Robert Zimmerman:

The Hubble Space Telescope has produced the most stunning images of the cosmos humanity has ever seen. It has transformed our understanding of the universe around us, revealing new information about its age and evolution, the life cycle of stars, and the very existence of black holes, among other startling discoveries. The Universe in a Mirror tells the story of this telescope and the visionaries responsible for its extraordinary accomplishments.

Robert Zimmerman takes readers behind the scenes of one of the most ambitious scientific instruments ever sent into space. After World War II, astronomer Lyman Spitzer and a handful of scientists waged a fifty-year struggle to build the first space telescope capable of seeing beyond Earth's atmospheric veil. Zimmerman shows how many of the telescope's advocates sacrificed careers and family to get it launched, and how others devoted their lives to Hubble only to have their hopes and reputations shattered when its mirror was found to be flawed. This is the story of an idea that would not die--and of the dauntless human spirit. Illustrated with striking color images, The Universe in a Mirror describes the heated battles between scientists and bureaucrats, the perseverance of astronauts to repair and maintain the telescope, and much more. Hubble, and the men and women behind it, opened a rare window onto the universe, dazzling humanity with sights never before seen.

This book tells their remarkable story.

From the archive:

Oh! I feel it. I feel the cosmos!

The Universe in a Mirror: The Saga of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Visionaries Who Built It

With plenty of sunscreen and a cold beer swaddled in his sleeping bag, writer and botanist Jim Malusa bicycled alone to the lowest point on each of six continents, a six-year series of “anti-expeditions” to the “anti-summits.” His journeys took him to Lake Eyre in the arid heart of Australia, along Moses’ route to the Dead Sea, and from Moscow to the Caspian Sea. He pedaled across the Andes to Patagonia, around tiny Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, and from Tucson to Death Valley. With a scientist’s eye, he vividly observes local landscapes and creatures. As a lone man, he is overfed by grandmothers, courted by ladies of the night in Volgograd, invited into a mosque by Africa’s most feared tribe, chased by sandstorms and hurricanes — yet Malusa keeps riding. His reward: the deep silence of the world’s great depressions. A large-hearted narrative of what happens when a friendly, perceptive American puts himself at the mercy of strange landscapes and their denizens, Into Thick Air presents one of the most talented new voices in contemporary travel writing.

Into Thick Air: Biking to the Bellybutton of Six Continents

Lester K. Little:

Plague was a key factor in the waning of Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. Eight centuries before the Black Death, a pandemic of plague engulfed the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea and eventually extended as far east as Persia and as far north as the British Isles. Its persisted sporadically from 541 to 750, the same period that witnessed the distinctive shaping of the Byzantine Empire, a new prominence of the Roman papacy and of monasticism, the beginnings of Islam and the meteoric expansion of the Arabic Empire, the ascent of the Carolingian dynasty in Frankish Gaul and, not coincidentally, the beginnings of a positive work ethic in the Latin West. In this volume, the first on the subject, twelve scholars from a variety of disciplines-history, archaeology, epidemiology, and molecular biology- have produced a comprehensive account of the pandemic's origins, spread, and mortality, as well as its economic, social, political, and religious effects. The historians examine written sources in a range of languages, including Arabic, Syriac, Greek, Latin, and Old Irish. Archaeologists analyze burial pits, abandoned villages, and aborted building projects. The epidemiologists use the written sources to track the disease's means and speed of transmission, the mix of vulnerability and resistance it encountered, and the patterns of reappearence over time. Finally, molecular biologists, newcomers to this kind of investigation, have become pioneers of paleopathology, seeking ways to identity pathogens in human remains from the remote past.

Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541-750

From Publishers Weekly:

In this intriguing volume, futurist and author Michael G. Zey (The Future Factor) imagines a time in which technology has stretched human life spans to 400 years or more. Genetic engineering, cloning technology and stem-cell science should eradicate disease and allow for nanoscopic repair and maintenance of the body, while "smart drugs" and "caloric restriction" programs ensure healthy bodies and sharp minds more or less indefinitely. Grounding his speculation in a thorough understanding of contemporary scientific research and present-day concerns (the environment, the post-boomer labor market, etc.), Zey's optimistic vision sees between-career hiatuses replacing retirement, and leisure time spent in the multi-generational home or on intense cross-cultural "immersion travels." Key players in the debate include supporters like Cambridge University scientist Aubrey de Grey, who envisions 5000-year life spans, and the radical futurist author Ray Kurzweil, who foresees the merging of humans and computers; meanwhile, organizations like the Coalition to Extend Life lobby the government for immortality research funding and find opposition in the President's Council on Bioethics and "deep ecologists" advocating zero-population growth. Criticizing current environmental trends as "anti-progress" and "anti-human," Zey's own solutions include controversial measures like human control of weather, colonization of outer space and genetically modifying food. He concludes that the "eventuality" of "a modern Fountain of Youth" is "closer than we think"; Zey's educated guess may not be entirely convincing, but it is both thorough and fascinating.

The Quest for Superlongevity and Physical Perfection

Hamid R. Ekbia:

This book is a critique of Artificial Intelligence (AI) from the perspective of cognitive science - it seeks to examine what we have learned about human cognition from AI successes and failures. The book's goal is to separate those "AI dreams" that either have been or could be realized from those that are constructed through discourse and are unrealizable. AI research has advanced many areas that are intellectually compelling and holds great promise for advances in science, engineering, and practical systems. After the 1980s, however, the field has often struggled to deliver widely on these promises. This book breaks new ground by analyzing how some of the driving dreams of people practicing AI research become valued contributions, while others devolve into unrealized and unrealizable projects.

Artificial Dreams: The Quest for Non-Biological Intelligence

From Publishers Weekly:

When President Eisenhower famously warned against the military-industrial complex, he largely meant the Department of Defense–funded programs of the RAND Corporation. Alex Abella presents a sometimes dry but thorough account of this think-tank, which he asserts not only played a key role in the U.S.'s biggest foreign misadventures in Vietnam and Iraq but also, through its development of rational choice theory, has affected every aspect of our lives, not necessarily for the better. Abella, working with the cooperation of the usually secretive organization, details RAND'S history, from analyst Herman Kahn's energetic support of a virtually unrestrained nuclear arms buildup to the organization's role in sparking America's involvement in Vietnam and the current war in Iraq. But even more, Abella says, RAND theorists' notion that self-interest, rather than collective interests like religion, governs human behavior has influenced every aspect of our society, from health care to tax policy. The RAND Corporation continues today—as brilliant, controversial and, in Abella's view, amoral as ever—with the complicity of all Americans. If we look in the mirror, Abella concludes, we will see that RAND is every one of us. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

Your daily Simpsons reference -- this time, from "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy":

In the treehouse, the neighborhood kids try to figure out what's up with the adults.

Bart: So finally, we're all in agreement about what's going on with the adults. Milhouse?

Milhouse: [steps up to blackboard] Ahem. OK, here's what we've got: the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people --

Bart: Thank you.

Milhouse: -- under the supervision of the reverse vampires --

Lisa: [sighs]

Milhouse: -- are forcing our parents to go to bed early in a fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner. [sotto voce] We're through the looking glass, here, people...

Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire

David Singh Grewal:

For all the attention globalization has received in recent years, little consensus has emerged concerning how best to understand it. For some, it is the happy product of free and rational choices; for others, it is the unfortunate outcome of impersonal forces beyond our control. It is in turn celebrated for the opportunities it affords and criticized for the inequalities in wealth and power it generates.

David Singh Grewal’s remarkable and ambitious book draws on several centuries of political and social thought to show how globalization is best understood in terms of a power inherent in social relations, which he calls network power. Using this framework, he demonstrates how our standards of social coordination both gain in value the more they are used and undermine the viability of alternative forms of cooperation. A wide range of examples are discussed, from the spread of English and the gold standard to the success of Microsoft and the operation of the World Trade Organization, to illustrate how global standards arise and falter. The idea of network power supplies a coherent set of terms and concepts—applicable to individuals, businesses, and countries alike—through which we can describe the processes of globalization as both free and forced. The result is a sophisticated and novel account of how globalization, and politics, work.

Network Power: The Social Dynamics of Globalization

Charles Fort:

This Encyclopedia Forteana anthologizes the cult hero’s four classic works on the strange, the unexplained, and the just plain weird: The Book of the Damned, Lo!, Wild Talents, and New Lands. It features Fort’s complete, unabridged text and a subject index.

Here are the four books that invented our understanding of the paranormal. These are cult hero Charles Fort’s defining records of bizarre, haunting, strange, and inexplicable “facts” for which science cannot account: Frogs falling from the skies. Mysterious airships in an age before flight. Monsters. Poltergeists. Floating islands. Teleportation (a term Fort invented).

These are the works that moved novelist Theodore Dreiser to write: “To me no one in the world has suggested the underlying depths and mysteries and possibilities as has Fort. To me he is simply stupendous.”

Now, Fort’s classic investigations are newly collected with a preface by biographer Jim Steinmeyer. Complete with a full subject index, here is the definitive Fort anthology for our times.

The Book of the Damned: The Collected Works of Charles Fort

John Rennie Short:

Nearly one in six Americans lives in "Megalopolis," an area of the northeastern United States along the I-95 corridor that includes the cities of Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. Liquid City is the first book to examine the major changes that have taken place in this "Main Street of the Nation" over the last half century.

In 1957, geographer Jean Gottman used the term "Megalopolis" to denote the Boston-to-Washington corridor. His seminal book, Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States, described the social, economic, and demographic characteristics of one of the largest city regions in the world. John Rennie Short juxtaposes Gottman's work with his own examination, providing a comprehensive assessment of the region's evolution. Particularly important is Short's use of the 2000 census data and his discussion of Megalopolis as a source of identity for the area's forty-nine million inhabitants.

This clear and accessible book focuses on five main aspects of change in the region: population redistribution from cities to suburbs; economic restructuring as exemplified by the suburbanization of employment; the role of immigration; patterns of racial/ethnic segregation; and the processes of globalization that have made Megalopolis one of the world's most influential economies.

Liquid City: Megalopolis and the Contemporary Northeast

P. G. Maxwell-Stuart:

A pre-cursor to contemporary chemistry and physics, alchemy began as the pursuit of knowledge, initially in China as a search for the secret of immortality, and appearing independently in Egypt as an attempt to produce gold through the arts of smelting and alloying metals. In The Chemical Choir, P.G. Maxwell-Stewart authoritatively traces the fascinating history of alchemy from its earliest incarnations right up to its legacy in modern science as we know it today.

Continuing from its roots in China and Egypt, alchemy received a great boost in Europe from work done by Islamic and Jewish alchemists, whose written accounts were translated into Latin and combined with what was known of Greek natural science to produce an outburst of attempts to manipulate matter and change it into transformative substances called the Philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. Alchemy's heyday in Europe was the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as practiced by the great minds of the age of Reason, including, among others, Sir Isaac Newton.

During this time, demonstrations of the alchemist's art were performed in royal courts under conditions meant to obviate any fraud, and specimens of the gold so transmuted can be seen in various museums. During the nineteenth century, attempts were made to amalgamate alchemy with the religious and occult philosophies then growing in popularity; and in the twentieth century psychologists--principally Carl Jung--perceived in alchemy a powerful vehicle for aspects of their theories about human nature. At the same time, laboratory scientists continued to experiment in ways very similar to those of their medieval and early modern forebears.

A lively overview of alchemy and its practitioners from the earliest times to the present, P.G. Maxwell-Stuart explores the changing importance and interest in alchemy through its historical, cultural, and intellectual contexts, revealing that the study of alchemy is not merely one of the stranger byways of antiquarianism, but rather a living part of the history of science itself.

From the archive:

Galileo was an astrologer.

Newton was an alchemist.

Chemical Choir: A History of Alchemy