A work of popular science in the tradition of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, James Gleick’s groundbreaking bestseller Chaos introduces his readership to chaos theory, one of the most significant waves of scientific knowledge in our time.
From Edward Lorenz’s discovery of the Butterfly Effect, to Mitchell Feigenbaum’s calculation of a universal constant, to Benoit Mandelbrot’s concept of fractals, which created a new geometry of nature, Gleick’s engaging narrative focuses on the key figures whose genius converged to chart an innovative direction for science.
In Chaos, Gleick makes the story of chaos theory not only fascinating but also accessible to beginners, and opens our eyes to a surprising new view of the universe.

From the bestselling, National Book Award-nominated author of Genius and Chaos , a bracing new work about the accelerating pace of change in today's world.

Most of us suffer some degree of "hurry sickness," a malady that has launched us into the "epoch of the nanosecond," a need-everything-yesterday sphere dominated by cell phones, computers, faxes, and remote controls. Yet for all the hours, minutes, and even seconds being saved, we're still filling our days to the point that we have no time for such basic human activities as eating, sex, and relating to our families. Written with fresh insight and thorough research, Faster is a wise and witty look at a harried world not likely to slow down anytime soon.

Here’s some of what just Millions of ordinary, sensible people came into possession of computers. These machines had wondrous powers, yet made unexpected demands on their owners. Telephones broke free of the chains that had shackled them to bedside tables and office desks. No one was out of touch, or wanted to be out of touch. Instant communication became a birthright.

A new world, located no one knew exactly where, came into being, called “virtual” or “online,” named “cyberspace” or “the Internet” or just “the network.” Manners and markets took on new shapes and guises.

As all this was happening, James Gleick, author of the groundbreaking Chaos , columnist for The New York Times Magazine , and—very briefly—an Internet entrepreneur, emerged as one of our most astute guides to this new world. His dispatches—by turns passionate, bewildered, angry, and amazed—form an extraordinary chronicle. Gleick loves what the network makes possible, and he hates it. Software makers developed a strangely tolerant view of an ancient devil, the product defect. One company, at first a feisty upstart, seized control of the hidden gears and levers of the new economy. We wrestled with novel issues of privacy, anonymity, and disguise. We found that if the human species is evolving a sort of global brain, it’s susceptible to new forms of hysteria and multiple-personality disorder.

What Just Happened is at once a remarkable portrait of a world in the throes of transformation and a prescient guide to the transformation still to come.

Dla swoich kolegów, uczonych, Richard Feynman był magikiem największej miary. Twórca teorii naukowych, enfant terrible programu budowy bomby atomowej, zaciekły krytyk komisji badającej przyczyny katastrofy promu "Challenger", laureat Nagrody Nobla za prace, które przyniosły fizykom nowy sposób opisywania oddziaływań między cząsteczkami elementarnymi - Feynman odcisnął swoje piętno na niemal wszystkich działach nowoczesnej fizyki.

This book brings together different work in the new field of physics called the chaos theory, an extension of classical mechanics, in which simple and complex causes are seen to interact. Mathematics may only be able to solve simple linear equations which experiment has pushed nature into obeying in a limited way, but now that computers can map the whole plane of solutions of non-linear equations a new vision of nature is revealed. The implications are staggeringly universal in all areas of scientific work and philosophical thought.

The “highly entertaining” New York Times bestseller, which explains chaos theory and the butterfly effect, from the author of The Information (Chicago Tribune).

For centuries, scientific thought was focused on bringing order to the natural world. But even as relativity and quantum mechanics undermined that rigid certainty in the first half of the twentieth century, the scientific community clung to the idea that any system, no matter how complex, could be reduced to a simple pattern. In the 1960s, a small group of radical thinkers began to take that notion apart, placing new importance on the tiny experimental irregularities that scientists had long learned to ignore. Miniscule differences in data, they said, would eventually produce massive ones—and complex systems like the weather, economics, and human behavior suddenly became clearer and more beautiful than they had ever been before.In this seminal work of scientific writing, James Gleick lays out a cutting edge field of science with enough grace and precision that any reader will be able to grasp the science behind the beautiful complexity of the world around us. With more than a million copies sold, Chaos is “a groundbreaking book about what seems to be the future of physics” by a writer who has been a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, the author of Time Travel: A History and Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (Publishers Weekly).

An illuminating portrayal of Richard Feynman—a giant of twentieth century physics—from his childhood tinkering with radios, to his vital work on the Manhattan Project and beyond

Raised in Depression-era Rockaway Beach, physicist Richard Feynman was irreverent, eccentric, and childishly enthusiastic—a new kind of scientist in a field that was in its infancy. His quick mastery of quantum mechanics earned him a place at Los Alamos working on the Manhattan Project under J. Robert Oppenheimer, where the giddy young man held his own among the nation’s greatest minds. There, Feynman turned theory into practice, culminating in the Trinity test, on July 16, 1945, when the Atomic Age was born. He was only twenty-seven. And he was just getting started.

In this sweeping biography, James Gleick captures the forceful personality of a great man, integrating Feynman’s work and life in a way that is accessible to laymen and fascinating for the scientists who follow in his footsteps.

James Gleick, the author of the best sellers
and
, now brings us a work just as astonishing and masterly: a revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era's defining quality—the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world.
The story of information begins in a time profoundly unlike our own, when every thought and utterance vanishes as soon as it is born. From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long-misunderstood talking drums of Africa, Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed the very nature of human consciousness. He provides portraits of the key figures contributing to the inexorable development of our modern understanding of information: Charles Babbage, the idiosyncratic inventor of the first great mechanical computer; Ada Byron, the brilliant and doomed daughter of the poet, who became the first true programmer; pivotal figures like Samuel Morse and Alan Turing; and Claude Shannon, the creator of information theory itself.
And then the information age arrives. Citizens of this world become experts willy-nilly: aficionados of bits and bytes. And we sometimes feel we are drowning, swept by a deluge of signs and signals, news and images, blogs and tweets.
is the story of how we got here and where we are heading.

A work of popular science in the tradition of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, this 20th-anniversary edition of James Gleick’s groundbreaking bestseller
introduces a whole new readership to chaos theory, one of the most significant waves of scientific knowledge in our time. From Edward Lorenz’s discovery of the Butterfly Effect, to Mitchell Feigenbaum’s calculation of a universal constant, to Benoit Mandelbrot’s concept of fractals, which created a new geometry of nature, Gleick’s engaging narrative focuses on the key figures whose genius converged to chart an innovative direction for science. In
, Gleick makes the story of chaos theory not only fascinating but also accessible to beginners, and opens our eyes to a surprising new view of the universe.

Quanta Magazine's stories of mathematical explorations show that "inspiration strikes willy-nilly," revealing surprising solutions and exciting discoveries.
These stories from Quanta Magazine map the routes of mathematical exploration, showing readers how cutting-edge research is done, while illuminating the productive tension between conjecture and proof, theory and intuition. The stories show that, as James Gleick puts it in the foreword, "inspiration strikes willy-nilly." One researcher thinks of quantum chaotic systems at a bus stop; another suddenly realizes a path to proving a theorem of number theory while in a friend's backyard; a statistician has a "bathroom sink epiphany" and discovers the key to solving the Gaussian correlation inequality. Readers of The Prime Number Conspiracy, says Quanta editor-in-chief Thomas Lin, are headed on "breathtaking intellectual journeys to the bleeding edge of discovery strapped to the narrative rocket of humanity's never-ending pursuit of knowledge."
Quanta is the only popular publication that offers in-depth coverage of the latest breakthroughs in understanding our mathematical universe. It communicates mathematics by taking it seriously, wrestling with difficult concepts and clearly explaining them in a way that speaks to our innate curiosity about our world and ourselves. Readers of this volume will learn that prime numbers have decided preferences about the final digits of the primes that immediately follow them (the "conspiracy" of the title); consider whether math is the universal language of nature (allowing for "a unified theory of randomness"); discover surprising solutions (including a pentagon tiling proof that solves a century-old math problem); ponder the limits of computation; measure infinity; and explore the eternal question "Is mathematics good for you?"
Contributors
Ariel Bleicher, Robbert Dijkgraaf, Kevin Hartnett, Erica Klarreich, Thomas Lin, John Pavlus, Siobhan Roberts, Natalie Wolchover
Copublished with Quanta Magazine

现如今，时间旅行已经深深渗透进我们的文化，几乎随处可见。但可能出乎我们大多数人意料，时间旅行其实是一个晚近的发明，“一种现代幻想”。当H.G. 威尔斯在十九世纪末想像出一部时间机器时，他也发明了“一种新的思维方式”。那么为什么不见于之前？又为什么是现在？
进入二十世纪，时间旅行及其引发的种种哲学论争和悖论，不仅吸引了科幻作家，更吸引了现代主义文学家、哲学家以及科学家的关注。从海因莱因、阿西莫夫到普鲁斯特、博尔赫斯，从柏格森、詹姆斯到爱因斯坦、哥德尔，从文学到心理学、量子理论，从小说、诗歌到电影，从宿命论到记忆、意识，各种形式的时间旅行或许可以帮助我们更好地理解那个古老而深刻的问题：时间是什么？
而进入二十一世纪，人类与时间的关系再次悄然发生改变。在这个相互连接日益密切的世界，无止尽的现在把过去和未来都吞并了进来：一切都是现在时。那么为什么我们现在仍想要时间旅行？而要是你有机会乘坐一次时间机器，你会选择哪个方向？未来，还是过去？

From the acclaimed author of The Information and Chaos, here is a mind-bending exploration of time travel: its subversive origins, its evolution in literature and science, and its influence on our understanding of time itself.
The story begins at the turn of the previous century, with the young H. G. Wells writing and rewriting the fantastic tale that became his first book and an international sensation: The Time Machine. It was an era when a host of forces was converging to transmute the human understanding of time, some philosophical and some technological: the electric telegraph, the steam railroad, the discovery of buried civilizations, and the perfection of clocks. James Gleick tracks the evolution of time travel as an idea that becomes part of contemporary culture—from Marcel Proust to Doctor Who, from Jorge Luis Borges to Woody Allen. He investigates the inevitable looping paradoxes and examines the porous boundary between pulp fiction and modern physics. Finally, he delves into a temporal shift that is unsettling our own moment: the instantaneous wired world, with its all-consuming present and vanishing future.

Winner of the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books 2012, the world's leading prize for popular science writing. We live in the information age. But every era of history has had its own information revolution: the invention of writing, the composition of dictionaries, the creation of the charts that made navigation possible, the discovery of the electronic signal, the cracking of the genetic code. In 'The Information' James Gleick tells the story of how human beings use, transmit and keep what they know. From African talking drums to Wikipedia, from Morse code to the 'bit', it is a fascinating account of the modern age's defining idea and a brilliant exploration of how information has revolutionised our lives.

Isaac Newton was born in a stone farmhouse in 1642, fatherless and unwanted by his mother. When he died in London in 1727 he was so renowned he was given a state funeral—an unheard-of honor for a subject whose achievements were in the realm of the intellect. During the years he was an irascible presence at Trinity College, Cambridge, Newton imagined properties of nature and gave them names— mass , gravity , velocity —things our science now takes for granted. Inspired by Aristotle, spurred on by Galileo’s discoveries and the philosophy of Descartes, Newton grasped the intangible and dared to take its measure, a leap of the mind unparalleled in his generation.
James Gleick, the author of Chaos and Genius , and one of the most acclaimed science writers of his generation, brings the reader into Newton’s reclusive life and provides startlingly clear explanations of the concepts that changed forever our perception of bodies, rest, and motion—ideas so basic to the twenty-first century, it can truly be said: We are all Newtonians.

未來決定於當下我們對自身的理解，資訊世代絕對不可忽略的一本書。
「人類從食物採集者變身為資訊採集者。」
－－麥克魯漢
我們當前的生活被臉書、Google、手機、電腦、網路層層穿透，層層包圍。人與資訊科技的交融共生顯然還會以更快的速度進展。這令人眼花撩亂的一切究竟從何而來？對於人類甚至整個世界又具有什麼樣的意義？
資訊氾濫、資訊過多妨礙知識吸收、資訊疲勞……這都是常聽到的抱怨與警告。然而這已不是人類史上第一次提出類似看法，歷史上每一次的技術創新，都會引起社會的疑慮與討論。
我們身處於演進迅速的資訊時代，無論你是科技的樂觀者、憂慮者、反對者，都應該看這本書！
資訊演進史中某些關鍵人物建構了我們當前對於「資訊」的理解：巴貝吉，第一臺機械計算器發明者；艾妲．拜倫，詩人拜倫早逝的聰慧女兒，也是世上第一位真正的程式設計師。還有核心人物如摩斯和圖寧，以及資訊理論發明人夏農。
資訊時代真正的突破性進展來自1948年貝爾實驗室一位年輕研究員的論文，這個名叫夏農的青年替「資訊」下了明確嚴格的定義，並發明「位元」一詞做為資訊的基本單位。如同牛頓將「力」、「運動」等向來含糊不清的詞彙變成可以用數學精確表達的概念，造成物理學的空前躍進一樣，資訊科學也從此一飛沖天，席捲整個世界。
但資訊的故事並非始於1948年，本書更往前追溯，述說數位時代之前，人類史上各種儲存資訊、處理資訊以及傳播通訊的方法和工具。作者從非洲會說話的鼓聲開始，一路從口語詩歌和文字之間的鬥爭、蒸汽時代的計算機與運算程式、電報與摩斯代碼的發明、電話的興起，談到電腦、人工智慧、網際網路、Google、臉書和推特。同時也清楚解釋資訊理論對生命科學與物理學的深刻影響，如何導致我們對世界與生命本身的理解產生巨大變革。
作者葛雷易克是全球頂尖的科普作者，處女作《混沌》影響既深且廣，《資訊》是他花費七年時光寫就的扛鼎之作，將科學、歷史、社會現象與人物傳記鎔鑄為一體，充滿趣味，既是一本深入淺出解釋科學概念的科普讀物，也是一部人與資訊的文化史。
《資訊》在美國一出版立即獲得各大媒體盛讚，幾度進入AMAZON銷售排行前十名。不但成為AMAZON當月選書，更被列入七月剛公布的AMAZON嚴選2011上半年最重要書籍之一。本書目前已售出19種語言版權，同時也獲選為《大西洋月刊》（The Atlantic）「促發思考的夏日推薦書單」第一名 ，且是美國數理資優高中生的必讀作品。
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「《資訊》敘述了夏農的成就（一個理論），追溯資訊數不清的表現形式（一段歷史），從五千年前記錄大麥銷售的楔形文字直到現今的數位爆炸（一股洪流）。由於夏農的理論，我們對數學、人工智慧、量子力學、遺傳學與其他知識領域有了更深刻的理解，葛雷易克清楚闡明了這一點。沒有其他作者比葛雷易克更有能耐處理這麼大範圍的知識旅程。有些作者對於敘述歷史相當拿手，有些作者擅長將困難的理論解釋清楚，還有一些則善於將科學家還原成活生生的人。葛雷易克是上述所有技巧的大師。」
－－《華爾街日報》
「《資訊》的封底說，作者「葛雷易克是當代頂尖的科學與現代科技記錄者」。這本新書的成就遠超過《混沌》與《理查．費曼：天才的軌跡》兩本葛雷易克早期的里程碑，證明了上述的說法所言不虛。」
－－《紐約時報》／Janet Maslin
「《資訊》是一本視角廣闊、研究深入，而且令人感到愉快的書，為當前這種雲端資料與下載的文化，記錄了我們如何用位元定義世界的歷史。」
－－《洛杉磯時報》
「葛雷易克帶著讀者穿越各種科學地景，從馬克士威的惡魔到哥代爾的定理、從黑洞到自私的基因。有些概念相當困難，但就像他之前的書一樣，葛雷易克為那些想讀到科學的讀者提供了清晰的解釋，也為其他只想知道情節的讀者提供有用的比喻。此外還有每個讀者都會喜歡的逸聞趣事。跟《混沌》不同的地方是，《資訊》也包含人類的歷史。」
－－《紐約時報》／Geoffrey Nunberg，
「有些人仍以傳統的方式思考資訊、尋找資訊。我們還沒有全部成為夏農的子民。這大概是我們還在閱讀像《資訊》這樣既大又迷人的書的原因。」
－－《華盛頓郵報》
「葛雷易克運用他綜合各種細節與講述精采故事的傑出能力，帶領我們參觀一種又一種傳遞資訊的形式……」
－－《出版人週刊》

James Gleick, the author of the bestsellers Chaos and Genius, brings us his crowning work: a revelatory chronicle that shows how information has become the modern era's defining quality--the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world. The story of information begins in a time profoundly unlike our own, when every thought and utterance vanished as soon as it was born. From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long misunderstood "talking drums" of Africa, James Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed the very nature of human consciousness. He provides portraits of the key figures contributing to the inexorable development of our modern understanding of information: Charles Babbage, the idiosyncratic inventor of the first great mechanical computer; Ada Byron, the poet's brilliant and doomed daughter, who became the first true programmer; pivotal figures like Samuel Morse and Alan Turing; and Claude Shannon, the creator of information theory itself. An then the information age comes upon us. Citizens of this world become experts willy-nilly: aficionados of bits and bytes. And they sometimes feel they are drowning, swept by a deluge of signs and signals, news and images, blogs and tweets. The Information is the story of how we got here and where we are heading. It will transform readers' view of its subject. James Gleick is our leading chronicler of science and modern technology. His first book, Chaos, a National Book Award finalist, has been translated into twenty-five languages. His best-selling biographies, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman and Isaac Newton, were short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize. The Information was seven years in the making. Gleick divides his time between New York and Florida.