And the trailblazing mathematicians who devoted their lives to taming numbers come to life in Brooks's telling. Here are ancient Egyptian priests, Babylonian tax officials, the Apollo astronauts, the hobbyist who cracked a mapmaking puzzle that had stumped both NASA and U.S. Geological Survey, and the MIT professor who invented the infrastructure of the online world. Their stories clearly demonstrate that the invention of mathematics is every bit as important to the human species as the discovery of fire. First page to last, The Art of More brings mathematics back into the heart of what it means to be human.

    In A Little Book about the Big Bang, physicist and writer Tony Rothman guides expert and uninitiated readers alike through the most compelling mysteries surrounding the nature and origin of the universe.Cosmologists are busy these days, actively researching dark energy, dark matter, and quantum gravity, all at the foundation of our understanding of space, time, and the laws governing the universe. Enlisting thoughtful analogies and a step-by-step approach, Rothman breaks down what is known and what isn't and details the pioneering experimental techniques scientists are bringing to bear on riddles of nature at once utterly basic and stunningly complex. In Rothman's telling, modern cosmology proves to be an intricate web of theoretical predictions confirmed by exquisitely precise observations, all of which make the theory of the big bang one of the most solid edifices ever constructed in the history of science. At the same time, Rothman is careful to distinguish established physics from speculation, and in doing so highlights current controversies and avenues of future exploration.The idea of the big bang is now almost a century old, yet with each new year comes a fresh enigma. That is scientific progress in a nutshell: every groundbreaking discovery, every creative explanation, provokes new and more fundamental questions. Rothman takes stock of what we have learned and encourages readers to ponder the mysteries to come.

    Army doctors to infect themselves with yellow fever virus in Cuba?• How did an English farmer become the first smallpox vaccinator?• What led to the first human-to-human blood transfusion in the eighteenth century?• Who was the first boy to be revived by a defibrillator, and how did that lead to the launch of CPR?• Could a woman force cautious doctors to implant a new, untested pacemaker in time to save her husband’s life?• How did a fifteen-year-old boy become a victim of AIDS in 1968, decades before the virus even had a name?Most readers will recognize these renowned health solutions. What makes this book so compelling is how the cases that prompted such groundbreaking innovations have considerably affected longevity and quality of human life for generations.