Physics

Based on the newly released personal letters of Albert Einstein, Walter Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos....

This landmark book is for those of us who prefer words to equations; this is the story of the ultimate quest for knowledge, the ongoing search for the secrets at the heart of time and space....

The idea that “thoughts become things” has become a meme in popular culture. It’s held as a firm proposition in metaphysics, and some spiritual teachers ascribe infinite powers to the mind....

Acclaimed writer and scientist Leonard Mlodinow shows us how randomness, chance, and probability reveal a tremendous amount about our daily lives....

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is essential listening for understanding the history, philosophy, and evolution of science....

No subject is bigger than reality itself, and nothing is more challenging to understand, since what counts as reality is undergoing continual revision and has been for centuries....

In Beyond Biocentrism, acclaimed biologist Robert Lanza and astronomer Bob Berman take the listener on an intellectual thrill ride....

This is the origin of and the reason for A Briefer History of Time: its author's wish to make its content more accessible to readers, as well as to bring it up-to-date....

In Beyond Infinity, musician, chef, and mathematician Eugenia Cheng takes listeners on a startling journey from math at its most elemental to its loftiest abstractions....

For more than 30 years, Richard P. Feynman's three-volume Lectures on Physics has been known worldwide as the classic resource for students and professionals alike....

Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous evolutionary biologist, presents a gorgeously lucid, science book examining some of the nature’s most fundamental questions....

There was a time when “universe” meant all there is. Everything....

The atomic bomb was the unnecessary product of mistrust and deceit between World War II allies - resulting in a threat of nuclear war that still haunts us today. Peter Watson recounts this pulse-pounding story of military overreach, which led to the development of an unnecessary weapon that, once it existed, was inevitably going to be deployed. He shows how politicians fatally failed to understand the nature of atomic science and, in so doing, needlessly exposed the world to great danger - a danger that is still very much with us today. 

The galaxy, the multiverse, and the history of astronomy are explored in this engaging compilation of cosmological "tales" by multiple award-winning science writer Marcia Bartusiak. In 32 concise and engrossing essays, the author provides a deeper understanding of the nature of the universe and those who strive to uncover its mysteries. Bartusiak shares the back stories for many momentous astronomical discoveries, including the contributions of such pioneers as Beatrice Tinsley and her groundbreaking research in galactic evolution.

Using Australia as a springboard, this book explores the science in folk history. It looks at ancient tales and traditions that may in all probability be rooted in scientifically verifiable fact and can be explored via geological evidence, such as the biblical flood. Nowadays the majority of our historical knowledge comes from the written word, but in The Edge of Memory, Patrick Nunn explores the largely untapped resource of the collective human memory that is held in stories. This important book explores the wider implications for our knowledge of how human society has developed through the millennia. 

The hunt for the Higgs particle has involved the biggest, most expensive experiment ever. So exactly what is this particle? Why does it matter so much? What does it tell us about the universe? Was finding it really worth all the effort? The short answer is yes. The Higgs field is proposed as the way in which particles gain mass - a fundamental property of matter. It's the strongest indicator yet that the Standard Model of physics really does reflect the basic building blocks of our universe. Little wonder the hunt and discovery of this new particle produced such intense media interest.

In When the Uncertainty Principle Goes to 11, physicist Philip Moriarty explains the mysteries of the universe's inner workings via drum beats and feedback: You'll discover how the Heisenberg uncertainty principle comes into play with every chugging guitar riff, what wave interference has to do with Iron Maiden, and why metalheads in mosh pits behave just like molecules in a gas.  

In the years following her role as the lead author of the international best seller, Limits to Growth - the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet - Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem-solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute's Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world....