**“Full of fascinating insights drawn from an impressive range of disciplines, The Ascent of Information casts the familiar and the foreign in a dramatic new light.” —Brian Greene, author of The Elegant UniverseYour information has a life of its own, and it’s using you to get what it wants.**One of the most peculiar and possibly unique features of humans is the vast amount of information we carry outside our biological selves. But in our rush to build the ...

A new understanding of black holes and what they do: "Scharf makes vivid the mind-boggling nature of the universe . . . [an] excellent book." — The Wall Street JournalWe've long understood black holes to be the points at which the universe as we know it comes to an end. Often billions of times more massive than the Sun, they lurk in the inner sanctum of almost every galaxy of stars in the universe. They're mysterious chasms so destructive and unforgiving th...

A leading astrobiologist argues that space travel is an evolutionary event at least as important as life’s first journey from sea to land"The Giant Leap is a detailed and provocative exploration of what it means for life as we know it to escape the bounds of the only planet where it has ever been." —Sean Carroll, author of The Biggest Ideas in the UniverseThe story of life has always been one of great transitions, of cross...

"Intoxicating . . . questions and startling discoveries. . . . Books such as these remind us that we are lucky to be here at all, and even luckier to be here now." ― The Guardian (UK)A Physics World Best Book of the YearAn NBC News Top Science and Tech Book of the YearIn the sixteenth century, Nicolaus Copernicus dared to go aga...

An accessible epic, full-color visual journey through all scales of the universe."A beautifully illustrated survey of the universe and its constituent parts, from quarks to galaxies and beyond. . . . A superb composite of scientific knowledge that will no doubt inspire readers of all ages to learn more about our enigmatic universe." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)In The Zoomable Universe...

We have long understood black holes to be the points at which the universe as we know it comes to an end - mysterious chasms so destructive and unforgiving that not even light can escape their deadly power. Recent research, however, has led to a cascade of new discoveries that have revealed an entirely new, and crucially important, side to black holes. Super-sized versions, often billions of times more massive than the Sun, lurk in every galaxy in the universe. And these chasms don't just ...

Though the concept of "the universe" suggests the containment of everything, the latest ideas in cosmology hint that our universe may be just one of a multitude of others-a single slice of an infinity of parallel realities.In The Copernicus Complex, the renowned astrophysicist and author Caleb Scharf takes us on a cosmic adventure like no other, from tiny microbes within the Earth to distant exoplanets and beyond, asserting that the age-old Copernican principle is in need ...

**“Full of fascinating insights drawn from an impressive range of disciplines, The Ascent of Information casts the familiar and the foreign in a dramatic new light.” —Brian Greene, author of The Elegant UniverseYour information has a life of its own, and it’s using you to get what it wants.**One of the most peculiar and possibly unique features of humans is the vast amount of information we carry outside our biological selves. But in our rush to build the ...

The Sunday Times (UK) Best Science Book of 2014A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2014An NBC News Top Science and Tech Book of 2014A Politics & Prose 2014 Staff PickIn the sixteenth century, Nicolaus Copernicus dared to go against the establishment by proposing that Earth rotates around the Sun. Having demoted Earth from its unique position in the cosmos to one of mediocrity, Cope...

One of The Barnes and Noble Review Editors' Picks: Best Nonfiction of 2012**Selected by The Christian Science Monitor as one of "21 smart nonfiction titles we think you'll enjoy this summer"Selected by The New Scientist as one of 10 books to look out for in 2012**We've long understood black holes to be the points at which the universe as we know it comes to an end. Often billions of times more massive than the Sun, they lu...

While European intellectual, cultural, and commercial life stagnated during the early medieval period, Asia flourished as the wellspring of science, philosophy, and religion.Linked together by a web of religious, commercial, and intellectual connections, the different regions of Asia's vast civilization, from Arabia to China, hummed with commerce, international diplomacy, and the brisk exchange of ideas.Stewart Gordon has fashioned a fascinating and unique look at Asia from...

Inspired by Charles Mackay's 19th-century classic Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Bernstein engages with mass delusion with the same curiosity and passion, but armed with the latest scientific research that explains the biological, evolutionary, and psychosocial roots of human irrationality. Bernstein tells the stories of dramatic religious and financial mania in western society over the last 500 years—from the Anabaptist Madness that afflicte...