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The MIT Press Reader draws on the MIT Press’s expansive catalog and family of authors to produce thought-provoking excerpts, interviews, and original essays — written for a general audience but backed by academic rigor.

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Culture	The Weird, Wonderful History of Fairground Photography An essay from renowned photography historian Clément Chéroux’s book “Since 1839... Eleven Essays on Photography."
Culture	Buried Alive: Pompeii and the Archaeology of the Uncanny An excerpt from Anthony Vidler’s classic book “The Architectural Uncanny.”
Culture	How to Fire Frank Lloyd Wright The untold story of a world-renowned architect, an obsessive librarian, and a $5,500 house that never was.
Culture	The Truth, by Stanisław Lem Lem's 1964 story, published in English for the first time, tells the tale of a scientist in an insane asylum theorizing that the sun is alive.
Culture	A Brief History of Consumer Culture Over the course of the 20th century, capitalism preserved its momentum by molding the ordinary person into a consumer with an unquenchable thirst for more stuff.
Culture	The Air-Conditioned Cowboy: A History of El Rancho Vegas The El Rancho, a self-contained and luxurious resort built along a busted-up highway in 1941, set the tone for the Las Vegas Strip.
Culture	Lessons From Operation “Denver,” the KGB’s Massive AIDS Disinformation Campaign Historian Douglas Selvage sheds light on a conspiracy theory that reverberates to this day.
Culture	A Brief Global History of the War on Cannabis Prohibitionists around the world have long used rhetoric to associate the plant with violence and depravity.

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Philosophy	Kafka's Screwball Tragedy: Investigations of a Philosophical Dog "Investigations of a Dog" is a funny and deeply philosophical tale of a lone, maladjusted dog who defies scientific dogma and pioneers an original research program in pursuit of the mysteries of his self and his world.
Philosophy	Plato’s Cave and the Stubborn Persistence of Ignorance Plato's cave metaphor illustrates the cognitive trap of ignorance, where we may be unaware of the limitations of our understanding.
Philosophy	Daniel Dennett: 'Where Am I?' Dennett's classic story raises deep philosophical questions about identity and consciousness.
Philosophy	How Humanity Came to Contemplate Its Possible Extinction: A Timeline It is only in the last couple of centuries that we have begun to grasp that our existence might one day cease to exist forever.
Philosophy	What Nihilism Is Not In order to preserve nihilism as a meaningful concept, it's necessary to distinguish it from pessimism, cynicism, and apathy.
Philosophy	Five Jokes by Slavoj Žižek A sample of Žižek's jokes, on subjects ranging from the illusion of freedom to fantasmatic identification.

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Science & Tech	How Typing Transformed Nietzsche’s Consciousness The Malling-Hansen writing ball, with its potential and limitations, redefined Nietzsche’s philosophical and creative expression.
Science & Tech	A Brief 200-Year History of Synesthesia Richard Cytowic, a pioneering researcher who returned synesthesia to mainstream science, traces the historical evolution of our understanding of the phenomenon.
Culture	Can AI Write Authentic Poetry? Cognitive psychologist and poet Keith Holyoak explores whether artificial intelligence could ever achieve poetic authenticity.
Science & Tech	The Curious Case of Alice in Wonderland Syndrome "My body is as if someone had drawn a vertical line separating the two halves. The right half seems to be twice the size of the left half."
Science & Tech	On Meditation and the Unconscious: A Buddhist Monk and a Neuroscientist in Conversation An excerpt from "Beyond the Self: Conversations between Buddhism and Neuroscience."
Science & Tech	“Funes the Memorious" and Other Cases of Extraordinary Memory In Jorge Luis Borges's story of barely 12 pages, the celebrated writer plays with the infinite in a context of vast labyrinths of memory and the consequences of having an unlimited capacity to remember.
Science & Tech	Is Consciousness Everywhere? Experience is in unexpected places, including in all animals, large and small, and perhaps even in brute matter itself.
Science & Tech	When Objects Become Extensions of You Whether they are tools, toys, or mirror reflections, external objects temporarily become part of who we are all the time.
Science & Tech	The Many-Worlds Theory, Explained A mind-bending, jargon-free account of the popular interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Science & Tech	Virtual Nuclear Weapons Design and the Blur of Reality With explosions taking place virtually, how much harder will it be for weapons scientists to confront the destructive power of their work and its ethical implications?
Science & Tech	The Most Important Scientific Problems Have Yet to Be Solved If certain areas of science appear to be quite mature, others are in the process of development, and yet others remain to be born.
Science & Tech	The Fantasy of Opting Out Those who know about us have power over us. Obfuscation may be our best digital weapon.

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Environment	How to Fix Climate Change (A Sneaky Policy Guide) We may already have a "miracle" fix for climate change: Electrify everything.
Environment	Of Deserts and Decolonization: Dispelling Myths About Drylands The notion of arid lands as ‘wastelands’ derives largely from colonial assumptions — assumptions that continue to harm the world’s drylands and impact the lives of millions of people.
Environment	How to Read the Land A lexicon of landscape as word, concept, and path to discoveries.
Environment	The Evolutionary Power of Cities and Light Urbanization and the spread of artificial light are transforming life for all of earth's species, bringing about a host of unintended consequences.
Environment	The Myth of a Wilderness Without Humans For over a century, conflicting views of wild nature created a rift between indigenous people and misguided conservationists.

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Culture	Removing Borders, Erasing Palestinians: Israeli Population Maps after 1967 How Israeli population cartography incorporated Palestinians through the very act of erasing them.
Media	The Most Dangerous Film in the World "We thought this film was defective. But we were mistaken. This is how radiation looks."
Media	Visualizing Data To Save Lives: A History of Early Public Health Infographics A wave of statistical enthusiasm, coupled with new technologies, paved the way for data visualization that laid the foundations for social reform in 19th-century Britain.
Media	The Disturbing Power of Information Pollution When we’re lulled into giving up on truth, we give up on critical thought — even dissent itself.
Media	The Importance of Being a Headline Part of the magical allure of news reading, headlines play a crucial role in turning news into a story.

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Economics	The Deep and Enduring History of Universal Basic Income While the concept stretches back centuries, it has garnered significant attention in recent decades.
Economics	Why People Vote Against Redistributive Policies That Would Benefit Them New explanations from economics research.
Economics	An Economist’s Guide to Potty Training Incentives are as risky in parenting as they are in business.
Economics	Stray Thoughts: Nobel Laureate Robert Solow’s Predictions for the Next Century A leading economist considers such topics as the effects of climate change on economic growth, the rise of income inequality, and the shifting work year.
Economics	Debunking the Myth of Small Business Job Creation Small businesses are not the engine of job growth, but that hasn't stopped small-is-beautiful advocates from continually making the claim.

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