empolgante aventura, colocando-o na rota da crise nuclear com o Irão e da mais importante descoberta jamais efectuada por Albert Einstein, um achado que o conduz ao maior de todos os mistérios: a prova científica da existência de Deus.

Uma história de amor, uma intriga de traição, uma perseguição implacável, uma busca espiritual que nos leva à mais espantosa revelação mística de todos os tempos.

Baseada nas últimas e mais avançadas descobertas científicas nos campos da física, da cosmologia e da matemática, A Fórmula de Deus transporta-nos numa surpreendente viagem até às origens do tempo, à essência do universo e ao sentido da vida.

An Immense World opens a door to a dimension previously unfathomable—the world as it is truly perceived by other animals. Ed Yong takes us on a journey into the unique sensory experiences of various creatures, revealing the diversity of life's perceptions beyond our own human capabilities.

We delve into the lives of beetles drawn to fires, songbirds that visualize magnetic fields, and the tactile sensitivity of a crocodile's face. The evolutionary marvel of a giant squid's eyesight and the astronomical observations of spiders are just a glimpse into the intricate tapestry of life's sensory palette.

The book not only recounts tales of significant scientific discoveries but also contemplates the enigmas that continue to puzzle researchers. It's a celebration of the vastness of nature and the intricate ways in which all creatures, great and small, navigate their existence.

But What If We're Wrong? visualizes the contemporary world as it will appear to those who'll perceive it as the distant past. Chuck Klosterman asks questions that are profound in their simplicity: How certain are we about our understanding of gravity? How certain are we about our understanding of time? What will be the defining memory of rock music, five hundred years from today? How seriously should we view the content of our dreams? How seriously should we view the content of television? Are all sports destined for extinction? Is it possible that the greatest artist of our era is currently unknown (or--weirder still--widely known, but entirely disrespected)? Is it possible that we "overrate" democracy? And perhaps most disturbing, is it possible that we've reached the end of knowledge? Kinetically slingshotting through a broad spectrum of objective and subjective problems, But What If We're Wrong? is built on interviews with a variety of creative thinkers--George Saunders, David Byrne, Jonathan Lethem, Kathryn Schulz, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Junot Díaz, Amanda Petrusich, Ryan Adams, Nick Bostrom, Dan Carlin, and Richard Linklater, among others--interwoven with the type of high-wire humor and nontraditional analysis only Klosterman would dare to attempt. It's a seemingly impossible achievement: a book about the things we cannot know, explained as if we did. It's about how we live now, once "now" has become "then."

Determined is an insightful exploration into the intricacies of human behavior and the factors that shape our actions. Robert M. Sapolsky delves into the science of decision-making, examining the complex interplay between biology, environment, and choice.

With a blend of neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, this book challenges our understanding of free will and determinism. Engage with thought-provoking concepts and explore the boundaries of human autonomy in this enlightening read.

The Removable Root Cause of Cancers and other Chronic Diseases delves into The Effort Theory of Evolution, exploring how chronic diseases and extinction are interconnected. This intriguing work by Paul Ola proposes a revolutionary perspective on the origins of chronic diseases, particularly cancer.

The book argues that chronic diseases are the result of evolutionary efforts that have gone awry. Through rigorous analysis and compelling arguments, Ola suggests that understanding these root causes can lead to more effective prevention and treatment strategies.

Explore the groundbreaking ideas that challenge conventional medical wisdom and offer new hope for combating some of the most persistent health challenges of our time.