"Excellent."--Steven Poole, The Wall Street Journal * "Terrific."--Liz Else, New Scientist (Best Popular Science Books of 2025) * "A brilliant overview of the state of modern cosmology."--Alex O'Connor, alexoconnor.com * "This will expand readers' minds...

An accessible yet erudite deep dive into how platforms are remaking experiences of death“A compelling collection of case studies about how technology breaks down when faced with the messiness of mortality.”—Gabriel Nicholas, Washington PostSince the...

“An elegant, wide-ranging history” (The New York Review of Books) of the centuries-long quest to discover the critical role of germs in disease thatreveals as much about human reasoning—and the pitfalls of ego—as it does about microbes.“Levenson takes...

With over 900 entries, ranging from brief definitions to substantial essays on major topics, The Oxford Companion to the Mind takes the reader on a dazzling tour of this endlessly fascinating subject, spanning many disciplines within the broad compass of...

A vivid portrait of the life and work of Carl LinnaeusCarl Linnaeus (1707–1778), known as the father of modern biological taxonomy, formalized and popularized the system of binomial nomenclature used to classify plants and animals. Linnaeus himself...

When Neil Armstrong first set foot in the lunar dust, the Earth held its breath. That one small step forever changed our view of what was possible, sparking a dramatic expansion of humankind's cosmic awareness. When we gain a new perspective, a...

The remarkable story of the man who created and then convinced all the nations of the world to adopt a unified standard for telling time.Standard Time was one of the crowning achievements of Victorian progressiveness and one of the few Victorian...

A novel theory of how technological revolutions affect the rise and fall of great powersWhen scholars and policymakers consider how technological advances affect the rise and fall of great powers, they draw on theories that center the moment of...

Origin Stories For Today's Viruses Often Start With Animals; Hiv In Humans Begins With A Chimpanzee, Or Our Covid-19 Pandemic With Possible Transmission From Bats. But It Often Works The Other Way Around-humans Have Caused Diseases In Other Animals...

In recent years, ideas of post- and transhumanism have been popularized by novels, TV series, and Hollywood movies. According to this radical perspective, humankind and all biological life have become obsolete. Traditional forms of life are inefficient...

London, 1924. Limited edition, one of 1000 copies. 4to. Cloth, no dj as issued ; top edge gilt. Inset at front cover with replica decal, gilt, of the Royal Aeronautic Society's Gold Medal, the "first award of which was made to Wilbur and Orville Wright...

How Silicon Valley’s heartless, baseless, and foolish obsessions—with escaping death, emergent AI tyrants, and limitless growth—pervert public discourse and distract us from real social problemsTech billionaires have decided that they should determine...

A treasure-trove of illuminating and entertaining quotations from beloved physicist Richard P. Feynman"Some people say, ‘How can you live without knowing?' I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing. That is easy. How you get to know is...

Would you read this book if a computer wrote it? Would you even know? And why would it matter? Today's eerily impressive artificial intelligence writing tools present us with a crucial challenge: As writers, do we unthinkingly adopt AI's time-saving...

A “fun” and “unexpected” (The Economist) global tour of the world’s greatest games and the mathematics that underlies themWhere should you move first in Connect 4? What is the best property in Monopoly? And how can pi help you win rock paper...

With so many competing priorities pulling us in different directions every day--family, friends, work, our health--it can feel difficult to make decisions that are aligned with what we care about most. Especially in the moment, we often default to the...