Showing titles in History

"It's the animal in us," we often hear when we've been bad. But why not when we're good? Primates and Philosophers tackles this question by exploring the biological foundations of one of humanity's most valued traits: morality.In this provocative book, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that modern-day evolutionary biology takes far too dim a view of the natural world, emphasizing our "selfish" genes.

From the Yangtze to the Yellow River, China is traversed by great waterways, which have defined its politics and ways of life for centuries. Water has been so integral to China's culture, economy, and growth and development that it provides a window on the whole sweep of Chinese history. In The Water Kingdom, renowned writer Philip Ball opens that window to offer an epic and powerful new way of thinking about Chinese civilization. Water, Ball shows, is a key that unlocks much of Chinese culture.

For many, the moon landing was the defining event of the twentieth century. So it seems only fitting that Norman Mailer - the literary provocateur who altered the landscape of American nonfiction - wrote the most wide-ranging, far-seeing chronicle of the Apollo 11 mission. A classic chronicle of America's reach for greatness in the midst of the Cold War, Of a Fire on the Moon compiles the reportage Mailer published between 1969 and 1970 in Life magazine

Utterly beautiful. Profoundly disconcerting. Quantum theory is quite simply the most successful account of the physical universe ever devised. Its concepts underpin much of the 21st-century technology that we now take for granted. But at the same time it has completely undermined our ability to make sense of the world at its most fundamental level.

#1 New York Times bestseller #1 Washington Post bestseller #1 Indie Bestseller USA Today Bestseller John Green, award-winning author and passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest infectious...

¿Qué es un cisne negro? Para empezar, es un suceso improbable, sus consecuencias son importantes y todas las explicaciones que se puedan ofrecer a posteriori no tienen en cuenta el azar y sólo buscan encajar lo imprevisible en un modelo perfecto. El éxito de Google y YouTube, y hasta el 11-S, son “cisnes negros”. Para Nassim Nicholas Taleb, los cisnes negros son parte integrante de nuestro mundo, desde el auge de las religiones hasta los acontecimientos de nuestra vida personal. ¿Por qué no podemos identificar este fenómeno hasta que ya ha sucedido?

El filósofo Pedro Insua explora con ideas y datos la desconocida línea salmantina que va desde los descubrimientos náuticos de Colón a los debates morales de Francisco de Vitoria sobre la licitud de la conquista de América. La ciudad castellana se elevó como el faro moral e ideológico para un imperio que domesticó océanos e hizo suyo todo un continente. Los sabios congregados en torno a Salamanca sentaron las bases de la astronomía moderna, la física, el derecho internacional y hasta la economía.

A paradigm-shifting work that revolutionizes our understanding of the origins and structure of science. 

From Aristotle's Physics to quantum teleportation, learn about the scientific pursuit of instantaneous connections in this insightful examination of our world. For millennia, scientists have puzzled over a simple question: Does the universe have a speed limit? If not, some effects could happen...

In The International Space Station: 10 Amazing Facts, author Daran Volcroft takes you on a journey beyond our atmosphere to discover the secrets, science, and stories behind this incredible achievement. From its humble beginnings as a single Russian module launched in 1998 to its current status as the largest human-made object in space, the ISS is a triumph of vision, technology, and cooperation.

The essential guide to radiation: the good, the bad, and the utterly fascinating, explained with unprecedented clarity. Earth, born in a nuclear explosion, is a radioactive planet; without radiation, life would not exist. And while radiation can be dangerous, it is also deeply misunderstood and...

In our muddled era of conspiracy theories, fake news and groupthink, science's only goal is truth. Like all human pursuits it can go wrong, but it has the great strength of being self-correcting. At its best, what lasts - after much deliberation, rigour and sweat - is the truth. The story of science is how we get there. Standing on the shoulders of giants, world-renowned immunologist Luke O'Neill (aka the People's Immunologist) tells the zigzag story of how we got to this moment in human history, and what the future might hold.

Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner once wondered about "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" in the formulation of the laws of nature. Is God a Mathematician? investigates why mathematics is as powerful as it is. From ancient times to the present, scientists and philosophers have marveled at how such a seemingly abstract discipline could so perfectly explain the natural world. More than that - mathematics has often made predictions, for example, about subatomic particles or cosmic phenomena that were unknown at the time, but later were proven to be true.

 Over the past 70 years, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, has evolved from a virtually unknown and little-used pamphlet to an imposing and comprehensive compendium of mental disorder. Its nearly 300 conditions have become the touchstones for the diagnoses that patients receive, students are taught, researchers study, insurers reimburse, and drug companies promote. 

From the acclaimed author of Death in the Air ("Not since Devil in the White City has a book told such a harrowing tale"--Douglas Preston) comes the riveting story of the birth of criminal investigation in the twentieth century. Berkeley, California, 1933. In a lab filled with...

Reality is not what it seems. Not fixed. Not silent. Not separate from the one who observes it. Quantum experiments reveal seams in the world… places where information appears without traveling… where outcomes wait for attention… where time behaves like something far more flexible than a river. These seams form a doorway. A narrow line where darkness gives way to light… where the familiar dissolves into the possible… where a question becomes the beginning of understanding. This book does not claim answers. It offers a key. If you have ever sensed something beneath the surface… Step closer.

The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, equal in size to China or the United States. Yet, this arid expanse was once a verdant, pleasant land, fed by rivers and lakes. The Sahara sustained abundant plant and animal life, such as Nile perch, turtles, crocodiles, and hippos, and attracted prehistoric hunters and herders. What transformed this land of lakes into a sea of sands?

By calling everything into doubt, Descartes laid the foundations of modern philosophy. With the celebrated words "I think therefore I am," his compelling argument swept aside ancient and medieval traditions. He deduced that human beings consist of minds and bodies; that these are totally distinct "substances"; that God exists and that He ensures we can trust the evidence of our senses.

The Voyager Space Missions: From the Grand Tour to Interstellar Space is the definitive story of humanity’s most daring leap into the unknown. When NASA launched Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in 1977, the world had never seen the outer planets up close, and interstellar space was only a theory. What began as an ambitious plan to take advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime planetary alignment soon became one of the greatest scientific adventures in history.

A sweeping inquiry into how the night sky has shaped human history For as long as humans have lived, we have lived beneath the stars. But under the glow of today’s artificial lighting, we have lost the intimacy our ancestors once shared with the cosmos. In Starborn, cosmologist Roberto Trotta...