Basic Books: 1466 books
Also Human
The Inner Lives of Doctors
Language: English
Release Date: June 12, 2018
A psychologist's stories of doctors who seek to help others but struggle to help themselves
From ER and M*A*S*H to Grey's Anatomy and House, the medical drama endures for good reason: we're fascinated by the people we must trust when we are most vulnerable. In Also Human, vocational psychologist...
The Spirit of Vatican II
A History of Catholic Reform in America
Language: English
Release Date: March 1, 2011
In 1962 a group of Catholic leaders traveled to Rome, charged by Pope John XXIII with the task of making the gospel of Christ relevant in a modern world. The Second Vatican Council transformed the lives of Catholics through sweeping reforms--yet its effect on the daily lives of practicing Catholics...
Life's Greatest Secret
The Race to Crack the Genetic Code
Language: English
Release Date: July 7, 2015
Everyone has heard of the story of DNA as the story of Watson and Crick and Rosalind Franklin, but knowing the structure of DNA was only a part of a greater struggle to understand life's secrets. Life's Greatest Secret is the story of the discovery and cracking of the genetic code, the thing that...
by Ian Stewart
Language: English
Release Date: April 27, 2010
Language: English
Release Date: April 27, 2010
Opening another drawer in his Cabinet of Curiosities, renowned mathematics professor Ian Stewart presents a new medley of games, paradoxes, and riddles in Professor Stewart's Hoard of Mathematical Treasures. With wit and aplomb, Stewart mingles casual puzzles with grander forays into ancient and modern...
by Ian Stewart
Language: English
Release Date: June 7, 2011
Language: English
Release Date: June 7, 2011
"Will this book do for biomathematics what Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time did for relativity and cosmology? Time will tell. Until then, the distinguished author's friendly, well-argued style should guarantee its popular success." --Times Higher Education Supplement (London)
Biologists...
by Ian Stewart
Language: English
Release Date: January 6, 2009
Language: English
Release Date: January 6, 2009
Knowing that the most exciting math is not taught in school, Professor Ian Stewart has spent years filling his cabinet with intriguing mathematical games, puzzles, stories, and factoids intended for the adventurous mind. This book reveals the most exhilarating oddities from Professor Stewart's legendary...
Calculating the Cosmos
How Mathematics Unveils the Universe
Language: English
Release Date: October 25, 2016
A prize-winning popular science writer uses mathematical modeling to explain the cosmos.
In Calculating the Cosmos, Ian Stewart presents an exhilarating guide to the cosmos, from our solar system to the entire universe. He describes the architecture of space and time, dark matter and dark energy,...
Monsters
The Hindenburg Disaster and the Birth of Pathological Technology
Language: English
Release Date: September 8, 2015
"Oh, the humanity!" Radio reporter Herbert Morrison's words on witnessing the destruction of the Hindenburg are etched in our collective memory. Yet, while the Hindenburg-like the Titanic-is a symbol of the technological hubris of a bygone era, we seem to have forgotten the lessons that...
by Nadia Comaneci
Language: English
Release Date: April 28, 2009
Language: English
Release Date: April 28, 2009
If there were such a thing as an "elder" stateswoman in women's gymnastics today, Nadia Comaneci would win that title as readily as she once won gold medals. Olga Korbut came before her, and many other medalists would follow, but none has ever been as dominant in winning the hearts of millions...
Churchill's Bomb
How the United States Overtook Britain in the First Nuclear Arms Race
Language: English
Release Date: October 8, 2013
Perhaps no scientific breakthrough has shaped the course of human history as much as the harnessing of the atom. Yet the twentieth century might have turned out entirely differently had this powerful technology stayed under the control of Great Britain, whose scientists spearheaded the Allies' nuclear...
To Cherish the Life of the World
The Selected Letters of Margaret Mead
Language: English
Release Date: April 29, 2009
Often far from home and loved ones, famed anthropologist Margaret Mead was a prolific letterwriter, always honing her writing skills and her ideas. To Cherish the Life of the World presents, for the first time, her personal and professional correspondence, which spanned sixty years. These letters...
No Friends but the Mountains
Dispatches from the World's Violent Highlands
Language: English
Release Date: March 7, 2017
A veteran war correspondent journeys to remote mountain communities across the globe-from Albania and Chechnya to Nepal and Colombia-to investigate why so many conflicts occur at great heights
Mountainous regions are home to only ten percent of the world's population yet host a strikingly disproportionate...
Our Final Hour
A Scientist's Warning
Language: English
Release Date: March 17, 2009
Bolstered by unassailable science and delivered in eloquent style, Our Final Hour's provocative argument that humanity has a mere 5050 chance of surviving the next century has struck a chord with readers, reviewers, and opinion-makers everywhere. Rees's vision of our immediate future is both a work...
Lives of the Planets
A Natural History of the Solar System
Language: English
Release Date: August 1, 2007
Lives of the Planets describes a scientific field in the midst of a revolution. Planetary science has mainly been a descriptive science, but it is becoming increasingly experimental. The space probes that went up between the 1960s and 1990s were primarily generalists-they collected massive amounts...