Topological Complexity of Smooth Random Functions

Over the past two decades, no field of scientific inquiry has had a more striking impact across a wide array of disciplines–from biology to physics, computing to meteorology–than that known as chaos and complexity, the study of complex systems. Now astrophysicist John Gribbin draws on his expertise to explore, in prose that communicates not only the wonder but the substance of cutting-edge science, the principles behind chaos and complexity. He reveals the remarkable ways these two revolutionary theories have been applied over the last twenty years to explain all sorts of phenomena–from weather patterns to mass extinctions.Grounding these paradigm-shifting ideas in their historical context, Gribbin also traces their development from Newton to Darwin to Lorenz, Prigogine, and Lovelock, demonstrating how–far from overturning all that has gone before–chaos and complexity are the triumphant extensions of simple scientific laws. Ultimately, Gribbin illustrates how chaos and complexity perme

If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate?Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed.Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103!—and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all.How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.”Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her a

Beyond Grief explores high-style funerary sculptures and their functions during the turn of the twentieth century. Many scholars have overlooked these monuments, viewing them as mere oddities, a part

With an Introduction by Max Allan CollinsThe author of Get Carter returns to his greatest invention, a smooth-operating hardcase named Jack Carter, who is about to burn a city down in order to silence

Beyond Grief explores high-style funerary sculptures and their functions during the turn of the twentieth century. Many scholars have overlooked these monuments, viewing them as mere oddities, a part

Egypt's January 25 revolution was triggered by a Facebook page and played out both in virtual spaces and the streets. Social media serves as a space of liberation, but it also functions as an arena wh

PAPA? MAMA?Four of Japan’s hottest guys are doing their best in their mission to turn dark, macabre Sunako into a dainty young woman. Gorgeous Ranmaru is famous for his smooth way with the ladies. B

Understanding yourself is the key to dealing with—and even enjoying—the inevitable complexity of life. Irini Rockwell presents us with a powerful system for the kind of self-understanding that leads t

Most people believe that money is organic and inevitable; we forget that money is just a tool created to perform certain functions. But just as computer programmers drop out-of date tools and pick up

Twice selected for Granta’s list of Best Young British Novelists, winner of the 2007 Costa Book Award for her acclaimed novel Day (“Day is a novel of extraordinary complexity”—The New York Review of B

A vivid and revelatory novel based on actual events of the 1847 Oregon migration, A Sudden Country follows two characters of remarkable complexity and strength in a journey of survival and redemption.

In a brilliant series of books about social behavior, including The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Asylums, and Stigma, Erving Goffman has exposed all that is at stake when people meet face to face. Goffman’s work, once of the great intellectual achievements of our time, is an endlessly fascinating commentary on how we enact ourselves by our responses to and our readings of other people.From the exemplary opening essay of Interaction Ritual, “On Face-Work,” —a full account of the extraordinary repertoire of maneuvers we employ in social encounters in order to “save face”—to the final, and classic, essay “Where the Action Is,”—an examination of people in risky occupations and situations: gamblers, criminals, coal miners, stock speculators—Goffman astounds us with the unexpected richness and complexity of brief encounters between people. For Goffman, as for Freud, the extreme cases are of interest because of the light they shed on the normal: The study of the trapeze artist is wo

Tequila is a national drink of great variety and complexity, inextricably entwined with the history and culture of Mexico. Tequila is the first book in English to explore fully what has been called “t

The contributors to this revised classic incorporate autobiographical and firsthand accounts to emphasize the complexity and symbolic nature of this "velvet underground" of human sexuality.A variety o