"We are obsessed with the multiverse. From blockbuster movies Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Everything, Everywhere, All at Once to television's The Man in the High Castle and Rick and Morty, the idea that there could be an infinite number of universes holding an infinite number of possibilities captivates us. And this fascination is not new - the fascination with these repetitions dates back to the philosophers of ancient Greece....

"The never-more-necessary return of one of our most vital and eloquent voices on technology and culture, the author of the seminal Close to the Machine. The last twenty years have brought us the rise of the internet, the development of artificial intelligence, the ubiquity of once unimaginably powerful computers, and the thorough transformation of our economy and society. Through it all, Ellen Ullman lived and worked inside that rising culture of...

"Welcome to the eighth continent! As a graduate student exploring the rain forests of Australia, Meg Lowman realized that she couldn't monitor her beloved leaves using any of the usual methods. So she put together a climbing kit: she sewed a harness from an old seat belt, gathered hundreds of feet of rope, and found a tool belt for her pencils and rulers. Up she went, into the trees. Forty years later, Lowman remains one of the world's foremost arbornauts,...

It is Christmas Eve, and all the construction vehicles are finishing up work on the site, and when they leave they find that there is a special present waiting for each of them.

When Rosie is unable to invent a contraption to help one of Aunt Rose's Raucous Riveters friends, she calls on classmates Iggy Peck and Ada Twist to help.

The story of mariners' centuries-long search for ways of determining longitude that tells not only of the scientific advances but of the perseverance, pettiness, politics, & interesting anecdotes involved. Longitude is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest, and of John Harrison's forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer. Full of heroism and chicanery, brilliance and the absurd, it is...

"Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) was perhaps the most famous naturalist in the world by the end of his life-- explorer extraordinaire, co-discoverer with Darwin of the principle of natural selection, collector of thousands of species new to science, and best-selling author. Wallace had fallen into obscurity in the 20th century, largely eclipsed by Darwin, but the 2013 centennial of his death led to renewed interest and Wallace is likely to garner...

"Nikola Tesla was a major contributor to the electrical revolution that transformed daily life at the turn of the twentieth century. His inventions, patents, and theoretical work formed the basis of modern AC electricity, and contributed to the development of radio and television. Like his competitor Thomas Edison, Tesla was one of America's first celebrity scientists, enjoying the company of New York high society and dazzling the likes of Mark Twain...

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

Mark Kurlansky, the bestselling author of Cod and The Basque History of the World, here turns his attention to a common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served as currency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities,

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