Science & Engineering

From finding a spouse to finding a parking spot, from organizing one's inbox to understanding the workings of human memory, Algorithms to Live By transforms the wisdom of computer science into strategies for human living....

Data is at the center of many challenges in system design today. Difficult issues need to be figured out, such as scalability, consistency, reliability, efficiency, and maintainability. In addition, we have an overwhelming variety of tools, including relational databases, NoSQL datastores...

Cosmos is one of the bestselling science books of all time. In clear-eyed prose, Sagan reveals a jewel-like blue world inhabited by a life form that is just beginning to discover its own identity and to venture into the vast ocean of space....

Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem-solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. This essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world....

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs and Steel examines the rise of civilization and the issues its development has raised throughout history. Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped...

Why is addiction “perfectly logical” to an addict? The answer is found in a single chemical in your brain: dopamine. Dopamine ensured the survival of early man. Thousands of years later, it is the source of our most basic behaviors and cultural ideas - and progress itself....

Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it....

Design doesn't have to complicated, which is why this guide to human-centered design shows that usability is just as important as aesthetics. Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner to turn on, or whether to push, pull, or slide a door...

How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There's no better guide through these questions than astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson....

Newly adapted for audiobook listeners. Today, software engineers need to know not only how to program effectively but also how to develop proper engineering practices to make their codebase sustainable and healthy. This book emphasizes this difference between programming and software engineering...

The author of the bestselling Boldand The Rise of Superman explores altered states of consciousness and how they can ignite passion, fuel creativity, and accelerate problem solving, in this groundbreaking book in the vein of Daniel Pink s Drive and Charles Duhigg s Smarter Faster Better. Why...

What’s the single most important thing you can do during pregnancy? What does watching TV do to a child’s brain? What’s the best way to handle temper tantrums? Scientists know....

Learn How Your Thoughts Hold the Power to Transform Your Life from the Cells Up It has been more than 15 years since the publication of The Biology of Belief, Dr. Bruce H. Lipton’s seminal book that changed the way we think about our lives, our health, and our planet. During that time...

The first definitive natural history of the Indian subcontinent. Did you know that the exquisite caves of Ellora were hewn from rock formed in the greatest lava floods the world has known—eruptions so enormous that they may well have obliterated dinosaurs? Or that Bengaluru owes its unique...

The author of the best seller The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch, explores the four most fundamental strands of human knowledge: quantum physics, and the theories of knowledge, computation, and evolution - and their unexpected connections....

By applying universal rules of software architecture, you can dramatically improve developer productivity throughout the life of any software system. Now, building upon the success of his best-selling books Clean Code and The Clean Coder, legendary software craftsman Robert C. Martin (“Uncle...

Once considered tedious, the field of statistics is rapidly evolving into a discipline Hal Varian, chief economist at Google, has actually called "sexy"....

Game theory means rigorous strategic thinking. It’s the art of anticipating your opponent’s next moves, knowing full well that your rival is trying to do the same thing to you....

For years, companies have rewarded their most effective engineers with management positions. But treating management as the default path for an engineer with leadership ability doesn't serve the industry well—or the engineer. The staff engineer's path allows engineers to contribute at a high...

Overcome anxiety and rewire your brain with tested advice from psychologist Catherine Pittman and author Elizabeth Karle.

From a renowned historian comes a ground-breaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution, a number one international best seller that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human”....

In AI Superpowers, Kai-fu Lee argues powerfully that because of these unprecedented developments in AI, dramatic changes will be happening much sooner than many of us expected....

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a magnificent treasury of the best short works of Richard P. Feynman....

The Blind Watchmaker is as prescient and timely a book as ever....

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? Find out....

At the southernmost tip of South Africa, where fresh and salt water collide, a tiny seahorse appears to levitate. Seahorses are the ocean’s slowest swimmers, but they have one of the world’s fastest muscle contractions, using it to suction up their prey. In this episode, we meander through eelgrass with a male Knysna seahorse as he twines tails with his partner, changes color to match the sand, and even gives birth to a brood of tiny seahorses.

Red pandas have thick bushy ringed tails like raccoons, but they aren’t related to panda bears or raccoons—in fact, they have no close relatives anywhere on Earth. In this episode, we wander the Himalayas with a red panda and her cubs as they munch on bamboo, practice walking in the treetops, and settle in to nap together as the first snowfall of the year covers their forest home.

California’s coast redwoods are Earth's tallest living beings, some reaching more than 350 feet high. They can also live for more than 2,000 years, outlasting entire civilizations. In this episode, we spend an evening with an ancient tree. Below ground, its roots tap into a forest-wide network; above ground, its branches harbor life in its many forms.

In the misty Puerto Rican El Yunque rainforest, coquí frogs no larger than your thumb fill the air with their distinctive two-note song: “co-quí, co-quí.” They alternate routines—one night singing to attract potential mates, the next hunting to fuel up for tomorrow’s performance. In this episode, we follow a singer and a hunter amid the vibrant nighttime chorus.

Concrete Botany is a gritty, kick-in-the-guts look at the ecological disturbance humans have caused and the resilience of the plants living amongst it. Delivered in his raw and unapologetic yet botanically accurate tone, Joey Santore—the unforgettable host of Crime Pays but Botany...

How did the world as we know it—from the soil beneath our feet to the air we breathe and the life that surrounds us—come to be? Geologists have proposed one set of answers while biologists have proposed another. Earth and Life is the first book to reveal why we need to listen to both voices—the physical and the biological—to understand how we and our planet became possible.

Join acclaimed travel writer and incurably curious hiker Tom Chesshyre in this celebration of the Peak District, Britain’s first National Park, on its 75th anniversary 'Funny, fair and honest, and effortlessly readable' Matthew Parris In the heart of England lies a fascinating landscape of...

Throughout the globe, STEM careers exist. However, in some countries, particular STEM careers have been male-dominated while in other countries no gender biases exist as it relates to STEM careers. One common trend which occurs throughout the world is that women who are working in these STEM...

When is the last time you ran your hands through the tumult of wild grass flowers? Or stopped to watch a firefly? In a warming, hostile world, how do we find purpose? Perhaps we can start with noticing the bird outside one's window? In her new book, Wild Capital, acclaimed nature writer Neha...

Shipwrecks selects the sinkings with the greatest loss of life, the most famous vessels, the richest treasure troves, the most archaeologically significant wreck sites and the most daring rescues. It tells the tales of the fate of the victims, the disastrous mistakes made by ships' captains and navigators, the impossible conditions faced at sea, the courage of those who survived and the audacious attempts to raise what now lies at the bottom of the sea.

What is Now? This immediate moment, what we're experiencing right now . . . it bathes us like air, or gravity. Yet when we try to grasp this quality, to scrutinize it or bring it into focus, it vanishes, slipping through our fingers like a dream. And worse, according to the most trusted models of physics, Now doesn't even exist. If all this is so, then what, exactly, are we experiencing? How do we carve out time, sensation, self, and meaning from a blank, Now-less canvas?

Ancient and carbon-rich, old-growth forests play an irreplaceable role in the environment. Their complex ecosystems clean the air, purify the water, cool the planet, and teem with life. In a time of climate catastrophe, old-growth and other natural forests face existential threats caused by...

Consciousness is the most fascinating but tantalizingly difficult topic in biology. Although many people now believe that mammals, birds, and possibly all vertebrates are conscious, there are also claims that many other animals such as crabs and insects may be conscious too. Such claims, if true...

Perhaps the closest a human being comes to visiting another planet is to descend into the sea. In Soundings, Kennedy Warne connects his lifelong exploration of the underwater world with a global story of humanity’s relationship with the sea. Drawing on over 20 years of work for National Geographic, he shares experiences that range from diving with harp seals under the sea ice of the Gulf of St Lawrence to following the legendary ‘sardine run’ along South Africa’s Wild Coast; from watching turret-building ghost crabs in Arabia to witnessing the impact of dynamite fishing in the Philippines…

Agentic AI is the next big leap in artificial intelligence. Agentic systems don't just respond to commands. They set goals, make decisions, and take initiative without direct human interaction. Sound like a lot to wrap your head around? Fortunately Agentic AI For Dummies is here to help you gain...

Brought to you by Penguin. The immune system is our most valuable resource, our first and most important line of defence, protecting us around the clock. It also determines how quickly we age, regulates our body weight and metabolism, and impacts our brain health. Yet modern life, with toxins...

Farley Mowat's youth was charmed and hilarious, and unbelievably free in its access to unspoiled nature through bird-banding expeditions and overnight outings in the dead of winter. The author writes of sleeping in haystacks for survival, and other adventures, with equal shares of Booth...

Telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and telekinesis: these attributes of the paranormal mind are widely dismissed as nonsense, but what can an exploration of such pseudoscientific phenomena tell us about accepted scientific and cultural thought? In Parascientific Revolutions, Derek Lee traces...

The Earth, that trusty old spinning marble we call home, isn't a sphere at all. No, according to some, it is flat as a pancake (or a pizza, if we're being generous). Yet for thousands of people, this is reality – or at least their version of it. The Flat Earth phenomenon isn't new. It has ancient roots, woven into the cosmologies of civilizations long past. But what's fascinating is how, in a time when we can send rovers to Mars, carry pocket supercomputers, and live-stream cat videos from space stations, this belief has not only persisted but thrived.

Deborah Lawrie didn't just break the glass ceiling - she flew right through it. They told her women couldn't fly commercial airliners. They told her women weren't welcome in the cockpit. They told her women couldn't work and have a family. She told them she'd see them in court. In an era when...

A kaleidoscopic journey through the secret history of hues—and the story of the obsessive genius behind the definitions of colors we use today, from the beloved author of Word by Word begonia (n.): 3 -s : a deep pink that is bluer, lighter, and stronger than average coral (see coral 3b), bluer...

For millennia, human societies have viewed the ocean as a dumping ground for waste products of all kinds. The sources of marine pollution are extensive, including oil spills, sewage, fertilizers, pesticides, industrial wastes, heavy metals, ocean acidification, plastics, and even invasive...

From the award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of Cod and Salt, To Catch a Fish is an entertaining and beautifully written illustrated collection of essays that explore a lifetime fascination with fishing. For as long as there have been humans, there have been humans trying to catch...

Surviving the unsurvivable. Healing from the unhealable. This is an inspiring memoir of physical and mental recovery, from someone who lived through the Whakaari White Island volcanic eruption. ""I heard someone say, 'Wow!' And someone else exclaimed, 'Look at that!' I had my back to the crater...

The concept of canine consent is far more than simply a buzzword in modern dog training practices. In its current form, consent is a distinctly human concept, designed by humans and for humans. Looking beyond species boundaries can help us not only consider concepts of canine consent and...