Contributors include Steven Weinberg, Peter Galison, John Maynard Smith, and Frank Wilczek.

    Graphs are not included, but both the graphs and the concepts behind them are explained; only basic math is included, and you can even skim over the math and still come away with an understanding of the concepts; statistics is not included at all.BASIC ECONOMICS FOR STUDENTS AND NON-STUDENTS ALIKE is an easy way to learn concepts relating to economics and the economy. It is a product of thousands of hours spent online, teaching basic concepts in economics to hundreds of students worldwide over the course of the past several years. From back and forth communications, I have discovered the explanations for the concepts that students find easiest to understand, as well as the areas that most often get misunderstood and under-emphasized.I have worked with students located throughout the United States and from many different countries, on six different continents; students from many different school systems with different points of emphasis; students with different levels of knowledge, different backgrounds, and different levels of interest in the subject. I have received numerous comments and testimonials regarding the teaching methods that I incorporate in BASIC ECONOMICS FOR STUDENTS AND NON-STUDENTS ALIKE.The subject matter included in BASIC ECONOMICS FOR STUDENTS AND NON-STUDENTS ALIKE comes from a compilation of many different textbooks at the introductory and intermediate levels. My goal was to include every subject in economics that normally will be found in an introductory level textbook of economics, microeconomics, or macroeconomics. Since different school systems, different classroom instructors, and different textbooks cover a slightly different combination of topics, BASIC ECONOMICS FOR STUDENTS AND NON-STUDENTS ALIKE is a little more comprehensive than most single introductory textbooks of economics. Some of the topics will be found in introductory classes in some schools, but in intermediate-level classes in other schools.

    The first half of the book deals with classical physical optics; the second principally with the quantum nature of light. Chapters 1 and 2 treat the propagation of light waves, including the concepts of phase and group velocities, and the vectorial nature of light. Chapter 3 applies the concepts of partial coherence and coherence length to the study of interference, and Chapter 4 takes up multiple-beam interference and includes Fabry-Perot interferometry and multilayer-film theory. Diffraction and holography are the subjects of Chapter 5, and the propagation of light in material media (including crystal and nonlinear optics) are central to Chapter 6. Chapters 7 and 8 introduce the quantum theory of light and elementary optical spectra, and Chapter 9 explores the theory of light amplification and lasers. Chapter 10 briefly outlines ray optics in order to introduce students to the matrix method for treating optical systems and to apply the ray matrix to the study of laser resonators.Many applications of the laser to the study of optics are integrated throughout the text. The author assumes students have had an intermediate course in electricity and magnetism and some advanced mathematics beyond calculus. For classroom use, a list of problems is included at the end of each chapter, with selected answers at the end of the book.

    Throughout these essays, which range from the creation of the Royal Society in the seventeenth century to the scientific inquiries of the Romantic generation to recent books by Daniel Kahneman and Malcolm Gladwell, he seeks to “break down the barriers that separate science from other sources of human wisdom.”  Dyson discusses twentieth-century giants of physics such as Richard Feynman, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Paul Dirac, and Steven Weinberg, many of whom he knew personally, as well as Winston Churchill’s pursuit of nuclear weapons for Britain and Wernher von Braun’s pursuit of rockets for space travel. And he takes a provocative, often politically incorrect approach to some of today’s most controversial scientific issues: global warming, the current calculations of which he thinks are probably wrong; the future of biotechnology, which he expects to dominate our lives in the next half-century as the tools to design new living creatures become available to everyone; and the flood of information in the digital age. Dyson offers fresh perspectives on the history, the philosophy, and the practice of scientific inquiry—and even on the blunders, the wild guesses and wrong theories that are also part of our struggle to understand the wonders of the natural world.

    Over three decades he has interviewed and investigated some of the most professional, dangerous and ruthless killers in Ireland. Now Dillon explores their personalities, motivations and bizarre crimes.Many of Ireland's assassins learned their trade in fields and on hillsides in remote parts of Ireland, while others were trained in the Middle East or with Basque separatist terrorists in Spain. Some were one-target-one-shot killers, like the sniper who terrorised the inhabitants of Washington State in the autumn of 2002, while others were bombers skilled in designing the most sophisticated explosive devices and booby traps. Another more powerful group of 'trigger men' were the influential figures in the shadows, who were experts in motivating the killers under their control. All of these men, whether they squeezed the trigger on a high-powered rifle, set the timer on a bomb or used their authority to send others out to commit horrific and unspeakable acts of cruelty, are featured in this book. The Trigger Men takes the reader inside the labyrinthine world of terrorist cells and highly classified counter-terrorism units of British Military Intelligence. The individual stories are described in gripping, unflinching detail and show how the terrorists carried out their ghastly work. Dillon also explores the ideology of the cult of the gunmen and the greed and hatred that motivated assassins in their killing sprees. There are penetrating insights into the mindset of the most infamous assassins: their social and historical conditioning, their callousness......

      In the constellation of Eridanus, there lurks a cosmic mystery: It’s as if something has taken a huge bite out of the universe. But what is the culprit? The hole in the universe is just one of many puzzles keeping cosmologists busy. Supermassive black holes, bubbles of nothingness gobbling up space, monster universes swallowing others—these and many other bizarre ideas are being pursued by scientists. Due to breathtaking progress in astronomy, the history of our universe is now better understood than the history of our own planet. But these advances have uncovered some startling riddles. In this electrifying new book, renowned cosmologist and author Paul Davies lucidly explains what we know about the cosmos and its enigmas, exploring the tantalizing—and sometimes terrifying—possibilities that lie before us. As Davies guides us through the audacious research offering mind-bending solutions to these and other mysteries, he leads us up to the greatest outstanding conundrum of all: Why does the universe even exist in the first place? And how did a system of mindless, purposeless particles manage to bring forth conscious, thinking beings? Filled with wit and wonder, What’s Eating the Universe? is a dazzling tour of cosmic questions, sure to entertain, enchant, and inspire us all.

    Now, at a moment when mathematicians are finally moving in on a proof, Dartmouth professor Dan Rockmore tells the riveting history of the hunt for a solution.In 1859 German professor Bernhard Riemann postulated a law capable of describing with an amazing degree of accuracy the occurrence of the prime numbers. Rockmore takes us all the way from Euclid to the mysteries of quantum chaos to show how the Riemann hypothesis lies at the very heart of some of the most cutting-edge research going on today in physics and mathematics.

      “An unexpectedly intimate look into a highly accomplished man, his colleagues and friends, the development of a new field of geometric analysis, and a glimpse into a truly uncommon mind.”—Nina MacLaughlin, Boston Globe “Engaging, eminently readable . . . For those with a taste for elegant and largely jargon-free explanations of mathematics, The Shape of a Life promises hours of rewarding reading.”—Judith Goodstein, American Scientist  Harvard geometer and Fields medalist Shing-Tung Yau has provided a mathematical foundation for string theory, offered new insights into black holes, and mathematically demonstrated the stability of our universe. In this autobiography, Yau reflects on his improbable journey to becoming one of the world’s most distinguished mathematicians. Beginning with an impoverished childhood in China and Hong Kong, Yau takes readers through his doctoral studies at Berkeley during the height of the Vietnam War protests, his Fields Medal–winning proof of the Calabi conjecture, his return to China, and his pioneering work in geometric analysis. This new branch of geometry, which Yau built up with his friends and colleagues, has paved the way for solutions to several important and previously intransigent problems. With complicated ideas explained for a broad audience, this book offers readers not only insights into the life of an eminent mathematician, but also an accessible way to understand advanced and highly abstract concepts in mathematics and theoretical physics.

    Such a device would operate under a different set of physical laws: The laws of quantum mechanics. Johnson gently leads the curious outsider through the surprisingly simple ideas needed to understand this dream, discussing the current state of the revolution, and ultimately assessing the awesome power these machines could have to change our world.

    Dumb crooks, celebrities gone bad, unsolved mysteries, odd laws, and more—Strange Crime has plenty of stories that will make you ask yourself, “What could they possibly have been thinking?” This easily portable paperback book is ideal for readers on the go. Take it to school, to work, to jury duty!

    Yet geometry is so much more than shapes and numbers; indeed, it governs much of our lives—from architecture and microchips to car design, animated movies, the molecules of food, even our own body chemistry. And as Siobhan Roberts elegantly conveys in The King of Infinite Space, there can be no better guide to the majesty of geometry than Donald Coxeter, perhaps the greatest geometer of the twentieth century.Many of the greatest names in intellectual history—Pythagoras, Plato, Archimedes, Euclid— were geometers, and their creativity and achievements illuminate those of Coxeter, revealing geometry to be a living, ever-evolving endeavor, an intellectual adventure that has always been a building block of civilization. Coxeter's special contributions—his famed Coxeter groups and Coxeter diagrams—have been called by other mathematicians "tools as essential as numbers themselves," but his greatest achievement was to almost single-handedly preserve the tradition of classical geometry when it was under attack in a mathematical era that valued all things austere and rational.Coxeter also inspired many outside the field of mathematics. Artist M. C. Escher credited Coxeter with triggering his legendary Circle Limit patterns, while futurist/inventor Buckminster Fuller acknowledged that his famed geodesic dome owed much to Coxeter's vision. The King of Infinite Space is an elegant portal into the fascinating, arcane world of geometry.

    In Gravity, he takes an enlightening look at three of the towering figures of science who unlocked many of the mysteries behind the laws of physics: Galileo, the first to take a close look at the process of free and restricted fall; Newton, originator of the concept of gravity as a universal force; and Einstein, who proposed that gravity is no more than the curvature of the four-dimensional space-time continuum.Graced with the author's own drawings, both technical and fanciful, this remarkably reader-friendly book focuses particularly on Newton, who developed the mathematical system known today as the differential and integral calculus. Readers averse to equations can skip the discussion of the elementary principles of calculus and still achieve a highly satisfactory grasp of a fascinating subject.Starting with a chapter on Galileo’s pioneering work, this volume devotes six chapters to Newton's ideas and other subsequent developments and one chapter to Einstein, with a concluding chapter on post-Einsteinian speculations concerning the relationship between gravity and other physical phenomena, such as electromagnetic fields.

    Yet as bestselling author and astrophysicist Jeffrey Bennett points out, black holes don't suck. With that simple idea in hand, Bennett begins an entertaining introduction to Einstein's theories, describing the amazing phenomena readers would actually experience if they took a trip through a black hole.The theory of relativity also gives us the cosmic speed limit of the speed of light, the mind-bending ideas of time dilation and curvature of spacetime, and what may be the most famous equation in history: e = mc2. Indeed, the theory of relativity shapes much of our modern understanding of the universe, and it is not "just a theory: " every major prediction of relativity has been tested to exquisite precision and its practical applications include the Global Positioning System (GPS). Bennett proves anyone can understand the basics of Einstein's ideas. His intuitive, nonmathematical approach gives a wide audience its first real taste of how relativity works and why it is so important not only to science but also to the way we view ourselves as human beings.

    In this little book Welsh writer and artist David Wade paints a picture of one of the most elusive and pervasive concepts known to man.

    Leibniz' Monadology, one of the most important pieces of the Leibniz corpus, is at once one of the great classics of modern philosophy & one of its most puzzling productions. Because the essay is written in so compactly condensed a fashion, for almost three centuries it has baffled & beguiled those who read it for the first time. Nicholas Rescher accompanies the text of the Monadology section-by-section with relevant excerpts from some of Leibniz' widely scattered discussions of the matters at issue. The result serves a dual purpose of providing a commentary of the Monadology by Leibniz himself, while at the same time supplying an exposition of his philosophy using the Monadology as an outline. The book contains all the materials that even the most careful study of this text could require: a detailed overview of the philosophical background of the work & of its bibliographic ramifications; a presentation of the original French text together with a new, closely faithful English translation; a selection of other relevant Leibniz texts; & a detailed commentary. Rescher also provides a survey of Leibniz' use of analogies & three separate indices of key terms & expressions, Leibniz' French terminology, & citations. Rescher's edition of the Monadology presents Leibniz' ideas faithfully, accurately & accessibly, making it especially valuable to scholars & students alike.