Heart of Darkness describes the incredible saga of humankind's quest to unravel the deepest secrets of the universe. Over the past thirty years, scientists have learned that two little-understood components--dark matter and dark energy--comprise most of the known cosmos, explain the growth of all cosmic structure, and hold the key to the universe's fate. The story of how evidence for the so-called "Lambda-Cold Dark Matter" model of cosmology has been gathered by generations of scientists throughout the world is told here by one of the pioneers of the field, Jeremiah Ostriker, and his coauthor Simon Mitton.

From humankind's early attempts to comprehend Earth's place in the solar system, to astronomers' exploration of the Milky Way galaxy and the realm of the nebulae beyond, to the detection of the primordial fluctuations of energy from which all subsequent structure developed, this book explains the physics and the history of how the current model of our universe arose and has passed every test hurled at it by the skeptics. Throughout this rich story, an essential theme is emphasized: how three aspects of rational inquiry--the application of direct measurement and observation, the introduction of mathematical modeling, and the requirement that hypotheses should be testable and verifiable--guide scientific progress and underpin our modern cosmological paradigm.

The story is far from complete, however, as scientists confront the mysteries of the ultimate causes of cosmic structure formation and the real nature and origin of dark matter and dark energy.

This comprehensive textbook introduces readers to the principal ideas and applications of game theory, in a style that combines rigor with accessibility. Steven Tadelis begins with a concise description of rational decision making, and goes on to discuss strategic and extensive form games with complete information, Bayesian games, and extensive form games with imperfect information. He covers a host of topics, including multistage and repeated games, bargaining theory, auctions, rent-seeking games, mechanism design, signaling games, reputation building, and information transmission games. Unlike other books on game theory, this one begins with the idea of rationality and explores its implications for multiperson decision problems through concepts like dominated strategies and rationalizability. Only then does it present the subject of Nash equilibrium and its derivatives.

Game Theory is the ideal textbook for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students. Throughout, concepts and methods are explained using real-world examples backed by precise analytic material. The book features many important applications to economics and political science, as well as numerous exercises that focus on how to formalize informal situations and then analyze them.

• Introduces the core ideas and applications of game theory
• Covers static and dynamic games, with complete and incomplete information
• Features a variety of examples, applications, and exercises
• Topics include repeated games, bargaining, auctions, signaling, reputation, and information transmission
• Ideal for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students
• Complete solutions available to teachers and selected solutions available to students

In the last thirty years, there have been fierce debates over how civilizations develop and why the West became so powerful. The Measure of Civilization presents a brand-new way of investigating these questions and provides new tools for assessing the long-term growth of societies. Using a groundbreaking numerical index of social development that compares societies in different times and places, award-winning author Ian Morris sets forth a sweeping examination of Eastern and Western development across 15,000 years since the end of the last ice age. He offers surprising conclusions about when and why the West came to dominate the world and fresh perspectives for thinking about the twenty-first century.

Adapting the United Nations' approach for measuring human development, Morris's index breaks social development into four traits--energy capture per capita, organization, information technology, and war-making capacity--and he uses archaeological, historical, and current government data to quantify patterns. Morris reveals that for 90 percent of the time since the last ice age, the world's most advanced region has been at the western end of Eurasia, but contrary to what many historians once believed, there were roughly 1,200 years--from about 550 to 1750 CE--when an East Asian region was more advanced. Only in the late eighteenth century CE, when northwest Europeans tapped into the energy trapped in fossil fuels, did the West leap ahead.

Resolving some of the biggest debates in global history, The Measure of Civilization puts forth innovative tools for determining past, present, and future economic and social trends.

Europe and the Islamic World sheds much-needed light on the shared roots of Islamic and Western cultures and on the richness of their inextricably intertwined histories, refuting once and for all the misguided notion of a "clash of civilizations" between the Muslim world and Europe. In this landmark book, three eminent historians bring to life the complex and tumultuous relations between Genoans and Tunisians, Alexandrians and the people of Constantinople, Catalans and Maghrebis--the myriad groups and individuals whose stories reflect the common cultural, intellectual, and religious heritage of Europe and Islam.

Since the seventh century, when the armies of Constantinople and Medina fought for control of Syria and Palestine, there has been ongoing contact between the Muslim world and the West. This sweeping history vividly recounts the wars and the crusades, the alliances and diplomacy, commerce and the slave trade, technology transfers, and the intellectual and artistic exchanges. Here readers are given an unparalleled introduction to key periods and events, including the Muslim conquests, the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, the commercial revolution of the medieval Mediterranean, the intellectual and cultural achievements of Muslim Spain, the crusades and Spanish reconquest, the rise of the Ottomans and their conquest of a third of Europe, European colonization and decolonization, and the challenges and promise of this entwined legacy today.

As provocative as it is groundbreaking, this book describes this shared history in all its richness and diversity, revealing how ongoing encounters between Europe and Islam have profoundly shaped both.

Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.

Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the lens of money and the challenges it posed to an institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all evil. Drawing on the writings of major Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Brown examines the controversies and changing attitudes toward money caused by the influx of new wealth into church coffers, and describes the spectacular acts of divestment by rich donors and their growing influence in an empire beset with crisis. He shows how the use of wealth for the care of the poor competed with older forms of philanthropy deeply rooted in the Roman world, and sheds light on the ordinary people who gave away their money in hopes of treasure in heaven.

Through the Eye of a Needle challenges the widely held notion that Christianity's growing wealth sapped Rome of its ability to resist the barbarian invasions, and offers a fresh perspective on the social history of the church in late antiquity.

Economic Geography is the most complete, up-to-date textbook available on the important new field of spatial economics. This book fills a gap by providing advanced undergraduate and graduate students with the latest research and methodologies in an accessible and comprehensive way. It is an indispensable reference for researchers in economic geography, regional and urban economics, international trade, and applied econometrics, and can serve as a resource for economists in government.

Economic Geography presents advances in economic theory that explain why, despite the increasing mobility of commodities, ideas, and people, the diffusion of economic activity is very unequal and remains agglomerated in a limited number of spatial entities. The book complements theoretical analysis with detailed discussions of the empirics of the economics of agglomeration, offering a mix of theoretical and empirical research that gives a unique perspective on spatial disparities. It reveals how location continues to matter for trade and economic development, yet how economic integration is transforming the global economy into an economic space in which activities are performed within large metropolitan areas exchanging goods, skills, and information. Economic Geography examines the future implications of this evolution in the spatial economy and relates them to other major social and economic trends.

• Provides a complete introduction to economic geography
• Explains the latest theory and methodologies
• Covers the empirics of agglomeration, from spatial concentration measurement to structural estimations of economic geography models
• Includes history and background of the field
• Serves as a textbook for students and a resource for professionals

The world's oceans account for roughly 71 percent of the planet's surface and 99 percent of its livable volume. Any study of this huge habitat requires a solid foundation in the principles that underlie marine biology and physical and chemical oceanography, yet until now undergraduate textbooks have largely presented compilations of facts rather than explanations of principles. How the Ocean Works fills this gap, providing a concise and accessible college-level introduction to marine science that is also ideal for general readers.

How are winds and currents driven? What is the dilemma of the two-layered ocean? Mark Denny explains key concepts like these in rich and fascinating detail. He explores early scientific knowledge of oceans, photosynthesis, trophic interactions and energy flow, and the impacts of human activities on marine and atmospheric systems. Focusing each chapter on a major topic and carefully explaining the principles and theory involved, Denny gives readers the conceptual building blocks needed to develop a coherent picture of the living ocean. How the Ocean Works is an indispensable resource that teaches readers how to think about the ocean--its biology, mechanics, and conservation.

• Provides a concise, up-to-date introduction to marine science
• Develops the conceptual basis needed to understand how the ocean works
• Explains fundamental principles and theory
• Includes color illustrations and informative diagrams
• Serves as a college textbook and a reference for general readers

Many textbooks on differential equations are written to be interesting to the teacher rather than the student. Introduction to Differential Equations with Dynamical Systems is directed toward students. This concise and up-to-date textbook addresses the challenges that undergraduate mathematics, engineering, and science students experience during a first course on differential equations. And, while covering all the standard parts of the subject, the book emphasizes linear constant coefficient equations and applications, including the topics essential to engineering students. Stephen Campbell and Richard Haberman--using carefully worded derivations, elementary explanations, and examples, exercises, and figures rather than theorems and proofs--have written a book that makes learning and teaching differential equations easier and more relevant. The book also presents elementary dynamical systems in a unique and flexible way that is suitable for all courses, regardless of length.

A concise but thorough introduction to the observational data and theoretical concepts underlying modern astronomy, Astrophysics in a Nutshell is designed for advanced undergraduate science majors taking a one-semester course. This well-balanced and up-to-date textbook covers the essentials of modern astrophysics--from stars to cosmology--emphasizing the common, familiar physical principles that govern astronomical phenomena, and the interplay between theory and observation.

In addition to traditional topics such as stellar remnants, galaxies, and the interstellar medium, Astrophysics in a Nutshell introduces subjects at the forefront of modern research, including black holes, dark matter, gravitational lensing, and dark energy, all updated with some of the latest observational results. To aid physical understanding, mathematical derivations are kept as simple, short, and clear as possible, and order-of-magnitude estimates, dimensional analysis, and scaling arguments are frequently used. These no-nonsense, "back-of-the-envelope" calculations train students to think like physicists. The book is amply illustrated with simple, clear figures and each chapter ends with a set of problems.

In addition to serving as a course textbook, Astrophysics in a Nutshell is an ideal review for a qualifying exam and a handy reference for teachers and researchers.

• The most concise and up-to-date astrophysics textbook for science majors
• Contains a broad and well-balanced choice of traditional subjects and current research topics
• Uses simple, short, and clear derivations of physical results
• Trains students in the essential skills of order-of-magnitude analysis
• Includes teaching problems with each chapter

"Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things." So wrote Adam Smith a quarter of a millennium ago. Using the tools of modern political economics and combining economic theory with a bird's-eye view of the data, this book reinterprets Smith's pillars of prosperity to explain the existence of development clusters--places that tend to combine effective state institutions, the absence of political violence, and high per-capita incomes.

To achieve peace, the authors stress the avoidance of repressive government and civil conflict. Easy taxes, they argue, refers not to low taxes, but a tax system with widespread compliance that collects taxes at a reasonable cost from a broad base, like income. And a tolerable administration of justice is about legal infrastructure that can support the enforcement of contracts and property rights in line with the rule of law. The authors show that countries tend to enjoy all three pillars of prosperity when they have evolved cohesive political institutions that promote common interests, guaranteeing the provision of public goods. In line with much historical research, international conflict has also been an important force behind effective states by fostering common interests. The absence of common interests and/or cohesive political institutions can explain the existence of very different development clusters in fragile states that are plagued by poverty, violence, and weak state capacity.

This full-color illustrated textbook offers the first comprehensive introduction to all major aspects of tropical ecology. It explains why the world's tropical rain forests are so universally rich in species, what factors may contribute to high species richness, how nutrient cycles affect rain forest ecology, and how ecologists investigate the complex interrelationships among flora and fauna. It covers tropical montane ecology, riverine ecosystems, savanna, dry forest--and more.

Tropical Ecology begins with a historical overview followed by a sweeping discussion of biogeography and evolution, and then introduces students to the unique and complex structure of tropical rain forests. Other topics include the processes that influence everything from species richness to rates of photosynthesis: how global climate change may affect rain forest characteristics and function; how fragmentation of ecosystems affects species richness and ecological processes; human ecology in the tropics; biodiversity; and conservation of tropical ecosystems and species.

Drawing on real-world examples taken from actual research, Tropical Ecology is the best textbook on the subject for advanced undergraduates and graduate students.

• Offers the first comprehensive introduction to tropical ecology
• Describes all the major kinds of tropical terrestrial ecosystems
• Explains species diversity, evolutionary processes, and coevolutionary interactions
• Features numerous color illustrations and examples from actual research
• Covers global warming, deforestation, reforestation, fragmentation, and conservation
• The essential textbook for advanced undergraduates and graduate students
• Suitable for courses with a field component

Leading universities that have adopted this book include:

• Biola University
• Bucknell University
• California State University, Fullerton
• Colorado State University - Fort Collins
• Francis Marion University
• Michigan State University
• Middlebury College
• Northern Kentucky University
• Ohio Wesleyan University
• St. Mary's College of Maryland
• Syracuse University
• Tulane University
• University of California, Santa Cruz
• University of Central Florida
• University of Cincinnati
• University of Florida
• University of Missouri
• University of New Mexico
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• University of the West Indies

Mathematical Modeling of Earth's Dynamical Systems gives earth scientists the essential skills for translating chemical and physical systems into mathematical and computational models that provide enhanced insight into Earth's processes. Using a step-by-step method, the book identifies the important geological variables of physical-chemical geoscience problems and describes the mechanisms that control these variables.

This book is directed toward upper-level undergraduate students, graduate students, researchers, and professionals who want to learn how to abstract complex systems into sets of dynamic equations. It shows students how to recognize domains of interest and key factors, and how to explain assumptions in formal terms. The book reveals what data best tests ideas of how nature works, and cautions against inadequate transport laws, unconstrained coefficients, and unfalsifiable models. Various examples of processes and systems, and ample illustrations, are provided. Students using this text should be familiar with the principles of physics, chemistry, and geology, and have taken a year of differential and integral calculus.

Mathematical Modeling of Earth's Dynamical Systems helps earth scientists develop a philosophical framework and strong foundations for conceptualizing complex geologic systems.

• Step-by-step lessons for representing complex Earth systems as dynamical models
• Explains geologic processes in terms of fundamental laws of physics and chemistry
• Numerical solutions to differential equations through the finite difference technique
• A philosophical approach to quantitative problem-solving
• Various examples of processes and systems, including the evolution of sandy coastlines, the global carbon cycle, and much more
• Professors: A supplementary Instructor's Manual is available for this book. It is restricted to teachers using the text in courses. For information on how to obtain a copy, refer to: http://press.princeton.edu/class_use/solutions.html

In the global economy, linguistic diversity influences economic and political development as well as public policies in positive and negative ways. It leads to financial costs, communication barriers, divisions in national unity, and, in some extreme cases, conflicts and war--but it also produces benefits related to group and individual identity. What are the specific advantages and disadvantages of linguistic diversity and how does it influence social and economic progress? This book examines linguistic diversity as a global social phenomenon and considers what degree of linguistic variety might result in the greatest economic good.

Victor Ginsburgh and Shlomo Weber look at linguistic proximity between groups and between languages. They describe and use simple economic, linguistic, and statistical tools to measure diversity's impact on growth, development, trade, the quality of institutions, translation issues, voting patterns in multinational competitions, and the likelihood and intensity of civil conflicts. They address the choosing of core languages in a multilingual community, such as the European Union, and argue that although too many official languages might harm cohesiveness, efficiency, and communication, reducing their number brings about alienation and disenfranchisement of groups.

Demonstrating that the value and drawbacks of linguistic diversity are universal, How Many Languages Do We Need? suggests ways for designing appropriate linguistic policies for today's multilingual world.

Discrete geometry is a relatively new development in pure mathematics, while computational geometry is an emerging area in applications-driven computer science. Their intermingling has yielded exciting advances in recent years, yet what has been lacking until now is an undergraduate textbook that bridges the gap between the two. Discrete and Computational Geometry offers a comprehensive yet accessible introduction to this cutting-edge frontier of mathematics and computer science.

This book covers traditional topics such as convex hulls, triangulations, and Voronoi diagrams, as well as more recent subjects like pseudotriangulations, curve reconstruction, and locked chains. It also touches on more advanced material, including Dehn invariants, associahedra, quasigeodesics, Morse theory, and the recent resolution of the Poincaré conjecture. Connections to real-world applications are made throughout, and algorithms are presented independently of any programming language. This richly illustrated textbook also features numerous exercises and unsolved problems.

• The essential introduction to discrete and computational geometry
• Covers traditional topics as well as new and advanced material
• Features numerous full-color illustrations, exercises, and unsolved problems
• Suitable for sophomores in mathematics, computer science, engineering, or physics
• Rigorous but accessible

The Global Carbon Cycle is a short introduction to this essential geochemical driver of the Earth's climate system, written by one of the world's leading climate-science experts. In this one-of-a-kind primer, David Archer engages readers in clear and simple terms about the many ways the global carbon cycle is woven into our climate system. He begins with a concise overview of the subject, and then looks at the carbon cycle on three different time scales, describing how the cycle interacts with climate in very distinct ways in each. On million-year time scales, feedbacks in the carbon cycle stabilize Earth's climate and oxygen concentrations. Archer explains how on hundred-thousand-year glacial/interglacial time scales, the carbon cycle in the ocean amplifies climate change, and how, on the human time scale of decades, the carbon cycle has been dampening climate change by absorbing fossil-fuel carbon dioxide into the oceans and land biosphere. A central question of the book is whether the carbon cycle could once again act to amplify climate change in centuries to come, for example through melting permafrost peatlands and methane hydrates.

The Global Carbon Cycle features a glossary of terms, suggestions for further reading, and explanations of equations, as well as a forward-looking discussion of open questions about the global carbon cycle.

Condensed Matter in a Nutshell is the most concise, accessible, and self-contained introduction to this exciting and cutting-edge area of modern physics. This premier textbook covers all the standard topics, including crystal structures, energy bands, phonons, optical properties, ferroelectricity, superconductivity, and magnetism. It includes in-depth discussions of transport theory, nanoscience, and semiconductors, and also features the latest experimental advances in this fast-developing field, such as high-temperature superconductivity, the quantum Hall effect, graphene, nanotubes, localization, Hubbard models, density functional theory, phonon focusing, and Kapitza resistance. Rich in detail and full of examples and problems, this textbook is the complete resource for a two-semester graduate course in condensed matter and material physics.

• Covers standard topics like crystal structures, energy bands, and phonons
• Features the latest advances like high-temperature superconductivity and more
• Full of instructive examples and challenging problems
• Solutions manual (available only to teachers)

This book provides an introduction to the mathematics needed to model, analyze, and design feedback systems. It is an ideal textbook for undergraduate and graduate students, and is indispensable for researchers seeking a self-contained reference on control theory. Unlike most books on the subject, Feedback Systems develops transfer functions through the exponential response of a system, and is accessible across a range of disciplines that utilize feedback in physical, biological, information, and economic systems.

Karl Åström and Richard Murray use techniques from physics, computer science, and operations research to introduce control-oriented modeling. They begin with state space tools for analysis and design, including stability of solutions, Lyapunov functions, reachability, state feedback observability, and estimators. The matrix exponential plays a central role in the analysis of linear control systems, allowing a concise development of many of the key concepts for this class of models. Åström and Murray then develop and explain tools in the frequency domain, including transfer functions, Nyquist analysis, PID control, frequency domain design, and robustness. They provide exercises at the end of every chapter, and an accompanying electronic solutions manual is available. Feedback Systems is a complete one-volume resource for students and researchers in mathematics, engineering, and the sciences.

• Covers the mathematics needed to model, analyze, and design feedback systems
• Serves as an introductory textbook for students and a self-contained resource for researchers
• Includes exercises at the end of every chapter
• Features an electronic solutions manual
• Offers techniques applicable across a range of disciplines

For many students, calculus can be the most mystifying and frustrating course they will ever take. The Calculus Lifesaver provides students with the essential tools they need not only to learn calculus, but to excel at it.

All of the material in this user-friendly study guide has been proven to get results. The book arose from Adrian Banner's popular calculus review course at Princeton University, which he developed especially for students who are motivated to earn A's but get only average grades on exams. The complete course will be available for free on the Web in a series of videotaped lectures. This study guide works as a supplement to any single-variable calculus course or textbook. Coupled with a selection of exercises, the book can also be used as a textbook in its own right. The style is informal, non-intimidating, and even entertaining, without sacrificing comprehensiveness. The author elaborates standard course material with scores of detailed examples that treat the reader to an "inner monologue"--the train of thought students should be following in order to solve the problem--providing the necessary reasoning as well as the solution. The book's emphasis is on building problem-solving skills. Examples range from easy to difficult and illustrate the in-depth presentation of theory.

The Calculus Lifesaver combines ease of use and readability with the depth of content and mathematical rigor of the best calculus textbooks. It is an indispensable volume for any student seeking to master calculus.

• Serves as a companion to any single-variable calculus textbook
• Informal, entertaining, and not intimidating
• Informative videos that follow the book--a full forty-eight hours of Banner's Princeton calculus-review course--is available at Adrian Banner lectures
• More than 475 examples (ranging from easy to hard) provide step-by-step reasoning
• Theorems and methods justified and connections made to actual practice
• Difficult topics such as improper integrals and infinite series covered in detail
• Tried and tested by students taking freshman calculus

In It's About Time, N. David Mermin asserts that relativity ought to be an important part of everyone's education--after all, it is largely about time, a subject with which all are familiar. The book reveals that some of our most intuitive notions about time are shockingly wrong, and that the real nature of time discovered by Einstein can be rigorously explained without advanced mathematics. This readable exposition of the nature of time as addressed in Einstein's theory of relativity is accessible to anyone who remembers a little high school algebra and elementary plane geometry.

The book evolved as Mermin taught the subject to diverse groups of undergraduates at Cornell University, none of them science majors, over three and a half decades. Mermin's approach is imaginative, yet accurate and complete. Clear, lively, and informal, the book will appeal to intellectually curious readers of all kinds, including even professional physicists, who will be intrigued by its highly original approach.