BASIC BOOKS The Big Ratchet How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis Ruth DeFries Summary Our species long lived on the edge of starvation. Now we produce enough food for all 7 billion of us to eat nearly 3,000 calories every day. This is such an astonishing thing in the history of life as to verge on the miraculous. The Big Ratchet is the story of how it happened, of the ratchets­the technologies and innovations, big and small­that propelled our species from hunters and gatherers on the savannahs of Africa to shoppers in the aisles of the supermarket. The Big Ratchet itself came in the twentieth century, when a range of technologies­from fossil fuels to scientific plant breeding to nitrogen fertilizers­combined to nearly quadruple our population in a century, and to grow our food supply even faster. To some, these technologies are a sign of our greatness; to others, of our hubris. Basic Books MacArthur fellow and Columbia University professor Ruth DeFries argues that the debate is the wrong one to 9780465044979 have. Limits do exist, but every limit that has confronted us, we have surpassed. That cycle of crisis and growth Pub Date: 9/9/14 is the story of our history; indeed, it is the essence of The Big Ratchet... $28.99 Hardback / Cloth over boards Author Bio Ruth DeFries is Denning Family Professor of Sustainable Development and Chair of the Department of Ecology, 288 pages Evolution and Environmental Biology at Columbia University. A recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, she lives in New York City. Markup Note: Rights Sold: Japanese: Nikkei Exercises for the Feynman Lectures on Physics Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, Matthew Sa... Summary Combined into one volume for the first time, the clarified and modernized Exercises for the Feynman Lectures on Physics provides a comprehensive, hands­on introduction to all the most important topics in physics­from the conservation of energy through the theory of gravitation and the laws of thermodynamics. A perfect complement to the Feynman Lectures on Physics, these exercises give students a chance to apply what they have learned and reinforce the concepts taught by the inimitable Richard Feynman. Author Bio The late Richard P. Feynman was Richard Chace Tolman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Basic Books Institute of Technology. He was awarded the 1965 Nobel Prize for his work on the development of quantum field 9780465060719 theory. He was also one of the most famous and beloved figures of the twentieth century, both in physics and Pub Date: 8/5/14 $24.99 as a public intellectual. Paperback / softback / Trade paperback (US) Exercises for The Feynman Lectures on Physics is edited by Michael A. Gottlieb and Rudlf Pfeiffer, publishers of the online edition of FLP at the Feynman Lectures Websites. 320 pages Markup Note: Rights Sold: Chinese (simplified); Shanghai Science and Technological Publishers; Polish: PWN; Russian: BKL Perseus Books Group Fall 2014 Rights titles ­ May 2014 Page 1 BASIC BOOKS Love and Math The Heart of Hidden Reality Edward Frenkel Summary What if you had to take an art class in which you were only taught how to paint a fence? What if you were never shown the paintings of van Gogh and Picasso, weren't even told they existed? Alas, this is how math is taught, and so for most of us it becomes the intellectual equivalent of watching paint dry. In Love and Math, renowned mathematician Edward Frenkel reveals a side of math we've never seen, suffused with all the beauty and elegance of a work of art. In this heartfelt and passionate book, Frenkel shows that mathematics, far from occupying a specialist niche, goes to the heart of all matter, uniting us across cultures, time, and space. Basic Books Love and Math tells two intertwined stories: of the wonders of mathematics and of one young man's journey 9780465064953 learning and living it. Having braved a discriminatory educational system to become one of the twenty­first Pub Date: 9/9/14 century's leading mathematicians, Frenkel now works on one of the biggest ideas to come out of math in the last $16.99 Paperback / softback / 50 years: the Langlands Program. Considered by many to be a Grand Unified Theory of mathematics, the Trade paperback (US) Langlands Program e... 304 pages Author Bio Edward Frenkel is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, and was previously on the faculty at Harvard University. The winner of the Hermann Weyl Prize in mathematical physics, he has contributed articles to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News, Slate, and the Scientific American blog. Markup Note: Chinese (simp.): CITIC; French: Flammarion; German: Spektrum; Greek: Alexandria Publications; Italian: Codice; Japanese: Bungeishunju; Korean: Banni Publishing; Portuguese (Brazil): Leya; Russian: Piter Press; Turkish: Paloma Yayinevi Surfaces and Essences Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking Douglas Hofstadter, Emmanuel Sander In a major new work from the author of Gödel, Escher, Bach and I Am a Strange Loop, two leading scholars argue that analogy is the basis for all human thoughts. Summary Analogy is the core of all thinking. This is the simple but unorthodox premise that Pulitzer Prize­winning author Douglas Hofstadter and French psychologist Emmanuel Sander defend in their new work. Hofstadter has been grappling with the mysteries of Basic Books human thought for over thirty years. Now, with his trademark wit and special talent for making complex ideas 9780465018475 Pub Date: 4/23/13 vivid, he has partnered with Sander to put forth a highly novel perspective on cognition. $35.00 Hardback / Cloth over We are constantly faced with a swirling and intermingling multitude of ill­defined situations. Our brain's job is to boards try to make sense of this unpredictable, swarming chaos of stimuli. How does it do so? The ceaseless hail of 592 pages input triggers analogies galore, helping us to pinpoint the essence of what is going on. Often this means the spontaneous evocation of words, sometimes idioms, sometimes the triggering of nameless, long­buried memories. Why did two­year­old Camille proudly exclaim, "I undressed the banana!"? Why do people who hear a story often blurt out, "Exactly the same thing happened to me!" when it was a completely different even... Author Bio Douglas Hofstadter is Distinguished College of Arts and Sciences Professor of Cognitive Science and Comparative Literature at Indiana University. His previous books include Gödel, Escher, Bach (which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1980) and Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies. Emmanuel Sander is Professor of Cognitive and Developmental Psychology at the University of Paris (Saint­Denis), specializing in the study of analogy­making and categorization and their connections to education. Among his previous works is the book Analogy, from the Naïve to the Creative. Markup Note: Rights Sold: Dutch: Contact; German: Klett­Cotta; Korean: Books 21 Publishing Group; Chinese (simp.): Cheers Publishing; Hungarian: Typotex Perseus Books Group Fall 2014 Rights titles ­ May 2014 Page 2 BASIC BOOKS Eureka Discovering Your Inner Scientist Chad Orzel Summary Even in the twenty­first century the popular image of a scientist is a reclusive genius in a lab coat, mixing formulas or working out equations inaccessible to all but the initiated few. The idea that scientists are somehow smarter than the rest of us is a common, yet dangerous, misconception, getting us off the hook for not knowing­ or caring­how the world works. How did science become so divorced from our everyday experience? Is scientific understanding so far out of reach for the non­scientists among us? As science popularizer Chad Orzel argues in Eureka, even the people who are most forthright about hating science are doing science, often without even knowing it. Orzel shows that science isn't something alien and inscrutable beyond the capabilities of ordinary people, it's central to the human experience. Every human can Basic Books think like a scientist, and regularly does so in the course of everyday activities. The disconnect between this 9780465074969 reality and most people's perception is mostly due to the common misconception that science is a body of Pub Date: 12/30/14 (boring, abstract, often mathematical) facts. ... $17.99 Paperback / softback / Trade paperback (US) Author Bio Chad Orzel received his BA in physics from Williams College, his Ph.D. in chemical physics from the University of 320 pages Maryland, and his postdoctorate from Yale University. He maintains the blog Uncertain Principles and is the author of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog and How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog. He is now a professor at Union College in Schenectady, New York. Ha! The Science of When We Laugh and Why Scott Weems Summary Humor, like pornography, is famously difficult to define. We know it when we see it, but is there a way to figure out what we really find funny­and why? In this fascinating investigation into the science of humor and laughter, cognitive neuroscientist Scott Weems uncovers what's happening in our heads when we giggle, guffaw, or double over with laughter. While we typically think of humor in terms of jokes or comic timing, in Ha! Weems proposes a provocative new model. Humor arises from inner conflict in the brain, he argues, and is part of a larger desire to comprehend a complex world. Showing that the delight that comes with "getting" a punchline is closely related to the joy that accompanies the insight to solve a difficult problem, Weems explores why surprise is such an important element in humor, why computers Basic Books are terrible at recognizing what's funny, and why it takes so long for a tragedy to become acceptable comedic 9780465031702 fodder.