Every time we think ahead, we are crafting a story. Every daily plan―and every political vision, social movement, scientific hypothesis, business proposal, and technological breakthrough―starts with “what if?” Linking causes to effects, considering...

WINNER of the 2022 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction!WINNER of the 2022 CLMP Firecracker Award in Creative Nonfiction!“Plastic is powerful and moving, a deep, personal exploration of the modern world.”—Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize recipient for...

In the last decade, there has been a revolution in observational astronomy, which has meant that we are very close to answering three of the four big ‘origin questions’, of how the planets, stars, galaxies, and the universe itself were formed. As...

Explores recent research into dark matter and its impact on the composition of the universe and the motions of galaxies, and describes efforts to determine what dark matter might be

Critical acclaim for How Simulation Is Changing the Frontiers of Scienc"John Casti is one of the great science writers of the 1990s." —San Francisco Examiner"A popular account of the enormous change computers have brought to the everyday practice of...

Nuclear planetary science has come to play an important role in our understanding of the origin and evolution of the planetary bodies in our solar system. A newly established branch of planetary science, its study aids in humankind's exploration of the...

Shortlisted for the 2024 British Academy Book Prize A new history of mathematics focusing on the marginalized voices who propelled the discipline, spanning six continents and thousands of years of untold stories. "A book to make you love math."...

NPR SciFri Book Club PickNext Big Idea Club's "Top 21 Psychology Books of 2022"Behavioral Scientist Notable Books of 2022A renowned grief expert and neuroscientist shares groundbreaking discoveries about what happens in our brain when we grieve,...

Harvard's acclaimed geologist "charts Earth's history in accessible style" (AP) "A sublime chronicle of our planet." -Booklist, STARRED review How well do you know the ground beneath your feet Odds are, where you're standing was once cooking under a...

In praise of the hand: A philosopher considers the crucial role of the hand in human evolution, particularly with respect to language. “McGinn is an ingenious philosopher who thinks like a laser and writes like a dream.”—Steven PinkerThis book is a hymn...

From the TED stage to the page, Juan Enriquez, author of As the Future Catches You and Evolving Ourselves, presents a lively and engaging guide to ethics in a technological age.Most people have a strong sense of right and wrong, and many of us are not...

Provocative, hopeful essays imagine a future that is not reduced to algorithms.When Joi Ito published an essay, "Resisting Reduction: A Manifesto," about human flourishing in an age of machine intelligence, his argument against industrial optimizations...

From the very start, at the age of twenty-one, Herbert York was swept into the century's most daring and dangerous technical achievement, the making of the atomic bomb. In Arms and the Physicist, York takes us backstage to witness key events of our time:...

A fresh look at electricity and its powerful role in life on EarthWhen we think of electricity, we likely imagine the energy humming inside our home appliances or lighting up our electronic devices—or perhaps we envision the lightning-streaked clouds of...

An engrossing look at the history and importance of a centuries-old but still unanswered math problemFor centuries, mathematicians the world over have tried, and failed, to solve the zeta-3 problem. Math genius Leonhard Euler attempted it in the 1700s...

A major biography of the brilliant naturalist, traveler, humanitarian, and codiscoverer of natural selectionAlfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) was perhaps the most famed naturalist of the Victorian age. His expeditions to remote Amazonia and southeast...

A concise and accessible introduction to exoplanets that explains the cutting-edge science behind recent discoveriesFor centuries, people have speculated about the possibility of planets orbiting distant stars, but only since the 1990s has technology...

The ubiquity of computer-generated imagery around us, in movies, advertising or on the Internet is already being taken for granted and what impresses most people is the photorealistic quality of the images. Pictures, as we have often been told, are worth...

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the biggest, and by far the most powerful, machine ever built. A project of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, its audacious purpose is to re-create, in a 16.5-mile-long circular tunnel under the...

A revealing look at how user behavior is powering deep social divisions online—and how we might yet defeat political tribalism on social mediaIn an era of increasing social isolation, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are among the most important tools...