Stewart Brand

What if Atlantis wasn't a myth, but an early precursor to a new age of great flooding? Across the globe, scientists and civilians alike are noticing rapidly rising sea levels, and higher and higher tides pushing more water directly into the places we live, from our most vibrant, historic cities to our last remaining traditional coastal villages. Wi...

The greatest challenge facing humankind is not climate change, or extreme inequality, or terrorism; it is our inability to think long term.   “The most important question we must ask ourselves is: Are we being good ancestors?” So said Jonas Salk, who cured polio in 1955, saving millions of lives, but refused to patent his discovery or make any mone...

A lucid translation of the well-known Taoist classic by a leading scholar-now in a Shambhala Pocket Library edition. Written more than two thousand years ago, the Tao Teh Ching, or -The Classic of the Way and Its Virtue, - is one of the true classics of the world of spiritual literature. Traditionally attributed to the legendary -Old Master, - Lao ...

The Meditations are a set of personal reflections by Marcus Aurelius. He writes about the vicissitudes of his own life and explores how to live wisely and virtuously in an unpredictable world.Part of the Macmillan Collectors Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful b...

A deluxe hardcover edition of Frank Herbert's epic masterpiece--a triumph of the imagination and one of the bestselling science fiction novels of all time. This deluxe hardcover edition of Dune includes: - An iconic new cover- Stained edges and fully illustrated endpapers- A beautifully designed poster on the interior of the jacket- A redesigned wo...

Composed at the rosy-fingered dawn of world literature almost three millennia ago, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and the yearning for home.This fresh, authoritative translation captures the beauty of this ancient poem as well a...

The former head of the Sante Fe Institute, visionary physicist Geoffrey West is a pioneer in the field of complexity science, the science of emergent systems and networks. The term “complexity” can be misleading, however, because what makes West’s discoveries so beautiful is that he has found an underlying simplicity that unites the seemingly compl...

Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, inhabited by genetically modified citizens and an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological mani...

When the First Foundation was conquered by a force Seldon had not foreseen - the overwhelming power of a single individual, a mutant called the Mule - the second Foundation was forced to reveal its existence and, infinitely worse, a portion of its power. One man understood the shifting patterns of the inhabited cosmos. This was Hari Seldon, the las...

Foundation and Empire tells the incredible story of a new breed of man who create a new force for galactic government. Thus, the Foundation hurtles into conflict with the decadent, decrepit First Empire. In this struggle for power amid the chaos of the stars, man stands at the threshold of a new, enlightened life which could easily be put aside for...

From the acclaimed author of The Information and Chaos, here is a mind-bending exploration of time travel: its subversive origins, its evolution in literature and science, and its influence on our understanding of time itself. The story begins at the turn of the previous century, with the young H. G. Wells writing and rewriting the fantastic tale t...

Robots are poised to transform today's society as completely as the Internet did twenty years ago. Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times science writer John Markoff argues that we must decide to design ourselves into our future, or risk being excluded from it altogether.In the past decade, Google introduced us to driverless cars; Apple debuted Siri...

Beowulf is a major epic of Anglo-Saxon literature, probably composed between the first half of the seventh century and the end of the first millennium. The poem was inspired by Germanic and Anglo-Saxon oral tradition recounting the exploits of Beowulf, the hero who gave his name to the poem. Here, it's transcribed as a verse epic, onto which are gr...

The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy a...

Andrew George's "masterly new translation" (The Times) of the world's first truly great work of literatureMiraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as much as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is the world’s oldest epic, predating Homer by many centuries. The story tells of Gilgamesh’s adventures with the wild man E...

The absorbing, definitive account of CrossFit's origins, its explosive grassroots growth, and its emergence as a global phenomenon.  One of the most illuminating books ever on a sports subculture, Learning to Breathe Fire combines vivid sports writing with a thoughtful meditation on what it means to be human. In the book, veteran journalist J.C. He...

One of the oldest extant works of Western literature, the Iliad is a timeless epic poem of great warriors trapped between their own heroic pride and the arbitrary, often vicious decisions of fate and the gods. Renowned scholar and acclaimed translator Peter Green captures the Iliad in all its surging thunder for a new generation of readers.Featurin...

2014 Reprint of 1955 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition. Not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. In "Homo Ludens," the classic evaluation of play that has become a "must-read" for those in game design, Dutch philosopher Johan Huizinga defines play as the central activity in flourishing societies. Like civilization, play requi...

Neil MacGregor's A History of the World in 100 Objects takes a bold, original approach to human history, exploring past civilizations through the objects that defined them. Encompassing a grand sweep of human history, A History of the World in 100 Objects begins with one of the earliest surviving objects made by human hands, a chopping tool from th...

In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fas...

There are at least two kinds of games, states James P. Carse as he begins this extraordinary book. One could be called finite; the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.Finite games are the familiar contests of everyday life; they are played in order to be won, wh...

A Wall Street Journal Best Business Book of 2012A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012In this revealing account of how the digital universe exploded in the aftermath of World War II, George Dyson illuminates the nature of digital computers, the lives of those who brought them into existence, and how code took over the world.  In the 1940s and ‘50s, a s...

A new publication compiling documentary heritage items that are inscribed on the Memory of the World Register has been launched by UNESCO and HarperCollins. Documentary treasures from 1700 BC to the present day are accompanied by background information about their worldwide significance and illustrated by high quality photographic materials.Documen...

Believe it or not, today we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species' existence. In his gripping and controversial new work, New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows that despite the ceaseless news about war, crime, and terrorism, violence has actually been in decline over long stretches of history. Exploding myths abou...

Dirt, soil, call it what you want—it's everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it's no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern ti...

A pioneering urban economist presents a myth-shattering look at the majesty and greatness of cities.America is an urban nation, yet cities get a bad rap: they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, environmentally unfriendly . . . or are they? In this revelatory book, Edward Glaeser, a leading urban economist, declares that cities are actually the healthiest, ...

A New York Times Notable Book for 2011Sometime around 1750, English entrepreneurs unleashed the astounding energies of steam and coal, and the world was forever changed. The emergence of factories, railroads, and gunboats propelled the West's rise to power in the nineteenth century, and the development of computers and nuclear weapons in the twenti...

"Sam Huntington, one of the West's most eminent political scientists, presents a challenging framework for understanding the realities of global politics in the next century. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is one of the most important books to have emerged since the end of the Cold War." --HENRY A. KISSINGERBased on the ...

A leading environmental writer looks at the unexpected effects—and possible benefits—of a shrinking, graying population  Over the last century, the world’s population quadrupled and fears of overpopulation flared, with baby booms blamed for genocide and terrorism, and overpopulation singled out as the primary factor driving global warming. Yet, sur...

Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide?In his million-copy bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the tech...

The Twin Novae battle had been one of the last of the Idiran war, and one of the most horrific: desperate to avert their inevitable defeat, the Idirans had induced not one but two suns to explode, snuffing out worlds and biospheres teeming with sentient life. They were attacks of incredible proportion -- gigadeathcrimes. But the war ended, and life...

This comprehensive medical resource, ...

With more than 1 million copies sold worldwide, The Elements is the most entertaining, comprehensive, and visually arresting book on all 118 elements in the periodic table....

From the editor of the widely praised The Landmark Thucydides, a new Landmark Edition of The Histories by Herodotus.Cicero called Herodotus "the father of history," and his only work, The Histories, is considered the first true piece of historical writing in Western literature. With lucid prose, Herodotus's account of the rise of the Persian Empire...

This sumptuously illustrated, beautifully written encyclopedia, the best book available on the topic, presents the most up-to-date information about planet Earth in a style and format that will appeal to an extremely wide range of readers. With thousands of photographs, illustrations, diagrams, and maps and a text written by a team of international...

The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks and military action.The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him towards his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him a...

This bold exploration of the cosmos ventures into intelligent star clusters and mingles among alien races for a memorable vision of infinity. Cited as a key influence by science-fiction masters such as Doris Lessing, this classic has left its mark not only in modern literature but also in the fields of social anthropology and philosophy.Olaf Staple...

The Culture--a humanoid/machine symbiotic society--has thrown up many great Game Players. One of the best is Jernau Morat Gurgeh, Player of Games, master of every board, computer and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel & incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game, a game so complex, so like life itself, tha...

The first book in Iain M. Banks's seminal science fiction series, The Culture. Consider Phlebas introduces readers to the utopian conglomeration of human and alien races that explores the nature of war, morality, and the limitless bounds of mankind's imagination.The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, p...

Historian Arthur Herman traces the roots of declinism and shows how major thinkers, past and present, have contributed to its development as a coherent ideology of cultural pessimism.From Nazism to the Sixties counterculture, from Britain's Fabian socialists to America's multiculturalists, and from Dracula and Freud to Robert Bly and Madonna, this ...

Andrew Robinson explains the interconnection between sound, symbol, and script in a succinct and absorbing text. He discusses each of the major writing systems in turn, from cuneiform and Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphs to alphabets and the scripts of China and Japan, as well as topics such as the Cherokee “alphabet” and the writing of runes. Full c...

A radical and optimistic view of the future course of human development by "the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence" (Bill Gates).At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what i...

WHY DO COMPETENT ARMIES FAIL?• Why did the American-led coalition in Iraq fail to wage a classic counter-insurgency campaign for so long after the fall of Baghdad?• Why was the sophisticated Israeli intelligence service so thoroughly surprised by the onslaught of combined Arab armies during the Yom Kippur War of 1973?• How did a dozen German U-boat...

'Journey over all the universe in a map, without the expense and fatigue of traveling, without suffering the inconveniences of heat, cold, hunger, and thirst.' --Miguel de Cervantes, in Don QuixoteFrom the earliest of times, maps have fired our imaginations and helped us make sense of our world, from the global to the very local. Head of Map Collec...

The first ever collection of Iain Banks' short fiction, this volume includes the acclaimed novella, The State of the Art. This is a striking addition to the growing body of Culture lore, and adds definition and scale to the previous works by using the Earth of 1977 as contrast. The other stories in the collection range from science fiction to horro...

Hailed by The Washington Post as "a definitive synthesis of the best editions" and by The Times of London as "a monument to Shakespearean scholarship," The Oxford Shakespeare is the ultimate anthology of the Bard's work: the most authoritative edition of the plays and poems ever published.Now, almost two decades after the original volume, Oxford is...

Now available in paperback, The Past From Above presents stunning aerial photographs of 250 of the world's foremost archaeological sites. The photographer, Georg Gerster, has been shooting ancient sites from the air for more than fifty years. In this current collection, his subjects range from the temple complex at Karnak to the Great Wall of China...

Humanity evolved in an Ice Age in which glaciers covered much of the world. But starting about 15,000 years ago, temperatures began to climb. Civilization and all of recorded history occurred in this warm period, the era known as the Holocene-the long summer of the human species. In The Long Summer, Brian Fagan brings us the first detailed record o...

In Bryson's biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To ...

Infinite in All Directions is a popularized science at its best. In Dyson's view, science and religion are two windows through which we can look out at the world around us. The book is a revised version of a series of the Gifford Lectures under the title "In Praise of Diversity" given at Aberdeen, Scotland. They allowed Dyson the license to express...

Western history would be unrecognizable had it not been for people who believed in One True God. There would have been wars, but no religious wars. There would have been moral codes, but no Commandments. Had the Jews been polytheists, they would today be only another barely remembered people, less important, but just as extinct as the Babylonians. ...

A magisterial accomplishment: both a moving description of our biosphere and a guidebook for the protection of all its species, including humankind.From one of the world’s most influential scientists (and two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning author) comes his most timely and important book yet: an impassioned call for quick and decisive action to save E...

In The Eternal Frontier, world-renowned scientist and historian Tim Flannery tells the unforgettable story of the geological and biological evolution of the North American continent, from the time of the asteroid strike that ended the age of dinosaurs 65 million years ago, to the present day. Flannery describes the development of North America's de...

Martin Ferguson Smith's work on Lucretius is both well known and highly regarded. However, his 1969 translation of De Rerum Natura--long out of print--is virtually unknown. Readers will share our excitement in the discovery of this accurate and fluent prose rendering. For this edition, Professor Smith provides a revised translation, new Introductio...

Ninth Edition Conceptual Physics author Paul G. Hewitt. Physics is a study in physical science and is considered a basic science. It is the study of motion, forces, energy, matter, heat, sound, light, and the inside of atoms....

In the tradition of David Macaulay's The Way Things Work, this popular-science book--a unique collaboration between a world-renowned molecular biologist and an equally talented artist--explains how life grows, develops, reproduces, and gets by. Full color.From the Hardcover edition....

Most people are baffled by how computers work and assume that they will never understand them. What they don't realize—and what Daniel Hillis's short book brilliantly demonstrates—is that computers' seemingly complex operations can be broken down into a few simple parts that perform the same simple procedures over and over again. Computer wizard Hi...

You can find an alternative cover for this ISBN here.Thucydides called his account of two decades of war between Athens and Sparta "possession for all time, " and indeed it is the first and still most famous work in the Western historical tradition. Considered essential reading for generals, statesmen, and liberally educated citizens for more than ...

Used by both the U.S. Forest and Park Services, this manual explains how to plan, build, design, and maintain trails....

The international sensation Iain M. Banks offers readers a deeply imaginative, wittily satirical tale, proving once again that he is "a talent to be reckoned with" ("Locus"). In Excession, the Culture's espionage and dirty tricks section orders Diplomat Byr Gen-Hofoen to steal the soul of a long-dead starship captain. By accepting the mission, Byr ...

One hundred years after H. G. Wells visited the future in The Time Machine, Freeman Dyson marshals his uncommon gifts as a scientist and storyteller to take us once more to that ever-closer, ever-receding time to come. The stories he tells - about "Napoleonic" versus "Tolstoyan" styles of doing science; the coming era of radioneurology and radiotel...

What increasingly affects all of us, whether professional planners or individuals preparing for a better future, is not the tangibles of life--bottom-line numbers, for instance--but the intangibles: our hopes and fears, our beliefs and dreams. Only stories--scenarios--and our ability to visualize different kinds of futures adequately capture these ...

Literary critic Harold Bloom's The Western Canon is more than a required reading list—it is a vision. Infused with a love of learning, compelling in its arguments for a unifying written culture, it argues brilliantly against the politicization of literature and presents a guide to the great works of the western literary tradition and essential writ...

"Refreshingly broad-brush in its approach...this history provides the big picture."—The Christian Science Monitor. Written from a consciously anti-enthnocentric approach, this fascinating work is a survey of the civilizations of the modern world in terms of the broad sweep and continuities of history, rather than the "event-based" technique of most...

Now revised and expanded, this edition of the splendidly detailed and lively history of the Middle Ages contains more than 30 percent new material....

The Rise of the West, winner of the National Book Award for history in 1964, is famous for its ambitious scope and intellectual rigor. In it, McNeill challenges the Spengler-Toynbee view that a number of separate civilizations pursued essentially independent careers, and argues instead that human cultures interacted at every stage of their history....

For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future -- to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in th...

This one thousand year history of the civilization of western Europe has already been recognized in France as a scholarly contribution of the highest order and as a popular classic. Jacques Le Goff has written a book which will not only be read by generations of students and historians, but which will delight and inform all those interested in the ...

What would you see if your vision could encompass as expanse of one billion light years? Or if you could peer inside the microscopic realm of the atom? Powers of Ten shows you. In fotry-two consecutive scenes, each at a different "power of ten" level of magnification, you'll travel from the breathtakingly vast to the extraordinarily small....

This new edition of the highly acclaimed study on the causes of war has been expanded and updated to include a complete discussion of World War II and the road towards nuclear war. Analyzing all international wars since 1700, this widely quoted work solves the riddle of why some wars are long and some are short, and demonstrates how the outbreak of...

Offers guidance on the use of historical analogies in clarifying a problem, defining basic objectives, and making a decision....

Previously published in three parts, The Peace War, Marooned in Realtime, and The Ungoverned, this is a marvelous extrapolative tale, to which no summary can do justice, with a gripping blend of high-tech razzle-dazzle and good old-fashioned murder mystery--all spiced with . . . the time-travel theme.--Kirkus Review....

An original history of man's greatest adventure: his search to discover the world around him....

“A manifesto of sorts for anyone who makes art [and] cares for it.” —Zadie Smith“The best book I know of for talented but unacknowledged creators. . . . A masterpiece.” —Margaret Atwood“No one who is invested in any kind of art . . . can read The Gift and remain unchanged.” —David Foster WallaceBy now a modern classic, The Gift is a brilliantly orc...

At the core of A Pattern Language is the philosophy that in designing their environments people always rely on certain ‘languages,’ which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a formal system which gives them coherence.This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable m...

Feminist Literature 60's Women's Issues - Health Fitness. This book was one of the Feminists Movement bibles- instrumental in changing the doctor patient relationship between a woman and her health care providers. Education about the issues provided the catalyst in tipping the balance of power in favor of the woman purchasing medical advice or trea...

Text: English, German (translation)...

Frederic Lane has achieved what is the often unfulfilled dream of every historian who has devoted his entire work to the exploration of partial aspects of a single broad subject: he has given us a comprehensive, thoughtful, readable, beautifully illustrated general history of Venice from the origins to the beginning of decline.--'Speculum.'...

Drawing from Eastern and Western literatures, Heinrich Zimmer presents a selection of stories linked together by their common concern for the problem of our eternal conflict with the forces of evil. Beginning with a tale from the Arabian Nights, this theme unfolds in legends from Irish paganism, medieval Christianity, the Arthurian cycle, and early...

Includes "Oedipus the King", "Oedipus at Colonus" and "Antigone"....

In this classic work that continues to inspire its many readers, Jim Lovelock puts forward his idea that life on earth functions as a single organism. Written for non-scientists, Gaia is a journey through time and space in search of evidence with which to support a new and radically different model of our planet. In contrast to conventional belief ...