“I am an assiduous reader of John Casti’s books. He is a real scientific intellectual.” —Nassim Nicholas Taleb, New York Times bestselling author of Fooled by Randomness“Casti is at his best in presenting difficult philosophical ideas enthusiastically and lucidly, and in presenting everyday examples to illustrate them.”—New York Times Book ReviewIn his highly provocative and grippingly readable book, X-Events, author John Casti brilliantly argues that today’s advanced, overly complex societies have grown highly vulnerable to extreme events that will ultimately topple civilization like a house of cards. Like Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan meets Jared Diamond’s Collapse, Casti’s book provides a much-needed wake-up call—sounding a fascinating and frightening warning about civilized society’s inability to recover from a global catastrophe— demonstrating how humankind could be blasted back into the Stone Age by a meteor strike, nuclear apocalypse, worldwide contagion, or any number of unforeseeable X-Events.

Product Description: "Casti Tours offers the most spectacular vistas of modern applied mathematics" â??Nature Mathematical modeling is about rulesâ??the rules of reality. Reality Rules explores the syntax and semantics of the language in which these rules are written, the language of mathematics...read more

Product Description: Beginning in 1983, the Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research has organized an annual workshop devoted to some aspect of the behavior and modeling of complex systems. These workshops have been held at the Abisko Research Station of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, a remote location far above the Arctic Circle in northern Sweden...read more