Caltech physicist and acclaimed author Sean Carroll offers listeners this eye-opening profile of the Large Hadron Collider and the search for the mysterious Higgs boson particle, the subatomic building block that imbues elementary particles with mass. Here Carroll chronicles how such a complex project got off the ground in the first place and explains why this discovery is so important, and what it means for the future of physics.

New York Times and Washington Post contributor Richard Louv is the widely respected author of seven previous books. In Last Child in the Woods, Louv illustrates how the alienation of today's children from nature can lead to a host of childhood disorders-and he offers effective methods for healing this rift. "This book is an absolute must-read for parents."-Boston Globe

One of our most brilliant social critics-- author of the bestselling The Middle Mind-- presents a scathing critique of the " delusions" of science alongside a rousing defense of the tradition of Romanticism and the " big" questions. With the rise of religion critics such as Richard Dawkins, and of pseudo-science advocates such as Malcolm Gladwell and Jonah Lehrer, you' re likely to become a subject of ridicule if you wonder " Why is there something instead of nothing?" or " What is our pur...

It was the universe's most elusive particle, the lynchpin for everything scientists dreamed up to explain how physics works. It had to be found. But projects as big as CERN's Large Hadron Collider don't happen without incredible risks - and occasional skullduggery. In the definitive account of this landmark event, Sean Carroll reveals the insights, rivalry, and wonder that fuelled the Higgs discovery, and takes us on a riveting and irresistible ride to the very edge of physics today.

2012 American Library Association Notable Children's Book. 2012 YALSA-ALA Award for Excellence in Young Adult Nonfiction Nominee. Meet the inventors and innovators who defined American music history. A radio repairman named Leo Fender imagined a solid-body electric guitar. The inventor of 3-D glasses, Laurens Hammond, envisioned an electric organ in every home. And a German carpenter named Steinway immigrated to New York City with the dream of designing the greatest piano in the world. Fro...

From TCU Press' Texas Tradition Series, "designed to publish and preserve significant Texas literature," comes Time and Place by Bryan Woolley, a powerful novel about a small West Texas town during the 1950s. Seventeen-year-old Kevin Adams' best friend is the first polio victim of Fort Appleby. In just a few short months, Kevin's adolescence is stripped away and he must confront decisions he is not prepared to make.

Wrongful intolerance has existed in American society for more than four centuries. Us and Them illuminates the shadowy corners of our national past and traces the country's continuing efforts to measure up to its lofty ideals. Through 14 dramatic narratives, listeners witness epic struggles that shaped our collective identity. These and eight other forgotten incidents of history come to life in clear and vibrant prose. - A Quaker woman in 1660 Massachusetts risks her life for religious lib...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them." —The Wall Street JournalOne of our greatest scientists—and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for On Human Nature and *The Ants—*gives us a work of visionary importance that may be the crowning achievement of his career. In Consilience (a word that originally meant "jumping together"), Edward O. Wilson renews...

From the most celebrated heir to Darwin comes a groundbreaking book on evolution, the summa work of Edward O. Wilson's legendary career.Sparking vigorous debate in the sciences, The Social Conquest of Earth upends “the famous theory that evolution naturally encourages creatures to put family first” (Discover). Refashioning the story of human evolution, Wilson draws on his remarkable knowledge of biology and social behavior to demonstrate that group selection, not kin selection, is ...

"Creativity is the unique and defining trait of our species; and its ultimate goal, self-understanding," begins Edward O. Wilson's sweeping examination of the humanities and its relationship to the sciences. By studying fields as diverse as paleontology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience, Wilson demonstrates that human creativity began not 10,000 years ago, as we have long assumed, but over 100,000 years ago in the Paleolithic Age. Chronicling the evolution of creativity from primates...

In his most urgent book to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and world-renowned biologist Edward O. Wilson states that in order to stave off the mass extinction of species, including our own, we must move swiftly to preserve the biodiversity of our planet. In this "visionary blueprint for saving the planet"(Stephen Greenblatt), Half-Earth argues that the situation facing us is too large to be solved piecemeal and proposes a solution commensurate with the magnitude of the problem:...

Edward O. Wilson recalls his lifetime with ants, from his first boyhood encounters in the woods of Alabama to perilous journeys into the Brazilian rainforest.“Ants are the most warlike of all animals, with colony pitted against colony,” writes Edward O. Wilson, one of the world’s most beloved scientists. “Their clashes dwarf Waterloo and Gettysburg.” In Tales from the Ant World, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Wilson takes us on a myrmecological tour to such far-flung destinations a...