The MIT Press @mitpress.bsky.social

Countless researchers have shown that the most meaningful forms of real-world creativity and invention depend less on solving well-defined problems than on figuring out what the problem is in the first place. thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-1960s-art-…

"An urgent call to curb private interests, restore pro-labor policies, and save democracy. A great book, a must-read." —Thomas Piketty, Professor, Paris School of Economics; author of "A Brief History of Equality" mitpress.mit.edu/9780262053525/…

One of the largest physics surveys ever finds no one agrees on anything: gizmodo.com/one-of-the-lar…

Thomas Edsall asked me how much Trump's fossil fuel handouts, attacks on cheap-clean-power, and reckless wars are costing the American people. So I sat down and did the math. This year alone, it's on pace to be $1508 per household. That's not going to be popular. nytimes.com/2026/05/12/opi…

"The Library of Babel" is a perfect metaphor for capturing the staggering scope of possibilities in biology, writes @AdrianWoolfson: thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/biological-bab…

A nice nod to Juarrero's #OA book "Context Changes Everything": bit.ly/4d4Baed "A change in context, as understood and explicated by the Cuban American philosopher Alicia Juarrero, can transform the essence—a real but not sure thing." bit.ly/48SgoMu

NPR talks to @MIT_SSP's Taylor Fravel about China's nukes. Read his International Security article here: direct.mit.edu/isec/article/4… iowapublicradio.org/news-from-npr/… @IntSecHarvard @mitpress @BelferCenter

New this week from the MIT Press. Happy publication day to our authors! 📘

"I remain mystified by the magic of the procedure." thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/pigs-could-end…

(1/3) In 1954, a small team at TIFR set out to build a digital computer. Most of them had never seen one. None but their lead had trained outside India. By 1959, they had designed and assembled TIFRAC, the first digital computer built by Indian engineers, with specs that rivalled IBM's first-generation machines. It was obsolete by the time Nehru formally named it in 1962, but what the team proved was far bigger than the machine itself. On National Technology Day, a look back at where India's tech story began. Selections from The Outsourcer: The Story of India's IT Revolution by NIF Fellow Dinesh C. Sharma

“We women were right,” says neuroscientist Susana Carmona. “We knew that something happens to our brains ... Now, we have neuroimaging data that very powerfully demonstrates that motherhood changes you completely.” smithsonianmag.com/science-nature…

During the French Revolution, voice itself became a technology. Strange devices amplified speech for the masses until the telegraph made sign language seem like “a realistic alternative to speech altogether.” thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-forgotten-…

ICYMI: "That Book Is Dangerous!" was featured on PBS Books’ nonfiction reading list for National Library Week last month! The list highlights the importance of access to information and the vital role libraries play in public life. Look out for the paperback edition next month.

Nozomi Naoi - The Land of Happiness How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life À paraître en août aux MIT Press

"In what follows, we mine medical manuals, period magazines, centuries-old etchings, and contemporary speculative designs to trace how birthing positions, furniture design, and social and cultural expectations have split and converged over time." thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/birthing-furni…

How a group of artist-mothers quietly rejected the reigning taboo of their era and forged a thriving practice of creativity as caregiving. thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-women-who-…

Nice shout for Shira Chess's "burrowing backgrounder" on Backrooms in David Hudon's fantastic Daily column at Criterion: criterion.com/current/posts/… The article: thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/backrooms-and-…

"Artists and scientists arrive at similar ideas by different paths. Both benefit from looking at each other’s work.” physicsworld.com/a/lure-of-the-…

"This is one of the first papers that’s telling us something about the quality of what’s being produced with LLMs, and it’s a signal of slop,” said @MishaTeplitskiy..." statnews.com/2026/05/07/lan…

"They did not need vision, but something much less romantic: extreme competence." thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/do-we-want-may…