A short, provocative book about why "useless" science often leads to humanity's greatest technological breakthroughsA forty-year tightening of funding for scientific research has meant that resources are increasingly directed toward applied or practical outcomes, with the intent of creating products of immediate value. In such a scenario, it makes sense to focus on the most identifiable and urgent problems, right? Actually, it doesn't. In his classic essay "The Use...

Prostitution will be studied in these pages from the standpoint of the practical experience of European countries. An effort will be made to ascertain its forms and extent, the sources from which it is recruited, the conditions that either cause or conduce to it, the procedure of different communities in dealing with it and with the conditions responsible for it, the measures which have been employed by way of combat or control, and the results which have been thus obtained. Material will ...

Originally published in 1930. Flexiner’s Universities was the big book on higher education when it was first published in 1930 and continued to be such until the appearance of Robert Maynard Hutchins’ The Higher Learning in America in 1936. Universities continues to be one of the great books in the field more than sixty years later・but for quite different reasons now than then.

An illuminating portrayal of Richard Feynman—a giant of twentieth century physics—from his childhood tinkering with radios, to his vital work on the Manhattan Project and beyondRaised in Depression-era Rockaway Beach, physicist Richard Feynman was irreverent, eccentric, and childishly enthusiastic—a new kind of scientist in a field that was in its infancy. His quick mastery of quantum mechanics earned him a place at Los Alamos working on the Manhattan Project under...

From a star astrophysicist and author of the national bestseller The Edge of Space Time**, a journey into the world of particle physics and the cosmos – and a call for a more just, inclusive practice of science.****“A love letter to the wonderous universe we call home, and an urge to think critically about how we explore its depths” –**Smithsonian MagazineIn The Disordered Cosmos, Dr. Chanda Presc...

"Packed with recipes that have crazy-short ingredient lists, fast cooking times, and creative spins, this is my kind of cookbook." —Jenny Rosenstrach, New York Times –bestselling author of Dinner: The PlaybookGetting a home-cooked meal on the table every day is an admirable goal, but it shouldn't get in the way of your life! In Bare Minimum Dinners, Jenna Helwig—food director at Rea...

THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR*Shortlisted for the 2021 Financial Times and McKinsey & Company Business Book of the Year Award*'This unique and fascinating history explains why the blame now being piled upon meritocracy for many social ills is misplaced-and that assigning responsibilities to the people best able to discharge them really is better than the time-honoured customs of corruption, patronage, nepotism ...

Relativity: The Special and General Theory is an introduction to Einstein's space-bending, time-stretching theory of Relativity, first published in December 1916. Special and General relativity explain the structure of space time and provide a theory of gravitation, respectively. Einstein's theories shocked the world with their counterintuitive results, including the dissolution of absolute time. In this book, he brings a simplified form of his profound understanding of the subject to the ...

Michael Young has christened the oligarchy of the future Meritocracy. Indeed, the word is now part of the English language. It would appear that the formula: IQ+Effort=Merit may well constitute the basic belief of the ruling class in the twenty-first century. Projecting himself into the year 2034, the author of this sociological satire shows how present decisions and practices may remold our society.It is widespread knowledge that it is insufficient to be somebody's nephew to obtain a resp...

The argument of this book is that an anarchist society, a society which organizes itself without authority, is always in existence, like a seed beneath the snow, buried under the weight of the state and its bureaucracy, capitalism and its waste, privilege and its injustices, nationalism and its suicidal loyalties, religious differences and their superstitious separatism.Anarchist ideas are so much at variance with ordinary political assumptions and the solutions anarchists offer so...

A FINANCIAL TIMES AND TLS BOOK OF THE YEARAn exhilarating new biography of John von Neumann: the lost genius who invented our world'A sparkling book, with an intoxicating mix of pen-portraits and grand historical narrative. Above all it fizzes with a dizzying mix of deliciously vital ideas. . . A staggering achievement' Tim HarfordThe smartphones in our pockets and computers like brains. The vagari...

Essays by economic historians making the case that early factory workers benefited from the Industrial Revolution, despite its hardships and disruptions.The views generally held about the rise of the factory system in Britain derive from highly distorted accounts of the social consequences of that system—so say the distinguished economic historians whose papers make up this book.The authors offer documentary evidence to support their conclusion that under c...