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Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order by Steven H. Strogatz
Category: Science | Series: Penguin Press Science Ser.
Why do crickets harmonize together in choruses on a summer night? What makes the moon spin precisely in sync with its orbit? Why do audiences clap simultaneously? What made the Millennium Bridge wobble? The answer in sync. The tendency to synchronize is one of the most far-reaching drives in the univers ...Show more
Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home by James Tiptree Jr.
Category: Science Fiction | Series: Penguin Science Fiction Ser.
'Unquestionably one of the brightest-burning talents in the constellation of science fiction' - The New York Times Written under the pseudonym James Tiptree Jr., the pioneering and outlandish tales of Alice B. Sheldon are some of the greatest science fiction short stories of the twentieth century, telli ...Show more
The Ark Sakura by Kobo Abe
Category: Sci-fi & Fantasy | Series: Penguin Science Fiction Ser.
In anticipation of a coming nuclear apocalypse, Mole has converted a huge underground quarry into an 'ark'. While searching for his crew, he falls for the tricks of a wily insect dealer and his friends. In the surreal drama that ensues, the ark is invaded by first a gang of youths and then a sinister gr ...Show more
The Blank Slate - The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker
Category: Science | Series: Penguin Press Science Ser.
In the past century many people have assumed that we are shaped by our environment: a blank slate waiting to be inscribed by our upbringing and culture, with innate abilities playing little part. Steven Pinker's profound and essential book shows that this view denies the heart of our being: human nature ...Show more
The Character of Physical Law by Richard P. Feynman
Category: Science | Series: Penguin Press Science Ser.
A series of classic lectures, delivered in 1960 and recorded for the BBC. This is Feynman's unique take on the problems and puzzles that lie at the heart of physical theory - with Newton's Law of Gravitation; on whether time can ever go backwards; on maths as the supreme language of nature. This collect ...Show more
The Colour Out of Space by H. P. Lovecraft
Category: Science Fiction | Series: Penguin Science Fiction Ser.
In the deep glens of Massachusetts, in the wild hills of Vermont, and in Australia's sandy wastes, unfathomable things lurk. Things that shine with an unnatural light, that speak and buzz strangely in the night, that prowl in the mind. Things not of our Earth. Widely considered to be the most significan ...Show more
The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age by Stanislaw Lem
Category: Science Fiction | Series: Penguin Science Fiction Ser.
Stanislaw Lem is perhaps the most original and influential European science-fiction writer of the twentieth century. His ornate, phantasmagorical writing probes the furthest reaches of the universe while remaining deeply and particularly human. The Cyberiad, one of Lem's most beloved works, follows the ...Show more
The Diversity of Life by Edward O. Wilson
Category: Science & Natural History | Series: Penguin Press Science Ser.
"Not since Darwin has an author so lifted the science of ecology with insight and delightful imagery" - Richard Dawkins. In this book a master scientist tells the great story of how life on earth evolved. E.O. Wilson eloquently describes how the species of the world became diverse, and why the threat to ...Show more
The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch
Category: Fiction | Series: Penguin Science Ser.
A synthesis of unifying ideas arising from quantum theory, the theory of computation, epistemology and the theory of evolution, this book explores the deep connections between the progress of knowledge of the world and the process of change in the world itself.
The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene
Category: Science | Series: Penguin Press Science Ser.
From Brian Greene, one of the world's leading physicists, comes a grand tour of the universe that makes us look at reality in a completely different way. Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a dir ...Show more
The Hair Carpet Weavers by Andreas Eschbach
Category: Science Fiction | Series: Penguin Science Fiction Ser.
In a distant universe, since the beginning of time, workers have spent their lives weaving intricate carpets from the hair of women and girls. But why? Andreas Eschbach's mysterious, poignant space opera explores the absurdity of work and of life itself. 'A novel of ideas that evokes complex emotions th ...Show more
The Mind of God by Paul C.W. Davies
Category: Fiction | Series: Penguin Press Science Ser.
This sequel to God and the New Physics explores the fascinating questions of modern physics such as why does maths, an abstract system of logic invented by man, prove to be so useful in understanding the laws of nature? And is the existence of intelligent life a random chance or in some sense an inevita ...Show more