Showing results by publisher "Simon & Schuster Audio" in Science & Engineering

Adam Savage is a maker. From Chewbacca’s bandolier to a 1,000-shot Nerf gun, he has built thousands of spectacular projects as a special-effects artist and the cohost of MythBusters. Adam is also an educator, passionate about instilling the principles of making in the next generation of inventors and inspiring them to turn their curiosity into creation. In this practical and passionate guide, Adam weaves together vivid personal stories, original sketches and photographs from some of his most memorable projects, and interviews with many of his iconic and visionary friends.

Raging ambition. Towering egos. Competition under a veneer of courtesy. Heroic effort combined with plagiarism, theft, exaggeration, and fraud. This was the state of bird study in eastern North America during the early 1800s, as a handful of intrepid men raced to find the last few birds that were still unknown to science. The most famous name in the bird world was John James Audubon, who painted spectacular portraits of birds. But although his images were beautiful, creating art was not his main goal. Instead, he aimed to illustrate (and write about) as many different species as possible.

Poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominately white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. When she moved there in 2013, with her husband and daughter, the community held strict restrictions about what residents could and could not plant in their gardens. In resistance to the homogenous policies that limited the possibility and wonder that grows from the earth, Dungy employs the various plants, herbs, vegetables, and flowers she grows in her garden as metaphor and treatise for how homogeneity threatens the future of our planet.

A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion.

For the last fifty years, we have been fighting a losing war on food. We have cut fat, reduced carbs, eliminated sugar, and attempted every conceivable diet only to find that eighty-eight million American adults are prediabetic, more than a hundred million have high blood pressure, and nearly half now qualify as obese. The harder we try to control what we eat, the unhealthier we become. Why?

In The Optimist, David Coggins makes a case for the skills and sensibility of an enduring sport and shares the secrets, frustrations, and triumphs of the great tradition of fly fishing, which has captivated anglers worldwide. Written in wry, wise, and keenly observed prose, each chapter focuses on a specific place, fish, and skill. Few individuals, for example, have the visual acuity required to catch the nearly invisible bonefish of the Bahamas flats.

Here, for the first time, in a brilliant, panoramic portrait by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is the definitive, often shocking story of the politics and the science behind the development of the hydrogen bomb and the birth of the Cold War.

Time is the most commonly used noun in the English language; it's always on our minds, and it advances through every living moment. But what is time exactly? Do children experience it the same way adults do? Why does it seem to slow down when we're bored and speed by as we get older? How and why does time fly? In this witty and meditative exploration, award-winning author and New Yorker staff writer Alan Burdick takes listeners on a personal quest to understand how time gets in us and why we perceive it the way we do.

A major audiobook about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes. Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on Earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.

The extraordinary Siddhartha Mukherjee has written a biography of the gene as deft, brilliant, and illuminating as his extraordinarily successful biography of cancer. Weaving science, social history, and personal narrative to tell us the story of one of the most important conceptual breakthroughs of modern times, Mukherjee animates the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices.

Nothing Like It in the World is the story of the men who built the transcontinental railroad. In Ambrose's hands, this enterprise comes to life. The U.S. government pitted two companies - the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads - against each other in a race for funding, encouraging speed over caution. As its peak the work force approached the size of Civil War armies, with as many as 15,000 workers on each line. The surveyors, the men who picked the route, lived off buffalo, deer, and antelope.

In H Is for Hope, Elizabeth Kolbert investigates the landscape of climate change—from “A,” for Svante Arrhenius, who created the world’s first climate model in 1894, to “Z,” for the Colorado River Basin, ground zero for climate change in the United States. Along the way she looks at Greta Thunburg’s “blah blah blah” speech (“B”), learns to fly an all-electric plane (“E”), experiments with the effects of extreme temperatures on the human body (“T”), and struggles with the deep uncertainty of the future of climate change (“U”).

Here is an impassioned plea for reason in a world divided by faith. This important and timely work delivers a startling analysis of the clash of faith and reason in today's world. Harris offers a vivid historical tour of mankind's willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs, even when those beliefs are used to justify harmful behavior and sometimes heinous crimes.

An enthusiastic, witty, and informative introduction to the world of insects and why we - and the planet we inhabit - could not survive without them.

An illuminating, authoritative, and in-depth examination of the fascinating science behind pain that “combines a career’s worth of expertise with a long history of pain treatment” (GQ) - from one of the internationally leading doctors in pain management.

438 Days is the miraculous account of the man who survived alone and adrift at sea longer than anyone in recorded history - as told to journalist Jonathan Franklin in dozens of exclusive interviews.

In this uniquely American memoir, Homer "Sonny" Hickam beautifully captures a moment when a dying town, a divided family, and a band of teenage dreamers dared to set their sights on the stars. Looking back after a distinguished NASA career that fulfilled his boyhood ambition, Hickam shares the story of his youth, taking listeners into the life of the little mining town and the boys who came to embody both its tensions and its dreams.

Einstein’s Fridge tells the incredible epic story of the scientists who, over two centuries, harnessed the power of heat and ice and formulated a theory essential to comprehending our universe. “Although thermodynamics has been studied for hundreds of years…few nonscientists appreciate how its principles have shaped the modern world” (Scientific American).

In this mesmerizing account, Sy Montgomery passionately and vividly reveals the wonderous world of hawks and what they can teach us about nature, life, and love.

In this revolutionary, comprehensive, and accessible guide on how the brain learns, discover how to study more efficiently and effectively, shrug away exam stress, and most of all, enjoy learning.