Novel Science is the first in-depth study of the shocking, groundbreaking, and sometimes beautiful writings of the gentlemen of the “heroic age” of geology and of the contribution these men made to the literary culture of their day. For these men, literature was an essential part of the practice of science itself, as important to their efforts as mapmaking, fieldwork, and observation. The reading and writing of imaginative literatures helped them to discover, imagine, debate, and give shape and meaning to millions of years of previously undiscovered earth history. Borrowing from the historical fictions of Walter Scott and the poetry of Lord Byron, they invented geology as a science, discovered many of the creatures we now call the dinosaurs, and were the first to unravel and map the sequence and structure of stratified rock. As Adelene Buckland shows, they did this by rejecting the grand narratives of older theories of the earth or of biblical cosmogony: theirs would be a humble science, faithfully recording minute details and leaving the big picture for future generations to paint. Buckland also reveals how these scientists—just as they had drawn inspiration from their literary predecessors—gave Victorian realist novelists such as George Eliot, Charles Kingsley, and Charles Dickens a powerful language with which to create dark and disturbing ruptures in the too-seductive sweep of story.

Thomas Keneally, the bestselling author of The Daughters of Mars and Schindler’s List, brings his “insightful and nimble prose” (The New York Times Book Review) to this exquisite exploration of community and country, love and morality, set in both prehistoric and modern Australia. An award-winning documentary filmmaker, Shelby Apple is obsessed with reimagining the full story of the Learned Man—a prehistoric man whose remains are believed to be the link between Africa and ancient Australia. From Vietnam to northern Africa and the Australian Outback, Shelby searches for understanding of this enigmatic man from the ancient past, unaware that the two men share a great deal in common. Some 40,000 years in the past, the Learned Man has made his home alongside other members of his tribe. Complex and deeply introspective, he reveres tradition, loyalty, and respect for his ancestors. Willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good, the Learned Man cannot conceive that a man millennia later could relate to him in heart and feeling. In this “meditation on last things, but still electric with life, passion and appetite” (The Australian), Thomas Keneally weaves an extraordinary dual narrative that effortlessly transports you around the world and across time, offering “a hymn to idealism and to human development” (Sydney Morning Herald).

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years. What would happen if the world were ending? A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . . Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth. A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.

A textbook your students will want to read. "If you would like students to understand hard political concepts, this work makes it accessible for them. By using pop culture, we can open ideological ideas and students are not bound by their own preconceived ideas." —Leah Murray, Weber State University A Novel Approach to Politics turns the conventional textbook wisdom on its head by using pop culture references to illustrate key concepts and cover recent political events. Adopters of previous editions are thanking author Douglas A. Van Belle for some of their best student evaluations to date. With this Seventh Edition, Van Belle brings the book fully up-to-date with recent events, current policy debates, international happenings, and other assorted political matters. Understanding politics requires a willingness to engage with ideas, arguments, and information that makes you uncomfortable, Van Belle takes the most tumultuous political periods in recent history head-on. Somehow, he weaves in recent movies and books into the text as he works in a solid foundation in institutions, ideology, and economics controversies into all that sizzle, which is certain to captivate students. Included with this title: LMS Cartridge: Import this title′s instructor resources into your school’s learning management system (LMS) and save time. Don′t use an LMS? You can still access all of the same online resources for this title via the password-protected Instructor Resource Site. Select the Resources tab on this page to learn more.

A Turing Award-winning computer scientist and statistician shows how understanding causality has revolutionized science and will revolutionize artificial intelligence "Correlation is not causation." This mantra, chanted by scientists for more than a century, has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. Today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, instigated by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and established causality -- the study of cause and effect -- on a firm scientific basis. His work explains how we can know easy things, like whether it was rain or a sprinkler that made a sidewalk wet; and how to answer hard questions, like whether a drug cured an illness. Pearl's work enables us to know not just whether one thing causes another: it lets us explore the world that is and the worlds that could have been. It shows us the essence of human thought and key to artificial intelligence. Anyone who wants to understand either needs The Book of Why.

PJ Manney concludes her visionary Philip K. Dick Award-nominated series of a world at war, a virtual search for identity, and the future of humanity. Five years ago, bioengineer Peter Bernhardt spearheaded an innovation in nanotechnology that changed the course of evolution. Until everything was taken from him--his research, the people he loved, and finally his life. Uploaded as an artificial intelligence, Peter is alive again thanks to a critical reactivation by fellow AI Carter Potsdam. But a third sentient computer program, Major Tom, is tearing the United States apart, destroying its leaders and its cities. Major Tom's mission: rebuild a new America from the ruins and reign as uncontested monarch. Carter knows that only a revolutionary like Peter can reverse the damage to a country set on fire. Caught in a virtual world between an alleged ally and an enemy, pieces of Peter's former self remain: the need for vengeance, empathy for the subjugated people of a derelict world, and doubt in everything he's been led to believe. To rescue what's left, he'll need to once again advance the notion of evolution and to expand the meaning of being human--by saving humanity.

How might the world as we know it end? In this illustrated guide, How Stuff Works author Marshall Brain explores myriad doomsday scenarios and the science behind them. What if the unimaginable happens? A nuclear bomb detonates over a major city, for example, or a deadly virus infects millions around the world. There are other disasters we don’t even have to imagine because they’ve already occurred, like violent hurricanes or cataclysmic tsunamis that have caused horrific loss of life and damage. In The Doomsday Book, Marshall Brain explains how everything finally ends—the decimation of nations and cities, of civilization, of humanity, of all life on Earth. Brain takes a deep dive into a wide range of doomsday narratives, including manmade events such as an electromagnetic pulse attack, a deadly pandemic, and nuclear warfare; devastating natural phenomena, such as an eruption from a super-volcano, the collapse of the Gulf Stream, or lethal solar flares; and science-fiction scenarios where robots take over or aliens invade. Each compelling chapter provides a detailed description of the situation, the science behind it, and ways to prevent or prepare for its occurrence. With fun graphics and eye-catching photographs at every turn, The Doomsday Book will be the last book you’ll ever have to read about the last days on Earth. Scenarios include: - Asteroid Strike: a massive asteroid could obliterate life—just as it might have killed the dinosaurs. - Gray Goo: self-replicating nanobots engulf the planet. - Grid Attack: an attack on our power grid shuts down the internet, affecting airports, banks, computers, food delivery, medical devices, and the entire economic system. - Gulf Stream collapse: the shutdown of this important ocean current causes temperatures to plummet. - Ocean acidification: if the oceans’ pH levels shift due to a rise in carbon dioxide, all marine life could die.