This is an informal collection of essays and speeches on the writers who in one way or another counted for Val ry in the shaping of his mind or in his affections and interests: Descartes, Voltaire,...
Inspiring popular video games like Tetris while contributing to the study of combinatorial geometry and tiling theory, polyominoes have continued to spark interest ever since their inventor,...
Prometheus the god stole fire from heaven and bestowed it on humans. In punishment, Zeus chained him to a rock, where an eagle clawed unceasingly at his liver, until Herakles freed him. For the...
What adventure novelist could have invented the life of Giuseppe Garibaldi? The revolutionary, soldier, politician, and greatest figure in the fight for Italian unification, Garibaldi (1807-1882)...
The Sanctuary of Eleusis, near Athens, was the center of a religious cult that endured for nearly two thousand years and whose initiates came from all parts of the civilized world. Looking at the...
What are your chances of dying on your next flight, being called for jury duty, or winning the lottery? In this collection of twenty-one puzzles, Paul Nahin challenges us to think creatively about...
The independence of the Federal Reserve is considered a cornerstone of its identity, crucial for keeping monetary policy decisions free of electoral politics. But do we really understand what is...
"Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics" was a revolutionary book that caused a sea change in theoretical physics. Here, John von Neumann, one of the leading mathematicians of the...
Although ecologists have long considered morphology and life history to be important determinants of the distribution, abundance, and dynamics of plants in nature, this book contains the first...
Nietzsche's work "Thus Spake Zarathustra" is filled with a strange sense of religiosity that seems to run counter to the philosopher's usual polemics against religious faith. For C...