As an editor at Esquire , AJ Jacobs had built up knowledge of celebrity trivia - and the cure was going to take a long time. While others read a broadsheet at the weekend, or become casual newsnight enthusiasts, Jacobs elected to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica . Part assemblage of trivia, part journey through adulthood, this is fun to read.

Charts how as business, politics, science, and media move online, the rules of the physical world - in which everything has a place - are upended. This book shows how people can reap rewards from the rise of digital knowledge.

Argues for the fundamental unity of all knowledge and the need to search for consilience : the composition of the principles governing every branch of learning. The author shows how our rise in intellectual mastery is rooted in an ancient Greek concept at its zenith during the Enlightenment.

Argues that the gap between digerati hype and end-user gloom is largely due to the tunnel vision that information-driven technologies breed. This book shows us how to look beyond our obsession with information and individuals to include the critical social networks of which these are always a part.

Michel Foucault was part of a glittering generation of thinkers, one which included Sartre, de Beauvoir and Deleuze. Arguable his finest work, this classic is a challenging but fantastically rewarding introduction to his ideas.

Possibly one off the most significant yet most overlooked works of the twentieth century, it was The Order of Things that established Foucault's reputation as an intellectual giant.

Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays safely in his own study at home, he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. This book is his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization.

How can we ensure that the accurate information emerges and is heeded? This book develops an optimistic understanding of the human potential to pool information, combat groupthink, and to use that knowledge to improve our lives.

Thomas S. Kuhn's work explaining the process of scientific discovery. This text is the third edition and incorporates a new index.

Offers an account of the role of knowledge in society aimed to stimulate both discussion and investigations. This book presents an analysis of knowledge in everyday life in the context of a theory of society as a dialectical process between objective and subjective reality.

The third edition of this text contains a new preface, as well as Paul Feyerabend's further contributions to the philosophy of science. Feyerabend takes account both of recent debates on science and of the impact of scientific products and practices on the human community.

This volume consists of writings in which Foucault himself explains, in straightforward and informal terms, different stages and aspects of his work and the preoccupations within the text. By bringing into clearer focus the political and intellectual environment in which these works were produced, Power Knowledge will allow readers to more fully appreciate their significance within contemporary ..

Seeks an answer to the question: exactly what are the unique characteristics of Japanese firms in product development behaviour? This book concludes that Japanese firms uniquely manage knowledge, and they create it in the course of product development.

Confronts the challenge of turning knowledge about how to improve performance into actions that produce measurable results. This book identifies the causes of the knowing-doing gap and explains how to close it.

In a barbarous and fallen world, the monks of the Order of Leibowitz inherit the sacred relics and spend their lives copying, illuminating and interpreting the holy fragments. They vow to preserve ancient knowledge, but will man learn from his mistakes or will history repeat itself?

Many definitions of postmodernism focus on its nature as the aftermath of the modern industrial age when technology developed. This book extends that analysis to postmodernism by looking at the status of science, technology, and the arts, the significance of technocracy, and the way the flow of information is controlled in the Western world.

Unabridged republication of the J M Meiklejohn translation as published by The Colonial Press, New York and London, 1900.

Presented in handy pocket-size, this title catalogues the various misconceptions, mistakes and misunderstandings in 'common knowledge' that can make you wonder why anyone bothers going to school.

First published in English in 1959, Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery revolutionized contemporary thinking about science and knowledge and is one of the most widely read books about science written in the 20th century.

This is a text about the big questions in life: knowledge, consciousness, fate, God, truth, goodness, justice. It is for anyone who believes there are big questions out there, but does not know how to approach them. Think sets out to explain what they are and why they are important.