Neil J. Smelser is university professor of sociology emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. His many books include Social Change in the Industrial Revolution, Problematics of Sociology, and Social Paralysis and Social Change. Terrorism is the most clear and present danger we confront today, yet no phenomenon is more poorly understood by policymakers, the media, and the general public. The Faces of Terrorism is the first serious interdisciplinary...

"Stephen S. Gubser, Winner of the 2017 Simons Investigator Award in Physics, Simons Foundation" Steven S. Gubser (1972–2019) was professor of physics at Princeton University. The essential beginner's guide to string theory The Little Book of String Theory offers a short, accessible, and entertaining introduction to one of the most talked-about areas of physics today. String theory has been called the "theory of everything." It seeks to describe...

"Longlisted for the 2013 Society of Biology Book Awards in General Biology" James L. Gould is professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University. Carol Grant Gould is a science writer who has published widely. Together, the Goulds have written nine earlier books, including The Animal Mind and Animal Architects. The mysterious and remarkable ways that animals navigate We know that animals cross miles of water, land, and sky with...

Katherine Freese is director of Nordita, the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, in Stockholm, and professor of physics at the University of Michigan. The inside story of the epic quest to solve the mystery of dark matter The ordinary atoms that make up the known universe-from our bodies and the air we breathe to the planets and stars-constitute only 5 percent of all matter and energy in the cosmos. The rest is known as dark matter and dark...

Paul G. Falkowski holds the Bennett L. Smith Chair in Business and Natural Resources at Rutgers University, where he studies how microbes have shaped the history of Earth. The marvelous microbes that made life on Earth possible and support our very existence For almost four billion years, microbes had the primordial oceans all to themselves. The stewards of Earth, these organisms transformed the chemistry of our planet to make it habitable for...

"Steven S. Gubser, Winner of the 2017 Simons Investigator Award in Physics, Simons Foundation" "Frans Pretorius, Winner of the 2017 New Horizons Prize in Fundamental Physics" Steven S. Gubser (1972–2019) was professor of physics at Princeton University. His books include The Little Book of String Theory (Princeton). Frans Pretorius is professor of physics at Princeton. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey. Dive into a mind-bending exploration of...

Dan Hooper is a senior scientist and the head of the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Dark Cosmos and Nature's Blueprint (both Smithsonian/Harper Collins). He lives in Oak Park, Illinois. Twitter @DanHooperAstro A new look at the first few seconds after the Big Bang-and how research into these moments continues...

Why do racing cyclists crouch low over their handlebars to go faster? Why do you fall back down when you bounce on a trampoline? And why does the refrigerator door close as if it's being pulled by something invisible? The answer is forces. Gravity, friction, gears, pulleys, levers, and magnets are all explored in this title. Readers will learn how trainee astronauts experience "zero gravity" on the aircraft known as the "vomit comet," how air resistance...

Imagine you are inside a dark closet. Everything around you looks black. You can't even see your own hands in front of your face. Why? Your hands are still there, but something important is missing-light! This in-depth look at light includes understanding light sources, incredible facts about our Sun, how light reflects off objects around us, and how our eyes use light to allow us to see. It also features topics such as shadows, making rainbows, and...

Why do we burp when we take a swig of a fizzy drink? What are air and water actually made of? And when a liquid raw egg becomes a solid fried egg, can this change of state ever be reversible? Packed with hands-on investigations, this book explores topics including, the properties of solids, liquids, and gases, how liquids become solids and how solids become liquids, how the water cycle works, why seawater is salty, and how changing states make recycling...