Engineering Technology

In this scientifically informed account of the changes occurring in the world over the last century, award-winning broadcaster and natural historian Sir David Attenborough shares a lifetime of wisdom and a hopeful vision for the future.

In the early 1990s, Motorola, the legendary American technology company, developed a revolutionary satellite system called Iridium that promised to be its crowning achievement. Light-years ahead of anything previously put into space, and built on technology developed for Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars", Iridium's constellation of 66 satellites in polar orbit meant that no matter where you were on Earth, at least one satellite was always overhead, and you could call Tibet from Fiji without a delay and without your call ever touching a wire.

Galileo Galilei was the foremost scientist of his day. Though he never left Italy, his inventions and discoveries were heralded around the world. His telescopes allowed him to reveal the heavens and enforce the astounding argument that the earth moves around the sun. For this belief, he was brought before the Holy Office of the Inquisition, accused of heresy, and forced to spend his last years under house arrest.

Through clear-eyed essays and vibrant conversations, infused with data and poetry, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson guides us through solutions and possibilities at the nexus of science, policy, culture, and justice. Visionary farmers and financiers, architects and advocates, help us conjure a flourishing future, one worth the effort it will take—from every one of us, with whatever we have to offer—to create.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, long-suppressed information has emerged on Heisenberg’s role in the Nazi atomic bomb project. In Beyond Uncertainty, Cassidy interprets this and other previously unknown material within the context of his vast research and tackles the vexing questions of a scientist’s personal responsibility and guilt when serving an abhorrent military regime.

The world is never finished catching up with Vaclav Smil. In his latest and perhaps most digestible book, Invention and Innovation, the prolific author—a favorite of Bill Gates—pens an insightful and fact-filled jaunt through the history of human invention. Impatient with the hype that so often accompanies innovation, Smil offers in this book a clear-eyed corrective to the overpromises that accompany everything from new cures for diseases to AI.

Long before Margaret O'Mara became one of our most consequential historians of the American-led digital revolution, she worked in the White House of Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the earliest days of the commercial Internet. There, she saw firsthand how deeply intertwined Silicon Valley was with the federal government - and always had been - and how shallow the common understanding of the secrets of the Valley's success actually was.

A Bold Vision for Humanity’s Future What if the next giant leap for mankind wasn’t to Mars—but to Titan? In Mission Titan: The Next Giant Leap for Mankind, Gary Covella, Ph.D. unveils a groundbreaking vision for human exploration of Saturn’s enigmatic moon, Titan. This is not just a story of science and engineering; it’s a tale of ambition, innovation, and the unyielding human spirit that dares to reach beyond the stars. The Allure of Titan Titan, with its thick atmosphere, methane lakes, and potential for prebiotic chemistry, has long captivated scientists and dreamers alike. But...

Elisabeth Tova Bailey tells the intimate and inspiring story of her year-long encounter with a snail. While an illness keeps her bedridden, she becomes an astute and amused observer of the snail's surprising nocturnal adventures as it lives in a flowerpot on her nightstand. Intrigued by the snail’s clear decision making abilities, hydraulic locomotion, mysterious courtship, and molluscan anatomy, Bailey takes the listener deep into the life of this tiny amazing animal. With wit and grace, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating recounts a remarkable journey of human and gastropod survival and resilience, and shows how the natural world illuminates our own human existence. Winner of the William Saroyan International Prize for Nonfiction, the John Burrough Medal Award for Natural History, and a National Outdoor Book Award. If you enjoyed Wesley the Owl, The Guest Cat, and Marley & Me, you'll enjoy this unique interspecies audiobook listen.

"Ants are the most warlike of all animals, with colony pitted against colony.... Their clashes dwarf Waterloo and Gettysburg", writes Edward O. Wilson in his most finely observed work in decades. In a myrmecological tour to such far-flung destinations as Mozambique and New Guinea, the Gulf of Mexico's Dauphin Island and even his parents' overgrown yard back in Alabama, Wilson thrillingly evokes his nine-decade-long scientific obsession with more than 15,000 ant species.

In the most authoritative book ever written about Apollo, David Whitehouse reveals the true drama behind the mission, telling the story in the words of those who took part - based around exclusive interviews with the key players. This enthralling book takes us from the early rocket pioneers to the shock America received from the Soviets' launch of the first satellite, Sputnik; from the race to put the first person into space, through President Kennedy's enthusiasm and later doubts, to the astronauts' intense competition to leave the first footprint.

In Rust journalist Jonathan Waldman travels from Key West, Florida, to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to meet the colorful and often reclusive people concerned with corrosion. He sneaks into an abandoned steelworks with a brave artist and nearly gets kicked out of Can School. Across the Arctic he follows a massive high-tech robot, hunting for rust in the Alaska pipeline.

Are you curious about the future of computing but confused about where to start? Are you fascinated by the quantum buzz but intimidated by dense academic jargon? I'm here to guide you through the fascinating universe of quantum tech, in the simplest way possible. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, software developer, eager student, or an innovator at heart, this book is tailored for minds like yours. I've translated qubits, quantum gates, and superposition in a refreshingly easy way, so you don't need a PhD to come along for the ride.

In Archaeology from Space, Sarah Parcak shows the evolution, major discoveries, and future potential of the young field of satellite archaeology. From surprise advancements after the declassification of spy photography, to a new map of the mythical Egyptian city of Tanis, she shares her field's biggest discoveries, revealing why space archaeology is not only exciting, but urgently essential to the preservation of the world's ancient treasures.

Asked to name a great physicist, most people would mention Newton or Einstein, Feynman or Hawking. But ask a physicist and there’s no doubt that James Clerk Maxwell will be near the top of the list. Maxwell, an unassuming Victorian Scotsman, explained how we perceive color. He uncovered the way gases behave. And, most significantly, he transformed the way physics was undertaken in his explanation of the interaction of electricity and magnetism, revealing the nature of light and laying the groundwork for everything from Einstein’s special relativity to modern electronics.

The most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural England, when workers known as the Luddites rose up rather than starve at the hands of factory owners who were using automated machines to erase their livelihoods. The Luddites organized guerrilla raids to smash those machines—on punishment of death—and won the support of Lord Byron, enraged the Prince Regent, and inspired the birth of science fiction. This all-but-forgotten class struggle brought nineteenth-century England to its knees.

As Carl Sagan did for astronomy and Brian Green did for cosmology, Walter Lewin takes listeners on a marvelous journey in For the Love of Physics, opening our eyes as never before to the amazing beauty and power with which physics can reveal the hidden workings of the world all around us. "I introduce people to their own world," writes Lewin, "the world they live in and are familiar with but don't approach like a physicist - yet."

Growing up in California, J. Craig Venter didn't appear to have much of a future. An unremarkable student, he nearly flunked out of high school. After being drafted into the army, he enlisted in the Navy and went to Vietnam, where the life-and-death struggles he encountered as a medic piqued his interest in science and medicine. After pursuing his advanced degrees, Venter quickly established himself as a brilliant and outspoken scientist.

In her memoir All That Remains, internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist Dame Sue Black recounted her life lived eye to eye with the Grim Reaper. During the course of it, she offered a primer on the basics of identifying human remains, plenty of insights into the fascinating processes of death, and a sober, compassionate understanding of its inescapable presence in our existence. Now in this book, Black builds on that memoir, taking us on a guided tour of the human skeleton and explaining how each person's life history is revealed in their bones.

Edward O. Wilson - winner of two Pulitzer prizes, champion of biodiversity, and Faculty Emeritus at Harvard University - is arguably one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. Yet his celebrated career began not with an elite education but from an insatiable curiosity about the natural world and drive to explore its mysteries. Called "one of the finest scientific memoirs ever written" by the Los Angeles Times, Naturalist is a wise and personal account of Wilson's growth as a scientist and the evolution of the fields he helped define.