Poetry and science, as Popova writes in her introduction, are instruments for knowing the world more intimately and loving it more deeply. In 15 short essays on subjects ranging from the mystery of dark matter and the infinity of pi to the resilience of trees and the intelligence of octopuses, Popova tells the stories of scientific searching and discovery. These stories are interwoven with details from the very real and human lives of scientists--many of them women, many underrecognized--and poets inspired by the same questions and the beauty they reveal. Each essay is paired with a poem reflecting its subject by poets ranging from Emily Dickinson, W. H. Auden, and Edna St. Vincent Millay to Maya Angelou, Diane Ackerman, and Tracy K. Smith, and is stunningly illustrated by celebrated artist Ofra Amit. Together, they wake us to a reality aglow with wonder.

From a star theoretical physicist, a journey into the world of particle physics and the cosmos--and a call for a more liberatory practice of science.

Winner of the 2021 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science & Technology
Winner of the 2022 Phi Beta Kappa Book Award in Science
Winner of the 2022 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award
A Finalist for the 2022 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
A Smithsonian Magazine Best Science Book of 2021
A Symmetry Magazine Top 10 Physics Book of 2021
An Entropy Magazine Best Nonfiction Book of 2020-2021
A Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction Book of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2021
A Booklist Top 10 Sci-Tech Book of the Year

In The Disordered Cosmos, Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein shares her love for physics, from the Standard Model of Particle Physics and what lies beyond it, to the physics of melanin in skin, to the latest theories of dark matter--along with a perspective informed by history, politics, and the wisdom of Star Trek.

One of the leading physicists of her generation, Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is also one of fewer than one hundred Black American women to earn a PhD from a department of physics. Her vision of the cosmos is vibrant, buoyantly nontraditional, and grounded in Black and queer feminist lineages.

Dr. Prescod-Weinstein urges us to recognize how science, like most fields, is rife with racism, misogyny, and other forms of oppression. She lays out a bold new approach to science and society, beginning with the belief that we all have a fundamental right to know and love the night sky. The Disordered Cosmos dreams into existence a world that allows everyone to experience and understand the wonders of the universe.

To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world's most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.

People live by their stories--how can we use them to accelerate action on climate change?

Climate scientist and policy expert Anna Farro Henderson embarks on a remarkable narrative journey in Core Samples, exploring how science is done, discussed, legislated, and imagined. Through stories both raucous and poignant--of far-flung expeditions, finding artistic inspiration in research, and traversing the systemic barriers women and mothers face in science and politics--she brings readers into the daily rhythms and intimacies of scientific research and political negotiation.

Grounded in her experiences as a climate scientist, an environmental policy advisor to Minnesota Senator Al Franken and Governor Mark Dayton, and a constant juggler of the many roles and responsibilities of professional moms, Henderson's eclectic, unconventional essays range from observations, confessions, and meditations on lab and fieldwork to a packing list for a trip to the State Capitol and a lactation diary. Readers are invited on voyages as far afield as the Trinity nuclear test site in New Mexico, the Juneau Icefield in Alaska, and a meteor crater in Ghana--and as close to home as a town hall meeting in America's corn belt.

A love letter to science and a bracing (and sometimes hilarious) portrait of the many obstacles women, mothers, and people digging for truth navigate, Core Samples illuminates the messy, contradictory humanity of our scientific and political institutions. Bringing us behind the closed doors of discovery and debate, Henderson exposes the flaws in research institutions, the halls of government, and the role of science in policy, yet she shows how each crack is also an invitation for camaraderie, creativity, and change.

It is intimidating to realize that we live in a world overflowing with misinformation, bias, myths, deception, and flawed knowledge. There really are no ultimate authority figures-no one has the secret, and there is no place to look up the definitive answers to our questions (not even Google).
Luckily, The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is your map through this maze of modern life. Here Dr. Steven Novella-along with Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Jay Novella, and Evan Bernstein-will explain the tenets of skeptical thinking and debunk some of the biggest scientific myths, fallacies, and conspiracy theories-from anti-vaccines to homeopathy, UFO sightings to N- rays. You'll learn the difference between science and pseudoscience, essential critical thinking skills, ways to discuss conspiracy theories with that crazy co- worker of yours, and how to combat sloppy reasoning, bad arguments, and superstitious thinking.

So are you ready to join them on an epic scientific quest, one that has taken us from huddling in dark caves to setting foot on the moon? (Yes, we really did that.) DON'T PANIC! With The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, we can do this together.

Thorough, informative, and enlightening, The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe inoculates you against the frailties and shortcomings of human cognition. If this book does not become required reading for us all, we may well see modern civilization unravel before our eyes. -- Neil deGrasse Tyson
In this age of real and fake information, your ability to reason, to think in scientifically skeptical fashion, is the most important skill you can have. Read The Skeptics' Guide Universe; get better at reasoning. And if this claim about the importance of reason is wrong, The Skeptics' Guide will help you figure that out, too. -- Bill Nye

Now, in this handsome new edition, Bill Bryson's words are supplemented by full-color artwork that explains in visual terms the concepts and wonder of science, at the same time giving face to the major players in the world of scientific study. Eloquently and entertainingly described, as well as richly illustrated, science has never been more involving or entertaining.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has attracted one of the world's largest online followings with his fascinating, widely accessible insights into science and our universe. Now, Tyson invites us to go behind the scenes of his public fame by revealing his correspondence with people across the globe who have sought him out in search of answers. In this hand-picked collection of 101 letters, Tyson draws upon cosmic perspectives to address a vast array of questions about science, faith, philosophy, life, and of course, Pluto. His succinct, opinionated, passionate, and often funny responses reflect his popularity and standing as a leading educator.

Tyson's 2017 bestseller Astrophysics for People in a Hurry offered more than one million readers an insightful and accessible understanding of the universe. Tyson's most candid and heartfelt writing yet, Letters from an Astrophysicist introduces us to a newly personal dimension of Tyson's quest to explore our place in the cosmos.

From Jim Holt, the New York Times bestselling author of Why Does the World Exist?, comes an entertaining and accessible guide to the most profound scientific and mathematical ideas of recent centuries in When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought.

Does time exist? What is infinity? Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not up and down? In this scintillating collection, Holt explores the human mind, the cosmos, and the thinkers who've tried to encompass the latter with the former. With his trademark clarity and humor, Holt probes the mysteries of quantum mechanics, the quest for the foundations of mathematics, and the nature of logic and truth.

Along the way, he offers intimate biographical sketches of celebrated and neglected thinkers, from the physicist Emmy Noether to the computing pioneer Alan Turing and the discoverer of fractals, Benoit Mandelbrot. Holt offers a painless and playful introduction to many of our most beautiful but least understood ideas, from Einsteinian relativity to string theory, and also invites us to consider why the greatest logician of the twentieth century believed the U.S. Constitution contained a terrible contradiction--and whether the universe truly has a future.

When we view a work of art, we often experience an emotional response, but the causes of our reactions are complex. Our knowledge of why we respond to art as we do is rooted in science--in psychology and biology. Eric R. Kandel traces the origins of this understanding to early twentieth-century Vienna, which gave rise to the concept of the beholder's share, the realization that art is incomplete without the perceptual and emotional involvement of the viewer--that is, without our responses to it.

But what causes our response? Our brain is a creativity machine that brings to bear on any image--including a painting--certain innate, universal processes related to sensory perception as well as higher-order processes related to our personal experiences, memories, and emotions. Understanding how these unconscious processes in the brain interact to create the beholder's share is one of the great challenges currently confronting brain science.

The essays on art and science in this book vary widely in subject matter, including the angst-ridden portraits of Soutine, conflicting views of women's sexuality, Cubism's challenge to our innate visual processes, and why we react differently to abstract versus figurative art. But each essay focuses on the interaction of art and science. Woven throughout are the many notable scientists, art historians, artists, and others, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who contributed to our understanding of how we experience art.

Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at the age of eight, Camilla Pang struggled to understand the world around her. Desperate for a solution, she asked her mother if there was an instruction manual for humans that she could consult. With no blueprint to life, Pang began to create her own, using the language she understands best: science.

That lifelong project eventually resulted in An Outsider's Guide to Humans, an original and incisive exploration of human nature and the strangeness of social norms, written from the outside looking in--which is helpful to even the most neurotypical thinker. Camilla Pang uses a set of scientific principles to examine life's everyday interactions:
- How machine learning can help us sift through data and make more rational decisions
- How proteins form strong bonds, and what they teach us about embracing individual differences to form diverse groups
- Why understanding thermodynamics is the key to seeking balance over seeking perfection
- How prisms refracting light can keep us from getting overwhelmed by our fears and anxieties, breaking them into manageable and separate wavelengths

Pang's unique perspective of the world tells us so much about ourselves--who we are and why we do the things we do--and is a fascinating guide to living a happier and more connected life.

Leah Elson draws upon her wildly popular web series, 60 Seconds of Science, for an irreverent debut that answers all sorts of scientific questions--from the age-old to the ridiculous to the sublime--posed by her fans around the world.

There Are (No) Stupid Questions ... in Science was born from Leah's popular web series, 60 Seconds of Science, wherein her avid followers, from all around the world, suggest topics to be explained within sixty seconds.

In the vein of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil DeGrasse Tyson and The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You: A Guide to Self-Diagnosis for Hypochondriacs by Jen Bilik, There Are (No) Stupid Questions ... in Science provides easy-to-understand and delightfully cheeky explanations for scientific and medical quandaries, and is appropriate for everyone from those with no prior scientific knowledge to colleagues in the scientific field.

Invisible in the food we eat, the people we kiss, and inside our own bodies, viruses flourish--with the power to shape not only our health, but our social, political, and economic systems. Drawing on his expertise in microbiology, Joseph Osmundson brings readers under the microscope to understand the structure and mechanics of viruses and to examine how viruses like HIV and COVID-19 have redefined daily life.

Osmundson's buoyant prose builds on the work of the activists and thinkers at the forefront of the HIV/AIDS crisis and critical scholars like José Esteban Munoz to navigate the intricacies of risk reduction, draw parallels between queer theory and hard science, and define what it really means to go viral. This dazzling multidisciplinary collection offers novel insights on illness, sex, and collective responsibility. Virology is a critical warning, a necessary reflection, and a call for a better future.

The bestselling editor of This Explains Everything brings together 175 of the world's most brilliant minds to tackle Edge.org's 2014 question: What scientific idea has become a relic blocking human progress?

Each year, John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org--The world's smartest website (The Guardian)--challenges some of the world's greatest scientists, artists, and philosophers to answer a provocative question crucial to our time. In 2014 he asked 175 brilliant minds to ponder: What scientific idea needs to be put aside in order to make room for new ideas to advance? The answers are as surprising as they are illuminating. In:

• Steven Pinker dismantles the working theory of human behavior
• Richard Dawkins renounces essentialism
• Sherry Turkle reevaluates our expectations of artificial intelligence
• Geoffrey West challenges the concept of a Theory of Everything
• Andrei Linde suggests that our universe and its laws may not be as unique as we think
• Martin Rees explains why scientific understanding is a limitless goal
• Nina Jablonski argues to rid ourselves of the concept of race
• Alan Guth rethinks the origins of the universe
• Hans Ulrich Obrist warns against glorifying unlimited economic growth
• and much more.

Profound, engaging, thoughtful, and groundbreaking, This Idea Must Die will change your perceptions and understanding of our world today . . . and tomorrow.

Drawn from the cutting-edge frontiers of science, This Explains Everything will revolutionize your understanding of the world.

What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation? This is the question John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org (The world's smartest website--The Guardian), posed to the world's most influential minds. Flowing from the horizons of physics, economics, psychology, neuroscience, and more, This Explains Everything presents 150 of the most surprising and brilliant theories of the way of our minds, societies, and universe work.

Jared Diamond on biological electricity - Nassim Nicholas Taleb on positive stress - Steven Pinker on the deep genetic roots of human conflict - Richard Dawkins on pattern recognition - Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek on simplicity - Lisa Randall on the Higgs mechanism - BRIAN Eno on the limits of intuition - Richard Thaler on the power of commitment - V. S. Ramachandran on the neural code of consciousness - Nobel Prize winner ERIC KANDEL on the power of psychotherapy - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on Lord Acton's Dictum - Lawrence M. Krauss on the unification of electricity and magnetism - plus contributions by Martin J. Rees - Kevin Kelly - Clay Shirky - Daniel C. Dennett - Sherry Turkle - Philip Zimbardo - Lee Smolin - Rebecca Newberger Goldstein - Seth Lloyd - Stewart Brand - George Dyson - Matt Ridley

Featuring a foreword by David Brooks, This Will Make You Smarter presents brilliant--but accessible--ideas to expand every mind.

What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? This is the question John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org, posed to the world's most influential thinkers. Their visionary answers flow from the frontiers of psychology, philosophy, economics, physics, sociology, and more. Surprising and enlightening, these insights will revolutionize the way you think about yourself and the world.

• Daniel Kahneman on the focusing illusion
• Jonah Lehrer on controlling attention
• Richard Dawkins on experimentation
• Aubrey De Grey on conquering our fear of the unknown
• Martin Seligman on the ingredients of well-being
• Nicholas Carr on managing cognitive load
• Steven Pinker on win-win negotiating
• Daniel Goleman on understanding our connection to the natural world
• Matt Ridley on tapping collective intelligence
• Lisa Randall on effective theorizing
• Brian Eno on ecological vision
• J. Craig Venter on the multiple possible origins of life
• Helen Fisher on temperament
• Sam Harris on the flow of thought
• Lawrence Krauss on living with uncertainty