History

Over the last 220 years, society has evolved a universal belief that electricity is "safe" for humanity and the planet. Scientist and journalist Arthur Firstenberg disrupts this conviction by telling the story of electricity in a way it has never been told before....

The breakthroughs that have had the most transformative practical impacts, from thermodynamics to the Internet....

The quest for gravitational waves involved years of risky research and many personal and professional struggles that threatened to derail one of the world's largest scientific endeavors....

From the Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of Woman, a playful, passionate guide to the science all around us: The Canon is an ebullient celebration of science that stands to become a classic....

Ignition! is the story of the Cold War era search for a rocket propellant that could be trusted to take man into space. A favorite of Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, listeners will want to tune into this "really good book on rocket[s]," available for the first time in audio....

In 20 captivating lectures, Professor Suzanne Pilaar Birch shares her expertise and passion for discovery as she peels back the years to expose the emergence and lives of early humans....

The Clockwork Universe is the story of a band of men who lived in a world of dirt and disease but pictured a universe that ran like a perfect machine....

Humans have long sought to comprehend the enormities of cosmic space and time. Here, best selling...

A sweeping history of tragic genius, cutting-edge science, and the discovery that changed billions of lives - including your own....

Science and religion have always been at each other’s throats, right? Most things you ‘know’ about science and religion are myths or half-truths that grew up in the last years of the nineteenth century and remain widespread today....

A literally world-changing book, Darwin put forward the anti-religious and scientific idea that humans in fact evolved over millions of generations from animals....

Lost Enlightenment chronicles this forgotten age of achievement, seeks to explain its rise, and explores the competing theories about the cause of its eventual demise....

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is essential listening for understanding the history, philosophy, and evolution of science....

Tobias Hürter takes us back in time to present the epic gripping history of how a group of physicists toppled the Newtonian universe in the early decades of the twentieth century....

"Without the invention of the transistor, I'm quite sure that the PC would not exist as we know it today." Bill Gates, CEO, Microsoft Corporation. On December 16, 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain...

Science is a force for good in the world—at least usually. But sometimes, when obsession gets the better of scientists, they twist a noble pursuit into something sinister. Under this spell, knowledge isn’t everything, it’s the only thing—no matter the cost....

In a rarified world of scientific research, a revolution has been brewing. Its activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics and pony-tailed graduates, mathematicians, and computer scientists from all over the world. They have formed an iconoclastic think-tank....

From the New York Times-bestselling author comes a new volume on the history of human ingenuity—and its attendant breakthroughs and busts....

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a magnificent treasury of the best short works of Richard P. Feynman....

People often think of imagination as something used only in creative endeavours. In fact, we use imagination constantly as we reminisce, anticipate, plan, daydream, read, create imagined worlds.

In her graceful, compelling style, Dava Sobel chronicles the history of the Copernican Revolution, relating the story of astronomy from Aristotle to the Middle Ages....

A bold new history of how botany and global plant collecting - centred at Kew Gardens and driven by Joseph Banks - transformed the earth....

This book conveys every aspect of the Apollo missions with breathtaking immediacy and stunning detail....

In Charged, James Morton Turner unpacks the history of batteries to explore why solving "the battery problem" is critical to a clean energy transition.

Written in Dava Sobel's characteristically graceful prose, The Planets is a distinctive view of our place in the universe....