Casting a wide net through history and culture, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions. He examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies as witchcraft, faith healings, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning, with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect.

As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.

What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.

Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and danger tree faller blasters. Intrepid as ever, she travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St. Peter's Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display. She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque.

Combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature's lawbreakers. When it comes to problem wildlife, she finds, humans are more often the problem--and the solution. Fascinating, witty, and humane, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.

An indispensable analysis of how the world really produces and consumes its food--and a scientist's exploration of how we can successfully feed a growing population without killing the planet

We have never had to feed as many people as we do today. And yet, we misunderstand the essentials of where our food really comes from, how our dietary requirements shape us, and why this impacts our planet in drastic ways. As a result, in our economic, political, and everyday choices, we take for granted and fail to prioritize the thing that makes all our lives possible: food.

In this ambitious, myth-busting book, Smil investigates many of the burning questions facing the world today: why are some of the world's biggest food producers also the countries with the most undernourished populations? Why do we waste so much food and how can we solve that? Could the whole planet go vegan and be healthy? Should it? He explores the global history of food production to understand why we farm some animals and not others, why most of the world's calories come from just a few foodstuffs, and how this might change in the future.

How to Feed the World is the data-based, rigorously researched guide that offers solutions to our broken global food system.

The noted inventor and futurist's successor to his landmark book The Singularity Is Near explores how technology will transform the human race in the decades to come

Since it was first published in 2005, Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near and its vision of an exponential future have spawned a worldwide movement. Kurzweil's predictions about technological advancements have largely come true, with concepts like AI, intelligent machines, and biotechnology now widely familiar to the public.

In this entirely new book Ray Kurzweil brings a fresh perspective to advances toward the Singularity--assessing his 1999 prediction that AI will reach human level intelligence by 2029 and examining the exponential growth of technology--that, in the near future, will expand human intelligence a millionfold and change human life forever. Among the topics he discusses are rebuilding the world, atom by atom with devices like nanobots; radical life extension beyond the current age limit of 120; reinventing intelligence by connecting our brains to the cloud; how exponential technologies are propelling innovation forward in all industries and improving all aspects of our well-being such as declining poverty and violence; and the growth of renewable energy and 3-D printing. He also considers the potential perils of biotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence, including such topics of current controversy as how AI will impact employment and the safety of autonomous cars, and After Life technology, which aims to virtually revive deceased individuals through a combination of their data and DNA.

The culmination of six decades of research on artificial intelligence, The Singularity Is Nearer is Ray Kurzweil's crowning contribution to the story of this science and the revolution that is to come.

Dazzling. - Steven Pinker, The Guardian

In this groundbreaking book, award-winning physicist David Deutsch argues that explanations have a fundamental place in the universe--and that improving them is the basic regulating principle of all successful human endeavor. Taking us on a journey through every fundamental field of science, as well as the history of civilization, art, moral values, and the theory of political institutions, Deutsch tracks how we form new explanations and drop bad ones, explaining the conditions under which progress--which he argues is potentially boundless--can and cannot happen. Hugely ambitious and highly original, The Beginning of Infinity explores and establishes deep connections between the laws of nature, the human condition, knowledge, and the possibility for progress.

Today's machine-learning systems, trained by data, are so effective that we've invited them to see and hear for us--and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Recent years have seen an eruption of concern as the field of machine learning advances. When the systems we attempt to teach will not, in the end, do what we want or what we expect, ethical and potentially existential risks emerge. Researchers call this the alignment problem.

Systems cull résumés until, years later, we discover that they have inherent gender biases. Algorithms decide bail and parole--and appear to assess Black and White defendants differently. We can no longer assume that our mortgage application, or even our medical tests, will be seen by human eyes. And as autonomous vehicles share our streets, we are increasingly putting our lives in their hands.

The mathematical and computational models driving these changes range in complexity from something that can fit on a spreadsheet to a complex system that might credibly be called artificial intelligence. They are steadily replacing both human judgment and explicitly programmed software.

In best-selling author Brian Christian's riveting account, we meet the alignment problem's first-responders, and learn their ambitious plan to solve it before our hands are completely off the wheel. In a masterful blend of history and on-the ground reporting, Christian traces the explosive growth in the field of machine learning and surveys its current, sprawling frontier. Readers encounter a discipline finding its legs amid exhilarating and sometimes terrifying progress. Whether they--and we--succeed or fail in solving the alignment problem will be a defining human story.

The Alignment Problem offers an unflinching reckoning with humanity's biases and blind spots, our own unstated assumptions and often contradictory goals. A dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, it takes a hard look not only at our technology but at our culture--and finds a story by turns harrowing and hopeful.

An essential analysis of the modern science and technology that makes our twenty-first century lives possible--a scientist's investigation into what science really does, and does not, accomplish.

We have never had so much information at our fingertips and yet most of us don't know how the world really works. This book explains seven of the most fundamental realities governing our survival and prosperity. From energy and food production, through our material world and its globalization, to risks, our environment and its future, How the World Really Works offers a much-needed reality check--because before we can tackle problems effectively, we must understand the facts.

In this ambitious and thought-provoking book we see, for example, that globalization isn't inevitable--the foolishness of allowing 70 per cent of the world's rubber gloves to be made in just one factory became glaringly obvious in 2020--and that our societies have been steadily increasing their dependence on fossil fuels, such that any promises of decarbonization by 2050 are a fairy tale. For example, each greenhouse-grown supermarket-bought tomato has the equivalent of five tablespoons of diesel embedded in its production, and we have no way of producing steel, cement or plastics at required scales without huge carbon emissions.

Ultimately, Smil answers the most profound question of our age: are we irrevocably doomed or is a brighter utopia ahead? Compelling, data-rich and revisionist, this wonderfully broad, interdisciplinary guide finds faults with both extremes. Looking at the world through this quantitative lens reveals hidden truths that change the way we see our past, present and uncertain future.

For David Deutsch, a physicist of unusual originality, quantum theory contains our most fundamental knowledge of the physical world. Taken literally, it implies that there are many universes parallel to the one we see around us. This multiplicity of universes, according to Deutsch, turns out to be the key to achieving a new worldview based on four main strands:

- Quantum physics and its many-universes interpretation
- The theory of evolution (Darwin/Dawkins)
- The theory of computation (quantum computation)
- The theory of knowledge (Karl Popper), explanation and understanding

The Fabric of Reality explains and connects many topics at the leading edge of current research and thinking, such as quantum computers (which work by effectively collaborating with their counterparts in other universes), the physics of time travel, the comprehensibility of nature and the physical limits of virtual reality, the significance of human life, and the ultimate fate of the universe.

Here--for scientist and layperson alike, for philosopher, science-fiction reader, biologist, and computer expert--is a startlingly complete and rational synthesis of disciplines, and a new, optimistic message about existence.

This special edition celebrates the thirty-fifth anniversary of this early Shambhala best seller that has gone on to become a true classic. It includes a fresh cover design and a new preface by the author reflecting on further discoveries and developments in the years since the book's original publication.

Physicists do not need mysticism, Dr. Capra says, and mystics do not need physics, but humanity needs both. It is a message of timeless importance.

In 2010, in a small New Hampshire town, next door to a copy center and framing shop, a ghost lab opened. The Kitt Research Initiative's mission was to use the scientific method to document the existence of spirits. Founder Andy Kitt was known as a straight-shooter; and was unafraid -- perhaps eager -- to offend other paranormal investigators by exposing the fraudulence of their less advanced techniques. But when KRI started to lose money, Kitt began to seek funding from the paranormal community, attracting flocks of psychics, alien abductees, witches, mediums, ghost hunters, UFOlogists, cryptozoologists and warlocks from all over New England, and the world. And there were plenty of them around.

The Ghost Lab tells the astonishing story of the wild ecosystem of paranormal profiteers and consumers, through the astonishing story of what happened in this one small town. But it also maps the trends of declining scientific literacy, trust in institutions, and the diffusion of a culture that has created space for armies of pseudoscientists to step into the minds of an increasingly credulous public.

With his distinct voice, eye for a story and ability to show how one community's experience reflects that of a society, Matt Hongoltz-Hetling crafts a powerful narrative about just how fragmented our understanding of what is real and what is not has become.

Lightman...belongs to a noble tradition of science writers, including Oliver Sacks and Lewis Thomas, who can poke endlessly into a subject and...stir up fresh embers of wonder. --The Wall Street Journal

Gazing at the stars, falling in love, or listening to music, we sometimes feel a transcendent connection with a cosmic unity and things larger than ourselves. But these experiences are not easily understood by science, which holds that all things can be explained in terms of atoms and molecules. Is there space in our scientific worldview for these spiritual experiences?

According to acclaimed physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, there may be. Drawing on intellectual history and conversations with contemporary scientists, philosophers, and psychologists, Lightman asks a series of thought-provoking questions that illuminate our strange place between the world of particles and forces and the world of complex human experience. Can strict materialism explain our appreciation of beauty? Or our feelings of connection to nature and to other people? Is there a physical basis for consciousness, the most slippery of all scientific problems?

Lightman weaves these investigations together to propose what he calls spiritual materialism-- the belief that we can embrace spiritual experiences without letting go of our scientific worldview. In his view, the breadth of the human condition is not only rooted in material atoms and molecules but can also be explained in terms of Darwinian evolution.

What is revealed in this lyrical, enlightening book is that spirituality may not only be compatible with science, it also ought to remain at the core of what it means to be human.

Featuring a new Foreword by former Vice President Al Gore

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Important and timely. We ignore this message at our peril.-Elizabeth Kolbert

Merchants of Doubt has been praised-and attacked-around the world, for reasons easy to understand. This book tells, with brutal clarity (Huffington Post), the disquieting story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. The same individuals who claim the science of global warming is not settled have also denied the truth about studies linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. Doubt is our product, wrote one tobacco executive. These experts supplied it. Merchants of Doubt rolls back the rug on this dark corner of American science. Now with a new Foreword by former Vice President Al Gore, and with a new Postscript by the authors.

This thoroughly readable book will convince you that the brain and the world are partners in constructing our understanding. --Sean Carroll, New York Times bestselling author of The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion

For as long as we've studied human cognition, we've believed that our senses give us direct access to the world. What we see is what's really there--or so the thinking goes. But new discoveries in neuroscience and psychology have turned this assumption on its head. What if rather than perceiving reality passively, your mind actively predicts it?

Widely acclaimed philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark unpacks this provocative new theory that the brain is a powerful, dynamic prediction engine, mediating our experience of both body and world. From the most mundane experiences to the most sublime, reality as we know it is the complex synthesis of sensory information and expectation. Exploring its fascinating mechanics and remarkable implications for our lives, mental health, and society, Clark nimbly illustrates how the predictive brain sculpts all human experience. Chronic pain and mental illness are shown to involve subtle malfunctions of our unconscious predictions, pointing the way towards more effective, targeted treatments. Under renewed scrutiny, the very boundary between ourselves and the outside world dissolves, showing that we are as entangled with our environments as we are with our onboard memories, thoughts, and feelings. And perception itself is revealed to be something of a controlled hallucination.

Unveiling the extraordinary explanatory power of the predictive brain, The Experience Machine is a mesmerizing window onto one of the most significant developments in our understanding of the mind.

In The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot argues nothing less than that the universe is itself one giant hologram. Mr. Talbot thus explains out-of-body experiences, quantum-theory problems, the paranormal, and other unsolved riddles of brain and body. -- New York Times

Now featuring a foreword by Lynne McTaggart, The Holographic Universe is a landmark work whose exciting conclusions continue to be proven true by today's most advanced physics, cosmology, and string theory.

Nearly everyone is familiar with holograms--three-dimensional images projected into space with the aid of a laser. Two of the world's most eminent thinkers believe that the universe itself may be a giant hologram, quite literally a kind of image or construct created, at least in part, by the human mind. University of London physicist David Bohm, a protégé of Einstein and one of the world's most respected quantum physicists, and Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, an architect of our modern understanding of the brain, have developed a remarkable new way of looking at the universe. Their theory explains not only many of the unsolved puzzles of physics but also such mysterious occurrences as telepathy, out-of-body and near-death experiences, lucid dreams, and even religious and mystical experiences such as feelings of cosmic unity and miraculous healings.

While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, The Singularity Is Near presents a radical and optimistic view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.

This thoroughly readable book will convince you that the brain and the world are partners in constructing our understanding. --Sean Carroll, New York Times bestselling author of The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion

For as long as we've studied human cognition, we've believed that our senses give us direct access to the world. What we see is what's really there--or so the thinking goes. But new discoveries in neuroscience and psychology have turned this assumption on its head. What if rather than perceiving reality passively, your mind actively predicts it?

Widely acclaimed philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark unpacks this provocative new theory that the brain is a powerful, dynamic prediction engine, mediating our experience of both body and world. From the most mundane experiences to the most sublime, reality as we know it is the complex synthesis of sensory information and expectation. Exploring its fascinating mechanics and remarkable implications for our lives, mental health, and society, Clark nimbly illustrates how the predictive brain sculpts all human experience. Chronic pain and mental illness are shown to involve subtle malfunctions of our unconscious predictions, pointing the way towards more effective, targeted treatments. Under renewed scrutiny, the very boundary between ourselves and the outside world dissolves, showing that we are as entangled with our environments as we are with our onboard memories, thoughts, and feelings. And perception itself is revealed to be something of a controlled hallucination.

Unveiling the extraordinary explanatory power of the predictive brain, The Experience Machine is a mesmerizing window onto one of the most significant developments in our understanding of the mind.

An essential analysis of the modern science and technology that makes our twenty-first century lives possible--a scientist's investigation into what science really does, and does not, accomplish.

We have never had so much information at our fingertips and yet most of us don't know how the world really works. This book explains seven of the most fundamental realities governing our survival and prosperity. From energy and food production, through our material world and its globalization, to risks, our environment and its future, How the World Really Works offers a much-needed reality check--because before we can tackle problems effectively, we must understand the facts.

In this ambitious and thought-provoking book we see, for example, that globalization isn't inevitable--the foolishness of allowing 70 per cent of the world's rubber gloves to be made in just one factory became glaringly obvious in 2020--and that our societies have been steadily increasing their dependence on fossil fuels, such that any promises of decarbonization by 2050 are a fairy tale. For example, each greenhouse-grown supermarket-bought tomato has the equivalent of five tablespoons of diesel embedded in its production, and we have no way of producing steel, cement or plastics at required scales without huge carbon emissions.

Ultimately, Smil answers the most profound question of our age: are we irrevocably doomed or is a brighter utopia ahead? Compelling, data-rich and revisionist, this wonderfully broad, interdisciplinary guide finds faults with both extremes. Looking at the world through this quantitative lens reveals hidden truths that change the way we see our past, present and uncertain future.

In Sharing Our Science, scientist-turned-writing teacher Brandon Brown offers an eminently useful guidebook for STEM practitioners looking to communicate their technical work to either a technical or a broader audience. Professionals are increasingly required to communicate their work through blogs, podcasts, and newsletters and to submit to traditional media. After seeing his colleagues struggle to find a writing guide that tackled the unique challenges of writing and speaking about scientific topics, Brown set out to write the definitive handbook to assist STEM students, scientists, engineers, and tech workers alike.

In this practical and relevant book, Brown uses his experience as a proven science communicator to cover three levels of writing: fundamental craft considerations, such as narrative tension, structure, sentences, and audience; unique scientific considerations, such as conveying numbers and utilizing metaphors; and finally, social considerations, such as public speaking and writing inside and outside of silos. In place of a reference manual, Brown's engaging narrative guide clarifies the fundamental principles that impact all scientific communication tasks, from white papers and slide decks to Zoom meetings and emails. Sharing Our Science represents the culmination of a lifetime of writing, research, and teaching that will enrich scientists' careers and illuminate the ways in which science is done and conveyed to the world.