From one of the architects of the new science of simplicity and complexity comes an explanation of the connections between nature at its most basic level and natural selection, archaeology, linguistics, child development, computers, and other complex adaptive systems. Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann offers a uniquely personal and unifying vision of the relationship between the fundamental laws of physics and the complexity and diversity of the natural world.

The new edition of Mathematical Structures for Computer Science continues to offer a pedagogically rich and intuitive introduction to discrete mathematics structures. It meets the needs of computer science majors by being both comprehensive and accessible. Relevant applications are balanced alongside clear presentation of concepts to help students better understand this text, which has been popular amongst professors and their classes for almost twenty-five years.

Long regarded as the gold standard in sensation and perception texts, E. Bruce Goldstein's SENSATION AND PERCEPTION has helped more than 100,000 students make the connection between perception and physiology. Goldstein has crafted an easier-to-understand, and more student-friendly book, without sacrificing the text's comprehensive examination of sensation and perception. Goldstein takes readers on an intriguing journey through their senses, and chronicles scientists' efforts to understand the fascinating behind the scenes activity that allows us to perceive. With balanced coverage of all senses, this book offers an integrated examination of how the senses work together. Goldstein shows readers how seemingly simple experiences are actually extremely complex mechanisms and examines both the psychophysical and physiological underpinnings of perception. All material is presented in a way students find interesting and easy to follow. The book's visually dynamic presentation includes numerous color plates that are presented as visual topic essays. In addition, more than 50 hands-on demonstrations illustrate perceptual experiences. All are simple enough for students to do and are seamlessly integrated into the flow of the text.

For thirty years this has been the acknowledged standard in advanced classical mechanics courses. This classic book enables readers to make connections between classical and modern physics - an indispensable part of a physicist's education. In this new edition, Beams Medal winner Charles Poole and John Safko have updated the book to include the latest topics, applications, and notation, to reflect today's physics curriculum. They introduce readers to the increasingly important role that nonlinearities play in contemporary applications of classical mechanics. New numerical exercises help readers to develop skills in how to use computer techniques to solve problems in physics. Mathematical techniques are presented in detail so that the book remains fully accessible to readers who have not had an intermediate course in classical mechanics. For college instructors and students.

There is no theme more central to human life on earth than birth (unless it is its natural counterpart, death). With a pathologist's trained eye for observation of detail and a style unrivaled in elegance and wit, F. Gonzalez-Crussi, author of The Five Senses, reflects on the largest of topics, those in which science, religion, and philosophy brush most closely together, such as the origin of life in the universe, the complex evolution of human sexuality, and the debate over when the soul is acquired. Drawing on a variety of sources spanning the fields of biology, literature, history, myth, medicine, and philosophy, On Being Born and Other Difficulties surveys a vast field of opinions and theories, contrasting the supremely rational processes by which we evolved on this planet with our irrational and often bizarre attempts to understand them. Gonzalez-Crussi traces millennia of misunderstandings to their sources - Aristotle, Hippocrates, Descartes, Sir Thomas Browne, Cervantes, Rabelais, Maupassant, and Nietzsche, among others - engaging them with precision, humour, and humanity. With its unparalleled depth and insight, On Being Born and Other Difficulties is a profoundly entertaining work of the highest literary calibre.

The theory of evolution is regarded as one of the greatest glimmerings of understanding humans have ever had. It is an idea of science, not of belief, and therefore undergoes constant scrutiny and testing by argumentative evolutionary biologists. But while Darwinists may disagree on a great many things, they all operate within a (thus far) successful framework of thought first set down in The Origin of Species in 1859.

In The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, a monumental labor of academic love, Stephen Jay Gould attempts to define and revise that framework. Using the clear metaphors and personable style he is so well known for, Gould outlines the foundation of the theory and attempts to use it to show that modern evolutionary biology has lost its way. He then offers his own system for reconciling Darwin's "basic logical commitments" with the critiques of modern scientists.

Gould's massive opus begs a new look at natural selection with the full weight of history behind it. His opponents will find much to criticize, and orthodox, reductionist Darwinists might feel that Gould has given them short shrift. But as an opening monologue for the new century's biological debates, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory sets a mountainous precedent in exhaustive scholarship, careful logic, and sheer reading pleasure. —Therese Littleton

There is an ill-concealed skeleton in the closet of physics: "As they are currently formulated, general relativity and quantum mechanics cannot both be right." Each is exceedingly accurate in its field: general relativity explains the behavior of the universe at large scales, while quantum mechanics describes the behavior of subatomic particles. Yet the theories collide horribly under extreme conditions such as black holes or times close to the big bang. Brian Greene, a specialist in quantum field theory, believes that the two pillars of physics can be reconciled in superstring theory, a theory of everything.

Superstring theory has been called "a part of 21st-century physics that fell by chance into the 20th century." In other words, it isn't all worked out yet. Despite the uncertainties——"string theorists work to find approximate solutions to approximate equations"—Greene gives a tour of string theory solid enough to satisfy the scientifically literate.

Though Ed Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study is in many ways the human hero of The Elegant Universe, it is not a human-side-of-physics story. Greene's focus throughout is the science, and he gives the nonspecialist at least an illusion of understanding—or the sense of knowing what it is that you don't know. And that is traditionally the first step on the road to knowledge. —Mary Ellen Curtin

As a boy, Brian Greene read Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus and was transformed. Camus, in Greene's paraphrase, insisted that the hero triumphs "by relinquishing everything beyond immediate experience." After wrestling with this idea, however, Greene rejected Camus and realized that his true idols were physicists; scientists who struggled "to assess life and to experience the universe at all possible levels, not just those that happened to be accessible to our frail human senses." His driving question in The Fabric of the Cosmos, then, is fundamental: "What is reality?" Over sixteen chapters, he traces the evolving human understanding of the substrate of the universe, from classical physics to ten-dimensional M-Theory.

Assuming an audience of non-specialists, Greene has set himself a daunting task: to explain non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and Inflationary Cosmology with analogies drawn from common experience. For the most part, he succeeds. His language reflects a deep passion for science and a gift for translating concepts into poetic images. When explaining, for example, the inability to see the higher dimensions inherent in string theory, Greene writes: "We don't see them because of the way we seeÂ…like an ant walking along a lily padÂ…we could be floating within a grand, expansive, higher-dimensional space."

For Greene, Rhodes Scholar and professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, speculative science is not always as thorough and successful. His discussion of teleportation, for example, introduces and then quickly tables a valuable philosophical probing of identity. The paradoxes of time travel, however, are treated with greater depth, and his vision of life in a three-brane universe is compelling and—to use his description for quantum reality——"weird.—"weird."

In the final pages Greene turns from science fiction back to the fringes of science fact, and he returns with rigor to frame discoveries likely to be made in the coming decades. "We are, most definitely, still wandering in the jungle," he concludes. Thanks to Greene, though, some of the underbrush has been cleared. —Patrick O'Kelley

"Learning the game of power requires a certain way of looking at the world, a shifting of perspective," writes Robert Greene. Mastery of one's emotions and the arts of deception and indirection are, he goes on to assert, essential. The 48 laws outlined in this book "have a simple premise: certain actions always increase one's power ... while others decrease it and even ruin us."

The laws cull their principles from many great schemers—and scheming instructors—throughout history, from Sun-Tzu to Talleyrand, from Casanova to con man Yellow Kid Weil. They are straightforward in their amoral simplicity: "Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit," or "Discover each man's thumbscrew." Each chapter provides examples of the consequences of observance or transgression of the law, along with "keys to power," potential "reversals" (where the converse of the law might also be useful), and a single paragraph cleverly laid out to suggest an image (such as the aforementioned thumbscrew); the margins are filled with illustrative quotations. Practitioners of one-upmanship have been given a new, comprehensive training manual, as up-to-date as it is timeless.

For network administrators, support professionals, and system designers, intimate knowledge of the network protocols that are the foundation of the Internet is crucial. Internet Core Protocols: The Definitive Guide is a superb summary of the nitty-gritty details of the most important Net standards.

This book assumes you have a working knowledge of networks and a basic familiarity with TCP/IP. Unlike the cursory coverage of TCP/IP found in many Internet titles, this presentation includes low-level details that aid in troubleshooting. It also includes a copy of Shomiti Surveyor Lite—a utility for analyzing network traffic. Extensive screen shots of Surveyor Lite also illustrate data fields.

Each protocol is examined closely, using network diagrams and detailed breakdowns of the fields and flags. In addition to TCP, IP and UDP, there is far-reaching discussion of multicasting and error communication protocols, including practical application issues such as caching and timeouts to provide a real-world perspective.

In addition to an education into the particulars of the Net's underpinnings, this book is an excellent reference tool. —Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered: TCP/IP overview, Internet Protocol (IP), Address Resolution Protocol (ARP), Multicasting, Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP), Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP), and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).

For this inexpensive paperback edition of a groundbreaking classic, the author has extensively rearranged, rewritten and enlarged the material. Book is unique in its emphasis on the frequency approach and its use in the solution of problems. Contents include: Fundamentals and Algorithms; Polynomial Approximation — Classical Theory; Fourier Approximation — Modern Therory; Exponential Approximation.

You can find bigger books about C, but you won't find one as authoritative or helpful as this reference manual. Harbison and Steele have now gone through four editions and are beginning to cover language differences which can surprise the experienced C coder moving to C++. As always, the authors do an excellent job of explaining what's standard and what it replaces. No hairy syntax has been omitted, so this volume can make wending one's way through obfuscated code, if not pleasant, at least less miserable. Whether you learned C from Kernighan or some massive tome, you'll want this volume as your day-to-day reference. And you won't mind buying a new edition once in a while, because you'll have worn the old one out by then.