Archives de catégorie : Popular Science

WHY SPACE? d’Ariel Ekblaw

Aerospace engineer and architect Ariel Ekblaw invites us to look up and see humanity at the edge of a new era. As civilization begins to extend beyond Earth’s cradle into the wider solar system, she argues that space exploration is not a luxury, but a moral, practical, and aspirational necessity.

WHY SPACE?
by Ariel Ekblaw
Crown, August 2027

Blending history, philosophy, and cutting-edge technology, the book shows how the challenges of living and working in orbit drive innovations that improve life on Earth, from biomedical breakthroughs in microgravity to sustainable systems shaped by extreme environments. It explores a rapidly growing space economy powered by commercial stations, new industries, and bold entrepreneurs, while also examining the profound perspective shift that comes from seeing Earth as a fragile, shared home.

Visionary yet grounded, WHY SPACE? reframes the space age as a collective project: a call to innovate responsibly, expand thoughtfully, and build a future in which life in orbit strengthens life on Earth.

Dr. Ariel Ekblaw is a visionary space architect and singular voice in astrophysics. She is the founder and CEO of Aurelia Institute and General Partner for Aurelia Foundry Fund, a hybrid space architecture research institute and venture incubation studio. Prior to founding Aurelia, Ariel founded the MIT Space Exploration Initiative, a team of 50+ students, faculty, and staff building and flying advanced technology for space exploration. She led this organization for seven years inside the MIT Media Lab. Ariel’s work has been featured in WIRED, Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, CNN, NPR, numerous academic papers, and top tech podcasts like Lex Fridman and Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “StarTalk.” Her TED talk ‘How to Build in Space for Life on Earth’ has been viewed over 500K since May.

USE YOUR BRAIN d’Erica Dhawan

A provocative, story-driven guide to reclaiming your mental edge in a tech-dominated world. Dhawan’s previous book, Digital Body Language, has been a go-to title for navigating the digital workplace with rights sold in nineteen territories.

USE YOUR BRAIN: How to Think Deeper in a World on Autopilot
by Erica Dhawan
St. Martin’s Press, January 2027

We have trained ourselves to surrender pieces of our agency to technology for decades; GPS tells us where to turn, search engines tell us what to know, and smartphones make constant availability feel normal. With the dawn of AI, the age of hyper-speed is here whether we like it or not. These new tools don’t just support our brains, they outsource them to machines that don’t feel, don’t doubt, and don’t care. But the future doesn’t belong to those who blindly follow algorithms or trends—it belongs to those who outthink them.

USE YOUR BRAIN is a practical playbook for nurturing, not abandoning, your critical thinking skills in an era defined by speed and automation. Author Erica Dhawan conducted a years-long intensive study of people across five continents and all walks of life—from CEOs and artists to students and scientists—and the leaders who are thriving aren’t dependent upon new technology; they’re able to use it to their advantage while refusing to compromise their own judgment.

Packed with entertaining stories and concrete advice, USE YOUR BRAIN is essential reading for getting ahead in modern life, whether you’re an executive navigating scale, an employee trying to stay relevant, a parent raising independent thinkers in a world of instant answers, or someone who just wants to remain mentally sharp and fully human. Anyone who wants to succeed in today’s world must understand a baseline truth that runs counter to everything Silicon Valley is selling us; that speed is not the same as wisdom, automation is not the same as judgment, and efficiency is not the same as progress. They will be the ones who know when to challenge it, when to trust their own reasoning, and when to step back and think for themselves.

Erica Dhawan is a globally-recognized expert on leadership and teamwork. She is regularly named as one of the top fifty management thinkers in the world by Thinkers50 and a top fifty keynote speaker by Real Leaders. She speaks on global stages ranging from the World Economic Forum at Davos to TED, and her work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and NPR, among others. She has degrees from Harvard, MIT Sloan and The Wharton School.

RACEBOOK de Tochi Onyebuchi

From the author of Hugo and NAACP Image Award finalist Riot Baby, an original memoir in essays that interrogates how identities are shaped and informed in online spaces and how the relationship between race and the Internet has changed in his three decades online.

RACEBOOK: A Personal History of the Internet
by Tochi Onyebuchi
Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic, October 2025

When Tochi Onyebuchi realized that his acclaimed science fiction and fantasy storytelling career had been centrally preoccupied with race, it prompted him to consider his responsibilities as a Black writer in the Internet age. Excavating the Internet of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Racebook explores how the writer and public intellectual Onyebuchi is today, was formed in that crucible.

Beginning with the current moment when everything, including personal identity, is a matter of dispute, and tracing his online persona in reverse chronological order back to Web 1.0’s promises of greater equality and a bright digital future, Onyebuchi deftly examines the evolution of internet culture and the ways that culture has shifted in the ensuing decades. From the ever-changing nature of personal writing and free expression, to gaming, manga, fandom, and virtual reality—Onyebuchi examines the internet alongside works of literature both classic and new, and asks if our vision for what is possible has really broadened. And given the inequities Black people are still subject to, on and off the page, does the Internet only amplify our failures of imagination?

A new, compelling investigation of race through the lens of the modern Internet age, and a profound intellectual journey in pursuit of community online, Onyebuchi argues for a liberation of the individual behind the code, ultimately asking “Is this a race book or is it not? Is it either-or? Can it be both-and? Can I?”

“Poetic and insightful . . . This is a must-read.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Racebook’s essays are filled with nostalgic gaming references, musings on the current state of the internet, social media follies, and a surprising amount of German. Onyebuchi uses his fascinating life story as the backbone for this book, and readers learn as much about his background as they do about how the internet has changed and grown. Recommended for readers who want to examine the internet as it was, is, and will be, and how one person’s unique perspective can elucidate universal truths.”—Booklist, starred review

“Wide-ranging . . . A trenchant essay collection about race and identity online . . . Onyebuchi’s cultural vocabulary is impressive, weaving together references to, among others, Graham Greene, Nas, and Walter Mosley . . . this is a lively and astute read.”—Kirkus Reviews

“A riotous history of the internet from a nostalgic fan and passionate critic. Tochi Onyebuchi knows that when you enter a world that turns friends into followers, and authenticity into performance, speaking the truth is the only way out. He does it beautifully in this memoir-in-essays, which looks at the pressure of data capitalism on our inner lives and future identities.”—Laila Lalami, author of The Dream Hotel

“A love letter to the broken internet: Onyebuchi’s prose glitters and his insights cut in this smart tour through the key junctures at which the internet’s terrible promise and peril revealed themselves.”—Cory Doctorow, author of Enshittification and Red Team Blues

Tochi Onyebuchi is the Hugo and NAACP Image Award finalist and author of Goliath, Riot Baby, the Beasts Made of Night series, and the War Girls series. He was the writer on Marvel Comics’ “Captain America: Symbol of Truth” series (2022-2023) and the Black Panther Legends run (2021-2022). He was also part of the writing team behind Activision’s Call of Duty: Vanguard. His nonfiction includes the book (S)kinfolk and has appeared in the New York Times, NPR, and the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, among other places. He has earned degrees from Yale University, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Columbia Law School, and the Paris Institute of Political Studies. He currently resides in Connecticut.

CIRCUIT BREAKERS d’Anna Chambers

Neuroscientist Dr. Anna Chambers takes us inside a state-of-the-art brain research laboratory, showing us how scientists unpack the biological secrets that make headlines and save lives.

CIRCUIT BREAKERS: How Neuroscientists Get Inside Your Head
by Anna Chambers
Abrams Press, November 2026
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)

In recent decades, neuroscience has revealed fascinating details about how the brain works in health and disease. But how do we know what we know?

In CIRCUIT BREAKERS, Harvard neuroscientist Dr. Anna Chambers pulls back the curtain to show us what happens in the modern brain research laboratory. Here, we learn how cutting-edge tools can manipulate memories, make neurons glow in the dark, and record signals at every level, from the whole brain to a single synapse. In the rapidly expanding field of neuroscience, unprecedented discoveries may be all in a day’s work. Through stories of the ‘science around the science’―all the daily problems a scientist must solve, like accessing a living brain encased in a skull, or figuring out how to coax unusual creatures like cuttlefish and bats into behaving naturally in a lab―Chambers invites us into spaces where few of us ever venture.

CIRCUIT BREAKERS weaves down-to-earth explanations of futuristic tools, like human brain implants and laser-controlled neurons, with candid interviews and stories from her own often-grueling journey as a researcher. Throughout, Chambers tells the little-known stories of these discoveries with equal parts humor and wonder. Through sharing this fascinating―and sometimes downright strange― profession with the wider world, Circuit Breakers is deeply committed to inspiring young neuroscientists, improving scientific literacy, and dispelling the many myths about the brain, the ultimate “black box.”

Dr. Anna Chambers is a neuroscientist who conducts research on memory, sleep and hearing. She is an Instructor of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery at Harvard Medical School and a researcher in the Eaton-Peabody Laboratories at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Hospital in Boston. She studied neuroscience as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins, received a Ph.D. from Harvard in 2015, and conducted postdoctoral fellowships in Germany and Norway. She lives in the Boston area with her husband and two sons.

SHAZAM de Chris Barton

Written by the co-founder and first CEO of Shazam, the music identification app, this is the inside story of how an “impossible” idea became a global phenomenon. Moneyball meets Grit, this is a story of inspiration and perseverance that we think will have wide appeal.

SHAZAM: The Quest to Bring an Impossible Idea to Life
by Chris Barton
St. Martin’s Press, Winter 2028

Today, Shazam is one of the most iconic and widely used apps in the world, with a brand name so recognizable that it has become a verb. But what few people know is that it was invented before smartphones existed. Chris dreamed up Shazam in 1999, when people were still buying CDs and carrying around portable CD players with wired headsets. There was no Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and certainly no App Store. The closest thing to streaming music was the illegal sharing of digital files on platforms like Napster. There was no Facebook, Instagram, or even Myspace. Chris’s idea, that anyone, anywhere, could use their phone to identify a song playing in the background, sounded like science fiction. More than 100 experts told him it couldn’t be done, but Chris refused to give up. Instead, he assembled a dream team of brilliant minds—engineers, scientists, and business thinkers—who shared his vision (after some persuasion). United by a shared sense of purpose and determination, they set out to build the impossible from scratch. Together, they would develop the technology that would power the world’s first AI-driven consumer tool, years before anyone had even heard the word “app.” What followed was an eighteen-year odyssey marked by near-bankruptcy, groundbreaking innovation, sabotage, fierce competition with behemoths like Google and Sony, and bitter internal battles among team members. Through every setback and betrayal, Chris never gave up on his vision, and he continued to fight to keep Shazam on course. In the end, the idea that no one thought could work became a global phenomenon. This is more than a tech success story. It’s a deeply human, often emotional narrative about vision, grit, and the power of believing in the impossible.

This story will appeal to music lovers, business book readers, or anyone who likes a narrative about overcoming odds and finding success.

Chris Barton is the original co-founder and first CEO of Shazam, which he conceived the idea of as an MBA student at U.C. Berkeley. He was also a founding member of Google’s mobile partnerships team and later joined Dropbox as one of its first 100 employees. Barton has an active speaking platform, delivering keynote speeches to audiences all around the world.