Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet

Andrew Blum

A journey to the center of the Internet uncovers what few of consider and even fewer understand — the jarringly tactile, material nuts and bolts of an intricate architectural system we tend to see as an abstract, amorphous blob.

“As everyone from Odysseus on down has pointed out, a journey is really understood upon arriving home. […] What I understood when I arrived home was that the Internet wasn’t a physical world or a virtual world, but a human world. The Internet’s physical infrastructure has many centers, but from a certain vantage point there is really only one: You. Me. The lowercase i. Wherever I am, and wherever you are.”

Trees of Life: A Visual History of Evolution

Theodore W. Pietsch

Trees of Life – a visual history of evolution in 450 years of tree-like diagrams of the living world.

Gentle Bridges: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on the Sciences of Mind

Jeremy W. Hayward

“Western civilization’s science and technology bring society tremendous benefit. Yet, due to highly developed technology, we also have more anxiety and more fear. I always feel that mental development and material development must be well-balanced, so that together they may make a more human world. If we lose human values and human beings become part of a machine, there is no freedom from pain and pleasure. Without freedom from pain and pleasure, it is very difficult to demarcate between right and wrong. The subjects of pain and pleasure naturally involve feeling, mind, and consciousness.”

The Dalai Lama and leading Western scientists explore the essence of mind.

Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You’re So Tired

Till Roenneberg

“Six hours’ sleep for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool,” Napoleon famously prescribed. (He would have scoffed at Einstein, then, who was known to require ten hours of sleep for optimal performance.)

But science indicates otherwise.

German chronobiologist Till Roenneberg debunks the social stigma around late risers and shows the biological roots of “night owls” and “early birds.”

The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human

Jonathan Gottschall

“Human minds yield helplessly to the suction of story. No matter how hard we concentrate, no matter how deep we dig in our heels, we just can’t resist the gravity of alternate worlds.”

Educator and science writer Jonathan Gottschall traces the roots, both evolutionary and sociocultural, of the transfixing grip storytelling has on our hearts and minds, individually and collectively. What emerges is a kind of “unified theory of storytelling,” revealing not only our gift for manufacturing truthiness in the narratives we tell ourselves and others, but also the remarkable capacity of stories — the right kinds of them — to change our shared experience for the better.

The Freud Files: An Inquiry into the History of Psychoanalysis

Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen

In 1916, Freud took the stage in Vienna in front of an audience that had gathered to hear the eighteenth of his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, and proceeded to canonize himself by staking his place in the history of humanity alongside Copernicus and Darwin, the former having solved geocentrism, the latter anthropocentrism, and Freud himself, allegedly, egocentrism. He likened the criticism psychoanalysis, “his” “science,” was receiving to that Copernicus and Darwin faced when their theories first confronted the status quo. Over the century that followed, Freud’s legacy penetrated society and went on to underpin the making of consumer culture. But understanding the story, the complete story, of how Freud became Freud hinges on understanding the story’s very storiness.

Science and the Indian Tradition: When Einstein Met Tagore (India in the Modern World)

David L. Gosling

In 1930, Indian philosopher Rabindranath Tagore met Albert Einstein. One of history’s most stimulating and intellectually riveting conversations ensued – collision and convergence in Truth and Beauty as the two explored the intersection of science and spirituality.

Free Radicals: The Secret Anarchy of Science

Michael Brooks

The story of scientific rule-breakers, the men and women who experimented on themselves, had fantastic visions and unexplainable hunches, and took once-in-a-lifetime risks, all in the name of pursuing curiosity.

Brain Bugs: How the Brain’s Flaws Shape Our Lives

Dean Buonomano

“It has been just so in all my inventions. The first step is an intuition — and come with a burst, then difficulties arise. This thing gives out and then that — ‘Bugs’ — as such little faults and difficulties are called.” ~ Thomas Edison

In Brain Bugs, Dean Buonomano argues that who we are as individuals and as a society is defined not only by the astonishing capabilities of the brain, but also by its flaws and limitations.

In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World

Ian Stewart

“The power of equations lies in the philosophically difficult correspondence between mathematics, a collective creation of human minds, and an external physical reality. Equations model deep patterns in the outside world. By learning to value equations, and to read the stories they tell, we can uncover vital features of the world around us… This is the story of the ascent of humanity, told in 17 equations.”

The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present

Eric Kandel

Something unusual defined Vienna between 1890 and 1918, something that shaped more of Western culture than we dare suspect — artists, writers, thinkers and scientists across biology, medicine, and psychoanalysis came into regular contact and, in the process of these interactions, steered the course of modern art and science.

Dear Professor Einstein: Albert Einstein’s Letters to and from Children

A delightful collection of Einstein’s letters to and from children, with an introduction by the great thinker’s granddaughter.

At the link, a heart-warming exchange between Einstein and a little girl from South Africa who wants to be a scientist.

Hidden Treasure: The National Library of Medicine

For the past 175 years, the The National Library of Medicine in Bethesda has been building the world’s largest collection of biomedical images, artifacts, and ephemera. With more than 17 million items spanning ten centuries, it’s a treasure trove of rare, obscure, extravagant wonders, most of which remain unseen by the public and unknown even to historians, librarians, and curators. Until now.

Hidden Treasure, following on the heels of The Art of Medicine, is an exquisite large-format volume that culls some of the most fascinating, surprising, beautiful, gruesome, and idiosyncratic objects from the Library’s collection in 450 full-color illustrations. From rare “magic lantern slides” doctors used to entertain and cure inmates at the St. Elizabeth Hospital for the Insane to astonishing anatomical atlases to the mimeographed report of the Japanese medical team first to enter Hiroshima after the atomic blast, each of the curious ephemera is contextualized in a brief essay by a prominent scholar, journalist, artist, collector, or physician.

Peek inside at the link.

In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise

George Prochnik

‘Sound imposes a narrative on you, and it’s always someone else’s narrative.’

A fascinating journey into the origin and cultural evolution of silence.

Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness

Daniel C. Dennett

As philosopher Dan Dennett turns 70, a look back at his collected wisdom on consciousness, memes, luck, existence, and other facets of the human condition.