A lightly surreal story of misfortune, menace, and high-end stereo equipment in the cutthroat, capitalistic world of modern China. An NYRB Classics Original The hero of The Invisibility Cloak lives in contemporary Beijing—where everyone is doing their best to hustle up the ladder of success while shouldering an ever-growing burden of consumer goods—and he’s a loser. Well into his forties, he’s divorced (and still doting on his ex), childless, and living with his sister (her husband wants him out) in an apartment at the edge of town with a crack in the wall the wind from the north blows through while he gets by, just, by making customized old-fashioned amplifiers for the occasional rich audio-obsessive. He has contempt for his clients and contempt for himself. The only things he really likes are Beethoven and vintage speakers. Then an old friend tips him off about a special job—a little risky but just don’t ask too many questions—and can it really be that this hopeless loser wins? This provocative and seriously funny exercise in the social fantastic by the brilliantly original Ge Fei, one of China’s finest living writers, is among the most original works of fiction to come out of China in recent years. It is sure to appeal to readers of Haruki Murakami and other fabulists of contemporary irreality.

Since the beginning of time humans and animals have looked for ways to be less visible to opponents. From the art of camouflage to the science of stealth technology, ways have been developed to hide objects and people. Today, scientists are building an “invisibility cloak” that makes objects and people underneath it seem to disappear. Every great invention begins with a great idea! Read all the books in this series and learn about the history and impact of some of the most fascinating innovations and inventions of our time. Explore the idea’s early stages of development, problems encountered along the way, and how each great idea has influenced our lives. From popular culture and the environment to life-saving machines, learn about the ideas, people, and technologies that made it all happen. This series correlates with The Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (S.T.E.M.) curriculum initiative.

In science fiction, invisibility cloaks let their users vanish from sight and sneak around unnoticed. How could one of these stealthy pieces of clothing work? Scientists have some ideas, which involve bending light. Discover the science and technology behind what it would take to make a real-life invisibility cloak!

Suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of engineering, physics, and mathematics and scientific researchers of all types, this is the first authoritative text on invisibility and the science behind it. More than 100 full-color illustrations, plus exercises with solutions. 2010 edition.

Science is said to be on the verge of achieving the ancient dream of making objects invisible. Invisible is a biography of an idea, tied to the history of science over the "longue duree." Taking in Plato to today s science, Ball shows us that the stories we have told about invisibility are not in fact about technical capability but about power, sex, concealment, morality, and corruption. Precisely because they refer to matters that lie beyond our senses, unseen beings and worlds have long been a repository for hopes, fears, and suppressed desires. Ideas of invisibility are, like all ideas rooted in legend, ultimately parables about our own potential and weaknesses. Invisible presents the first comprehensive survey of the roles that the idea of invisibility has played throughout time and culture. This territory takes us from medieval grimoires to cutting-edge nanotechnology, from fairy tales to telecommunications, from camouflage to early cinematography, and from beliefs about ghosts to the dawn of nuclear physics and the discovery of dark energy. Invisible reveals what our age-old fantasies about what lurks unseen, and whether we can enter that realm ourselves, truly say about us. "

From Harry Potter's famous cloak, to the secrets of the "Invisible Man," popular culture has long been obsessed with the idea of becoming invisible. Yet, the art of invisibility is one of the most closely guarded of all occult secrets. For centuries magicians and adepts have hinted at ways of achieving this seemingly impossible feat, but now these ideas have been brought together for the first time to form a complete manual on how invisibility can be accomplished. Drawing on alchemy, Rosicrucianism, medieval magic, hypnotism, Einsteinian physics and yogic techniques, Steve Richards presents an authoritative and entertaining investigation into this extraordinary subject. This book focuses on the most elusive and seductive of all magical powers, teaching readers the power of invisibility from an occult perspective.

The ability is see is fundamental to our very existence. How true our perceptions really are depends upon many factors, and not least is our understanding of what light is and how it interacts with matter. It was said that the camera, the icon of light recording instruments, never lies, and in the day of the glass plate and celluloid roll-film this might well have been true. But in this modern era, with electronic cameras and computer software, it is often safe to assume that the camera always lies. The advertising images that bombard our every waking moment are manipulated in shape, profile, color, and form. In this new era, light can be manipulated with metamaterials to make one object look like another or even cause that objects to vanish, literally before our eyes; not only can the image we see be manipulated, but so can the light itself.

You think that your choices and behaviors are driven by your individual, personal tastes, and opinions. Our own personal thoughts and opinions is patently obvious. Right? Wrong. Other people's behavior has a huge influence on everything we do, from the mundane to the momentous. Berger integrates research and thinking from business, psychology, and social science to focus on the subtle, invisible influences behind our choices as individuals

Drew is caught in a world of light - just inches away from the dark What if...there was a world beyond our vision, a world just fingertips beyond our reach? What if...our world wasn’t beyond their influence? Tragedy and heartache seem to be waiting for Drew Carter at every turn, but college offers Drew a chance to start over—until an accident during a physics experiment leaves him blind and his genius friend, Benjamin Berg, missing. As his sight miraculously returns, Drew discovers that the accident has heightened his neuron activity, giving him skills and sight beyond the normal man. When he begins to observe fierce invaders that no one else can see, he questions his own sanity, and so do others. But is he insane or do the invaders truly exist? With help from Sydney Carlyle, a mysterious and elusive girl who offers encouragement through her faith, Drew searches for his missing friend, Ben, who seems to hold the key to unlocking this mystery. As the dark invaders close in, will he find the truth in time?

In this innovative synthesis of words and images, the award-winning author of Open City and photography critic for The New York Times Magazine combines two of his great passions. One of Time’s Top 10 Non-Fiction Books of the Year • One of Smithsonian.com’s Ten Best Photography Books of the Year When it comes to Teju Cole, the unexpected is not unfamiliar: He’s an acclaimed novelist, an influential essayist, and an internationally exhibited photographer. In Blind Spot, readers follow Cole’s inimitable artistic vision into the visual realm as he continues to refine the voice, eye, and intellectual obsessions that earned him such acclaim for Open City. Here, journey through more than 150 of Cole’s full-color original photos, each accompanied by his lyrical and evocative prose, forming a multimedia diary of years of near-constant travel: from a park in Berlin to a mountain range in Switzerland, a church exterior in Lagos to a parking lot in Brooklyn; landscapes and interiors, beautiful or quotidian, that inspire Cole’s memories, fantasies, and introspections. Ships in Capri remind him of the work of writers from Homer to Edna O’Brien; a hotel room in Wannsee brings back a disturbing dream about a friend’s death; a home in Tivoli evokes a transformative period of semi-blindness, after which “the photography changed. . . . The looking changed.” As exquisitely wrought as the work of Anne Carson or Chris Marker, Blind Spot is a testament to the art of seeing by one of the most powerful and original voices in contemporary literature. Praise for Blind Spot “Common things [are] made radiant by the quality of Cole’s looking. . . . In this new, luminous book, Cole shows himself to be really one of the best at seeing.”—The Guardian “This lyrical essay in photographs paired with texts explores the mysteries of the ordinary.”—The New York Times Books Review (Editors’ Choice) “Stunning . . . feels like the fulfillment of an intellectual project that has defined most of [Cole’s] career.”—Slate “Dazzling . . . cerebral yet intimate . . . combines personal essay, history, biography, journalism, and photography into a seamless package, capturing human dignity and grace through careful, clear-eyed reverence.”—Vice “An eclectically brilliant distillation of what photography can do, and why it remains an important art form.”—San Francisco Chronicle