Science & Engineering

In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed....

A Radio 4 Book Club Selection.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson's fascinating and humorous quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization....

Of course, nobody needs telling that there isn't enough time. We're obsessed by our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling....

To this day A Brief History of Time remains a staple of the scientific canon, and its succinct and clear language continues to introduce millions to the universe and its wonders....

Did ancient India witness the Great Flood? Why did the Buddha give his first sermon at Sarnath? How did the Europeans map India? Combining scholarship with sparkling wit, Sanjeev Sanyal sets out to explore how India's history was shaped by its geography....

Until very recently, science had no answer to the question of why we sleep, or what good it served, or why its absence is so damaging to our health....

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....

We have never had so much information at our fingertips, and yet most of us simply don't understand how our world really works. Professor Vaclav Smil is not a pessimist or an optimist, he is a scientist, and this book is a much-needed reality check on a wide range of topics....

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....

Few places have been as influential as the Indian subcontinent in shaping the course of life on Earth. Yet its evolution has remained largely unchronicled. Indica: A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent fills this gap....

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....

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....

Why do human beings behave as they do? We are capable of savage acts of violence but also spectacular feats of kindness: is one side of our nature destined to win out over the other? Find out...

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. The Design of Everyday Things shows that good, usable design is possible....

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

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs and Steel examines the rise of civilization and the issues its development has raised throughout history....

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson’s quest to find out everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization....

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything....

How do today's most successful tech companies - Amazon, Google, Facebook - design, develop, and deploy the products that have earned the love of literally billions of people around the world? Find out....

From the leading theorist of the Metaverse comes the definitive account of the next internet: what the Metaverse is, what it will take to build it, and what it means for all of us....

Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories, The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological makeup.... 

Storytelling with Data teaches you the fundamentals of data visualization and how to communicate effectively with data....

A direct challenge to the status quo "spray and pray" style of innovation, Monetizing Innovation presents a practical approach that can be adopted by any organization, in any industry....

Urgent and essential, Numbers Don't Lie inspires listeners to interrogate what they take to be true in these significant times....

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....

Das Erdmittelalter vor 65 Millionen Jahren: Noch herrscht der König der Echsen, der Tyrannosaurus Rex, einer der furchterregendsten Fleischfresser aller Zeiten, über die Tiere der Urzeit. Doch seine Zeit ist bald gekommen. Eine Katastrophe löscht die Ära der Dinosaurier aus. Und kaum ist der letzte Ruf des T. Rex verstummt, da treten die Säugetiere das Erbe der Saurier an. Hier beginnt auch die akustische Reise in die Urzeit.

Peter Wohlleben est forestier depuis vingt ans. Grâce à ses livres, traduits dans le monde entier, il a fait découvrir la vie secrète des arbres et ses enseignements à des millions de lecteurs. Dans sa forêt en Allemagne, qui est comme un laboratoire à ciel ouvert, il est le témoin des bienfaits de l'écosystème forestier, de son action sur le cycle de l'eau, les sols et la qualité de l'air que nous respirons, surtout quand le climat change.

L'11 marzo 2011, un potentissimo tsunami si abbatté sulle coste del Giappone, provocando la morte di quasi sedicimila persone. A Fukushima, in quello che divenne il più devastante incidente industriale di tutti i tempi, centinaia di uomini e donne rimasero da solia fronteggiare il surriscaldamento incontrollato dei reattori, con il destino dell'intero Paese appeso a un filo. In pochi sanno cosa è successo davvero in quei giorni, e ancora meno sanno perché è successo. Come è stato possibile che uno stato così all'avanguardia nella tecnologia si facesse trovare impreparato?

What happens in our brains to make us feel fear, love, hate, anger, joy? Do we control our emotions, or do they control us? Do animals have emotions? How can traumatic experiences in early childhood influence adult behavior, even though we have no conscious memory of them? In The Emotional Brain, Joseph LeDoux investigates the origins of human emotions and explains that many exist as part of complex neural systems that evolved to enable us to survive.

Es un hecho que en los últimos diez años, gracias a que los estudiosos del comportamiento animal han cambiado su foco de interés, de los primates, aves y cetáceos, al estudio de la inteligencia canina, hemos aprendido más sobre el comportamiento canino que en todo el siglo veinte. El tema de este libro es muy novedoso, la cognición canina. Es la primera vez que unos científicos condensan en un texto divulgativo todo lo descubierto en el tema del intelecto canino. 

Daniel P. Todes provides concise introduction to the life and science of the great Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov. Beyond a basic biography, Todes devotes particular attention to Pavlov's Nobel Prize-winning research on digestion and his iconic studies of conditional reflexes and higher nervous activity, as well as his experiments with dogs. Todes shows that Pavlov was not a behaviorist, did not use a bell, and was uninterested in training dogs. The Russian scientist sought to explain not merely external behaviors, but the emotional and intellectual life of animals and humans. 

Drawing on humorous examples, true stories, and playful analogies, Connection Mode shows how our nervous system—including a surprisingly common missed opportunity to finish our lower brain development—often interferes with our lives in ways we don’t even realize. Connection Mode distills decades of compelling information from the Brain Highways program, which has guided 20,000 kids and adults to improve their lives by changing their brain and nervous system. The book offers a simple, time-tested trifecta approach for restoring our nervous system’s flexibility.

In this book, Jeff Lowenfels digs into the new science behind how endophytic bacteria supply nutrients to a large array of plants and explains, in accessible language, how this information applies to home gardeners, small-scale farmers, and cannabis growers. Based on cutting-edge science that will help gardeners increase plant health and productivity, Teaming with Bacteria is a must-have addition to every organic gardener’s library.

In the absence of motorized boats and gondolas, Venice’s waters have returned to a sparkling blue color. Deer have been spotted roaming cities in Italy, and mountain goats recently took over a small seaside town in Wales. Taking advantage of the decreased boat traffic, whales have returned to roaming Vancouver’s harbours. The absence of “regular” human activities has dramatically affected our environment. In this book, Bob McDonald turns his focus to global energy sources, and shows how the global shutdowns may have been exactly what we needed.

Un libro imprescindible en la línea de Sapiens, de Yuval Noah Harari. Un ensayo que mezcla las humanidades, con la filosofía moral y la ciencia. Una investigación que aporta una visión amplia y humana de lo que significa ser humano. Los humanos son los animales más curiosos, emocionales, imaginativos, agresivos y desconcertantes del planeta. Pero, ¿nos conocemos realmente bien a nosotros mismos?

Your heart is a miracle in motion, a marvel of construction unsurpassed by any human-made creation. It beats 100,000 times every day—if you were to live to 100, that would be more than 3 billion beats across your lifespan. Despite decades of effort in labs all over the world, we have not yet been able to replicate the heart’s perfect engineering. But, as Sian Harding shows us in The Exquisite Machine, new scientific developments are opening up the mysteries of the heart. And this explosion of new science has crucial, real-world consequences for health and well-being. 

Burning fossil fuels will cause catastrophic global warming: this is what top American oil executives were told by scientists in 1959. But they ignored that warning. Instead, they developed one of the biggest, most polluting oil sources in the world—the oil sands in Alberta, Canada. As investigative journalist Geoff Dembicki reveals in this explosive book, the decades-long conspiracy to keep the oil sands flowing into the US would turn out to be one of the biggest reasons for the world's failure to stop the climate crisis.

You're invited to discover the wonder and drama of the history of the cosmos. Follow the journey of one proton who comes into existence at the beginning of creation and makes it all the way through history to today. By becoming a part of atoms and molecules that turn up at some of the universe's most important moments, our friend Proton witnesses emerging galaxies, the origin of life, evolution, the first human beings, the birth and life of Jesus, the beginnings of the Christian church, all the way up to the present day. Through it all, the plans of the Creator continue to unfold.

In Healing Grounds, Liz Carlisle tells the stories of Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian American farmers who are reviving their ancestors' methods of growing food—techniques long suppressed by the industrial food system. These farmers are restoring native prairies, nurturing beneficial fungi, and enriching soil health. While feeding their communities and revitalizing cultural ties to land, they are steadily stitching ecosystems back together and repairing the natural carbon cycle.  

A youth movement is reenergizing global environmental activism. The "climate generation"—late millennials and iGen, or Generation Z—is demanding that policy makers and government leaders take immediate action to address the dire outcomes predicted by climate science. Those inheriting our planet's environmental problems expect to encounter challenges, but they may not have the skills to grapple with the feelings of powerlessness and despair that may arise when they confront this seemingly intractable situation.