Formerly the domain of fiction, moving human civilization to the stars is increasingly becoming a scientific possibility -- and a necessity. Whether in the near future due to climate change and the depletion of finite resources, or in the distant future due to catastrophic cosmological events, we must face the reality that humans will one day need to leave planet Earth to survive as a species. World-renowned physicist and futurist Michio Kaku explores...

"Bestselling author David Gessner asks what kind of planet his daughter will inherit in this coast-to-coast guide to navigating climate crisis. The world is burning and the seas are rising. How do we navigate this new age of extremes? In A Traveler's Guide to the End of the World, David Gessner takes readers on an eye-opening tour of climate hotspots from the Gulf of Mexico to the burning American West to New York City to the fragile Outer Banks,...

"A guide to uncovering the mysteries of weather using close observation-decoding the ever-shifting alchemy of heat, water, and air to understand how it shapes our cities, woods, and hills"--

"One of the most stunning achievements of moral philosophy is something we take for granted: moral universalism, or the idea that every human has equal moral worth. In What We Owe the Future, Oxford philosopher William MacAskill demands that we go a step further, arguing that people not only have equal moral worth no matter where or how they live, but also no matter when they live. This idea has implications beyond the obvious (climate change) - including...

Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all. With a worldwide...

"We are addicted to prediction, desperate for certainty about the future. But the complexity of modern life won't provide that: experts in forecasting are reluctant to look more than 400 days out. History doesn't repeat itself, and even genetics won't tell you everything you want to know. Tomorrow remains uncharted territory, but Heffernan demonstrates how we can forge ahead with agility. Drawing on a wide array of people and places, Uncharted traces...

Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair’s breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger — all by the time he was thirty. The New York Times now publishes FiveThirtyEight.com, where Silver is one of the nation’s most influential political forecasters. Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish...

Set in the 23rd century, The Glass Bead Game is the story of Joseph Knecht, who has been raised in Castalia, the remote place his society has provided for the intellectual elite to grow and flourish. Since childhood, Knecht has been consumed with mastering the Glass Bead Game, which requires a synthesis of aesthetics and scientific arts, such as mathematics, music, logic, and philosophy, which he achieves in adulthood, becoming a Magister Ludi (Master...

At the heart of this book by Nobel Prize–winning immunologist and professor Peter Doherty is this striking observation: Birds detect danger to our health and the environment before we do. Following a diverse cast of bird species around the world — from tufted puffins in Puget Sound to griffon vultures in India, pigeons in East Asia, and wedge-tailed shear waters off the islands of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef — Doherty illuminates birds’...

As the sea levels rose, every street became a canal. Every skyscraper an island. For the residents of one apartment building in Madison Square, however, New York in the year 2140 is far from a drowned city. There is the market trader, who finds opportunities where others find trouble. There is the detective, whose work will never disappear --- along with the lawyers, of course. There is the internet star, beloved by millions for her airship adventures,...