The story of the compass is shrouded in mystery and myth, yet most will agree it begins around the time of the birth of Christ in ancient China. A mysterious lodestone whose powers affected metal was known to the Chinese emperor. When this piece of metal was suspended in water, it always pointed north. This unexplainable occurrence led to the stone's use in feng shui, the Chinese art of finding the right location. However, it was the Italians, more than a thousand years later, who discovered the ultimate destiny of the lodestone and unleashed its formidable powers. In Amalfi sometime in the...

For thousands of years, it was the visionaries and writers who argued that we cannot be alone-that there is intellegent life in the universe. Now, with the discoveries of the Hubble Telescope, data emerging from Mars, and knowledge about life at the extremes, scientists are taking up where they left off. Amir Aczel, author of Fermat's Last Theorem, pulls together everyting science has discovered, and mixes in proabability theory, to argure the case for the existence of intelligent life beyond this planet. Probability 1 is an extraordinary tour de force in which the author draws on cosmology,...

He was neither a mathematician nor a trained physicist and yet Leon Foucault always knew that a mysterious force of nature was among us. Like Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, and others before him, Foucault sensed a dramatic relationship between the rotating skies above and the seemingly motionless ground beneath our feet. But it wasn't until 1851 -- in Paris, inside the Pantheon, and in the company of fellow amateur scientist Napoleon III -- that Foucault swung a pendulum and demonstrated an extraordinary truth about the world: that it turns on its axis.
Pendulum is a fascinating...

Modeled on Aczel's successful Fermat's Last Theorem, this book gives readers the tools to minimize, or maximize, chance's effect on their lives. Aczel explores probability theory and its daily, practical applications, while relating stories of gamblers who also happen to be mathematical geniuses.

How to Beat the I.R.S. at Its Own Game: Strategies to Avoid-and Fight-an Audit By Amir D. Aczel Second edition. "The I.R.S. as well as taxpayers can learn something from this book."-the Wall Street Journal ISBN: 1-56858-048-7

Could fiction become reality? Will a time come when we are able to teleport across space or communicate between universes? The lines between science and science fiction are becoming increasingly blurred. in Philip Pulman's The Amber Spyglass communicate between universes, both are using the phenomenon known as entanglement. Now quantum mechanics promises that some of our wildest dreams may be realized. Recent experiments show not only that such bizarre effects might be possible but that they could become reality, perhaps even in our lifetimes.