Showing titles in Science & Engineering

What is it really like to be a brain surgeon, to hold someone's life in your hands, to drill down into the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason? In this brutally honest account, one of the country's top neurosurgeons reveals what it is to play god in life-and-death situations. Henry...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize “The book is a form of meditation, written with headlong urgency, about seeing. . . . There is an ambition about [Dillard's] book that I like. . . . It is the ambition to feel.” — Eudora Welty, New York Times Book Review Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of...

Brought to you by Penguin. From the world-renowned physicist and best-selling author of The Elegant Universe comes this captivating exploration of deep time and humanity's search for purpose In both time and space, the cosmos is astoundingly vast, and yet is governed by simple, elegant...

Brought to you by Penguin. For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike - either free and equal, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts...

In the New York Times bestseller Brain Rules, Dr. John Medina, a molecular biologist, shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we work. In each chapter, he describes a brain rule - what scientists know for sure about how our brains work - and then offers transformative ideas for our daily lives. Medina’s fascinating stories and infectious sense of humor breathe life into brain science.

Brought to you by Penguin. In the coming decades, the technology that enables virtual and augmented reality will improve beyond recognition. Within a century, world-renowned philosopher David J. Chalmers predicts, we will have virtual worlds that are impossible to distinguish from non-virtual...

'Wooldridge is like the teacher you wish you'd had' GUARDIAN 'This book is simply brilliant . . . I learned so much' SIR DAVID SPIEGELHALTER, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 'Fresh, clever and playful' MATT RIDLEY, AUTHOR OF THE ORIGINS OF VIRTUE 'Michael explains the complex, strategic structures of...

Our understanding of cancer is slowly undergoing a revolution, allowing for the development of more effective treatments. For the first time ever, the death rate from cancer is showing a steady decline … but the ‘War on Cancer’ has hardly been won. In The Cancer Code, Dr Jason Fung offers...

The Quantum Rules applies the laws of physics to explain everything from relationships and human nature to the effects of globalization. It achieves the impossible task of making quantum physics deeply relevant to all listeners - even those with no interest in science. With a lively and engaging tone, author Kunal Das ponders the underlying truths and patterns in our shared and common life experiences, using insights derived from the fundamental laws of physics.

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...

From New York Times bestselling author Sarah Wilson comes a deeply moving, wise guide to finding joy and meaning in a world that seems to be falling apart. Things are not going back to ‘normal’. How we choose to live will shape the next era. “A book for dark times that is filled with light...

Read by the author. Will technology change what it means to be human? You don't have to be a computer scientist to have discerning conversations about artificial intelligence and technology. We all wonder where we're headed. Even now, technological innovations and machine learning have a daily...

In 24 thought-provoking lectures designed for nonscientists, this course explores today's exciting field of genomics, the study of the vast storehouse of information contained within chromosomes. Your professor is Princeton University biologist Lee M. Silver, an acclaimed teacher, scientist, and author of popular books on biotechnology, genetics, and their impact on society.

This memoir is soaked in the sunshine of Corfu, where Gerald Durrell lived as a boy, surrounded by his eccentric family - as well as puppies, toads, scorpions, geckoes, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, bats, and butterflies.

“A delightful and fascinating book filled with insight and wit, which will make you think twice and cheer up.” — Steven Pinker In a bold and provocative interpretation of economic history, Matt Ridley, the New York Times-bestselling author of Genome and The Red Queen, makes the case for an...

There are an infinite number of possible futures that lie ahead of us—like threads stretching out into the distance. Rob Hopkins, cofounder of the international Transition Network movement, invites us to travel to future worlds we would actually want to live in.

From Schrodinger's cat to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, this book untangles the weirdness of the quantum world. 'A master of making the complex simple' Independent 'Al-Khalili is the ideal guide through [the] mysteries of modern science' New Scientist 'Superb' Guardian Quantum mechanics...

Statistics has played a leading role in our scientific understanding of the world for centuries, yet we are all familiar with the way statistical claims can be sensationalised, particularly in the media. In the age of big data, as data science becomes established as a discipline, a basic grasp of statistical literacy is more important than ever. In The Art of Statistics, David Spiegelhalter guides the listener through the essential principles we need in order to derive knowledge from data. 

A bold, provocative exploration of the tension between our evolutionary history and our modern woes and what we can do about it. We are living through the most prosperous age in all of human history, yet we are listless, divided and miserable. Wealth and comfort are unparalleled, but our political landscape is unmoored, and rates of suicide, loneliness and chronic illness continue to skyrocket.

A story of defiance and determination by a controversial scientist, this is Lee Berger's own take on finding Homo naledi, an all-new species on the human family tree and one of the greatest discoveries of the 21st century. In 2013, Lee Berger, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence, heard of a cache of bones in a hard-to-reach underground cave in South Africa. He put out a call around the world for petite collaborators - men and women small and adventurous enough to be able to squeeze through eight-inch tunnels to reach a sunless cave forty feet underground. It worked.