The wisdom of famous philosophers distilled into practical takeaways for readers who seek to confront reality and carve out a livable space within it.For centuries, philosophers have considered the "big questions" of human life, mulling over everything from ethics to the definition of reality. Their ideas and insights are powerful and innovative, but often inaccessible and far too academic for most readers. In The Philosophy Cure: Lessons on Living from the...

The wisdom of famous philosophers distilled into practical takeaways for modern listeners.For centuries, philosophers have considered the “big questions” of human life, mulling over everything from ethics to the definition of reality. Their ideas and insights are powerful and innovative, but often inaccessible and far too academic for most listeners.In The Philosophy Cure: Lessons on Living from the Great Philosophers, scholar and expert on Cartesi...

Etched in the wedge-shaped letters known as cuneiform on clay tablets, the Epic of Gilgamesh stands as the earliest classic of world literature. Its earliest surviving fragments date back to the eighteenth century BC, more than 3,700 years ago. In The Buried Book, David Damrosch tells the story of George Smith, a self-taught linguist, who one momentous afternoon in 1872 was working at the British Museum, going through a pile of Layard’s clay tablets, when he suddenly real...

The story of how we got our numbers—told through one mathematician's journey to find zeroThe invention of numerals is perhaps the greatest abstraction the human mind has ever created. Virtually everything in our lives is digital, numerical, or quantified. The story of how and where we got these numerals, which we so depend on, has for thousands of years been shrouded in mystery. Finding Zero is an adventure-filled saga of Amir Aczel's lifelong obsession: to find the origin...

A fascinating account of a scientific project that tracked five generations of children—the longest-ever-running study of human development. The lives of 70,000 people reveal the importance of our beginnings on the greater trajectory of our lives.In March 1946, scientists began to track thousands of children born in one cold week as part of a birth cohort study. No one imagined that this would become the longest-running study of human development in the world, grow...

An eye-opening narrative of how geometric principles fundamentally shaped our worldOne night in 1661, Nicholas Fouquet, a superintendent under Louis XIV, was arrested. His crime was peculiar: he had dared to construct a grand geometrical garden. In doing so, he violated an irrefutable hierarchy: that geometry, in its perfection, was a testament to divine right. The elegant, symmetrical designs were more than just ornament; they were proofs of incontestable certaint...

What do Bach's compositions, Rubik's Cube, the way we choose our mates, and the physics of subatomic particles have in common? All are governed by the laws of symmetry, which elegantly unify scientific and artistic principles. Yet the mathematical language of symmetry—known as group theory—did not emerge from the study of symmetry at all, but from an equation that couldn't be solved.For thousands of years mathematicians solved progressively more difficult algebraic equations, until...

Today's computers are composing music that sounds "more Bach than Bach," turning photographs into paintings in the style of Van Gogh's Starry Night, and even writing screenplays. But are computers truly creative—or are they merely tools to be used by musicians, artists, and writers?Miller, an authority on creativity, identifies the key factors essential to the creative process, from "the need for introspection" to "the ability to discover the key problem." He talks to peop...

We all make mistakes. Nobody’s perfect. Not even some of the greatest geniuses in history, as Mario Livio tells us in this marvelous story of scientific error and breakthrough.Charles Darwin, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, and Albert Einstein were all brilliant scientists. Each made groundbreaking contributions to his field - but each also stumbled badly. Darwin’s theory of natural selection shouldn’t have worked, according to the prevailing beliefs of hi...

Explore the fascinating myths of Greek and Roman civilizations!The tales of gods and heroes are often turned into tedious discourse that even Ovid would reject. This easy-to-read guide cuts out the boring details, and instead, provides you with a thrilling lesson in classic mythology.From the heights of Mt. Olympus to the depths of the Underworld, this book takes you on an unforgettable journey through all the major myths born in ancient Greece and Rome, su...

The Fear and the Freedom is Keith Lowe's follow-up to Savage Continent. While that book painted a picture of Europe in all its horror as World War II was ending, The Fear and the Freedom looks at all that has happened since, focusing on the changes that were brought about because of World War II—simultaneously one of the most catastrophic and most innovative events in history. It killed millions and eradicated empires, while at the same time creating the idea of ...

We don't think anymore, like the ancient Chinese did, that the world was hatched from an egg, or, like the Maori, that it came from the tearing apart of a love embrace. The Greeks told of a tempestuous Hera and a cunning Zeus, but we now use genes and natural selection to explain fear and desire, and physics to demystify the workings of the universe.Evolutions brings to life the latest scientific thinking on the birth of the universe and the solar system, the journey from ...