Innovations

New York Times Best Seller How will Artificial Intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology—and there’s nobody better qualified or situated to explore that...

The dramatic inside story of the first four historic flights that launched SpaceX—and Elon Musk—from a shaky startup into the world's leading edge rocket company. In 2006, SpaceX—a brand-new venture with fewer than 200 employees—rolled its first, single-engine rocket onto a launch pad at...

Now a Netflix Film, Starring and Directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor of 12 Years a Slave William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, a country where magic ruled and modern science was mystery. It was also a land withered by drought and hunger. But William had read about windmills, and he dreamed of building...

In The Next Renaissance, acclaimed AI advisor Zack Kass presents an optimistic and compelling vision of how artificial intelligence will shape our lives. Drawing on historical context, cutting-edge advancements, and firsthand experience, Kass lays out how AI will become a collaborative partner...

In The Idea Factory, New York Times Magazine writer Jon Gertner reveals how Bell Labs served as an incubator for scientific innovation from the 1920s through the 1980s. In its heyday, Bell Labs boasted nearly 15,000 employees, 1200 of whom held PhDs and 13 of whom won Nobel Prizes. Thriving in a...

A New York Times Bestseller In the spirit of Steve Jobs and Moneyball, Elon Musk is both an illuminating and authorized look at the extraordinary life of one of Silicon Valley’s most exciting, unpredictable, and ambitious entrepreneurs—a real-life Tony Stark—and a fascinating exploration...

The inside story of Lean, a computer program that answers the age-old question: How do you know if something is true? It began as an obscure bug-checking program at Microsoft Research developed by a lone computer engineer named Leo de Moura. Then an unlikely crew of mathematical misfits caught...

From the New York Times-bestselling author, a new volume on the history of human ingenuity—and its attendant breakthroughs and busts. The world is never finished catching up with Vaclav Smil. In his latest and perhaps most digestible book, Invention and Innovation, the prolific author—a...

Look out for Johnson’s new book, Wonderland, on sale November 15, 2016. From the New York Times–bestselling author of Where Good Ideas Come From and Everything Bad Is Good for You, a new look at the power and legacy of great ideas. In this illustrated history, Steven Johnson explores the...

From gunpowder to generative AI, the forces of disruption are repeatedly rewriting the rules of business, society, and human possibility. But what drives these revolutionary changes? In Epic Disruptions, innovation expert Scott Anthony weaves together the stories behind history's most...

Bloomsbury presents Little Blue Dot by Katherine Dunn, read by Laurel Lefkow The unexplored history of GPS, a military technology turned daily necessity that impacts all aspects of our lives. Gone are the days when we pulled off to the side of the road, twisted a map this way and that, and...

A momentous look at the private companies building a revolutionary new economy in space, from the New York Times bestselling author of Elon Musk In When the Heavens Went on Sale, Ashlee Vance illuminates our future and unveils the next big technology story of our time: welcome to the Wild West...

Under the aegis of machine learning in our data-driven machine age, computers are programming themselves and solving an extraordinary range of problems....

Nikola Tesla was a major contributor to the electrical revolution that transformed daily life at the turn of the 20th century....

Experience the world's most promising technological innovations and the science behind them in this entertaining photo-rich book. For futurists and sci-tech enthusiasts, every moment reveals advances powering our future, with on-site interviews, deep explainers, and helpful visuals.

A lively history seen through the fifty inventions that shaped it most profoundly, by the bestselling author of The Undercover Economist and Messy. Who thought up paper money? What was the secret element that made the Gutenberg printing press possible? And what is the connection between The Da...

Overturn everything you knew about history’s greatest minds in this raucous and hilarious book, where it turns out there's a finer line between "genius" and "idiot" than we've previously known. “As Albert Einstein almost certainly never said, everyone is a genius – but if you judge a fish...

If all measures of human advancement in the last hundred centuries were plotted on a graph, they would show an almost perfectly flat line - until the eighteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution would cause the line to shoot straight up, beginning an almost uninterrupted march of progress...

The conventional wisdom on how technology will change the future is wrong. Mark Mills lays out a radically different and optimistic vision for what's really coming. The mainstream forecasts fall into three camps. One considers today as the "new normal," where ordering a ride or food on a...

A history of the engineering marvels behind one of America's most innovative and beloved entertainment experiences When Disneyland opened to the public in 1955, it demystified the hidden world of factory automation through its extraordinary new attractions. In this fascinating book, Roland...

One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions: Where do good ideas come from?...

Since the Gutenberg Bible first went on sale in 1455, printing has been viewed as one of the highest achievements of human innovation. But the march of progress hasn't been smooth; downright bizarre is more like it. Printer's Error chronicles some of the strangest and most humorous episodes in...

Brought to you by Penguin. “Tanks are like dinner jackets”, an Australian general once commented, “you don’t need them very often, but when you do, nothing else will do.” An authoritative history of the tank and the remarkable individuals who designed them and fought in them, from a...

A fascinating study of the global Maker Movement that explores how ‘making’ impacts our personal and social development—perfect for enthusiastic DIY-ers Dale Dougherty, creator of MAKE: magazine and the Maker Faire, provides a guided tour of the international phenomenon known as the Maker...

WHAT IS IT THAT DRIVES THE SUCCESS OF AMERICA AND THE IDENTITY OF ITS PEOPLE? ACCLAIMED WRITER AND CONTRIBUTING EDITOR TO THIS AMERICAN LIFE JACK HITT THINKS IT’S BECAUSE WE’RE ALL A BUNCH OF AMATEURS. America’s self-invented tinkerers are back at it in their metaphorical...

Experience the world's most promising technological innovations and the science behind them in this entertaining photo-rich book. For futurists and sci-tech enthusiasts, every moment reveals advances powering our future, with on-site interviews, deep explainers, and helpful visuals.

A rollicking, enlightening examination of humanity’s changing relationship to creativity, written from the perspectives of the Greek Muses. The thing that sets humans apart from other animals is our ability to create, to imagine how one thing could become something else. For millennia, art and...

Decoding how moonshots are built and who gets to build them Moonshots shape the future―self-driving cars, space exploration, AI at planetary scale, and beyond. The ambition has been extraordinary. But what if we haven’t been ambitious enough? In Invent Now: The Next Leap in Moonshots, Dr...

Uncover the thrilling popular science history of how brilliant inventors conquered darkness to build the modern world. Perfect for your daily commute, this engaging historical journey transports you from the smoky, fire-lit nights of the past into the high-energy laboratories of the nineteenth...

Master the captivating engineering history of civilization through its most revolutionary mechanical invention. Perfect for an enlightening morning commute, this awe-inspiring journey transforms everyday physics into an engaging narrative of human ingenuity. Without relying on complex equations...