Basic Books: 1466 books
Sun Moon Earth
The History of Solar Eclipses from Omens of Doom to Einstein and Exoplanets
Language: English
Release Date: September 13, 2016
With beautiful illustrations and a detailed map, Sun Moon Earth has everything you need to get ready for the next solar eclipse.
On April 8, 2024, millions of Americans will experience an awe-inspiring phenomenon: a total eclipse of the sun. In Sun Moon Earth, astronomer Tyler Nordgren illustrates...
by Ian Stewart
Language: English
Release Date: August 1, 2007
Language: English
Release Date: August 1, 2007
Mathematician Ian Stewart tells readers what he wishes he had known when he was a student. He takes up subjects ranging from the philosophical to the practical-what mathematics is and why it's worth doing, the relationship between logic and proof, the role of beauty in mathematical thinking, the future...
Moral Origins
The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame
Language: English
Release Date: May 1, 2012
From the age of Darwin to the present day, biologists have been grappling with the origins of our moral sense. Why, if the human instinct to survive and reproduce is "selfish," do people engage in self-sacrifice, and even develop ideas like virtue and shame to justify that altruism? Many...
Sperm Wars
Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles
Language: English
Release Date: January 3, 2006
Published to acclaim and controversy a decade ago, Sperm Wars is a revolutionary thesis about sex that turned centuries-old biological assumptions on their head. Evolution has programmed men to conquer and monopolize women while women, without ever knowing they are doing it, seek the best genetic...
America and the Pill
A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation
Language: English
Release Date: April 27, 2010
In 1960, the FDA approved the contraceptive commonly known as "the pill." Advocates, developers, and manufacturers believed that the convenient new drug would put an end to unwanted pregnancy, ensure happy marriages, and even eradicate poverty. But as renowned historian Elaine Tyler May...
Reinventing the Sacred
A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion
Language: English
Release Date: January 10, 2008
Consider the complexity of a living cell after 3.8 billion years of evolution. Is it more awesome to suppose that a transcendent God fashioned the cell at a stroke, or to realize that it evolved with no Almighty Hand, but arose on its own in the changing biosphere?
In this bold and fresh look...
by Pete Takeda
Language: English
Release Date: April 13, 2009
Language: English
Release Date: April 13, 2009
At some point during the inhumanly cold Himalayan winter straddling 1965 and 1966, a peculiar collection of box-shaped objects - one sprouting a six-foot, insect-like antenna - plummets nine thousand feet down the sheer flanks of a remote peak. Ripped from its moorings by an avalanche, the jumbled...
The Ravenous Brain
How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning
Language: English
Release Date: August 28, 2012
Consciousness is our gateway to experience: it enables us to recognize Van Gogh’s starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven’s Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously difficult to examine: philosophers have for centuries declared...
Supersymmetry and Beyond
From the Higgs Boson to the New Physics
Language: English
Release Date: May 14, 2013
The epic story of the quest to uncover a fully unified theory of physics, revised to reflect the possible discovery of the Higgs Boson.
The Man Who Found Time
James Hutton and the Discovery of the Earth's Antiquity
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2008
There are three men whose life's work helped free science from the strait-jacket of religion. Two of the three-Nicolaus Copernicus and Charles Darwin-are widely heralded for their breakthroughs. The third, James Hutton, is comparatively unknown, yet he profoundly changed our understanding of the earth,...
Weather
How It Works And Why It Matters
Language: English
Release Date: January 7, 2008
Scientists have delved deep into the smallest particles of matter and have extended their view to the far reaches of the universe, but still they are unable to predict the temperature five days hence. In this intriguing book, two experts in meteorology and astronomy take us on a grand tour of Earth's...
Why Marriage
The History Shaping Today's Debate Over Gay Equality
Language: English
Release Date: March 6, 2009
Angry debate over gay marriage has divided the nation as no other issue since the Vietnam War. Why has marriage suddenly emerged as the most explosive issue in the gay struggle for equality? At times it seems to have come out of nowhere-but in fact it has a history. George Chauncey offers an electrifying...
Confronting Iran
The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Next Great Crisis in the Middle East and the Next Gre
Language: English
Release Date: March 16, 2007
Iran refuses to relent in developing nuclear technology, despite U.N. sanctions. Rumors persist that Israel is drawing up plans for military strikes. Neither the emboldened Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad nor the embattled President Bush has relented in his war of words. How did we get here?...
Corpse
Nature, Forensics, And The Struggle To Pinpoint Time Of Death
Language: English
Release Date: July 30, 2013
When detectives come upon a murder victim, there's one thing they want to know above all else: When did the victim die? The answer can narrow a group of suspects, make or break an alibi, even assign a name to an unidentified body. But outside the fictional world of murder mysteries, time-of-death...