The Fall Line


Mark T. Sullivan - 1994
    On the run from both the cartel and the FBI, Jack finds temporary refuge in the quiet of Utah’s mountains. With a new identity and surgically-altered face, he may have narrowly escaped his old life. But can he run from his own destructive nature? Bored in the anonymous safety of his new reality, Jack quickly finds himself drawn to Inez Didier, a mysterious French director documenting the high-stakes lives of the world’s most daring skiers. As Inez pulls Jack further into her work, he struggles to keep his thrill-addicted temperament in check. But when the darkest secrets of his thorny past begin to surface, Jack’s life may once again wind up in freefall… “Not many investigative reporters have the sensitivity and poetry that are exhibited in this exciting story of dare-devil skiing.”—The New York Times Book Review

PopCo


Scarlett Thomas - 2004
    She works for the huge toy company named PopCo, where she creates snooping kids' kits - KidSpy, KidTec and KidCracker. At the company conference Alice and her colleagues are brought into developing the ultimate product for the teenage girls.

An Invisible Sign of My Own


Aimee Bender - 2000
    Now, in her first novel, she builds on that early promise.Mona Gray was ten when her father contracted a mysterious illness and she became a quitter, abandoning each of her talents just as pleasure became intense. The only thing she can’t stop doing is math: She knocks on wood, adds her steps, and multiplies people in the park against one another. When Mona begins teaching math to second-graders, she finds a ready audience. But the difficult and wonderful facts of life keep intruding. She finds herself drawn to the new science teacher, who has an unnerving way of seeing through her intricately built façade. Bender brilliantly directs her characters, giving them unexpected emotional depth and setting them in a calamitous world, both fancifully surreal and startlingly familiar.

Lizzie Tempest Ruins A Viscount (The Felmont Brides Series, Book 1)


Maggie Jagger - 2012
    The noble Felmont family is infamous for both. Unfortunately, Lizzie has accidentally ruined Lord Felmont and her banker uncles are forcing her to marry him. No one ever said that Felmont males are handsome. They are famous for their long noses and their passionate natures. The only thing they all agree on is the need for one of them to marry Lizzie to keep her fortune in the family. Lord Felmont had wanted to marry for love but Lizzie has ruined his chance for happiness, and now she fears he is going to take his revenge. Lizzie shudders at the thought!

Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C


Bruce Schneier - 1993
    … The book the National Security Agency wanted never to be published." –Wired Magazine "…monumental… fascinating… comprehensive… the definitive work on cryptography for computer programmers…" –Dr. Dobb's Journal"…easily ranks as one of the most authoritative in its field." —PC Magazine"…the bible of code hackers." –The Millennium Whole Earth CatalogThis new edition of the cryptography classic provides you with a comprehensive survey of modern cryptography. The book details how programmers and electronic communications professionals can use cryptography—the technique of enciphering and deciphering messages-to maintain the privacy of computer data. It describes dozens of cryptography algorithms, gives practical advice on how to implement them into cryptographic software, and shows how they can be used to solve security problems. Covering the latest developments in practical cryptographic techniques, this new edition shows programmers who design computer applications, networks, and storage systems how they can build security into their software and systems. What's new in the Second Edition? * New information on the Clipper Chip, including ways to defeat the key escrow mechanism * New encryption algorithms, including algorithms from the former Soviet Union and South Africa, and the RC4 stream cipher * The latest protocols for digital signatures, authentication, secure elections, digital cash, and more * More detailed information on key management and cryptographic implementations

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn


Richard Hamming - 1996
    By presenting actual experiences and analyzing them as they are described, the author conveys the developmental thought processes employed and shows a style of thinking that leads to successful results is something that can be learned. Along with spectacular successes, the author also conveys how failures contributed to shaping the thought processes. Provides the reader with a style of thinking that will enhance a person's ability to function as a problem-solver of complex technical issues. Consists of a collection of stories about the author's participation in significant discoveries, relating how those discoveries came about and, most importantly, provides analysis about the thought processes and reasoning that took place as the author and his associates progressed through engineering problems.

The Magic of Math: Solving for X and Figuring Out Why


Arthur T. Benjamin - 2015
    joyfully shows you how to make nature's numbers dance."--Bill Nye (the science guy)The Magic of Math is the math book you wish you had in school. Using a delightful assortment of examples-from ice-cream scoops and poker hands to measuring mountains and making magic squares-this book revels in key mathematical fields including arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and calculus, plus Fibonacci numbers, infinity, and, of course, mathematical magic tricks. Known throughout the world as the "mathemagician," Arthur Benjamin mixes mathematics and magic to make the subject fun, attractive, and easy to understand for math fan and math-phobic alike."A positively joyful exploration of mathematics."-Publishers Weekly, starred review"Each [trick] is more dazzling than the last."-Physics World

Introduction to Logic


Harry J. Gensler - 2001
    Harry Gensler engages students with the basics of logic through practical examples and important arguments both in the history of philosophy and from contemporary philosophy. Using simple and manageable methods for testing arguments, students are led step-by-step to master the complexities of logic.The companion LogiCola instructional program and various teaching aids (including a teacher's manual) are available from the book's website: www.routledge.com/textbooks/gensler_l...

Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications


Toby Segaran - 2002
    With the sophisticated algorithms in this book, you can write smart programs to access interesting datasets from other web sites, collect data from users of your own applications, and analyze and understand the data once you've found it.Programming Collective Intelligence takes you into the world of machine learning and statistics, and explains how to draw conclusions about user experience, marketing, personal tastes, and human behavior in general -- all from information that you and others collect every day. Each algorithm is described clearly and concisely with code that can immediately be used on your web site, blog, Wiki, or specialized application. This book explains:Collaborative filtering techniques that enable online retailers to recommend products or media Methods of clustering to detect groups of similar items in a large dataset Search engine features -- crawlers, indexers, query engines, and the PageRank algorithm Optimization algorithms that search millions of possible solutions to a problem and choose the best one Bayesian filtering, used in spam filters for classifying documents based on word types and other features Using decision trees not only to make predictions, but to model the way decisions are made Predicting numerical values rather than classifications to build price models Support vector machines to match people in online dating sites Non-negative matrix factorization to find the independent features in a dataset Evolving intelligence for problem solving -- how a computer develops its skill by improving its own code the more it plays a game Each chapter includes exercises for extending the algorithms to make them more powerful. Go beyond simple database-backed applications and put the wealth of Internet data to work for you. "Bravo! I cannot think of a better way for a developer to first learn these algorithms and methods, nor can I think of a better way for me (an old AI dog) to reinvigorate my knowledge of the details."-- Dan Russell, Google "Toby's book does a great job of breaking down the complex subject matter of machine-learning algorithms into practical, easy-to-understand examples that can be directly applied to analysis of social interaction across the Web today. If I had this book two years ago, it would have saved precious time going down some fruitless paths."-- Tim Wolters, CTO, Collective Intellect

Elmore Leonard's Western Roundup #1: Bounty Hunters, Forty Lashes Less One, and Gunsights


Elmore Leonard - 1998
    Bounty Hunters, Forty Lashes Less One, and Gunsights comprise this collection of great western stories by the author of Get Shorty.

Cupidity: 50 Stupid Things People Do For Love And How To Avoid Them


Hayley DiMarco - 2010
    You really are. Most of the time. So why are you having such trouble making sense of your love life? Whether you’re single and wondering where your “one” could be hiding; head over heels in a new relationship and vowing that "this" time it’ll work; or finding that married life isn’t the thrilling adventure you’d once anticipated . . . you might be surprised to discover that the answer lies in your own ‘Cupidity’—stupid love. In this book, popular authors Hayley and Michael DiMarco identify 50 of the most common acts of Cupidity, ways to avoid them and learn from them, and some surprising things God has to say about relationships. With the help of their inside information, smart, successful love can be just around the corner.

Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos


Seth Lloyd - 2006
    This wonderfully accessible book illuminates the professional and personal paths that led him to this remarkable conclusion.All interactions between particles in the universe, Lloyd explains, convey not only energy but also information—in other words, particles not only collide, they compute. And what is the entire universe computing, ultimately? “Its own dynamical evolution,” he says. “As the computation proceeds, reality unfolds.”To elucidate his theory, Lloyd examines the history of the cosmos, posing questions that in other hands might seem unfathomably complex: How much information is there in the universe? What information existed at the moment of the Big Bang and what happened to it? How do quantum mechanics and chaos theory interact to create our world? Could we attempt to re-create it on a giant quantum computer? Programming the Universe presents an original and compelling vision of reality, revealing our world in an entirely new light.

The New Turing Omnibus: 66 Excursions In Computer Science


A.K. Dewdney - 1989
    K. Dewdney's The Turing Omnibus.Updated and expanded, The Turing Omnibus offers 66 concise, brilliantly written articles on the major points of interest in computer science theory, technology, and applications. New for this tour: updated information on algorithms, detecting primes, noncomputable functions, and self-replicating computers--plus completely new sections on the Mandelbrot set, genetic algorithms, the Newton-Raphson Method, neural networks that learn, DOS systems for personal computers, and computer viruses.Contents:1 Algorithms 2 Finite Automata 3 Systems of Logic 4 Simulation 5 Godel's Theorem 6 Game Trees 7 The Chomsky Hierarchy 8 Random Numbers 9 Mathematical Research 10 Program Correctness 11 Search Trees 12 Error-Corecting Codes 13 Boolean Logic 14 Regular Languages 15 Time and Space Complexity 16 Genetic Algorithms 17 The Random Access Machine 18 Spline Curves 19 Computer Vision 20 Karnaugh Maps 21 The Newton-Raphson Method 22 Minimum Spanning Trees 23 Generative Grammars 24 Recursion 25 Fast Multiplication 26 Nondeterminism 27 Perceptrons 28 Encoders and Multiplexers 29 CAT Scanning 30 The Partition Problem 31 Turing Machines 32 The Fast Fourier Transform 33 Analog Computing 34 Satisfiability 35 Sequential Sorting 36 Neural Networks That Learn 37 Public Key Cryptography 38 Sequential Cirucits 39 Noncomputerable Functions 40 Heaps and Merges 41 NP-Completeness 42 Number Systems for Computing 43 Storage by Hashing 44 Cellular Automata 45 Cook's Theorem 46 Self-Replicating Computers 47 Storing Images 48 The SCRAM 49 Shannon's Theory 50 Detecting Primes 51 Universal Turing Machines 52 Text Compression 53 Disk Operating Systems 54 NP-Complete Problems 55 Iteration and Recursion 56 VLSI Computers 57 Linear Programming 58 Predicate Calculus 59 The Halting Problem 60 Computer Viruses 61 Searching Strings 62 Parallel Computing 63 The Word Problem 64 Logic Programming 65 Relational Data Bases 66 Church's Thesis

The Quantum Universe: Everything That Can Happen Does Happen


Brian Cox - 2011
    Cox and Forshaw's contention? There is no need for quantum mechanics to be viewed this way. There is a lot of mileage in the 'weirdness' of the quantum world, and it often leads to confusion and, frankly, bad science. The Quantum Universe cuts through the Wu Li and asks what observations of the natural world made it necessary, how it was constructed, and why we are confident that, for all its apparent strangeness, it is a good theory.The quantum mechanics of The Quantum Universe provide a concrete model of nature that is comparable in its essence to Newton’s laws of motion, Maxwell’s theory of electricity and magnetism, and Einstein’s theory of relativity.

The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity


Steven H. Strogatz - 2012
    do it? How should you flip your mattress to get the maximum wear out of it? How does Google search the Internet? How many people should you date before settling down? Believe it or not, math plays a crucial role in answering all of these questions and more.Math underpins everything in the cosmos, including us, yet too few of us understand this universal language well enough to revel in its wisdom, its beauty — and its joy. This deeply enlightening, vastly entertaining volume translates math in a way that is at once intelligible and thrilling. Each trenchant chapter of The Joy of x offers an “aha!” moment, starting with why numbers are so helpful, and progressing through the wondrous truths implicit in π, the Pythagorean theorem, irrational numbers, fat tails, even the rigors and surprising charms of calculus. Showing why he has won awards as a professor at Cornell and garnered extensive praise for his articles about math for the New York Times, Strogatz presumes of his readers only curiosity and common sense. And he rewards them with clear, ingenious, and often funny explanations of the most vital and exciting principles of his discipline.Whether you aced integral calculus or aren’t sure what an integer is, you’ll find profound wisdom and persistent delight in The Joy of x.