"Consistently surprising… The Logic of Miracles breaks new ground in the relationship of probability, fate, and the ability of human beings to behold them."—Douglas Rushkoff, author of Team HumanWe live in a more turbulent world than we like to think. Yet the science we use to analyze economic, financial, and statistical events mostly disregards the world's essentially chaotic nature. We need to get used to the idea that wildly improbable events a...

Are people ever rational? Consider this: You auction off a one-dollar bill to the highest bidder, but you set the rules so that the second highest bidder also has to pay the amount of his last bid, even though he gets nothing. Would people ever enter such an auction? Not only do they, but according to Martin Shubik, the game's inventor, the average winning bid (for a dollar, remember) is $3.40. Many winners report that they bid so high only because their opponent "went completely crazy." T...

Sometimes even ideas that are widely accepted can be worth thinking a step further: neither Aristotle, Newton or Einstein could have known anything about the Internet or about cloning. This said, great minds often err more intelligently than lesser mortals get it right.

A fact-filled, illustrated exhibit of four billion years of history in 133 objects—from Pangaea to ancient Rome to Dracula's home to the iPhone.This amazing book tells the story of our planet as you've never seen it before. The Mini Museum is a collection of treasures gathered from across space and time and shared by tens of thousands of people in more than 120 countries. Each item in the collection is inspired by a childhood dream of sharing all the wonders the uni...

Have you always wanted to write a novel?Emily Winslow will help you develop the mindset and skills to get you started, keep you going, and see you through. Time to Write is a creative writing guide aimed at anyone who wants to write a novel and could use some support.It contains 49 lessons, each easy to read and packed with insights based on experience. Emily has taken her own work to high levels with major publishers, and has learned from teaching...

Leah Elson draws upon her wildly popular web series, 60 Seconds of Science, in this highly entertaining and visually appealing giftable book of real-world scientific questions and answers.How does DNA work?Does chicken noodle soup actually help with being sick?When cats purr, what is actually making the noise?Does singing to plants really help them grow?Is it possible to clone a woolly mammoth?In the vein of Randall Munroe’s What If? and p...

A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist exposes the sixty-seven US nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands that decimated a people and their land.The most important place in American nuclear history are the Marshall Islands—an idyllic Pacific paradise that served as the staging ground for over sixty US nuclear tests. It was here, from 1946 to 1958, that America perfected the weapon that preserved the peace of the post-war years. It was here—with the 1954 Castle Bravo test...

How they changed the world, and how they can change it again.This is the best book on philosophy I have ever read, and I have four master's degrees. —Philip van Heusen for Readers' FavoriteFor better or worse, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle engineered the Western mind.Above all, they formed part of a movement that stood at the crossroads of mythological and scientific-rational thought, at the crossroads of mythos and logos....

"In his lively, vivid history of pirates, Lehr finds some striking continuities from ancient to modern times." — Foreign AffairsA Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the YearIn the twenty-first century, pirates have regained a central place in Western culture, thanks to an odd combination of a blockbuster film franchise and a dramatic rise in piracy around the Horn of Africa. In this global history of the phenomenon, maritime te...

A remarkable collection, Robots through the Ages includes stories from some of the best writers of science fiction, both old and new.This anthology, with an introduction by Robert Silverberg, offers a sweeping survey of robots as depicted throughout literature. Since the Iliad—in which we are shown golden statues built by Hephaestus “with minds and wisdoms”—humans have been fascinated by the idea of artificial life. From the Argonautica t...

This "magisterial history" presents a new perspective on Thomas Morton, his colonial philosophy, and his lengthy feud with the Puritans ( Wall Street Journal).Adding new depth to our understanding of early New England society, this riveting account of Thomas Morton explores the tensions that arose from competing colonial visions. A lawyer and fur trader, Thomas Morton dreamed of a society where Algonquian peoples and English colonists could coexist. Infamou...

The timeless stories of Greek mythology come to life in these reimagined tales written in the voices of Zeus, Oedipus, Odysseus, and many others.Though the gods are featured prominently in Greek mythology, there is nothing sacred about it. Anyone is free to bring their own interpretation to these stories, just as Homer, Sophocles, and Euripides did centuries ago. In this volume, classicist and author Robert Garland presents nearly forty Greek legends as told by the ...