Engineering Technology

“How do I make my user stories smaller?” “What is the right size for a user story?” “What is the difference between an Epic and a Story? And where do Tasks and Sub-Tasks fit in?” Allan Kelly found himself answering these questions, and similar ones, again and again so...he sat down to write the answers and this book was born.

Most people struggle with AI because they don't know how to talk to it. This hands-on beginner's guide gives you the tools, confidence, and structure to get real results from today's most powerful AI tools, no tech skills required. The AI Workshop is your plain-language guide to mastering prompt engineering, the skill that turns vague AI requests into powerful results. Whether you're a student, business owner, creative professional, or simply curious about AI, this book shows you how to stop guessing and start getting consistent, high-quality outputs.

More than 50 years ago, John Coltrane drew the 12 musical notes in a circle and connected them with straight lines, forming a five-pointed star. Inspired by Einstein, Coltrane had put physics and geometry at the core of his music. Physicist and jazz musician Stephon Alexander returns the favor, using jazz to answer physics' most vexing questions about the past and future of the universe.

The book is an autobiographical account of five years in the childhood of naturalist Gerald Durrell. The book is divided into three sections, marking the three villas in which the family lived on the island. Apart from Gerald (the youngest) and Larry, the family comprised their widowed mother, the gun-mad Leslie, and diet-obsessed sister Margo together with Roger the dog.

The world of online business is changing fast — and in 2025, ChatGPT and AI tools are leveling the playing field for everyday entrepreneurs. Whether you’re launching your first digital product, automating client work, or scaling your side hustle, this step-by-step guide gives you everything you need to turn ideas into income using the latest AI technologies.

When South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony was asked to accept a herd of "rogue" wild elephants on his Thula Thula game reserve in Zululand, his common sense told him to refuse. But he was the herd's last chance of survival: they would be killed if he wouldn't take them. In order to save their lives, Anthony took them in. In the years that followed he became a part of their family. And as he battled to create a bond with the elephants, he came to realize that they had a great deal to teach him about life, loyalty, and freedom.

Predicting society’s present addiction to technology, our challenges with data privacy, and the dramatic increase in drug overdoses and depression that have accompanied a technology-induced lack of purpose, The Unabomber’s vision of the future has become our reality. Of course, his means were disgusting and condemnable. But his message is more important than ever. If we want to thrive in an age where automation and artificial intelligence and rapidly making humans obsolete, it is our responsibility to understand and prepare for the technological machine we are up against.

A self-professed "comprehensive anticipatory design scientist", the inventor Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was undoubtedly a visionary. Fuller's creations often bordered on the realm of science fiction, ranging from the freestanding geodesic dome to the three-wheel Dymaxion car to a bathroom requiring neither plumbing nor sewage. Yet in spite of his brilliant mind and lifelong devotion to serving mankind, Fuller's expansive ideas were often dismissed, and have faded from public memory since his death.

Want to know how AT&T's Bell Labs developed semiconductor technology - and how its leading scientists almost came to blows in the process? Want to understand how radio and television work - and why RCA drove their inventors to financial ruin and early graves? Conquering the Electron offers these stories and more, presenting each revolutionary technological advance right alongside blow-by-blow personal battles that all too often took place.

There may never be another era of science like the first half of the twentieth century, when many of the most important physicists ever to live—Marie Curie, Max Planck, Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Ernst Schrödinger, Albert Einstein, and others—came together to uncover the quantum world: a concept so outrageous and shocking, so contrary to traditional physics, that its own founders rebelled against it until the equations held up and fundamentally changed our understanding of reality. Tobias Hürter takes us back to this uniquely momentous and harrowing time.

"Understanding Systems Engineering: A Practical Guide to Today’s Technology" explores modern systems engineering with a focus on integrating disciplines to manage complex systems throughout their lifecycle. Informed by the author’s diverse experience, the book addresses challenges professionals face and offers insights into the evolving field.

As lives offline and online merge, it's easy to forget how we got here. Rise of the Machines reclaims the story of cybernetics, a control theory of man and machine. Thomas Rid delivers a portrait of our technology-enraptured era. Springing from mathematician Norbert Wiener amid the devastation of World War II, the cybernetic vision underpinned a host of myths about the future of machines. This vision radically transformed the postwar world, ushering in sweeping cultural change.

Everyone knew it was crazy to try to extract oil and natural gas buried in shale rock deep below the ground. Everyone, that is, except a few reckless wildcatters - who risked their careers to prove the world wrong. Things looked grim for American energy in 2006. Oil production was in steep decline and natural gas was hard to find. The Iraq War threatened the nation’s already tenuous relations with the Middle East. China was rapidly industrializing and competing for resources.

The grid is an accident of history and of culture, in no way intrinsic to how we produce, deliver and consume electrical power. Yet this is the system the United States ended up with, a jerry-built structure now so rickety and near collapse that a strong wind or a hot day can bring it to a grinding halt. The grid is now under threat from a new source: renewable and variable energy, which puts stress on its logics as much as its components.

In the final decades of the 19th century, three brilliant and visionary titans of America's Gilded Age - Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse - battled as each vied to create a vast and powerful electrical empire. In Empires of Light, historian Jill Jonnes portrays this extraordinary trio and their riveting and ruthless world of cutting-edge science, invention, intrigue, money, death, and hard-eyed Wall Street millionaires.

Nearly 20 years after the Agile Manifesto was first presented, the legendary Robert C. Martin (“Uncle Bob”) reintroduces Agile values and principles for a new generation - programmers and nonprogrammers alike. Martin, author of Clean Code and other highly influential software development guides, was there at Agile’s founding. Now, in Clean Agile: Back to Basics, he strips away misunderstandings and distractions that over the years have made it harder to use Agile than was originally intended.

In this comprehensive guide, authors Kelly Shortridge and Aaron Rinehart help you navigate the challenges of sustaining resilience in complex software systems by using the principles and practices of security chaos engineering. By preparing for adverse events, you can ensure they don't disrupt your ability to innovate, move quickly, and achieve your engineering and business goals.

Looking to learn Python? Python has gone to be one of the most popular programming languages in the world, and you will be one of the few people left out if you don’t add this knowledge to your arsenal. This audiobook makes learning Python simple, fast, and easy, taking away the confusion from learning a new language. It will teach you all the basics of Python, and even some of the more advanced Python concepts, taking you from beginner to intermediate Python programmer.

In the Shadow of the Moon tells the story of the most exciting and challenging years in spaceflight, with two superpowers engaged in a titanic struggle to land one of their own people on the moon. Drawing on interviews with astronauts, cosmonauts, their families, technicians, and scientists, as well as rarely seen Soviet and American government documents, the authors craft a remarkable story of the golden age of spaceflight as both an intimate human experience and a rollicking global adventure.

With his signature wit and thought-provoking insights, Neil deGrasse Tyson - one of our foremost thinkers on all things space - illuminates the past, present, and future of space exploration and brilliantly reminds us why NASA matters now as much as ever. As Tyson reveals, exploring the space frontier can profoundly enrich many aspects of our daily lives, from education systems and the economy to national security and morale.