How physicists are trying to solve our energy problems—by unlocking the secrets of the sun: "Explain[s] cutting-edge science with remarkable lucidity." — BooklistThis revelatory book tells the story of the scientists who believe the solution to the planet's ills can be found in the original energy source: the Sun itself. There, at its center, the fusion of 620 million tons of hydrogen every second generates an unfathomable amount of energy. By replicating ...

Our rapidly industrializing world has an insatiable hunger for energy and conventional sources are struggling to meet demand. Oil is running out, coal is damaging our climate, many nations are abandoning nuclear, yet solar, wind, and water will never be a complete replacement. The solution, says Daniel Clery in this deeply researched and revelatory audiobook, is to be found in the original energy source: the Sun itself. There, at its center, the fusion of 620 million tons of hydrogen every...

‘Sarah Cruddas is a gifted writer and Look Up is an inspired book. I am hopeful that we will never stop looking up.’ Apollo 11 astronaut Michael CollinsMost of us have never been to space. To date, of the more than 100 billion humans that have ever existed, fewer than 600 humans have ever left Earth. But the exploration of space is the most significant thing we will ever do as a species.Sarah Cruddas has been looking to the skies h...

A foolproof guide both to lying and to detecting deception,Lying and Lie Detection: A CIA Insider's Guide will teach you how the pros can tell if and when somebody is lying.People lie all the time. Studies show that the average American lies between six and twenty times a day. Most lies are of the “little white” variety or are meant to spare a person’s feelings. But what about the big lies? What about the consequential ones? You have a right to know when somebody is lying to you.

Humans and their genetically altered descendants struggle to find their place in a universe controlled by a benevolent artificial intelligence in this brilliant classic of future speculation.On a far-future Earth, a linked system of artificial intelligences called the cybercosm runs the planet and the universe far more efficiently than any flesh and blood ruler ever could, in essence rendering the human race obsolete. On the Earth's moon, genetically engineered Lun...

In this bracing book, Michael Chertoff makes clear that our laws and policies surrounding the protection of personal information, written for an earlier time, need to be completely overhauled in the Internet era. On the one hand, the collection of data—more widespread by business than by government, and impossible to stop—should be facilitated as an ultimate protection for society. On the other, standards under which information can be inspected, analyzed, or used must be significantly tig...

“All that can be done is for each one of us to invent our own ideal library of our classics.”—from Why Read the Classics?Classics, according to Italo Calvino, are not only works of enduring cultural value, but also something much more personal: talismans, touchstones, books through which we understand our world and ourselves. In Why Read the Classics?, Calvino shares over thirty of his classics in essays of warmth, humor, and striking insight.He ranges from Homer to Jorge L...

On fire for God—a sweeping history of puritanism in England and America.Begun in the mid–sixteenth century by Protestant nonconformists keen to reform England's church and society while saving their own souls, the puritan movement was a major catalyst in the great cultural changes that transformed the early modern world. Providing a uniquely broad transatlantic perspective, this groundbreaking volume traces puritanism's tumultuous history from its initial attempts ...

A journey into the mysteries and meaning of quantum theory: "Gorgeously lucid text . . . easily the best book I've read on the subject." — The Washington Post"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." Since Niels Bohr said this many years ago, quantum mechanics has only been getting more shocking. We now realize that it's not really telling us that "weird" things happen out of sight, on the tiniest level, in the atomic wor...

The Nobel Prize winner offers "an ideal introduction to the theories of special and general relativity" in clear, comprehensible language ( Nature ).A renowned mathematician and philosopher , and as well as recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Bertrand Russell was acclaimed for his ability to address complex subjects in accessible ways. In this classic reference book, Russell delve...

Alfred North Whitehead (18681-1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which has been applied to a variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education, physics, biology, economics, and psychology. He was educated at Cambridge University in England and later became a professor of philosophy at Harvard University. Early in his career Whitehead wrote primary on mathematics, l...

From the bestselling authors and hosts of "The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe," a high-tech roadmap of the future in their beloved voice, cracking open the follies of futurists past and how technology will profoundly change our world, redefining what it means to be human.Our predictions of the future are a wild fantasy, inextricably linked to our present hopes and fears, biases and ignorance. Whether they be the outlandish leaps predicted in the 1920s, like multi-...