My Favorite Science Books

'The Illustrated on the Shoulders of Giants: The Grea... by Stephen Hawking
http://t.co/iVDS3YXa

'The Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature by Philip Ball
http://t.co/SlIMOD2U

Cats' Paws and Catapults: Mechanical Worlds of Na...' by Steven Vogel
http://t.co/Lr6SOMzm

Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another' by Philip Ball
http://t.co/6tTvrjTJ

'Dynamics of Dinosaurs by R. McNeill Alexander
http://t.co/5SoIiMlL

The Universe Below : Discovering the Secrets of the Deep Sea
http://t.co/26Plaa0U

Dinosaurs, Spitfires, and Sea Dragons
http://t.co/ozLTMqcx

Signs of Life: How Complexity Pervades Biology
http://t.co/0ozIY7XJ

Five More Golden Rules: Knots, Codes, Chaos, and Other Great Theories of
20th-Century Mathematics
http://t.co/o4L3T2p0

Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle
http://t.co/LLbqfWwb

In Search of the Lost Cord: Solving the Mystery of Spinal Cord Regeneration
http://t.co/kWGLSytz

The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can\'t Do Without It
http://t.co/aS4qSmZZ

The Engines of Our Ingenuity: An Engineer Looks at Technology and Culture
http://t.co/xmvFDK5l

How the Mind Works
http://t.co/SF8IYziu

The Millennium Problems: The Seven Greatest Unsolved Mathematical Puzzles Of Our
Time
http://t.co/8j4Cnuaz

It Must Be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science
http://t.co/zzWVSsDQ

Lists free science e-books, textbooks, lecture notes, monographs, and other science related documents.

Science Books Online lists free science e-books, textbooks, lecture notes, monographs, and other science related documents. All texts are available for free reading online, or for downloading in various formats.

The Music Instinct

The sound files and podcasts for the book The Music Instinct are now live.

All human cultures seem to make music - today and through history. But why they do so, why music can excite deep passions, and how we make sense of musical sound at all are questions that have, until recently, remained profoundly mysterious.

Google Books Settlement Agreement with Authors and Publisher

Philanthrocapitalism

The Public Domain

James Boyle’s new book is out — The Public Domain: Enclosing of the Commons of the Mind, published by Yale University Press. Download the PDF under a CC BY-NC-SA license.

Opening Up Education

Opening Up Education (MIT Press, 2008) argues that we must develop not only the technical capability but also the intellectual capacity for transforming tacit pedagogical knowledge into commonly usable and visible knowledge: by providing incentives for faculty to use (and contribute to) open education goods, and by looking beyond institutional boundaries to connect a variety of settings and open source entrepreneurs.

The entrepreneur success gap among different races

Education, prior work experience and financial backing are crucial factors in the success of entrepreneurs, according to a new book by Robert W. Fairlie and Alicia M. Robb and funded in part by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The book examines why Asian American-owned businesses do well in comparison to white-owned businesses, and African American-owned firms do poorly in relation to both. The book also explores the broader question of why some small businesses succeed and others fail.

According to Race and Entrepreneurial Success: Black-, Asian-, and White-Owned Businesses in the United States, the most significant factors contributing to a firm's level of success are its startup capital and the owner's education level and business experience. The book, which was recently released by MIT Press, provides a new comprehensive analysis of Census Bureau data that are rarely seen by the public.

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature

Just Another Emperor? The Myths and Realities of Philanthrocapitalism

Business involvement in philanthropy is increasing day by day, but is it a blessing, a curse, or somewhere in between? Just Another Emperor? is the first book to take a comprehensive and critical look at this vital new phenomenon. Whatever position you take, this will be one of the most important debates of the next 10 years.

Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software

In Two Bits, Christopher M. Kelty investigates the history and cultural significance of Free Software, revealing the people and practices that have transformed not only software, but also music, film, science, and education.

Drawing on ethnographic research that took him from an Internet healthcare start-up company in Boston to media labs in Berlin to young entrepreneurs in Bangalore, Kelty describes the technologies and the moral vision that binds together hackers, geeks, lawyers, and other Free Software advocates. In each case, he shows how their practices and way of life include not only the sharing of software source code but also ways of conceptualizing openness, writing copyright licenses, coordinating collaboration, and proselytizing for the movement. By exploring in detail how these practices came together as the Free Software movement from the 1970s to the 1990s, Kelty also shows how it is possible to understand the new movements that are emerging out of Free Software: projects such as Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that creates copyright licenses, and Connexions, a project to create an online scholarly textbook commons.

Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software

In Two Bits, Christopher M. Kelty investigates the history and cultural significance of Free Software, revealing the people and practices that have transformed not only software, but also music, film, science, and education.

Drawing on ethnographic research that took him from an Internet healthcare start-up company in Boston to media labs in Berlin to young entrepreneurs in Bangalore, Kelty describes the technologies and the moral vision that binds together hackers, geeks, lawyers, and other Free Software advocates. In each case, he shows how their practices and way of life include not only the sharing of software source code but also ways of conceptualizing openness, writing copyright licenses, coordinating collaboration, and proselytizing for the movement. By exploring in detail how these practices came together as the Free Software movement from the 1970s to the 1990s, Kelty also shows how it is possible to understand the new movements that are emerging out of Free Software: projects such as Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that creates copyright licenses, and Connexions, a project to create an online scholarly textbook commons.

The Theory and Practice of Online Learning

The Theory and Practice of Online Learning
Edited by Terry Anderson
May 2008
E-Book
978-1-897425-07-7 (e-book)

Every chapter in the widely distributed first edition has been updated, and four new chapters on current issues such as connectivism and social software innovations have been added. Essays by practitioners and scholars active in the complex, diverse, and rapidly evolving field of distance education blend scholarship and research; practical attention to the details of teaching and learning; and mindful attention to the economics of the business of education.

The Future of the Internet

Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It
Synopsis:
This extraordinary book explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquity—and reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation—and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control.

The book is available to download under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 3.0 license

Science, Evolution, and Creationism

The National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine have released Science, Evolution, and Creationism, a book designed to give the public a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the current scientific understanding of evolution and its importance in the science classroom.

In the book Science, Evolution, and Creationism, a group of experts assembled by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine explain the fundamental methods of science, document the overwhelming evidence in support of biological evolution, and evaluate the alternative perspectives offered by advocates of various kinds of creationism, including "intelligent design." The book explores the many fascinating inquiries being pursued that put the science of evolution to work in preventing and treating human disease, developing new agricultural products, and fostering industrial innovations. The book also presents the scientific and legal reasons for not teaching creationist ideas in public school science classes.

Creating a World Without Poverty

Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus outlines his vision for a new business model that combines the power of free markets with the quest for a more humane world—and. In Creating a World Without Poverty, Yunus goes beyond microcredit to pioneer the idea of social business—a completely new way to use the creative vibrancy of business to tackle social problems from poverty and pollution to inadequate health care and lack of education.

On Being a Scientist

On Being a Scientist presents discussions of the social and historical context of science, the allocation of credit for discovery, the scientist's role in society, the issues revolving around publication, and many other aspects of scientific work. The booklet explores the inevitable conflicts that arise when the black and white areas of science meet the gray areas of human values and biases.

Science Books 2007

Peter Atkins, Four Laws That Drive the Universe, (Hardcover), Oxford University Press.

Fritjof Capra, Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance, (Hardcover), Doubleday.

Ian Stewart, Why Beauty Is Truth: A History of Symmetry, (Hardcover), Perseus Books Group.

Paul J. Steinhardt, Neil Turok, Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang, (Hardcover), Doubleday.

Philp Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, (Hardcover) Random House.

Peter D. Ward, Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future, (Hardcover), Collins.

J. Craig Venter, A Life Decoded: My Genome: My Life, (Hardcover), Viking.

Michael Shermer, The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics, (Hardcover), Times Books.

Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, (Hardcover), Knopf.

Gino Segre, Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics, (Hardcover), Viking.

Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, (Hardcover), Viking.

John Allen Paulos, Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up, (Hardcover), Hill and Wang.

Lynn Margulis & Eduardo Punset, Mind, Life, and Universe: Conversations with Great Scientists of Our Time, (Hardcover), Chelsea Green Publishing.

David Lindley, Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science, (Hardcover), Doubleday.

Douglas Hofstatder, I Am a Strange Loop, (Hardcover), Basic Books.

Howard Gardner, Five Minds for the Future, (Hardcover), Harvard Business School Press.

Jeremy Bernstein, Plutonium: A History of the World's Most Dangerous Element, (Hardcover), Joseph Henry Press.

How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas

How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas
Updated Edition by David Bornstein

"David Bornstein's How to Change the World is the first book to study a remarkable and growing group of individuals around the world--what Bornstein calls social entrepreneurs. These men and women are bringing innovative, and successful, grass-roots approaches to a wide variety of social and economic problems, from rural poverty in India to discrimination against gypsies in Central Europe; from industrial pollution in the United States to child prostitution in Thailand. Like business entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs are creative, driven, and adventurous. The embrace change, exploit new opportunities, and think big. In How to Change the World, Bornstein provides vivid profiles of many such individuals, looking at the personalities, strategies, and techniques they have in common."

Science books for children

In this Nature Podcast science book special (mp3), they discuss the latest trends in childrens science publishing and the importance of storytelling.