How games are being harnessed as instruments of exploitation – and what we can do about itWarehouse workers pack boxes while a virtual dragon races across their screen. If they beat their colleagues, they get an award. If not, they can be fired. Uber presents exhausted drivers with challenges to keep them driving. China scores its citizens so they behave well, and games with in-app purchases use achievements to empty your wallet.Points, badges and leaderboa...

Science fiction meets alternate history as a curator looks back on the 21st century through 100 of its artifacts—from silent messaging systems to artificial worlds on asteroids.In the year 2082, a curator looks back at the 21st century, offering a history of the era through a series of objects and artifacts. He reminisces about the power of connectivity, which was reinforced by such technologies as silent messaging—wearable computers that relay subvocal co...

How games are being harnessed as instruments of exploitation—and what we can do about itWarehouse workers pack boxes while a virtual dragon races across their screen. If they beat their colleagues, they get an award. If not, they can be fired. Uber presents exhausted drivers with challenges to keep them driving. China scores its citizens so they behave well, and games with in-app purchases use achievements to empty your wallet.Points, badges, and leaderboar...

How games are being harnessed as instruments of exploitation—and what we can do about itWarehouse workers pack boxes while a virtual dragon races across their screen. If they beat their colleagues, they get an award. If not, they can be fired. Uber presents exhausted drivers with challenges to keep them driving. China scores its citizens so they behave well, and games with in-app purchases use achievements to empty your wallet.Points, badges, and leaderboar...

From multiple Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Robert Silverberg, Roma Eterna takes an in-depth look at an alternative history in which the Roman Empire survives into the twenty-first century and beyond.What would happen if Imperial Rome never fell? Roma Eterna, spanning fifteen hundred years of global history, follows the reign of the Roman Empire from its inception to the present day. Empire continues to expand, creeping across the globe and...

A NEW APPROACH TO EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY: A leading developmental psychologist proposes an evolutionary pathway to understanding human psychological agency.Nature cannot build organisms biologically prepared for every contingency they might possibly encounter. Instead, Nature builds some organisms to function as feedback control systems that pursue goals, make informed behavioral decisions about how best to pursue those goals in the current situation, and then mon...

**As spiritualism reaches its fevered pitch at the dawn of the 20th century, a Scottish girl crosses the veil to unlock a powerful connection within an infamous asylum in this thrillingly atmospheric, exquisitely evocative exploration of feminine rage and agency for readers of Sarah Penner, Alice Hoffman, and Hester Fox.Now available in paperback!**Leaving behind a quiet life of simple comforts, Nairna Liath traverses the Scottish countryside with her charlatan father, Tavi...

If you liked Caitlin Starling's The Luminous Dead and The Deep by Nick Cutter then you'll love this detective, horror, science fiction adventure.Thirty-seven miners disappear without a trace within a Titanium mine, Hellweg’s Keep, deep within Zeta One, a moon orbiting the planet, Terra. When FBI agent Kendra Omen arrives via the spaceship Marietta, strange phenomenon begins to manifest…suicides, shadows a shade darker than the shadows they move wi...

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice**“Wide-ranging and thoroughly winning.” —Jordan Ellenberg, The New York Times Book Review“An absolute joy to read!" —Steven Levitt, New York Times bestselling author of Freakonomics**For fans of Seven Brief Lessons in Physics, an exploration of the many ways mathematics can transform our understanding of literature and vice versa, by the first woman to ...

Discover the secret method used to build the world…For millennia, humans have used one simple method to solve problems. Whether it's planting crops, building skyscrapers, developing photographs, or designing the first microchip, all creators follow the same steps to engineer progress. But this powerful method, the "engineering method", is an all but hidden process that few of us have heard of—let alone understand—but that influences every aspect of our lives.

'A fiendishly good read!'Mignon Fogarty, Grammar GirlThe English language is where words go to be tortured and mutilated into unrecognizable shadows of their former selves. It's where Latin, Greek, and Germanic roots are shredded apart and stitched unceremoniously back together with misunderstood snippets of languages snatched from the wreckage of conquest and colonialism. It wreaks merciless havoc upon grammar and spelling. It turns clinical terms into insults and ...

A desperate sea battle; a fortune risked on the turn of a card; a duel at dawn with the loser…Patrick O'Brian meets James Bond.It's 1803. The Napoleonic Wars are raging, Britain is on her heels, and His Majesty's Secret Service has just lost its best agent, Thomas Grey. Deeply depressed by his wife's untimely death, Grey resigns from the service and accepts an offer to join a lumber firm in Boston. But when a sea battle with a privateer forces the ship carrying him...