Fiction. This updated 2017 edition includes a new story. A man in search of a golden bead that is rumored to grant immortality. A would-be astronaut's manifesto. An Archivist who can't help but record all of life's statistics. In these thirteen small stories, Anne Valente takes us to worlds both fantastic and familiar, forgotten and foretold, and in tight, layered prose, she strives to unravel all the tangled questions we have about ourselves. From the field guides of anatomy to permutations on desire, these small stories are expansive and encyclopedic, a cataloging of love and loss, an attempt to find a formula for everything that courses through us.

An awesome, globe-spanning, and New York Times bestselling journey through the beauty and power of mathematics What if you had to take an art class in which you were only taught how to paint a fence? What if you were never shown the paintings of van Gogh and Picasso, weren't even told they existed? Alas, this is how math is taught, and so for most of us it becomes the intellectual equivalent of watching paint dry. In Love and Math, renowned mathematician Edward Frenkel reveals a side of math we've never seen, suffused with all the beauty and elegance of a work of art. In this heartfelt and passionate book, Frenkel shows that mathematics, far from occupying a specialist niche, goes to the heart of all matter, uniting us across cultures, time, and space. Love and Math tells two intertwined stories: of the wonders of mathematics and of one young man's journey learning and living it. Having braved a discriminatory educational system to become one of the twenty-first century's leading mathematicians, Frenkel now works on one of the biggest ideas to come out of math in the last 50 years: the Langlands Program. Considered by many to be a Grand Unified Theory of mathematics, the Langlands Program enables researchers to translate findings from one field to another so that they can solve problems, such as Fermat's last theorem, that had seemed intractable before. At its core, Love and Math is a story about accessing a new way of thinking, which can enrich our lives and empower us to better understand the world and our place in it. It is an invitation to discover the magic hidden universe of mathematics.

'Hiller offers extraordinary resilience and moments of immense, liberatory tenderness. [...] This is a harrowing book, yes, but ultimately, with its invitation to “billow forth the wrecks we hold”, with its emphasis on resistance and joy, it is a staggeringly beautiful piece of life-affirming work.' Stephanie Sy-Quia, The Poetry Review

A profound and perceptive fourth collection of poetry explores the themes of science, popular culture, feminism, gender roles, stereotypes, and social institutions. Reprint.

Poetry. African & African American Studies. Women's Studies. Diane Exavier's book-length lyric is an attempt to do the math of a woman, of a family, of a country, of a diaspora. The sum of one life reveals the permutations of many: daughters, sisters, lovers. The cost of one death is uncountable. Exavier's voice has the heart-stilling gravity of a weary prophet. With THE MATH OF SAINT FELIX, she has continued the work of generations. This book is ledger and legacy.

In this must-have for anyone who wants to better understand their love life, a mathematician pulls back the curtain and reveals the hidden patterns—from dating sites to divorce, sex to marriage—behind the rituals of love. The roller coaster of romance is hard to quantify; defining how lovers might feel from a set of simple equations is impossible. But that doesn’t mean that mathematics isn’t a crucial tool for understanding love. Love, like most things in life, is full of patterns. And mathematics is ultimately the study of patterns—from predicting the weather to the fluctuations of the stock market, the movement of planets or the growth of cities. These patterns twist and turn and warp and evolve just as the rituals of love do. In The Mathematics of Love, Dr. Hannah Fry takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the patterns that define our love lives, applying mathematical formulas to the most common yet complex questions pertaining to love: What’s the chance of finding love? What’s the probability that it will last? How do online dating algorithms work, exactly? Can game theory help us decide who to approach in a bar? At what point in your dating life should you settle down? From evaluating the best strategies for online dating to defining the nebulous concept of beauty, Dr. Fry proves—with great insight, wit, and fun—that math is a surprisingly useful tool to negotiate the complicated, often baffling, sometimes infuriating, always interesting, mysteries of love.