Charles Seife

The nightly news and conventional wisdom tell us that things are bad and getting worse. Yet despite dire predictions, scientists see many good things on the horizon. John Brockman, publisher of Edge (www.edge.org), the influential online salon, recently asked more than 150 high-powered scientific thinkers to answer a vital question for our frequently pessimistic times: "What are you optimistic about?"Spanning a wide range of topics—from string theory to education, from population growth to medicine, and even from global warming to the end of world—What Are You Optimistic About? is an impressive array of what world-class minds (including Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, New York Times bestselling authors, and Harvard professors, among others) have weighed in to offer carefully considered optimistic visions of tomorrow. Their provocative and controversial ideas may rouse skepticism, but they might possibly change our perceptions of humanity's future.

"Confined to a wheelchair and surrounded by an entourage of nurses, Stephen Hawking was a symbol of the power of mind over matter. The public adored him, and the media compared him to Newton and Einstein. Appearing at concerts, on The Simpsons, and even on the edge of space, he was an icon who captured the imaginations of audiences all over the world. It didn't seem to matter that his fans had only a tenuous understanding of his contributions, or that the scientific community scoffed at much of his work. Somehow, Hawking had managed to transform himself into the world's most brilliant man. In Hawking Hawking, science journalist Charles Seife shows how. Examining Hawking's work his fraught relationships with his wives, lovers, and children, and his obsession with celebrity and fame, Seife demonstrates that Hawking's true genius lay not in his talent for physics but rather manipulation. Hawking worked tirelessly to cultivate his image as the epitome of rationality, a man of childlike simplicity, who could probe the vast recesses of space with his mind. But beneath the fac ʹade was a figure who was at best complex, at worst, conceited, selfish, and sexist. When he was wrong, as he was more often than not, he recast his failings as scientific victories. He distracted from his many character flaws with wit, charm, and self-deprecation. He convinced audiences of his authority on topics about which he knew little. And when, unable to produce his "theory of everything," his status began to slip away, he used his students as tools to recapture his former glory. But for all the suffering he caused others, it was Hawking who suffered most of all. So extreme was his need to remain in the spotlight that he often played the role of the victim, whether by allowing confidence men to sell books under his name or enduring physical abuse at the hands of his second wife. To make matters worse, as his celebrity grew, he found himself increasingly estranged from his wives and children, even as he struggled to preserve his image as a family man. And though he bristled at any mention of his heroism, wanting to be remembered for his mind, not his body, Hawking accepted that his ALS was at the core of his persona and begrudgingly allowed audiences and the media to marvel at his perseverance and stoicism. In the end, Hawking was a genius because we wanted him to be one, and so did he. Provocative and controversial, Hawking Hawking upends everything we thought we knew about the world's most beloved scientist, shining light on the true nature of fame and the intoxicating effects of genius"--

In the tradition of Stephen Colbert's concept of truthiness, Proofiness explores the intersection of chicanery and mathematics. The author explores regression, false correlation, Potemkin numbers, and a variety of other sketchy techniques used to make people think that the data reflect patterns that don't exist in actuality. How to Lie With Statistics would strike me as a readalike.

The author of Zero looks at the messy history of the struggle to harness fusion energy .When weapons builders detonated the first hydrogen bomb in 1952, they tapped into the vastest source of energy in our solar system--the very same phenomenon that makes the sun shine. Nuclear fusion was a virtually unlimited source of power that became the center of a tragic and comic quest that has left scores of scientists battered and disgraced. For the past half-century, governments and research teams have tried to bottle the sun with lasers, magnets, sound waves, particle beams, and chunks of meta. (The latest venture, a giant, multi-billion-dollar, international fusion project called ITER, is just now getting underway.) Again and again, they have failed, disgracing generations of scientists. Throughout this fascinating journey Charles Seife introduces us to the daring geniuses, villains, and victims of fusion science: the brilliant and tortured Andrei Sakharov; the monomaniacal and Strangelovean Edward Teller; Ronald Richter, the secretive physicist whose lies embarrassed an entire country; and Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, the two chemists behind the greatest scientific fiasco of the past hundred years. Sun in a Bottle is the first major book to trace the story of fusion from its beginnings into the 21st century, of how scientists have gotten burned by trying to harness the power of the sun.

The author of Zero explains the scientific revolution that is transforming the way we understand our worldPreviously the domain of philosophers and linguists, information theory has now moved beyond the province of code breakers to become the crucial science of our time. In Decoding the Universe, Charles Seife draws on his gift for making cutting-edge science accessible to explain how this new tool is deciphering everything from the purpose of our DNA to the parallel universes of our Byzantine cosmos. The result is an exhilarating adventure that deftly combines cryptology, physics, biology, and mathematics to cast light on the new understanding of the laws that govern life and the universe.