History

The global history of high speed rail, from the railways' "wisest, most detailed historian" (The Observer) Sleek, comfortable, accessible, and sustainable, high-speed rail is the future. Since Japan’s Bullet Train first sped down the track in the sixties, it has become a global icon, as famous...

The story of human civilization can be read most deeply in the materials we have found or created, used or abused......

How did a simple design error cause one of the great disasters of the 1980s - the collapse of the walkways at the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel? What made the graceful and innovative Tacoma Narrows Bridge twist apart in a mild wind in 1940? How did an oversized waterlily inspire the...

How much should you pay for a return trip to the moon? How are Winnie the Pooh and the artificial heart related? Did teenagers exist before 1950? If not, who invented them? James May's 20th Century answers all these questions and more. In this exclusive download released to tie-in with the BBC...

From a New York Times bestselling author and investigative journalist comes The Social Network for the video game industry: a riveting examination of Blizzard Entertainment's rise and shocking downfall—"A fast paced thrill ride, perfect for anyone who has ever played a video game" (Ben...

To live in 19th-century Britain was to experience an astonishing series of changes, of a kind for which there was simply no precedent in the human experience....

This Is Not a Game is the extraordinary untold story of the internet’s first conspiracy theory, the legend of Ong’s Hat.

Steven Levy's classic book traces the exploits of the computer revolution's original hackers - those brilliant and eccentric nerds from the late 1950s through the early '80s who took risks....

This book conveys every aspect of the Apollo missions with breathtaking immediacy and stunning detail....

Longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year The "rich and gripping" true story of the first time machines came for human jobs—and how the Luddite uprising explains the power, threat, and toll of big tech and AI today (Naomi Klein) The most urgent story in modern tech begins...

Although we usually think of technology as something unique to modern times, our ancestors began to create the first technologies millions of years ago....

As Marc Raboy shows us in this enthralling and comprehensive biography, Marconi was the first truly global figure in modern communications....

Ignition! is the inside story of the Cold War era search for a rocket propellant which could be trusted to take man into space. A favorite of Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, listeners will want to tune into this "really good book on rocket[s]," available for the first time in audio. Ignition!...

Gene Kranz was present at the creation of America's manned space program and was a key player in it for three decades. As a flight director in NASA's Mission Control, Kranz witnessed firsthand the making of history. He participated in the space program from the early days of the Mercury program...

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, and the space race was born. Desperate to beat the Russians into space, NASA put together a crew of the nation's most daring test pilots: the seven men who were to lead America to the moon. The first into space was Alan Shepard; the last...

Most people think about technology as something we created to serve us, but we may well be getting to the point where we are the ones who're serving an ever more sophisticated technology. Dr Sharp outlines strategies and tools to build your confidence to cope with the modern world.

2015 Audie Award Finalist for Nonfiction Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson’s New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed The Innovators is a “riveting, propulsive, and at times deeply moving” (The Atlantic) story of the people who created the...

James Gleick, the author of the best sellers Chaos and Genius, 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...

The grid is an accident of history and of culture, in no way intrinsic to how we produce, deliver and consume electrical power. Yet this is the system the United States ended up with....

A sweeping history of data and its technical, political, and ethical impact on our world. From facial recognition—capable of checking us onto flights or identifying undocumented residents—to automated decision systems that inform everything from who gets loans to who receives bail, each of...