"An eminent political thinker uses our history with states and corporations—"artificial agents" to which we have granted immense power—to predict how AI will remake society. Much has been written about the arrival of artificial intelligence, but according to political philosopher David Runciman, we've been living with AI for 300 years—because states and corporations are robots, too. In this mind-bending work, Runciman explains the modern world...

"The studies described in this report developed flood hazard data that will be used to establish actuarial flood insurance rates and to assist communities in efforts to implement sound floodplain management."--

"How can you be 100 percent sure you will win a bet? Why did so many Pompeians stay put while Mount Vesuvius was erupting? Are you more likely to work in a kitchen if your last name is Baker? Ever since the dawn of human civilization, we have been trying to make predictions about what the world has in store for us. For just as long, we have been getting it wrong. In How to Expect the Unexpected, mathematician Kit Yates uncovers the surprising science...

"If you could rewind your life to the very beginning and then press play, would everything turn out the same? Or could making an accidental phone call or missing an exit off the highway change not just your life, but history itself? And would you remain blind to the radically different possible world you unknowingly left behind? In Fluke, myth-shattering social scientist Brian Klaas dives deeply into the phenomenon of random chance and the chaos it...

"Por la sangre de las mujeres Marte corre una magia que les concede dones especiales. Creciendo en República Dominicana, y luego al migrar a Nueva York, las hermanas Flor, Matilde, Pastora y Camila aprendieron a valerse de ellos, y de la fuerza de su vínculo, para protegerse de las hostilidades del mundo. Pero también, a callarse sus deseos, temores y anhelos más profundos. Por eso, cuando Flor anuncia que va a celebrar un velorio en vida, el...

"The Internet of today is a far cry from its early promise of a decentralized, democratic network of creativity and innovation. In the past decade, the Internet has fallen under the control of a tiny group of massive companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook. In Read Write Own, tech visionary Chris Dixon argues that the dream of an open network for fostering creativity and entrepreneurship doesn't have to die, and that in fact it can, and must, be...

"What’s the best way to determine what most voters want when multiple candidates are running? What’s the fairest way to allocate legislative seats to different constituencies? What’s the least distorted way to draw voting districts? Not the way we do things now. Democracy is mathematical to its very foundations. Yet most of the methods in use are a historical grab bag of the shortsighted, the cynical, the innumerate, and the outright discriminatory....

In The Accidental Superpower, international strategist Peter Zeihan examines how the hard rules of geography are eroding the American commitment to free trade; how much of the planet is aging into a mass retirement that will enervate markets and capital supplies; and how, against all odds, it is the ever-ravenous American economy that - alone among the developed nations - is rapidly approaching energy independence. Combined, these factors are doing...

"Most people rely only on their life experiences to make investment decisions. This causes them to overlook cyclical forces that repeatedly reshape economies and markets. Investing in U.S. Financial History fills this void by recounting the financial history of the United States of America. It begins with Alexander Hamilton's financial programs in 1790 and ends with the Federal Reserve's battle to contain inflation in 2023. Authored by Mark Higgins,...

"An urgent warning of the unprecedented risks that AI and other fast-developing technologies pose to global order, and how we might contain them while we have the chance--from a co-founder of the pioneering artificial intelligence company DeepMind." -- "Una advertencia urgente sobre los riesgos sin precedentes que la IA y otras tecnologías de rápido desarrollo representan para el orden global, y cómo podemos contenerlos mientras tengamos la oportunidad,...