History

When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh.

Bitcoin was promised to be a liberating technology, a free market alternative to state-controlled money. But that promise was broken after a small group of insiders took over the project and fundamentally changed Bitcoin's design.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Midnight in Chernobyl comes the definitive, dramatic, minute-by-minute story of the Challenger disaster, based on fascinating in-depth reporting and new archival research—a riveting history that flows like a thriller.

El esperado nuevo libro de Yuval Noah Harari, uno de los pensadores más innovadores, interesantes y clarividentes de la actualidad, y autor de Sapiens, el fenómeno literario global que ha cautivado a millones de lectores.

Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet....

Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize David McCullough tells the dramatic story behind the story about the courageous brothers who taught the world how to fly....

Thunderstruck tells the stories of two men: Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication....

The grid is an accident of history and of culture, in no way intrinsic to how we produce, deliver and consume electrical power. Yet this is the system the United States ended up with....

The phenomenal true story of the Black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space....

Throughout history, technological change — whether it takes the form of agricultural improvements in the Middle Ages, the Industrial Revolution, or today’s artificial intelligence — has been viewed as a main driver of prosperity, working in the public interest.

James Gleick, the author of the best sellers Chaos and Genius, now brings us a work just as astonishing and masterly: A revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era’s defining quality....

An entertaining account of the philosophy and technology of hacking—and why we all need to understand it....

Ignition! is the story of the Cold War era search for a rocket propellant that could be trusted to take man into space. A favorite of Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, listeners will want to tune into this "really good book on rocket[s]," available for the first time in audio....

The virus now known as Stuxnet was unlike any other piece of malware built before: Rather than simply hijacking targeted computers or stealing information from them, it proved that a piece of code could escape the digital realm and wreak actual, physical destruction....

Best-selling author and time-travel enthusiast Ryan North tells you how to invent all the modern conveniences we take for granted - from first principles....

From Paleolithic flax to 3D knitting, explore the global history of textiles and the world they weave together in this enthralling and educational guide....

The smartphones in our pockets and computers like brains. The vagaries of game theory and evolutionary biology. Nuclear weapons and self-replicating spacecrafts. All bear the fingerprints of one remarkable, yet largely overlooked, man: John von Neumann....

Steven Levy's classic book traces the exploits of the computer revolution's original hackers - those brilliant and eccentric nerds from the late 1950s through the early '80s who took risks....

Cult of the Dead Cow is the tale of the oldest, most respected, and most famous American hacking group of all time. Though until now it has remained mostly anonymous, its members invented the concept of hacktivism....

From one of tech’s boldest thinkers and his longtime deputy and advisor, a sweeping indictment of Silicon Valley, showing how the West has slid into a culture of complacency, even as we enter a new era of mounting global threats.

From the New York Times-bestselling author comes a new volume on the history of human ingenuity—and its attendant breakthroughs and busts....

How We Got to Now investigates the secret history behind the everyday objects of contemporary life....

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), credited as the inspiration for radio, robots, and even radar, has been called the patron saint of modern electricity....

As the 50th anniversary of the first lunar landing approaches, the award-winning historian and perennial New York Times best-selling author takes a fresh look at the space program, President John F. Kennedy’s inspiring challenge, and America’s race to the moon....

The dramatic rise—and unimaginable fall—of America's most iconic corporation by New York Times bestselling author and pre-eminent financial journalist William D. Cohan....