A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature
Millions have seen the movie and thousands have read the book but few have fully appreciated the mathematics developed by John Nash’s beautiful mind. Today Nash’s beautiful math has become a universal language for research in the social sciences and has infiltrated the realms of evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and even quantum physics...
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A Good Start in Life: Understanding Your Child's Brain and Behavior
A warm, friendly book that guides parents through the formative years of their child’s life, combining solid, reliable science with logical, clear-cut information and advice.
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American Hazardscapes: The Regionalization of Hazards and Disasters
Natural Hazards and Disasters: Reducing Loss and Building Sustainability in a Hazardous World: A Series This volume examines the risks associated with living and owning property in diverse regions across the United States, offering dual perspectives: that of the geographer and that of the social science hazards researcher.
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Billy's Halo: Love, Science, and My Father's Dream
As Ruth McKernan’s father slowly succumbs to a mysterious illness, she relies on her professional training as a neuroscientist to help her work through her fear and grief. This moving memoir of love, science, and a parent’s death is an inspired blend of personal revelations and professional insights. Science is just one way of looking at life. As a neuroscientist working at the forefront of medical research, it is Ruth McKernan’s way. For a while it was her father Billy’s way, too. Indeed, science was a language they shared—until Billy inexplicably lapsed into a coma after being admitted to the hospital...
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Biodiversity II: Understanding and Protecting Our Biological Resources
Biodiversity II is a renewed call for urgency. This volume updates readers on how much we already know and how much remains to be identified scientifically.
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Biotechnology Unzipped: Promises and Realities, Revised Second Edition
In Biotechnology Unzipped, scientist and skilled science popularizer Eric Grace helps readers understand what biotechnology is and what implications it holds for all of us.
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Brave New Universe: Illuminating the Darkest Secrets of the Cosmos
Cosmologists yearn to behold the unseen elements of our universe. And as new technologies become more powerful and precise, scientists are getting their wish—though these tools are challenging the limits of our imagination as fast as they are answering many longstanding questions. Space is one of the last great frontiers for modern man. A never-ending source of investigation and inspiration, it beckons to scientists with an irresistible siren’s call. And in this glorious age of cosmology, astronomical measurement has never been more precise...
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Buzzwords: A Scientist Muses on Sex, Bugs, and Rock 'n' Roll
Buzzwords showcases the Best of Berenbaum, a selection from her humor column in the American Entomologist professional journal, accompanied by a number of original pieces written for this book.
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Carving Our Destiny: Scientific Research Faces a New Millennium
Carving Our Destiny is for people who love and understand science and want to know more about contemporary research frontiers. The questions addressed are as fascinating as they are diverse.
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Chaos Theory Tamed
How did the term "chaos"—long associated with disorder—come to signify a new paradigm in the orderly realm of mathematics? In Chaos Theory Tamed, scientist Garnett P. Williams walks the reader through this exciting territory.
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Climate Crash: Abrupt Climate Change and What It Means for Our Future
Climate Crash tells the story of how scientists recently discovered, buried deep in the polar ice cap of Greenland, that climate can change far more rapidly – and more drastically – than they had believed possible. What does this mean to widespread concerns about global warming? The implications of abrupt climate change may surprise you.
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Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle's Life in Science
This biography tells the story of Fred Hoyle, one of the most distinguished and controversial scientists of the twentieth century and the man who coined the term 'The Big Bang.'
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Cooperating with Nature: Confronting Natural Hazards with Land-Use Planning for Sustainable Communities
Natural Hazards and Disasters: Reducing Loss and Building Sustainability in a Hazardous World: A Series This volume focuses on the breakdown in sustainability—the capacity of the planet to provide quality of life now and in the future—that is signaled by disaster.
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The Culture of Our Discontent: Beyond the Medical Model of Mental Illness
By many estimations, the Western medical model of mental health is dangerously incomplete. If we step outside of the traditional disease model there are many new and different ways to understand, treat, and even accept mental illness. Culture—how we collectively live, interact, and view the world— frames our mental outlook. Arguably, culture even creates it. Western culture, for example, has completely embraced the medical model of mental illness. We quickly turn to physicians if we are “unhappy” or otherwise mentally discomfited, seeking solutions on a prescription pad...
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Darwin's Gift: to Science and Religion
With the publication in 1859 of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Charles Darwin established evolution by common descent as the dominant scientific explanation for nature’s diversity. This was to be his gift to science and society—at last, we had an explanation for how life came to be on Earth.

Scientists agree that the evolutionary origin of animals and plants is a scientific conclusion beyond reasonable doubt. They place it beside such established concepts as the roundness of the earth, its revolution around the sun, and the molecular composition of matter. That evolution has occurred, in other words, is a fact...
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Degrees Kelvin: A Tale of Genius, Invention, and Tragedy
Lindley presents a surprising and compelling portrait of William Thompson, a.k.a. Lord Kelvin, one of the most brilliant scientific minds of the 19th century.
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Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids
Androids, robots, and bionic people pervade popular culture, from classics like Frankenstein and R.U.R. to modern tales such as The Six Million Dollar Man, The Terminator, and A.I. Our fascination is obvious -- and the technology is quickly moving from books and films to real life. Digital People examines the ways in which technology is inexorably driving us to a new and different level of humanity and shows us just where technology is taking us, in directions both wonderful and terrible, to ponder what it means to be human.
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Disasters by Design: A Reassessment of Natural Hazards in the United States
Natural Hazards and Disasters: Reducing Loss and Building Sustainability in a Hazardous World: A Series This volume provides an overview of what is known about natural hazards, disasters, recovery, and mitigation, how research findings have been translated into policies and programs; and a sustainable hazard mitigation research agenda.
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Dying to Quit: Why We Smoke and How We Stop
Dying to Quit features the real-life smoking day of a young woman who plans to quit—again. Her comments take readers inside her love/hate relationship with tobacco.
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Eclipse: The Celestial Phenomenon That Changed the Course of History
In Eclipse, Duncan Steel expertly captures our continuing fascination with all manner of eclipses—including the familiar solar and lunar varieties. Moving beyond the mysticism and the magic, the science of eclipses is revealed.
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Einstein Defiant: Genius versus Genius in the Quantum Revolution
One of the most dramatic scientific debates of the modern era pitted two of the world's greatest geniuses against one another, leaving in its wake a scandal that even today hovers over the history of 20th century physics. Albert Einstein and Neils Bohr -- geniuses both -- spent decades arguing the merits and validity of quantum mechanics. Einstein Defiant is the first book to capture the soul and the science that inspired this dramatic duel, revealing the personalities and the passions -- and, in the end, what was at stake for the world.
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Einstein's Unfinished Symphony: Listening to the Sounds of Space-Time
Einstein's Unfinished Symphony captures the excitement as two gravity-wave observatories approach operation, and physicists gear up to begin their work to register the long-predicted quakes in space-time.
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Electronic Brains: Stories from the Dawn of the Computer Age
Library Journal Bestseller in Computer Science, 2005-2006

"[T]his book details the post-war computer development boom, concentrating on the personalities instead of the technology, and blending human interest with history in a lighthearted way that will appeal to technophiles and Luddites alike...The book has its techie moments, but this is an informative and entertaining read for anyone who's ever wondered about the evolution of computers from vacuum-tube-filled, moth-cooking, multi-ton calculators to iPods and wafer thin laptops."
--Publishers Weekly, October 17, 2005
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Empire of Light: A History of Discovery in Science and Art
In Empire of Light, Sidney Perkowitz combines the expertise of a physicist with the vision of an art connoisseur and the skill of an accomplished writer to offer a unique view of the most fundamental feature of the universe: light.
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Extreme Waves
Waves are hypnotic and beautiful. They can also be great fun. But Hurricanes Katrina and Rita taught us that they can be powerful and deadly while the 2004 tsunami proved that some waves are absolutely devastating. Science is the best tool for understanding and predicting the most extreme waves. Where do waves come from? Why are some big and some small? From winter to summer, the nature of the beach changes, sculpted by the tireless energy of waves. Most waves are simply rhythmic expressions of Earth’s movement through space and the changes they bring to our shorelines are gradual. But given the right weather conditions and combination of natural forces, waves can wreak havoc...
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Facing the Unexpected: Disaster Preparedness and Response in the United States
Natural Hazards and Disasters: Reducing Loss and Building Sustainability in a Hazardous World: A Series This volume presents a wealth of information derived from disasters around the world during the past 25 years and explores how these findings can improve disaster programs and identify remaining research needs.
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Faux Real: Genuine Leather and 200 Hundred Years of Inspired Fakes
What makes genuine leather genuine? What makes real things… real? In an age of virtual reality, veneers, synthetics, plastics, fakes, and knockoffs, it’s hard to know.

Over the centuries, men and women have devoted enormous energy to making fake things seem real. As early as the 14th century, fabric was treated with special oils to make it resemble leather. In the 1870s came Leatherette, a new bookbinding material. The 20th century has given us Fabrikoid, Naugahyde, Corfam, and Ultrasuede. Each claims to transcend leather’s limitations, to do better than nature itself—or at least to convince consumers that it has...
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Fed Up! Winning the War Against Childhood Obesity
Based in part on the Institute of Medicine's ground-breaking report on this topic, FED UP! provides an eye-opening look at the complex challenge of childhood obesity and the strategies for combating this frightening epidemic.
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Firepower in the Lab: Automation in the Fight Against Infectious Diseases and Bioterrorism
Today's world poses a triple threat: infectious diseases, contamination of food and water, and bioattacks. Firepower in the Lab examines how the nation can combat these threats by improving our ability to detect, measure, and monitor harmful biological agents.
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From Certainty to Uncertainty: The Story of Science and Ideas in the Twentieth Century
Physicist F. David Peat examines the basic philosophic difference between the certainty that characterized the thinking of humankind in the nineteenth century and the startling fall of certainty in the twentieth.
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Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins
Life on Earth arose nearly 4 billion years ago, bursting forth from air, water, and rock. Though the process obeyed all the rules of chemistry and physics, the details of that original event pose as deep a mystery as any facing science. How did non-living chemicals become alive? While the question is (deceivingly) simple, the answers are unquestionably complex. Science inevitably plays a key role in any discussion of life’s origins, dealing less with the question of why life appeared on Earth than with where, when, and how it emerged on the blasted, barren face of our primitive planet...
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Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages
What do primordial bacteria, medieval alchemists, and the World Wide Web have to do with each other? This fascinating exploration of how information systems emerge takes readers on a provocative journey through the history of the information age.

Today's "information explosion" may seem like an acutely modern phenomenon, but we are not the first generation—nor even the first species—to wrestle with the problem of information overload. Long before the advent of computers, human beings were collecting, storing, and organizing information: from Ice Age taxonomies to Sumerian archives, Greek libraries to Dark Age monasteries...
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The Great Brain Debate: Nature or Nurture?
How much of our behavior is determined by our genes and how much by our environment? Fiercely debated but not fully resolved, we continue to grapple with this nature-vs.-nurture question. But data from the study of the developing and adult brain are providing us with new ways of thinking about this issue – ways that, finally, promise answers.
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Halley's Quest
For most people, Edmond Halley is best known for accurately predicting the periodic appearance of the comet that ultimately would bear his name. But his greatest achievement may have been overlooked— indeed few people know that it was Halley who solved the riddle of accurate navigation for all sea-going vessels...
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In Search of the Lost Cord: Solving the Mystery of Spinal Cord Regeneration
Science journalist Luba Vikhanski profiles the rapidly developing field of spinal cord injury research. She explains the field’s greatest scientific challenges and introduces us to the pioneers who are working toward what would be a startling breakthrough.
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In the Beat of a Heart: Life, Energy, and the Unity of Nature
For centuries, scientists have dreamt of discovering an underlying unity to nature. Science now offers powerful explanations for both the dazzling diversity and striking similarities seen in the living world. Life is complicated. It is truly the “entangled bank” that Charles Darwin described. But scientists are now discovering that energy is the unifying force that joins all life on Earth. Visionary biologists have advanced a new theory that explains how the natural world—from the tiniest amoeba to the greatest rain forest—is constructed, providing a fresh perspective on the essential interconnectivity of living systems...
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In War and Peace: My Life in Science and Technology
Past president of Carnegie Mellon University, former Chief Scientist of the U.S. Air Force, one-time Director of the National Science Foundation, professor at MIT for 20 years, member of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering, and science advisor to two presidents…Guy Stever recounts an extraordinary life that reveals as much about the man as about the major scientific and technological events of his day.
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Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel
Drawing on his vast store of knowledge about space travel, as well as hundreds of interviews with cosmonauts, astronauts, and scientists, Zimmerman superbly captures the excitement and suspense of our recent space-traveling past.
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The Man Who Stopped Time: The Illuminating Story of Eadweard Muybridge - Pioneer Photographer, Father of the Motion Picture, Murderer
The photographs of Eadweard Muybridge are immediately familiar to us. Less familiar is the dramatic personal story of this seminal and wonderfully eccentric Victorian pioneer, now brought to life for the first time in this engaging and thoroughly entertaining biography...
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Mendel in the Kitchen: A Scientist's View of Genetically Modified Food
While European restaurants race to footnote menus, reassuring concerned gourmands that no genetically modified ingredients were used in the preparation of their food, starving populations around the world eagerly await the next harvest of scientifically improved crops. Mendel in the Kitchen provides a clear and balanced picture of this tangled, tricky (and very timely) topic.
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Mountains of Madness: A Scientist's Odyssey in Antarctica
Told in a highly accessible and entertaining style, Mountains of Madness is the account of John Long's two unforgettable "summers" on the southern continent. As the story unfolds, we learn of both the highs of scientific discovery as well as the grueling yet essential routines that must be practiced every day just to stay alive in one of the harshest environments on our planet.
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Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries, Second Edition
Nobel Prize Women in Science is a startling and revealing look into the history of science and the critical and inspiring role that women have played in the drama of scientific progress.
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The One True Platonic Heaven: A Scientific Fiction of the Limits of Knowledge
By the author of The Cambridge Quintet, John L. Casti's new book continues the tradition of combining science fact with just the right dose of fiction. Part novel, part science –- wholly informative and entertaining. Imaginatively conceived and artfully executed, The One True Platonic Heaven is an accessible and intriguing presentation of some of the deepest scientific and philosophical ideas of the 20th century.
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One Universe: At Home in the Cosmos
One Universe explores the physical principles that govern the workings of our own world so that we can appreciate how they operate in the cosmos around us. This book explains complex ideas in ways that every reader can grasp and enjoy.
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Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, and Earth's Ancient Atmosphere
For 65 million years dinosaurs ruled the Earth—until a deadly asteroid forced their extinction. But what accounts for the incredible longevity of dinosaurs? A renowned scientist now provides a startling explanation that is rewriting the history of the Age of Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were pretty amazing creatures—real-life monsters that have the power to fascinate us. And their fiery Hollywood ending only serves to make the story that much more dramatic. But fossil evidence demonstrates that dinosaurs survived several mass extinctions, and were seemingly unaffected by catastrophes that decimated most other life on Earth...
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Paying the Price: The Status and Role of Insurance Against Natural Disasters in the United States
Natural Hazards and Disasters: Reducing Loss and Building Sustainability in a Hazardous World: A Series This volume considers the effectiveness of insurance coverage for low-probability, high-consequence events such as natural disasters—and how insurance programs can successfully be used with other policy tools.
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Preparing Our Teachers: Opportunities for Better Reading Instruction
Preparing Our Teachers demonstrates to educators, parents, and policy makers alike that the first and most enduring way to meet children’s literacy needs is to support their teachers and teachers-to-be.
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Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics
In August of 1859 Bernhard Riemann, a 32-year old mathematician, posed a deceptively simple question to the Berlin Academy: Is there a general rule for figuring out how many prime numbers there are? More than 150 years later, the solution to this critical problem eludes our grasp. Alternating chapters of extraordinarily lucid mathematical exposition with chapters of biography and history, Prime Obsession is a fascinating and fluent account of an epic mathematical mystery that continues to challenge and excite the world.
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The Proteus Effect: Stem Cells and Their Promise for Medicine
Stem cells could be the key that unlocks cures to scores of diseases and illnesses. Their story is at once compelling, controversial, and remarkable. Part detective story, part medical history, The Proteus Effect recounts the events leading up to the discovery of stem cells and their incredible potential for the future of medicine.
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Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction: Where Real Science Ends...and Pseudoscience Begins
Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction takes us on a tour of the most notorious instances of pseudoscience and sets the record straight on what is and isn’t science.
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Reefscape: Reflections on the Great Barrier Reef
Part travelogue, part eco-history, Reefscape represents multiple views of the reef—through the eyes of mariners, pearl divers, naturalists, filmmakers, pirates, industrialists, and tourists alike—painting a fascinating portrait of a unique locale.
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Schrödinger's Rabbits: The Many Worlds of Quantum
For the better part of a century, attempts to explain what was really going on in the quantum world seemed doomed to failure. But recent technological advances have made the question both practical and urgent. A brilliantly imaginative group of physicists at Oxford University have risen to the challenge. This is their story.
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Secret Agents: The Menace of Emerging Infections
Secret Agents looks at today’s new and emerging infections and tells the stories of scientists racing to catch up with invisible adversaries superior in both speed and guile.
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The Secret Life of the Brain
The Secret Life of the Brain tells the fascinating story of the opportunities and perils during each of the brain’s five developmental stages: gestation, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age.
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The Secret Life of Numbers: 50 Easy Pieces on How Mathematicians Work and Think
Most of us picture mathematicians laboring before a chalkboard, scribbling numbers and obscure symbols as they mutter unintelligibly. This lighthearted (but realistic) sneak-peak into the everyday world of mathematicians turns that stereotype on its head.Most people have little idea what mathematicians do or how they think. It’s often difficult to see how their seemingly arcane and esoteric work applies to our own everyday lives. But mathematics also holds a special allure for many people...
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Snooze... or Lose!: 10 "No-War" Ways to Improve Your Teen's Sleep Habits
Walk into any first-period high school classroom and it's obvious: teenagers are exhausted. Sleep deprivation is an epidemic as widespread as obesity—and just as damaging. Fortunately, science has answers and Dr. Helene Emsellem has solutions that all parents can use. Affecting the lives of more than 41 million adolescents in the United States alone, sleep deprivation is a chronic problem for kids today. We know this intuitively as we watch teenagers frantically juggle a hectic social calendar with the overwhelming demands of school, work, and chores...
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Stephen Hawking: A Life in Science, Second Edition
Originally published in 1992 to great acclaim, this updated edition traces the course of Hawking's life and science, successfully marrying biography and physics to tell the story of a remarkable man.
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Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities
From terrorist attacks to big money jackpots, Struck by Lightning deconstructs the odds and oddities of chance, examining both the relevant and irreverent role of randomness in our everyday lives.Human beings have long been both fascinated and appalled by randomness. On the one hand, we love the thrill of a surprise party, the unpredictability of a budding romance, or the freedom of not knowing what tomorrow will bring. We are inexplicably delighted by strange coincidences and striking similarities. But we also hate uncertainty’s dark side. From cancer to SARS, diseases strike with no apparent pattern. Terrorists attack, airplanes crash, bridges collapse, and we never know if we’ll be that one in a million statistic...
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Swords into Market Shares: Technology, Economics, and Security in the New Russia
In Swords into Market Shares, Schweitzer examines the prospects for Russia to prosper from its technology in the post-Soviet world.
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The Anthrax Letters: A Medical Detective Story
Fast paced and riveting, this minute-by-minute chronicle of the fall 2001 anthrax attacks recounts more than a history of recent current events, it uncovers the untold and perhaps even more important story of how scientists, doctors, and researchers perform life-saving work under intense pressure and public scrutiny. Conducting his own detective work, bioterrorism expert Leonard Cole has composed a series of fascinating stories that get to the heart of all the noisy sound bytes and hysterical headlines, amply demonstrating how vulnerable America and the world really were in 2001.
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The Common Thread: A Story of Science, Politics, Ethics, and the Human Genome
The world was agog when scientists made the astounding announcement that they had successfully sequenced the human genome. Few contributed so directly to this feat as Sir John Sulston, who was knighted by the Queen for his work on the British arm of the Human Genome Project. The Common Thread is Sulston's personal account of one of the largest international scientific operations ever undertaken.
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The Depths of Space: The Story of the Pioneer Planetary Probes
Emblazoned with the nude figures of a man and a woman, etched representations of our human form, the Pioneer generation of probes were aptly named. Launched into the inky depths of space, they were more than mere machines, they were humanity's first emissaries into deep space. The Depths of Space recounts the long overdue history of Pioneer both as a scientific and technological achievement and as the story of the exceptional people who made the program possible.
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The Door in the Dream: Conversations with Eminent Women in Science
Elga Wasserman offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of women who have risen to the top of their scientific profession, providing readers the opportunity to benefit from their personal insights and anecdotes.
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The End of Stress As We Know It
The End of Stress as We Know It leads us to a new appreciation of the mind–body connection so that we learn how to reduce stress and increase our overall sense of health and well-being.
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The Genomic Revolution: Unveiling the Unity of Life
The Genomic Revolution takes readers on a fascinating journey through genomics—from the basic presentation of ideas about heredity through the essential principles of molecular biology.
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The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World
The electrical grid goes everywhere—it's the largest and most complex machine ever made. Yet the system is built in such a way that the bigger it gets, the more inevitable its collapse.

Named the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century by the National Academy of Engineering, the electrical grid is the largest industrial investment in the history of humankind. It reaches into your home, snakes its way to your bedroom, and climbs right up into the lamp next to your pillow....
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The Language of Life: How Cells Communicate in Health and Disease
The Language of Life reveals the private conversations of cells, telling a fantastic story of discovery that artfully conveys the epic of the developing embryo, the miracle of the human brain, and the stories of battles waged by cells on the front lines of a never-ending war against disease.
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The Last Sorcerers: The Path from Alchemy to the Periodic Table
What we now call chemistry began in the fiery cauldrons of mystics and sorcerers seeking not to make a better world through science, but rather to make themselves richer through magic formulas and con games. But among these early magicians, frauds, and con artists were a few far-seeing seeing "alchemists" who, through rigorous experimentation, transformed mysticism into science. Depicting the lively careers of these scientists and their contributions while carefully deconstructing the history and the science, author Richard Morris skillfully brings it all to life.
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The People's Health: A Memoir of Public Health and Its Evolution at Harvard
In The People's Health, Henig brings to life the compelling story of the successes and setbacks of public health. This book documents the expansion of public health and discusses the link between health and human rights.
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The Quantum Zoo: A Tourist's Guide to the Neverending Universe
The two towering achievements of modern physics are quantum theory and Einstein's general theory of relativity. Together, they explain virtually everything about the world we live in. But, almost a century after their advent, most people haven't the slightest clue what either is about. Did you know that there's so much empty space inside matter that the entire human race could be squeezed into the volume of a sugar cube? Or that you grow old more quickly on the top floor of a building than on the ground floor? And did you realize that 1% of the static on a TV tuned between stations is the relic of the Big Bang? These and many other remarkable facts about the world are direct consequences of quantum physics and relativity...
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The Silent Landscape: The Scientific Voyage of HMS Challenger
In 1872, HMS Challenger set sail from Portsmouth, England, to map and sample the ocean floor. This marked the birth of modern oceanography. Relying on the official documentation, logs, and journals of the ship's company, The Silent Landscape recounts the tale of an extraordinary voyage brought to life by 21st-century science. From the endangered coral reefs of the Caribbean to the trackless depths beneath the western Pacific, The Silent Landscape takes us on an epic journey across time.
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The Third Domain
The Third Domain is the untold story of how the discovery of a new form of life—first ridiculed, then ignored for the past thirty years by mainstream scientists—is revolutionizing science, industry, and even our search for extraterrestrial life.

Classification is a serious issue for science: if you don’t know what you’re looking at, how can you interpret what you see? Starting with Carolus Linnaeus in the 17th century, scientists have long struggled to order and categorize the many forms of life on Earth. But by the early 20th century the tree of life seemed to have stabilized, with two main domains of life at its roots: single-celled and multi-celled organisms...
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Touch the Universe: A NASA Braille Book of Astronomy
Touch the Universe is a unique and innovative astronomy book that will help visually impaired people "see" the wonders of our universe. Using a combination of Braille and large-print captions that face 14 pages of brilliant Hubble Space Telescope photos, it is embossed with shapes that represent various astronomical objects such as stars, gas clouds, and jets of matter streaming into space.
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True Genius: The Life and Science of John Bardeen
John Bardeen ranks among the most imaginative and inspired scientists of our time. But despite being the only person ever to win two Nobel Prizes in physics, this astonishing, though decidedly modest, Midwesterner was often overlooked by both the media and the public, simply because he differed radically from the popular stereotype of genius. Through an exploration of his science as well as his life, a fresh and thoroughly engaging portrait of genius and the nature of creativity emerges. True Genius is a fascinating biography that provides a whole new perspective on what it truly means to be a genius.
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Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra
Prime Obsession taught us not to be afraid to put the math in a math book. Unknown Quantity heeds the lesson well. So grab your graphing calculators, slip out the slide rules, and buckle up! John Derbyshire is introducing us to algebra through the ages—and it promises to be just what his die-hard fans have been waiting for.“Here is the story of algebra.” With this deceptively simple introduction, we begin our journey. Flanked by formulae, shadowed by roots and radicals, escorted by an expert who navigates unerringly on our behalf, we are guaranteed safe passage through even the most treacherous mathematical terrain...
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We're Friends, Right?: Inside Kids' Culture
Sociologists often study exotic cultures by immersing themselves in an environment until they become accepted as insiders. In this fascinating account by acclaimed researcher William A. Corsaro, a scientist "goes native" to study the secret world of children. At a time when many parents fear that they don't spend enough time with their children, and experts debate the best path to healthy development, seeing childhood through the eyes of a child offers parents and caregivers fresh and compelling insights.
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The Whole Truth About Contraception: A Guide to Safe and Effective Choices
The Whole Truth About Contraception is the right book for anyone making decisions about contraception—men and women, from teenagers to middle-agers.
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Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl
When a titanic explosion ripped through the Number Four reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in 1986, spewing flames and chunks of burning, radioactive material into the atmosphere, one of our worst nightmares came true. As the news gradually seeped out of the USSR and the extent of the disaster was realized, it became clear how horribly wrong things had gone. Dozens died--two from the explosion and many more from radiation illness during the following months--while scores of additional victims came down with acute radiation sickness...
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The Zombie Curse: A Doctor's 25-year Journey Into the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic in Haiti
This memoir of a dedicated doctor battling the AIDS epidemic in Haiti does more than chronicle the story of a horrible disease. It is a moving tribute to the abundant courage, resilience, and dignity of a people beset by tragedy.The Zombie Curse A Doctor’s 25-Year Journey into the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic in Haiti Arthur M. Fournier, M.D., with Daniel Herlihy Dr. Art Fournier met his first AIDS patient on an autumn afternoon in 1979. Of course, neither Fournier nor his colleagues at Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital fully understood the chilling impact of what they were seeing...
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A Matter of Size: Triennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative
The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) was created in 2000 to focus and coordinate the nanoscience and nanotechnology research and development (R&D) activities being funded by several federal agencies. The purpose of the NNI is to marshal these research activities in order to accelerate responsible development and deployment of nanotechnology for economic benefit and national security...
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BIO2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists
Biological sciences have been revolutionized, not only in the way research is conducted -- with the introduction of techniques such as recombinant DNA and digital technology -- but also in how research findings are communicated among professionals and to the public. Yet the undergraduate programs that train biology researchers remain much the same. BIO2010 outlines ways for biology education to catch up with biology research.
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Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century
Health care today harms too frequently and routinely fails to deliver its potential benefits. Between the health care we have and the care we could have lies not just a gap, but a chasm. Crossing the Quality Chasm recommends a sweeping redesign of the American health care system and provides overarching principles for specific direction for policymakers, health care leaders, clinicians, regulators, purchasers, and others.
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Deadly Lessons: Understanding Lethal School Violence
How do we make sense of the tragedy of a school shooting or even draw objective conclusions from these incidents? Deadly Lessons is the outcome of the National Research Council’s unique effort to glean lessons from six case studies of lethal student violence, presenting the tragic complexity of the young shooter’s social and personal circumstances in rich detail.
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The Drama of the Commons
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