MIT Press

Karrie G. Karahalios · MIT Press · 2026

This book serves as a first-of-its-kind roadmap for auditing artificial intelligence systems to prevent decision-making failures in health care, policing, and employment. Using canonical examples of AI gone wrong, from misidentified facial recognition to biased hiring algorithms, this book explains why robust audits are essential and how they drive concrete policy and corporate change.

Erin L. Scott · MIT Press · 2026

This edited volume introduces and explores the concept of Bayesian entrepreneurship, a novel framework for understanding entrepreneurial decision-making under uncertainty. It brings together contributions from leading scholars to examine how entrepreneurs form beliefs about opportunities, learn through experimentation, and make strategic decisions.

Lorna J. Gibson · MIT Press · 2026

A renowned engineer and lifelong birder, Gibson explores the hidden microscopic structures and engineering principles that keep birds aloft and alive, how an egg forms, how a bird generates lift, how woodpeckers safely drill their holes, and much more. She also considers the longer view of birds in their habitats and natural history. Her up-close look at avian mysteries provides a perspective like no other, for the expert ornithologist and curious observer alike.

Lita Nelsen · MIT Press · 2026

"Launching from the Lab" provides a much-needed framework for new entrepreneurs who are founding companies based on "deep technology", groundbreaking innovations rising from new discoveries in fundamental research. Nelsen and Stancik Boyce cover the steps to launch and fund such companies, beginning with emergence from the laboratory and acquiring intellectual property through the intensive research of customer needs, building a team, and raising capital.

Elisabeth B. Reynolds · MIT Press · 2026

A new world order is emerging, and within it, U.S. priorities are shifting. For the country to flourish as well as defend and secure its interests, it must build on its decades of experience in developing frontier technologies and globally competitive industries through investments into priority technologies for the 21st century. This volume presents an introduction to some of the key areas where the U.S. must lead in order to ensure both national and economic security: critical minerals, semiconductors, biomanufacturing, quantum computing, drones, and advanced manufacturing.

Kristin J. Forbes · MIT Press · 2026

Central banks are navigating a world of higher debt, tightly interconnected markets, and rising geopolitical tensions. How might they respond effectively? In "The Art of Monetary Policy," Forbes draws on the writings of Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu to suggest modern principles for central banks, including preparing for the next financial battle, establishing a strong tactical position, combining weapons and methods, and modifying and varying tactics to maintain flexibility.

Benjamin A. Olken · MIT Press · 2026

Over the past several decades, social protection programs that provide financial assistance to the poor and insure against shocks for the vulnerable have become widespread in low- and middle-income countries. These programs can play a critical role in society. This book provides an overview of what we know about the differing aspects of social protection and highlights the open questions for research for the future.

Howard J. Herzog · MIT Press · 2025

In "Carbon Removal," Herzog and MacDowell discuss how technology and policy can come together to help us reach "net-zero" climate targets. The authors explore the rapidly evolving world of carbon dioxide removal (CDR), presenting the technological pathways of enhancing the land sink, biomass-based carbon capture and storage, engineered removal methods, and ocean-based carbon removal. They also discuss barriers facing CDR as well as ethical implications of this process.

Alex "Sandy" Pentland · MIT Press · 2025

How can we build a flourishing society by using human nature to design technology rather than letting technology shape society? Pentland explores how cultural inventions, from civilizations to the Enlightenment, accelerated innovation and collective wisdom. He argues that understanding these key factors in cultural evolution is essential for solving global challenges like climate change and pandemics, and shows how AI and digital media can aid rather than replace human deliberation.

Edward A. F. Gibson · MIT Press · 2025

This book lays out the grammar of a language from the perspective of a cognitive scientist, outlining the components of language structure and the model of syntax that Gibson advocates: dependency grammar, in which a word is connected to another word via a dependency arc to form a larger compositional meaning. This formalism can explain numerous aspects of word order universals across languages.

Phil Budden · MIT Press · 2025

Leaders in large organizations face continuous pressure to innovate, and few possess the internal resources needed to keep up with rapid advances in science and technology. But looking beyond their own organizations, most face a bewildering landscape of external resources. In "Accelerating Innovation," leaders will find a practical guide to this external landscape. Budden and Murray provide directions for navigating innovation ecosystems - those hotspots worldwide where researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors congregate.

Jana Dambrogio · MIT Press · 2025

Before the invention of the gummed envelope in the 1830s, how did people secure their private letters? The answer is letterlocking - the ingenious process of securing a letter using a combination of folds, tucks, slits, or adhesives such as sealing wax, so that it becomes its own envelope. In this book, Dambrogio and Starza Smith, experts who have pioneered the field over the last 10 years, tell the fascinating story of letterlocking within epistolary history, drawing on real historical examples from all over the world.

Samuel Jay Keyser · MIT Press · 2025

Leonard Bernstein, in his famous Norton Lectures, extolled repetition, saying that it gave poetry its musical qualities and that music theorists' refusal to take it seriously did so at their peril. "Play It Again, Sam" takes Bernstein seriously. In this book, Keyser explores why we enjoy works of poetry, music, and painting, and how repetition plays a central part in the pleasure.

Bruno Perreau · MIT Press · 2025

How can the rights of minorities be protected in democracies? The question has been front and center in the U.S. since the Supreme Court's repeal of affirmative action. In Europe too, minority politics are being challenged. The very notion of "minority" is being questioned, while the notion of a "protected class" risks encouraging competition among minorities. In "Spheres of Injustice," Perreau demonstrates how we can make the fight against discrimination beneficial for all.

Natalie Bell · MIT Press · 2025

Accompanying the related exhibition at MIT List Visual Arts Center and Buffalo AKG Art Museum, "Steina" brings renewed recognition to Steina (b. 1940, Iceland), tracing her oeuvre from early collaborative works with her partner Woody Vasulka to her independent explorations of optics and a liberated, non-anthropocentric subjectivity.

Peter B. Kaufman · MIT Press · 2025

Video is today's most popular information medium. Two-thirds of the world's internet traffic is video. Americans get their news and information more often from screens and speakers than through any other means. "The Moving Image" is the first authoritative account of how we have arrived here, together with the first definitive manual to help writers, educators, and publishers use video more effectively.

David Mindell · MIT Press · 2025

Climate change, global disruption, and labor scarcity are forcing us to rethink the underlying principles of industrial society. In this book, Mindell envisions this new industrialism from the fundamentals, drawing on the 18th century when first principles were formed at the founding of the Industrial Revolution. While outlining the new industrialism, he tells the story of the Lunar Society, a group of engineers, scientists, and industrialists who came together to apply the principles of the Enlightenment to industrial processes.

Judith Barry · MIT Press · 2024

This collection of essays reveals the depth and complexity of the sculpture of American modernist Tony Smith, placing his multifaceted practice in dialogue with contemporary voices. Barry's chapter, "New Piece: Elective Geometries," describes the transformation of Smith's sculpture into the form of a flipbook and centerpiece "pop-up."

Joseph F. Coughlin · MIT Press · 2024

Populations around the world are aging, and older adults' economic influence stands to grow markedly in future decades. This volume brings together entrepreneurs, researchers, designers, public servants, and others to address the multifaceted concerns of aging societies and to explore the possibility that certain regions will distinguish themselves as longevity hubs: home to disproportionate economic and innovative activity for older populations.

Nick Montfort · MIT Press · 2024

The discussion of computer-generated text has recently reached a fever pitch but largely omits the long history of work in this area - text generation, as it happens, was not invented yesterday in Silicon Valley. This anthology aims to correct that omission by gathering seven decades of English-language texts produced by generation systems and software, long before ChatGPT and Claude.

Greg Epstein · MIT Press · 2024

Today's technology has overtaken religion as the chief influence on 21st-century life and community. In "Tech Agnostic," Epstein explores what it means to be a critical thinker with respect to this new faith. Encouraging readers to reassert their common humanity beyond the seductive sheen of "tech," this book argues for tech agnosticism - not worship - as a way of life.

Lawrence J. Vale · MIT Press · 2024

Too often the places most vulnerable to climate change are those that are home to people with the fewest economic and political resources. And while some leaders are starting to take action to reduce climate risks, many early adaptation schemes have actually made preexisting inequalities worse. In this book, Vale and Lamb ask how cities can adapt to climate change and other threats while also doing right by disadvantaged residents.

Catherine D'Ignazio · MIT Press · 2024

"Counting Feminicide" brings to the fore the work of data activists across the Americas who are documenting feminicide, and challenging the reigning logic of data science by centering care, memory, and justice in their work. D'Ignazio describes the creative, intellectual, and emotional labor of feminicide data activists who are at the forefront of a data ethics that rigorously and consistently takes power and people into account.

Malia Lazu · MIT Press · 2024

In her new book, Lazu draws on her background as a community organizer, her corporate career as a bank president, and now her experience as a leading consultant to explain what has been holding organizations back and what they can do to become more inclusive and equitable. "From Intention to Impact" goes beyond "feel good" PR-centric actions to showcase the real work that must be done to create true and lasting change.

Nancy G. Leveson · MIT Press · 2023

Preventing accidents and losses in complex systems requires a holistic perspective that can accommodate unprecedented types of technology and design. Leveson's book covers the history of safety engineering; explores risk, ethics, legal frameworks, and policy implications; and explains why accidents happen and how to mitigate risks in modern, software-intensive systems. It includes accounts of well-known accidents like the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters, Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents, examining their causes and how to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga · MIT Press · 2023

In this provocative book - the first in a trilogy - Chakanetsa Mavhunga argues that our critical thinkers must become actual thinker-doers. Taking its title from one of Thomas Sankara's most inspirational speeches, "Dare to Invent the Future" looks for moments in Africa's story where precedents of critical thought and knowledge in service of problem-solving are evident to inspire readers to dare to invent such a knowledge system.

Barbara H. Wixom · MIT Press · 2023

In "Data Is Everybody's Business," the authors offer a clear and engaging way for people across the entire organization to understand data monetization and make it happen. The authors identify three viable ways to convert data into money - improving work with data, wrapping products with data, and selling information offerings - and explain when to pursue each and how to succeed.

Olivier Blanchard · MIT Press · 2023

Policy makers in advanced economies find themselves in an unusual fiscal environment: debt ratios are historically high, and - once the fight against inflation is won - real interest rates will likely be very low again. This combination calls for a rethinking of the role of fiscal and monetary policy - and this is just what Blanchard proposes in this work. His conclusions hold practical implications for economic and fiscal policymakers, bankers, and politicians around the world.

Mikael Jakobsson · MIT Press · 2023

In "Playing Oppression," Jakobsson and Flanagan apply incisive frameworks of postcolonial theory to a broad historical survey of board games to show how seemingly benign entertainments reinforce the logic of imperialism. The work deftly analyzes this insidious violence and proposes a path forward with board games that challenge colonialist thinking and embrace a much broader cultural imagination.

David Kiron · MIT Press · 2023

MIT Sloan Management Review ; Elizabeth J. Altman; Jeff Schwartz; and Robin Jones "Workforce Ecosystems" is a research-driven framework for leading complex, interconnected workforces. Drawing on case studies, worldwide surveys, and extensive interviews with C-suite executives and senior leaders from Amazon, IBM, Mayo Clinic, NASA, Nike, Roche, Unilever, the US Army, Walmart, and others, the authors explore what workforce ecosystems are and how to navigate their unique challenges and opportunities.

George Stiny · MIT Press · 2022

In this book, Stiny runs visual calculating in shape grammars through art and design - incorporating Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poetic imagination and Oscar Wilde's corollary to see things as they aren't. Many assume that calculating limits art and design to suit computers, but shape grammars rely on seeing to prove otherwise. Rules that change what they see extend calculating to overtake what computers can do, in logic and with data and learning. Shape grammars bridge the divide between seeing and combinatoric play.

Maia Weinstock · MIT Press · 2022

In "Carbon Queen," Weinstock describes how, with curiosity and drive, the late MIT Institute Professor Mildred "Millie" Dresselhaus (1930-2017) defied expectations and forged a career as a leading scientist and engineer. Dresselhaus, who made highly influential discoveries about the properties of carbon and other materials, helped reshape our world in countless ways - from electronics to aviation to medicine to energy. She was also a trailblazer for women in STEM and a beloved educator, mentor, and colleague.

Harold Abelson · MIT Press · 2022

This book offers an overview of computational thinking and its importance in K-12 education. Topics include the rationale for teaching computational thinking, programming as a general problem-solving skill, the "phenomenon-based learning" approach, and the educational implications of the explosion in artificial intelligence research, discussing, among other things, the importance of teaching children to be conscientious designers and consumers of AI.

Miro Kazakoff · MIT Press · 2022

"Persuading with Data" provides a guide to data visualization, strategic communication, and delivery best practices. This is the first book that combines explanatory visualization and communication strategy, showing how to use visuals to create effective communications that convince others to accept and act on data. It explains how our brains make sense of graphs, how to design effective graphs and slides that support ideas, how to create a compelling presentation, and how to deliver and defend data to an audience.

Shigeru Miyagawa · MIT Press · 2022

"Syntax in the Treetops" proposes that syntax extends into the domain of discourse by making linkages between core syntax and the conversational participants. Miyagawa draws on evidence for this extended syntactic structure from a variety of languages, as well as the language of autistic children. His proposal for what happens at the highest level of the tree structure used by linguists offers a unique contribution to the new discipline sometimes known as "syntacticization of discourse."

David Autor · MIT Press · 2022

"The Work of the Future" describes why the U.S. trails other industrialized countries in sharing the benefits of innovation with workers, and explores how we can remedy the problem. Building on the multiyear MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, the authors argue that to create better jobs, we must foster institutional innovations that complement technological change.

Ritu Raman · MIT Press · 2021

You are a biological machine whose movement is powered by skeletal muscle, just as a car is a machine whose movement is powered by an engine. If you can be built from the bottom up with biological materials, other machines can be as well. This is the idea driving biofabrication: building with living cells. Part of the MIT Press' Essential Knowledge series, "Biofabrication" offers an introduction to how materials and machines powered by cells can tackle challenges in medicine, agriculture, and global security.

Alex "Sandy" Pentland · MIT Press · 2021

Data are now central to the economy, government, and health systems - so why are data and the artificial intelligence systems that interpret data in the hands of so few? "Building the New Economy" argues that we need to think about data as a new type of capital, and that data trusts and distributed ledgers can empower people with user-centric data ownership, transparent and accountable algorithms, machine-learning fairness principles and methodologies, and secure digital transaction systems.

Azra Akšamija · MIT Press · 2021

"Design to Live" shows how refugees use art and design to transform their living environments, restoring humanity within circumstances that seem aimed at depriving them of it. Featuring more than 20 projects created by Syrian refugees at the Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan, this bilingual book in English and Arabic offers a new way of understanding design as a subversive worldmaking practice and as a tool for reclaiming agency in conditions of forced displacement.

Ariel Ekblaw · MIT Press · 2021

In the Anthropocosmos - an era of space exploration in which we will expand humanity's horizons beyond our planet's bounds - humans have twin responsibilities, to Earth and to space, and we should neither abandon our own planet to environmental degradation nor litter the galaxy with space junk. This generously illustrated volume presents space technology for this new age: prototypes, artifacts, experiments, and habitats for an era of participatory space exploration.

Fábio Duarte · MIT Press · 2021

In "Urban Play," Duarte and Álvarez argue that technology is powerful not when it becomes optimally functional, but while it is still playful and open to experimentation. It is through play that we explore new territories, create new devices and languages, and transform ourselves. Only then can innovative spatial design create resonant spaces that go beyond functionalism to evoke an emotional response in those who use them.

Olivier Blanchard · MIT Press · 2021

Economic inequality is the defining issue of our time. In this book, leading economists, many of them current or former policymakers, bring good news: We have the tools to reverse the rise in inequality. In their discussions, they consider which of these tools are the most effective at doing so.

Katrin Kaufer · MIT Press · 2021

In this book, Kaufer and Steponaitis take readers on a global tour of financial institutions that use finance as a force for good. In so doing, they remind us that money, if used intentionally and equitably, can be just money - a tool that serves nature, human development, and social justice.

Patrick Henry Winston · MIT Press · 2021

Effective communication can be life-changing. This book from the late MIT professor and former director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory helps readers understand how writing and speaking tools can help you get a job, make a sale, convince a boss, inspire a student, or even start a revolution.

Arup Chakraborty · MIT Press · 2021

This book provides an accessible explanation of how viruses emerge to cause pandemics, how our immune system combats them, and how diagnostic tests, vaccines, and antiviral therapies work - concepts that provide the foundation for our public health policies.

William Bonvillian · MIT Press · 2021

Bonvillian and Sarma offer a roadmap for rebuilding America's working class. They argue that we need to train more workers more quickly, and they describe innovative methods of workforce education that are being developed across the country.

Chappell Lawson · MIT Press · 2020

What does it mean to "secure the homeland" in the 21st century? What lessons can be drawn from the first two decades of U.S. government efforts to do so? In this book, leading academic experts and former senior government officials address the most salient challenges of homeland security today.

Sarah Williams · MIT Press · 2020

Data inevitably represent the ideologies of those who control their use; data analytics and algorithms too often exclude women, the poor, and ethnic groups. In this book, Williams provides a guide for working with data in more ethical and responsible ways.

Catherine D'Ignazio · MIT Press · 2020

Data are neither neutral nor objective. While they have been used for good (exposing injustice, improving health outcomes), they have also been used to discriminate (granting home loans, determining jail sentences). The authors present a new way of thinking about data informed by intersectional feminism, and offer strategies for how data scientists can work toward a more just society.

Sasha Costanza-Chock · MIT Press · 2020

"Design justice" is an approach to design that is led by marginalized communities and that aims to challenge, rather than reproduce, structural inequalities. This book documents a multitude of real-world community-led design practices and connects design to larger struggles for collective liberation and ecological survival.

Noelle E. Selin · MIT Press · 2020

This book explores how people have made beneficial use of mercury for thousands of years, how they've been harmed by its toxic properties, and how they've tried to protect themselves and the environment from its damaging effects. The authors develop and apply an analytical framework that can inform other efforts to evaluate and promote sustainability.

Michael Schrage · MIT Press · 2020

Schrage explains the origins, technologies, business applications, and increasing societal impact of recommendation engines, the systems that allow companies worldwide to know what products, services, and experiences "you might also like." Part of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series.

Jennifer S. Light · MIT Press · 2020

Across the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th century, simulated cities, states, and nations sprang up in which children played legislators, police officers, bankers, shopkeepers, and other adults. They passed laws, grew food, and constructed buildings, among other tasks, inside virtual worlds. Light examines these "junior republics" and argues that they marked the transition to a new kind of "sheltered" childhood for American youth.

Samuel Jay Keyser · MIT Press · 2020

Keyser argues that the stylistic innovations of Western modernism reflect not a cultural shift but a cognitive one. Behind modernism is the same cognitive phenomenon that led to the scientific revolution of the 17th century: the brain coming up against its natural limitations.

Hashim Sarkis · MIT Press · 2020

The world's growing vulnerability to planet-sized risks invites action on a global scale. This book shows how, for more than a century, architects have imagined the future of the planet through world-scale projects. With 50 speculative projects by visionary architects documented in text and images, this ambitious and wide-ranging book is the first compilation of its kind.