Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt wrote the first edition of this influential book in 1999 to help their clients create better software and rediscover the joy of coding. These lessons have helped a generation of programmers examine the very essence of software development. Now, 20 years later, this new edition re-examines what it means to be a modern programmer. Topics range from personal responsibility and career development to architectural techniques for keeping your code flexible and easy to adapt and reuse.

Norman Davies captures it all - the rise and fall of Rome, the sweeping invasions of Alaric and Atilla, the Norman Conquests, the Papal struggles for power, the Renaissance and the Reformation, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Europe's rise to become the powerhouse of the world, and its eclipse in our own century, following two devastating World Wars.

In 1945, the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four million strong, 5,000 nuclear-tipped missiles, and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward, the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the 20th century.

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, 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.

In SPQR, world-renowned classicist Mary Beard narrates the unprecedented rise of a civilization that even 2,000 years later still shapes many of our most fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury, and beauty.