Do we live in a simple or a complex universe? Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart explore the ability of complicated rules to generate simple behaviour in nature through 'the collapse of chaos'. 'The most startling, thought-provoking book I've read all year. I was pleased to learn that most of the things I thought I knew were wrong' -- Terry Pratchett

Chaos has collapsed, along with its trendy cousin, complexity, into simplicity. The first half of this book is a witty primer of everything one needs to know about science, from Newton to the present. The second half puts everything into a larger context, enabling ordinary people to look at the world in a new way. Diagrams.

In this New York Times bestseller, one of America’s premier physicians offers a must-read account of the new challenges facing parents today and a program for how we can better prepare our children to navigate the obstacles they face In The Collapse of Parenting, internationally acclaimed author Leonard Sax argues that rising levels of obesity, depression, and anxiety among young people can be traced to parents abdicating their authority. The result is children who have no standard of right and wrong, who lack discipline, and who look to their peers and the Internet for direction. Sax shows how parents must reassert their authority - by limiting time with screens, by encouraging better habits at the dinner table, and by teaching humility and perspective - to renew their relationships with their children. Drawing on nearly thirty years of experience as a family physician and psychologist, along with hundreds of interviews with children, parents, and teachers, Sax offers a blueprint parents can use to help their children thrive in an increasingly complicated world.

Getting home has never been so treacherous When an EMP takes down the power grid and everything that runs on a computer chip, Melissa has no choice but to walk from her office in downtown Salt Lake City to her home in a suburb fifteen miles south. With a few co-workers to keep her company, she isn't too worried-until they begin their journey and discover how quickly society can fall apart. Alex, Melissa's husband, works thirty blocks south of Melissa's office. When everything stops working he has to decide whether to head north and find Melissa or go in the opposite direction to see if their teenaged children made it home. Only trouble is, he's by himself and danger is everywhere.

From Africa to Asia and Latin America, the era of climate wars has begun. Extreme weather is breeding banditry, humanitarian crisis, and state failure. In Tropic of Chaos, investigative journalist Christian Parenti travels along the front lines of this gathering catastrophe--the belt of economically and politically battered postcolonial nations and war zones girding the planet's midlatitudes. Here he finds failed states amid climatic disasters. But he also reveals the unsettling presence of Western military forces and explains how they see an opportunity in the crisis to prepare for open-ended global counterinsurgency. Parenti argues that this incipient "climate fascism" -- a political hardening of wealthy states-- is bound to fail. The struggling states of the developing world cannot be allowed to collapse, as they will take other nations down as well. Instead, we must work to meet the challenge of climate-driven violence with a very different set of sustainable economic and development policies.

"Put together one of the world's best science writers with one of the universe's most fascinating subjects and you are bound to produce a wonderful book. . . . The subject of complexity is vital and controversial. This book is important and beautifully done."—Stephen Jay Gould "[Complexity] is that curious mix of complication and organization that we find throughout the natural and human worlds: the workings of a cell, the structure of the brain, the behavior of the stock market, the shifts of political power. . . . It is time science . . . thinks about meaning as well as counting information. . . . This is the core of the complexity manifesto. Read it, think about it . . . but don't ignore it."—Ian Stewart, Nature This second edition has been brought up to date with an essay entitled "On the Edge in the Business World" and an interview with John Holland, author of Emergence: From Chaos to Order.

On the night of November 9, 1989, massive crowds surged toward the Berlin Wall, drawn by an announcement that caught the world by surprise: East Germans could now move freely to the West. The Wall—infamous symbol of divided Cold War Europe—seemed to be falling. But the opening of the gates that night was not planned by the East German ruling regime—nor was it the result of a bargain between either Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It was an accident. In The Collapse, prize-winning historian Mary Elise Sarotte reveals how a perfect storm of decisions made by daring underground revolutionaries, disgruntled Stasi officers, and dictatorial party bosses sparked an unexpected series of events culminating in the chaotic fall of the Wall. With a novelist’s eye for character and detail, she brings to vivid life a story that sweeps across Budapest, Prague, Dresden, and Leipzig and up to the armed checkpoints in Berlin. We meet the revolutionaries Roland Jahn, Aram Radomski, and Siggi Schefke, risking it all to smuggle the truth across the Iron Curtain; the hapless Politburo member Günter Schabowski, mistakenly suggesting that the Wall is open to a press conference full of foreign journalists, including NBC’s Tom Brokaw; and Stasi officer Harald Jäger, holding the fort at the crucial border crossing that night. Soon, Brokaw starts broadcasting live from Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, where the crowds are exulting in the euphoria of newfound freedom—and the dictators are plotting to restore control. Drawing on new archival sources and dozens of interviews, The Collapse offers the definitive account of the night that brought down the Berlin Wall.

Science's traditional answers to the question: How does complexity arise in nature? are given at the beginning of this book. It shows how intelligence and human culture can be traced back to atomic structure, reducing the whole of nature to simple laws of fundamental physics.

In a heartbeat, everything grinds to a halt...On Christmas Eve, the lights go out. Vehicles stop working. Communications break down.Reclusive former soldier Liam Coleman doesn't want to be anywhere near bustling downtown Chicago the day before Christmas. But his twin brother and his pregnant sister-in-law need him, so he makes the trip.But mere minutes after leaving O'Hare, their car crashes, along with hundreds of other vehicles. When Liam's phone stops working, he begins to suspect something more sinister than a local power outage. But before he can react, the first plane falls from the sky... When a super EMP takes down the nation's power grid, Liam knows it's time to bug out. He's prepared, but he never expected to be caught in the middle of Chicago as chaos erupts. With society collapsing before his very eyes, Liam will have to risk more than he ever thought possible to protect the ones he loves--if it's not already too late. Chaos Rising is the riveting post-apocalyptic EMP survival thriller prequel novella set in the Edge of Collapse universe, a brand new series from bestselling author, Kyla Stone. Includes a six-chapter sneak peek of Edge of Collapse, book #1 in the explosive new post-apocalyptic series.

Historical treatment of significant financial crises.