James Gleick
Chaos
James Gleick’s Chaos asks how deterministic systems—from weather and turbulent fluids to populations, markets, hearts, and fractal forms—can become unpredictable without becoming random. It explains sensitivity to initial conditions, strange attractors, scaling, and self-organization, showing how this framework reshapes scientific thinking about patterns, prediction, and complex systems.
8 chapters
Isaac Newton
James Gleick traces how Newton moved from childhood observations and self-directed study toward a mathematical account of motion, light, and gravity. The biography follows his unsettled experiments, theological and alchemical inquiries, disputes over priority, and public authority. It asks what mathematical laws explain—and what Newton left unresolved—framing scientific discovery as both proof and unfinished argument.
13 chapters