Invention, engineering and space

Why structures hold up or fail: tension, compression, shear and fracture explained.

How the Bell Labs team of Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain invented the transistor.

Prosperity grows as trade and specialisation let ideas meet and combine.

Innovation is gradual, collective and bottom-up, not the work of lone inventors.

How Hinton, LeCun and Bengio kept neural networks alive until deep learning took off.

Insider history of liquid rocket propellant development

The engineering design of liquid-propellant rocket engines, with 470 illustrations.

The chief engineer on designing, building, testing and flying the lunar module.

Seven patterns, such as the adjacent possible, in the settings that produce ideas.

Science-inspired cooking techniques of modern gastronomy, across six volumes.

The case that fast-improving technology will make scarce resources cheap.

How Bell Labs turned research into the transistor, the laser and information theory.

Why glass is clear and paperclips bend: the science of everyday materials.

The knowledge survivors would need to rebuild technological society after a collapse.

Why organisations kill breakthrough projects, and how structure can protect them.