Stephen Budiansky

Unlike every other domestic animal, the cat evolved as a solitary animal, not a group-dweller. A cat in a household is almost literally a fish out of water. That cats can nonetheless get along with people and (sometimes) other cats when forced to, is testimony to a remarkable adaptability. But it also makes for an extraordinary range of behaviours. Cats have for years been the subjects of intensive research in the fields of developmental psychology, learning, emotions, brain chemistry, and perception. THE CHARACTER OF CATS is the first popular book to bring this knowledge to bear on the behaviour and nature of cats. Budiansky enables us to see that many of the things that puzzle and at times baffle or even infuriate cat owners have a rational - though often very surprising - explanation in science.

A remarkable account of Kurt G del weaving together creative genius mental illness political corruption and idealism in the face of the turmoil of war and upheaval At age 24 a brilliant Austrian born mathematician published a mathematical result that shook the world Nearly a hundred years after Kurt G del s famous 1931 paper On Formally Undecidable Propositions appeared his proof that every mathematical system must contain propositions that are true yet never provable within that system continues to pose profound questions for mathematics philosophy computer science and artificial intelligence His close friend Albert Einstein with whom he would walk home every day from Princeton s famous Institute for Advanced Study called him the greatest logician since Aristotle He was also a man who felt profoundly out of place in his time rejecting the entire current of 20th century philosophical thought in his belief that mathematical truths existed independent of the human mind and beset by personal demons of anxiety and paranoid delusions that would ultimately lead to his tragic end from self starvation Drawing on previously unpublished letters diaries and medical records Journey to the Edge of Reason offers the most complete portrait yet of the l

¿Tienen conciencia los animales? ¿Cómo se comunica un animal con otro? ¿Cómo hacen cálculos matemáticos? ¿Cómo encuentran el camino de vuelta a casa? Es casi imposible imaginar que estas habilidades existan en otros animales que no sean los seres humanos pero, como Budiansky revela en este fascinante libro, cada animal piensa a su manera y resuelve los problemas que le van surgiendo en su trayectoria vital de forma completamente distinta a como los resolvemos nosotros. Para llegar a entender y apreciar realmente la inteligencia animal debemos dejar de proyectar nuestras propias emociones en los animales. Caballos, ovejas, delfines, perros, aves y abejas pueden realizar hazañas cognitivas de memoria y accion que obviamente estan mas alla de nuestras capacidades. Budiansky nos muestra las razones evolutivas que explican los limites de nuestra inteligencia e imaginacion. A lo largo del libro, revisa de forma concisa los diferentes estudios que se han realizado sobre aspectos tan diversos de la mente animal como son el uso y construccion de herramientas, la capacidad de contar, la comunicacion verbal y corporal, y la evolucion de la conciencia de uno mismo y de los demas. Su argumento principal es que en lugar de intentar enseñar a los simios el lenguaje de signos o a las palomas a contar, deberiamos estudiar las habilidades propias de los animales (la capacidad de los caballos para utilizar mapas mentales de sus territorios, o la de las ovejas de reconocer los rostros individuales de sus congeneres). Las conclusiones del autor se resumen en los siguiente parrafos: existe una gran continuidad en la inteligencia de todas las especies de vertebrados; la discontinuidad tiene lugar entre animales humanos y no humanos y es el resultado de la aparicion del lenguaje. El lenguaje constituye una forma de comunicacion diferente a todas las otras: permite a las personas tener pensamientos sobre pensamientos. Por tanto, hoy dia el principal reto que se les plantea a los estudiosos del comportamiento animal es diseñar experimentos que puedan servir para distinguir entre razonar sobre estados mentales y razonar sobre conductas observabl

Stephen Budiansky holds that virtually everything previously written about dogs is either wrong or misguided. Instead he maintains that to understand the true nature of dogs we need to stop interpreting their behaviour in the human terms of loyalty and betrayal. The truth is far more complex and surprising.The Dog Genome Project is currently laying the groundwork for identifying the genetic basis of why our dogs behave in the way they do. Other research investigates canine intelligence, and some remarkable experiments reveal what dogs can and cannot see. Budiansky brings together the disciplines of behavioural science, genetics, neuroscience and archaeology to show us how wrong we have been about mans best friend.

What makes a winning racehorse? How intelligent are horses? What are horses trying to tell us when they stamp their hooves and snort? Do horses talk to each other?The horse, long a symbol of beauty and athletic prowess, has made and lost fortunes and transformed human history and culture, and yet has retained mysteries that baffle even those who work with them every day. There has recently been an explosion of scientific research on the horse. In this book Stephen Budiansky brings the insights of modern science to a wider audience of horse enthusiasts and animal-lovers.

In Perilous Fight, Stephen Budiansky tells the rousing story of the underdog coterie of American seamen and their visionary secretary of the navy, who combined bravery and strategic innovation to hold off the legendary Royal Navy.Budiansky vividly demonstrates that far from an indecisive and unnecessary conflictas historians have long dismissed the War of 1812this forgotten war had profound consequences that would change the course of naval warfare, Americas place in the world, and the rules of international conflict forever. Never again would the great powers challenge the young republics sovereignty in the aftermath of the stunning performance of Americas navy and privateersmen in sea battles that ranged across half the globe. Their brilliant hit-and-run tactics against a far mightier foe would pioneer concepts of asymmetric warfare that would characterize the insurgency warfare of later centuries. Above all, the War of 1812 would be the making of the United States Navy. Even as the war began, the nation was bitterly divided over whether it should have a navy at all: Jeffersonian Republicans denounced the idea as a dangerous expansion of government power, while Federalists insisted that America could never protect its burgeoning seagoing commerce or command respect without a strong naval force. After the war, Americans would never again doubt that their might, respect, and very survival depended upon a permanent and professional navy.Drawing extensively on diaries, letters, and personal accounts from both sides, Budiansky re-creates the riveting encounters at sea in bloody clashes of cannonfire and swordplay; the intimate hopes and fears of vainglorious captains and young seamen in search of adventure; and the behind-the-scenes political intrigue and maneuvering in Washington and London. Throughout, Perilous Fight proves itself a gripping and essential work of American naval history.

Effective in showing the sheer depth and virulence of white supremacy in the South . . . This book and the story it tells should keep us vigilant at protecting our political rights, rendered sacred in the blood of Reconstruction, and beyond.The New York SunA gripping look at terrorist violence during the Reconstruction era Between 1867, when the defeated South was forced to establish new state governments that fully represented both black and white citizens, and 1877, when the last of these governments was overthrown, more than three thousand African Americans and their white allies were killed by terrorist violence. Drawing on original letters and diaries as well as published racist diatribes of the time, acclaimed historian Stephen Budiansky concentrates his vivid, fast paced narrative on the efforts of five heroic mentwo Union officers, a Confederate general, a Northern entrepreneur, and a former slavewho showed remarkable idealism and courage as they struggled to establish a New South in the face of overwhelming hatred and organized resistance. The Bloody Shirt sheds new light on the violence, racism, division, and heroism of Reconstruction, a largely forgotten but epochal chapter in American history.

Sir Francis Walsinghams official title was principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I, but in fact this pious, tight-lipped Puritan was Englands first spymaster. A ruthless, fiercely loyal civil servant, Walsingham worked brilliantly behind the scenes to foil Elizabeths rival Mary Queen of Scots and outwit Catholic Spain and France, which had arrayed their forces behind her. Though he cut an incongruous figure in Elizabeths worldly court, Walsingham managed to win the trust of key players like William Cecil and the Earl of Leicester before launching his own secret campaign against the queens enemies. Covert operations were Walsinghams genius; he pioneered techniques for exploiting double agents, spreading disinformation, and deciphering codes with the latest code-breaking science that remain staples of international espionage.

No single human invention has transformed war more than the airplanenot even the atomic bomb. Even before the Wright Brothers first flight, predictions abounded of the devastating and terrible consequences this new invention would have as an engine of war. Soaring over the battlefield, the airplane became an unstoppable force that left no spot on earth safe from attack. Drawing on combat memoirs, letters, diaries, archival records, museum collections, and eyewitness accounts by the men who foughtand the men who developed the breakthrough inventions and conceptsacclaimed author Stephen Budiansky weaves a vivid and dramatic account of the airplanes revolutionary transformation of modern warfare.On the web: http://www.budiansky.com/

A Washington Post Notable BookIn March 1941, after a year of devastating U-boat attacks, the British War Cabinet turned to an intensely private, bohemian physicist named Patrick Blackett to turn the tide of the naval campaign. Though he is little remembered today, Blackett did as much as anyone to defeat Nazi Germany, by revolutionizing the Allied anti-submarine effort through the disciplined, systematic implementation of simple mathematics and probability theory. This is the story of how British and American civilian intellectuals helped change the nature of twentieth-century warfare, by convincing disbelieving military brass to trust the new field of operational research.

A sweeping, in-depth history of NSA, whose famous cult of silence has left the agency shrouded in mystery for decades The National Security Agency was born out of the legendary codebreaking programs of World War II that cracked the famed Enigma machine and other German and Japanese codes, thereby turning the tide of Allied victory. In the postwar years, as the United States developed a new enemy in the Soviet Union, our intelligence community found itself targeting not soldiers on the battlefield, but suspected spies, foreign leaders, and even American citizens. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, NSA played a vital, often fraught and controversial role in the major events of the Cold War, from the Korean War to the Cuban Missile Crisis to Vietnam and beyond. In Code Warriors, Stephen Budianskya longtime expert in cryptologytells the fascinating story of how NSA came to be, from its roots in World War II through the fall of the Berlin Wall. Along the way, he guides us through the fascinating challenges faced by cryptanalysts, and how they broke some of the most complicated codes of the twentieth century. With access to new documents, Budiansky shows where the agency succeeded and failed during the Cold War, but his account also offers crucial perspective for assessing NSA today in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations. Budiansky shows how NSAs obsession with recording every bit of data and decoding every signal is far from a new development; throughout its history the depth and breadth of the agencys reach has resulted in both remarkable successes and destructive failures. Featuring a series of appendixes that explain the technical details of Soviet codes and how they were broken, this is a rich and riveting history of the underbelly of the Cold War, and an essential and timely read for all who seek to understand the origins of the modern NSA.

El hecho de que no existan gatos guardianes o gatos lazarillo tiene una clara explicación. Los gatos, como bien saben sus propios «dueños», son animales tan independientes que pueden llegar a resulta

En esta revisión de nuestros compañeros caninos, tan provocadora y divertida como admirable, Stephen Budiansky recurre a los últimos descubrimientos sobre genética, comportamiento y evolución de los perros para explicar cómo han llegado a ocupar un lugar tan importante en nuestras vidas y afectos. Budiansky muestra los motivos de los extrañísimos comportamientos que estos animales adoptan tan a menudo, como la defensa feroz de un par de zapatos, ladrarle sin parar al cartero, temblar con las tormentas, revolcarse en superficies apestosas e incluso «fingir» dolencias. También se explora lo que sabemos de las emociones de los perros, y se revela que los sentimientos de los canes son sorprendentemente similares a los nuestros y a la vez, sin embargo, extraordinariamente diferentes.