The Fractalist
Memoir of a Scientific Maverick
Written by Benoit Mandelbrot

Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Publisher: Pantheon
On Sale: October 30, 2012
Price: $30.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-37735-7 (0-307-37735-0)

A fascinating memoir from the man who revitalized visual geometry, and whose ideas about fractals have changed how we look at both the natural world and the financial world.

Benoit Mandelbrot, the creator of fractal geometry, has significantly improved our understanding of, among other things, financial variability and erratic physical phenomena. In... Read more >

Relativity and Quantum Physics For Beginners

Written by Steven L. Manly
Illustrated by Steven Fournier

Format: Trade Paperback, 144 pages
Publisher: For Beginners
On Sale: November 17, 2009
Price: $14.99
ISBN: 978-1-934389-42-3 (1-934389-42-0)

As we humans have expanded our horizons to see things vastly smaller, faster, larger, and farther than ever before, we have been forced to confront preconceptions born of the human experience and create wholly new ways of looking at the world around us. The theories of relativity and quantum physics were... Read more >

The Drunkard's Walk
How Randomness Rules Our Lives
Written by Leonard Mlodinow

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: May 5, 2009
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-27517-2 (0-307-27517-5)

With the born storyteller's command of narrative and imaginative approach, Leonard Mlodinow vividly demonstrates how our lives are profoundly informed by chance and randomness and how everything from wine ratings and corporate success to school grades and political polls are less reliable than we believe.

By showing us the true nature... Read more >

The Drunkard's Walk
How Randomness Rules Our Lives
Written by Leonard Mlodinow

Format: Hardcover, 272 pages
Publisher: Pantheon
On Sale: May 13, 2008
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-42404-5 (0-375-42404-0)

In this irreverent and illuminating book, acclaimed writer and scientist Leonard Mlodinow shows us how randomness, change, and probability reveal a tremendous amount about our daily lives, and how we misunderstand the significance of everything from a casual conversation to a major financial setback. As a result, successes and failures in... Read more >

What the Numbers Say
A Field Guide to Mastering Our Numerical World
Written by Derrick Niederman and David Boyum

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Broadway
On Sale: June 8, 2004
Price: $19.00
ISBN: 978-0-7679-0999-0 (0-7679-0999-2)

“This is a superb book—important and fun to read. We live in an age in which all people need to be fluent in two languages—words and numbers. Yet our schools do not teach and our students do not learn to be quantitatively literate. This book demonstrates what traditionally is not taught... Read more >

What the Numbers Say
A Field Guide to Mastering Our Numerical World
Written by Derrick Niederman and David Boyum

Format: Hardcover, 288 pages
Publisher: Crown Business
On Sale: June 10, 2003
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 978-0-7679-0998-3 (0-7679-0998-4)

“This is a superb book—important and fun to read. We live in an age in which all people need to be fluent in two languages—words and numbers. Yet our schools do not teach and our students do not learn to be quantitatively literate. This book demonstrates what traditionally is not taught... Read more >

Poetry of the Universe

Written by Robert Osserman

Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: January 15, 1996
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-47429-0 (0-385-47429-6)

Poetry of the Universe is a delightful and compelling narrative charting the evolution of mathematical ideas that have helped to illuminate the nature of the observable universe. In a richly anecdotal fashion, the book explores the leaps of imagination and vision in mathematics that have helped pioneer our understanding of the... Read more >

Beyond Numeracy

Written by John Allen Paulos

Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: April 7, 1992
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-73807-7 (0-679-73807-X)

By the author of Innumeracy, this work is an enriching exploration of the beauty and fascination of mathematics. Paulos presents in an engrossing fashion a broad range of mathematical concepts that have transformed our world, including algebra, calculus, probability theory, and new areas such as chaos, fractals, recursion, and complexity. Read more >

Cycles of Time
An Extraordinary New View of the Universe
Written by Roger Penrose

Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: May 1, 2012
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-27846-3 (0-307-27846-8)

This groundbreaking book presents a new perspective on three of cosmology’s essential questions: What came before the Big Bang? What is the source of order in our universe? And what cosmic future awaits us?

Penrose shows how the expected fate of our ever-accelerating and expanding universe—heat death or ultimate entropy—can actually... Read more >

Cycles of Time
An Extraordinary New View of the Universe
Written by Roger Penrose

Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: May 3, 2011
Price: $28.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-26590-6 (0-307-26590-0)

From the best-selling author of The Emperor’s New Mind and The Road to Reality, a groundbreaking book that provides new views on three of cosmology’s most profound questions: What, if anything, came before the Big Bang? What is the source of order in our universe? What is its ultimate future?

Current understanding... Read more >

The Road to Reality
A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe
Written by Roger Penrose

Format: Trade Paperback, 1136 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: January 9, 2007
Price: $26.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-77631-4 (0-679-77631-1)

From one of our greatest living scientists, a magnificent book that provides, for the serious lay reader, the most comprehensive and sophisticated account we have yet had of the physical universe and the essentials of its underlying mathematical theory.

Since the earliest efforts of the ancient Greeks to find order amid the... Read more >

The Value of Science
Essential Writings of Henri Poincare
Written by Henri Poincare

Format: Trade Paperback, 608 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: October 2, 2001
Price: $27.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-75848-5 (0-375-75848-8)

More than any other writer of the twentieth century, Henri Poincaré brought the elegant, but often complicated, ideas about science and mathematics to the general reader. A genius who throughout his life solved complex mathematical calculations in his head, and a writer gifted with an inimitable style, Poincaré rose to the... Read more >

Labyrinths of Reason
Paradox, Puzzles, and the Frailty of Knowledge
Edited by William Poundstone

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: December 1, 1989
Price: $12.76
ISBN: 978-0-385-24271-4 (0-385-24271-9)

This sharply intelligent, consistently provocative book takes the reader on an astonishing, thought-provoking voyage into the realm of delightful uncertainty--a world of paradox in which logical argument leads to contradiction and common sense is seemingly rendered irrelevant. Read more >

Prisoner's Dilemma

Written by William Poundstone

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: January 1, 1993
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-41580-4 (0-385-41580-X)

"Both a fascinating biography of von Neumann, the Hungarian exile whose mathematical theories were building blocks for the A-bomb and the digital computer, and a brilliant social history of game theory and its role in the Cold War and nuclear arms race."--San Francisco Chronicle Read more >

Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis
The Quest to Find the Hidden Law of Prime Numbers
Written by Dan Rockmore

Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: May 9, 2006
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-72772-6 (0-375-72772-8)

In 1859 a German professor named Bernhard Riemann postulated a law capable of describing with an amazing degree of accuracy the baffling occurrence of prime numbers; coming up with its proof has been the holy grail of mathematicians ever since. In Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis, Dan Rockmore, a prominent mathematician in... Read more >

The Arithmetic of Life and Death

Written by George Shaffner

Format: Trade Paperback, 220 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
On Sale: May 1, 2001
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-345-42645-1 (0-345-42645-2)

In this thought-provoking primer, Shaffner cuts to the heart of real-life dilemmas great and small-whether it's the risks of smoking or the advantages of teamwork-and shows how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide your way to deeper understanding. 224 pp.

"Shaffner believes in living life by the numbers...Life not adding up? Try... Read more >

The Code Book
The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography
Written by Simon Singh

Format: Trade Paperback, 432 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: August 29, 2000
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-49532-5 (0-385-49532-3)

In his first book since the bestselling Fermat's Enigma, Simon Singh offers the first sweeping history of encryption, tracing its evolution and revealing the dramatic effects codes have had on wars, nations, and individual lives. From Mary, Queen of Scots, trapped by her own code, to the Navajo Code Talkers who... Read more >

Fermat's Enigma
The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem
Written by Simon Singh
Foreword by John Lynch

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: September 8, 1998
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-49362-8 (0-385-49362-2)

"I have discovered a truly marvelous proof, which this margin is too narrow to contain." With these words, the seventeenth-century French mathematician Pierre de Fermat threw down the gauntlet to future generations. What came to be known as Fermat's Last Theorem looked simple, yet proving it would baffle the finest minds... Read more >

The Probability of God
A Simple Calculation That Proves the Ultimate Truth
Written by Dr. Stephen D. Unwin

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
On Sale: October 26, 2004
Price: $12.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5478-7 (1-4000-5478-8)

Does God exist?

This is probably the most debated question in the history of mankind. Scholars, scientists, and philosophers have spent their lifetimes trying to prove or disprove the existence of God, only to have their theories crucified by other scholars, scientists, and philosophers. Where the debate breaks down is in the... Read more >