HOW ART MADE THE WORLD

From Paleolithic flax to 3D knitting, a global history of textiles and the world they madeThe story of humanity is the story of textiles -- as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was sp

Explore the universe and immerse yourself in the story of our solar system, planet, and life through meteorites.Meteorites have long been seen as portents of fate and messages from the gods, their fie

Offers an introduction to how the Federalist Papers were written, the philosophical thinking that shaped the Constitution, how the framers meant the various clauses to be understood, and why they are

As a glance down any street in America quickly reveals, American women have forgotten how to dress. We chase fads, choose inappropriate materials and unattractive cuts, and waste energy tottering in h

From the sidewalk to the catwalk, there’s no shortage of proof that Americans have lost the ability to dress well. It’s not that we dress poorly on purpose; instead, we lack the fashion know-how we ne

The groundbreaking history of how climate change transformed Europe and the world, from a renowned archaeologist -- updated with a new preface on the latest climate researchThe Little Ice Age tells th

How both logical and emotional reasoning can help us live better in our post-truth worldIn a world where fake news stories change election outcomes, has rationality become futile? In The Art of Logic

How both logical and emotional reasoning can help us live better in our post-truth worldIn a world where fake news stories change election outcomes, has rationality become futile? In The Art of Logic

在資訊爆炸的時代，懂統計就是一種看穿世界的能力。本書以生活化案例帶你理解數據如何被解讀與誤解，幫助你建立清晰判斷力。從醫療、新聞到社會議題，都是一場關於「如何不被數字欺騙」的思考訓練。The "important and comprehensive" (New Yorker) guide to statistical thinkingThe age of big data has made statistical literacy more important than ever. In The Art of Statistics, David Spiegelhalter shows how to apply statistical reasoning to real-world problems. Whether we're analyzing preventative medical screening or the terrible crime sprees of serial killers, Spiegelhalter teaches us how to clarify questions, assumptions, and expectations and, most importantly, how to interpret the answers we receive. Combining the incomparable insight of an expert with the playful enthusiasm of an aficionado, The Art of Statistics is the definitive guide to the power of data. "A call to arms for greater societal data literacy . . . a reminder that there are passionate, self-aware statisticians who can argue eloquently that their discipline is needed now more than ever." -- Financial Times

Twenty-six essays discuss contemporary artists, developments in the world of museums and galleries, and how the art world is now dominated by market demands.

The author of My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World provides a close-up look at the growing phenomenon of MMPORGs (Massively MultiPlayer Online Role-Playing Games) and the subculture it h

How the tools that enabled us to overcome the uncertainty of the weather will enable us to find new answers to modern science's most pressing questions Why does your weather app say "There's a 10% chance of rain" instead of "It will be sunny tomorrow"? In large part this is due to the insight of Tim Palmer, who made uncertainty essential to the study of weather and climate. Now he wants to apply it to how we study everything else. In The Primacy of Doubt, Palmer argues that embracing the mathematics of uncertainty is vital to understanding ourselves and the universe around us. Whether we want to predict climate change or market crashes, understand how the brain is able to outpace supercomputers, or find a theory that links quantum and cosmological physics, Palmer shows how his vision of mathematical uncertainty provides new insights into some of the deepest problems in science. The result is a revolution--one that shows that power begins by embracing what we don't know.

A spellbinding exploration of the human capacity to imagine the future Our ability to think about the future is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal. In The Invention of Tomorrow, cognitive scientists Thomas Suddendorf, Jonathan Redshaw, and Adam Bulley argue that its emergence transformed humans from unremarkable primates to creatures that hold the destiny of the planet in their hands. Drawing on their own cutting-edge research, the authors break down the science of foresight, showing us where it comes from, how it works, and how it made our world. Journeying through biology, psychology, history, and culture, they show that thinking ahead is at the heart of human nature―even if we often get it terribly wrong. Incisive and expansive, The Invention of Tomorrow offers a fresh perspective on the human tale that shows how our species clawed its way to control the future.

A Turing Award-winning computer scientist and statistician shows how understanding causality has revolutionized science and will revolutionize artificial intelligenceCorrelation is not causation. This mantra, chanted by scientists for more than a century, has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. Today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, instigated by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and established causality -- the study of cause and effect -- on a firm scientific basis. His work explains how we can know easy things, like whether it was rain or a sprinkler that made a sidewalk wet; and how to answer hard questions, like whether a drug cured an illness. Pearl's work enables us to know not just whether one thing causes another: it lets us explore the world that is and the worlds that could have been. It shows us the essence of human thought and key to artificial intelligence. Anyone who wants to understand either needs The Book of Why

From one of the world’s leading economists, a grand narrative of the century that made us richer than ever, yet left us unsatisfied Before 1870, humanity lived in dire poverty, with a slow crawl of invention offset by a growing population. Then came a great shift: invention sprinted forward, doubling our technological capabilities each generation and utterly transforming the economy again and again. Our ancestors would have presumed we would have used such powers to build utopia. But it was not so. When 1870–2010 ended, the world instead saw global warming; economic depression, uncertainty, and inequality; and broad rejection of the status quo. Economist Brad DeLong's Slouching Towards Utopia tells the story of how this unprecedented explosion of material wealth occurred, how it transformed the globe, and why it failed to deliver us to utopia. Of remarkable breadth and ambition, it reveals the last century to have been less a march of progress than a slouch in the right dir

A bestselling author, neuroscientist, and computer engineer unveils a theory of intelligence that will revolutionize our understanding of the brain and the future of AI. For all of neuroscience's advances, we've made little progress on its biggest question: How do simple cells in the brain create intelligence? Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses maplike structures to build a model of the world-not just one model, but hundreds of thousands of models of everything we know. This discovery allows Hawkins to answer important questions about how we perceive the world, why we have a sense of self, and the origin of high-level thought. A Thousand Brains heralds a revolution in the understanding of intelligence. It is a big-think book, in every sense of the word.