Here are 100 books that The Matter of Everything fans have personally recommended if you like
The Matter of Everything.
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Since 2008, I have conducted research on themes related to International Political Economy. I am currently the co-chair of the research committee on this topic at the International Political Science Association (IPSA) and am passionate about making sense of the interplay between material and symbolic factors that shape capitalism and globalisation. Being based in Brazil, I was stuck when the country—which did not have salient identity cleavages in politics—came to be, after 2008, a hotspot of religious-based right-wing populism associated with the defence of trade liberalisation as globalisation started to face meaningful backlash from White-majority constituencies who are relatively losers of the post-Cold War order in the advanced industrialised democracies.
In a time when industrial policy is no longer taboo, even in the West, I would recommend this book to remember the pivotal role that state policies play in promoting development.
More than being the result of self-made people, crucial innovations like the smartphone result from the research backbone that the state provides.
The book is, therefore, thought-provoking as it debunks myths of state decline during the so-called neoliberal age, although recognises that private firms have acquired excessive power.
In this sharp and controversial expose, Mariana Mazzucato debunks the pervasive myth that the state is a laggard, bureaucratic apparatus at odds with a dynamic private sector. She reveals in detailed case studies, including a riveting chapter on the iPhone, that the opposite is true: the state is, and has been, our boldest and most valuable innovator. Denying this history is leading us down the wrong path. A select few get credit for what is an intensely collective effort, and the US government has started disinvesting from innovation. The repercussions could stunt economic growth and increase inequality. Mazzucato teaches us…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
Over my lifetime I have been involved in myriad policy issues running from 1970s anti-inflation policies, through the creation of NAFTA in the 1980s, to dealing with climate change in the 2000s. My interest and that of my co-author in technological change and economic growth entailed involvement in innovation policy. We are particularly worried because many citizens have no realisation of the important part that public policy has played in technological changes. Ignorance of this is dangerous in that it may lead legislatures to inhibit the public sector’s future role in such developments without which we have a much-diminished chance of dealing with climate change and holding our own in international economic competition.
While all the books listed earlier provide detailed, in-depth, case studies of public-private sector cooperation in developing selected new technologies, the last two chapters of this book provide necessarily brief coverages of the myriad ways in which this cooperation had been successfully manifested beyond encouraging specific technologies.
Although the book’s main purpose is to show how a series of important technologies have transformed economic, social, and political life over the millennia, the last two chapters show how knowledge of these transformations sheds light on the wider use of public policy to achieve economic goals.
While many public initiatives have succeeded, others have failed. The authors isolate the reasons for these successes and failures and offer their template for designing and administering policies that are more likely to succeed than fail.
This book examines the long term economic growth that has raised the West's material living standards to levels undreamed of by counterparts in any previous time or place. The authors argue that this growth has been driven by technological revolutions that have periodically transformed the West's economic, social and political landscape over the last 10,000 years and allowed the West to become, until recently, the world's only dominant technological force.
Unique in the diversity of the analytical techniques used, the book begins with a discussion of the causes and consequences of economic growth and technological change. The authors argue that…
Over my lifetime I have been involved in myriad policy issues running from 1970s anti-inflation policies, through the creation of NAFTA in the 1980s, to dealing with climate change in the 2000s. My interest and that of my co-author in technological change and economic growth entailed involvement in innovation policy. We are particularly worried because many citizens have no realisation of the important part that public policy has played in technological changes. Ignorance of this is dangerous in that it may lead legislatures to inhibit the public sector’s future role in such developments without which we have a much-diminished chance of dealing with climate change and holding our own in international economic competition.
This book studies the evolution of seven high-tech industries—machine-tools, organic chemical products, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, computers, semiconductors, and software—in the United States, Japan, and Western Europe, stressing the factors that contributed to their successes.
The effects of public policy, although significant in all these cases, have varied across industries and across countries. For example, the American Department of Defense successfully pushed developments in semiconductors, computers, and software, and while the National Institutes of Health massively financed medical research.
Case studies of policy failures, particularly in Japan and Europe, emphasize what has been seen in many less developed countries, that competition among competing firms is vastly preferable to giving a local monopoly to a chosen national champion.
This book describes and analyzes how seven major high-tech industries evolved in the USA, Japan, and Western Europe. The industries covered are machine tools, organic chemical products, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, computers, semiconductors, and software. In each of these industries, firms located in one or a very few countries became the clear technological and commercial leaders. In a number of cases, the locus of leadership changed, sometimes more than once, over the course of the histories studied. The focus of the book is on the key factors that supported the emergence of national leadership in each industry, and the reasons behind…
In 1913, a 15-year-old pregnant girl was found dead of apparent suicide. Dr. James Wilson, a new graduate and the first doctor ever to start a practice in this rural town, feels guilty over her death because of his delayed intervention.
Over my lifetime I have been involved in myriad policy issues running from 1970s anti-inflation policies, through the creation of NAFTA in the 1980s, to dealing with climate change in the 2000s. My interest and that of my co-author in technological change and economic growth entailed involvement in innovation policy. We are particularly worried because many citizens have no realisation of the important part that public policy has played in technological changes. Ignorance of this is dangerous in that it may lead legislatures to inhibit the public sector’s future role in such developments without which we have a much-diminished chance of dealing with climate change and holding our own in international economic competition.
In the original version of this book, Wade refutes the two extreme versions of the reasons for the dramatic successes of the East Asian Tigers, particularly Taiwan, in going from undeveloped to advanced economies, fully integrated into the global economy, within one generation.
One version is that the success was mainly due to the free market and the other that it is attributed mainly to government intervention. Instead, Wade shows that key decisions were divided between the private and public sectors in a way that produced a synergy between them.
The revised version extends the coverage to explain the booms and busts in the early 21st century and outlines his new agenda for national and international development policy.
Published originally in 1990 to critical acclaim, Robert Wade's Governing the Market quickly established itself as a standard in contemporary political economy. In it, Wade challenged claims both of those who saw the East Asian story as a vindication of free market principles and of those who attributed the success of Taiwan and other countries to government intervention. Instead, Wade turned attention to the way allocation decisions were divided between markets and public administration and the synergy between them. Now, in a new introduction to this paperback edition, Wade reviews the debate about industrial policy in East and Southeast Asia…
I am totally fascinated by the quest of how Nature does it. In particular, I love the fact that humans managed to enters the strange world of atoms and photons by just using their brute intellectual force and imagination. This world obeys precise rules, but very different ones from those we get used to since childhood. For example, the laws that govern the microscopic world allow for indeterminacy and randomness. Moreover, some random events may manifest themselves at several locations at once, leading to the phenomenon of quantum non-locality. I am very fortunate that I could spend all my professional time on such fascinating conceptual questions, combined with highly timely new technologies.
This book tells the fascinating story of the people and events behind the turbulent changes in attitudes to quantum theory in the second half of the 20th century. Science is sometimes quite abstract. But it is made by very concrete persons whose characters shape the various scientific communities.
This book tells the fascinating story of the people and events behind the turbulent changes in attitudes to quantum theory in the second half of the 20th century. The huge success of quantum mechanics as a predictive theory has been accompanied, from the very beginning, by doubts and controversy about its foundations and interpretation. This book looks in detail at how research on foundations evolved after WWII, when it was revived, until the mid 1990s, when most of this research merged into the technological promise of quantum information. It is the story of the quantum dissidents, the scientists who brought…
I’m a Professor of Creative Writing at York St John’s University in York, UK. I’ve been published as a poet, novelist, and nonfiction writer. My list reflects perhaps some eclectic tastes, but what unites these books is a fascination with engaging with the world in a way that de-centers the human, and I have done this throughout my writing career. I love the natural world, growing plants, and watching the seasons change. I am also curious about time and memory and how we perceive these. I am drawn towards science fiction, but more the speculative end of that spectrum, where writers explore otherness and possible worlds.
I’ve always been interested in physics, but I have no talent for maths, and like lots of creative types, I find science tough. But not with the engaging voice of Italian physicist Rovelli. This blew my mind and blew the lid off of the universe.
Rovelli explains the fundamentals of physical laws beautifully but then introduces the quantum realm, where time and space are not at all what you thought they were. This isn’t unsettling to me, but it is profoundly beautiful. Time may not be linear at all, we simply have no other way of perceiving it, which means moments in time I felt were lost, are not at all if you look at them another way.
But it also reinforces the idea we must exist in the moment and savor it, as, in a sense, that’s all we have.
INDEPENDENT, ECONOMIST, TELEGRAPH, GUARDIAN, NEW SCIENTIST, EVENING STANDARD BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
Everything you need to know about modern physics, the universe and our place in the world in seven enlightening lessons
'Here, on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown, shines the mystery and the beauty of the world. And it's breathtaking'
These seven short lessons guide us, with simplicity and clarity, through the scientific revolution that shook physics in the twentieth century and still continues to shake us today. In this beautiful and mind-bending introduction to…
Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977, and Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977. Both began a historic journey with unique 'time capsules' on board intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record 12-inch gold-plated disk…
I am a physics professor with a passion for teaching. When I was a graduate student, I took required courses in classical mechanics, classical electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics. Some of the textbooks assigned by my professors were good; some were not so good. In every case, it was extremely helpful to read what other authors had to say about these foundational subjects. Four of the five books I recommend below are my personal favorites among these serious physics books. My fifth book choice is less serious and does not teach physics, but it will improve your graduate student experience nonetheless.
This book helped me pass my PhD qualifying exam. The writing style is crisp and qualitative arguments abound. Baym treats perturbation theory and scattering theory particularly nicely and your interest will never flag because he illustrates the formal theory with wonderfully chosen examples like K-meson interference effects, the Van der Waals interaction, Cooper pairing, spin resonance, multipole radiation, Klein’s paradox, and the Hanbury-Brown and Twiss experiment. A special treat not found in other textbooks is a discussion of Julian Schwinger’s unique take on the quantum theory of angular momentum.
These lecture notes comprise a three-semester graduate course in quantum mechanics at the University of Illinois. There are a number of texts which present the basic topics very well; but since a fair quantity of the material discussed in my course was not available to the students in elementary quantum mechanics books, I was asked to prepare written notes. In retrospect these lecture notes seemed sufficiently interesting to warrant their publication in this format. The notes, presented here in slightly revised form, consitutute a self-contained course in quantum mechanics from first principles to elementary and relativistic one-particle mechanics. Prerequisite to…
Since my first college course in quantum physics, I have been fascinated with this enigmatic, infinitely interesting theory. It's our most fundamental description of the universe, it's been found to be unerringly accurate, yet it's quite subtle to interpret. Even more intriguingly, "nobody really understands quantum physics" (as Richard Feynman put it). For example, the theory's central concept, the wave function, is interpreted radically differently by different physicists. I have always yearned to grasp, at least to my own satisfaction, a comprehensive understanding of this theory. Since retirement 23 years ago, I have pursued this passion nearly full-time and found some answers, leading to several technical papers and a popular book.
Baggott's book is a rich, readable account of quantum physics as viewed at 40 key "moments" in its history. These moments range from the trouble with classical physics in 1900, leading to the notion of discrete "quanta" of energy, to the hunt for the Higgs particle at the CERN accelerator laboratory. Other moments include the invention of Schrodinger's equation, the Uncertainty Principle, and the Standard Model of particle physics. The author is an experienced science writer and former academic scientist.
The twentieth century was defined by physics. From the minds of the world's leading physicists there flowed a river of ideas that would transport mankind to the pinnacle of wonderment and to the very depths of human despair. This was a century that began with the certainties of absolute knowledge and ended with the knowledge of absolute uncertainty. It was a century in which physicists developed weapons with the capacity to destroy our reality, whilst at the same time denying us the possibility that we can ever properly comprehend it.
Almost everything we think we know about the nature of…
I’m a research physicist working in fusion energy and astrophysics. To explain our work, I’ve had to overcome the misconceptions about science that are widespread in the media and among the general population. These books are the best ones I know to correct the mystification of science, especially of topics like quantum mechanics, time, consciousness, and cosmology.
Gamow, one of the greatest popularizers of science and a leading nuclear researcher, clearly describes for non-scientific audiences the drama of the early evolution of quantum theory.
For those who think, based on current popularization, that quantum mechanics is akin to mysticism, this book shows how the quantum debates evolved in real life. Gamow, unlike current popularizers, does not assume that the debates have been resolved in favor of some nonsensical obscurantism.
"Dr. Gamow, physicist and gifted writer, has sketched an intriguing portrait of the scientists and clashing ideas that made the quantum revolution." — Christian Science Monitor In 1900, German physicist Max Planck postulated that light, or radiant energy, can exist only in the form of discrete packages or quanta. This profound insight, along with Einstein's equally momentous theories of relativity, completely revolutionized man's view of matter, energy, and the nature of physics itself. In this lucid layman's introduction to quantum theory, an eminent physicist and noted popularizer of science traces the development of quantum theory from the turn of the…
Deputy Jenna Hart has only been working in her sleepy hometown of Pearl Springs for seven months when city officials begin to be targeted by a killer. Twenty years ago, the construction of a dam caused people to lose their land to eminent domain. That wound has not healed with…
As a professor, I see students fascinated by science, but petrified to take a science class. This is in part because we have dehumanized science, removed the story, edited out the human, deleted the parts that allow people to connect with it. Science does not get delivered by gods, but is created by people: smart, quirky, sometimes immoral people. As a writer, my hope is to be able to reinsert life into readers’ understanding of our greatest advances. As a reader myself, I am deeply appreciative when other authors do it too.
The early period of the development of quantum mechanics were heady days, full of fascinating characters and factional infighting. As Europe was about to tear itself apart again, the physics community had also fractured. Jones explains the scientific fault lines and the personal relations (some of them quite racy!) that were in play as the modern theory of the atom unfolded.
Theoretical physics is in trouble. At least that's the impression you'd get from reading a spate of recent books on the continued failure to resolve the 80-year-old problem of unifying the classical and quantum worlds. The seeds of this problem were sewn eighty years ago when a dramatic revolution in physics reached a climax at the 1927 Solvay conference in Brussels. It's the story of a rush to formalize quantum physics, the work of just a handful of men fired by ambition, philosophical conflicts and personal agendas. Sheilla Jones paints an intimate portrait of the key figures who wrestled with…
