History

This book explores the colourful past, present and future of an instrument that is, quite literally, close to our hearts. The stethoscope has become the symbol of medicine itself, but how did this come to be? What makes the stethoscope such a familiar...

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed such fervent investigations of the natural world that the period has been called the 'Scientific Revolution.' New ideas and discoveries not only redefined what human beings believed, knew, and could do,...

This book presents a biography of Abdus Salam, the first Muslim to win a Nobel Prize for Science (Physics 1979), who was nevertheless excommunicated and branded as a heretic in his own country. His achievements are often overlooked, even besmirched...

Life innovates constantly, producing perfectly adapted species - but there's a catch. A TIMES AND TELEGRAPH BEST BOOK OF 2023 'Hopeful and fascinating.' THE TIMES Many animals and plants eke out seemingly unremarkable lives. Passive,...

Science is a serious business, right? Wrong. Scientists have been participants in the best reality show of all time, with all the highs, lows, bust-ups, and strange personalities of any show on telly today. From Luke O'Neill - the science teacher you...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781101983898Author Jim BellFormat PaperbackPage Count 352Imprint E P Dutton & Co IncPublisher Penguin Putnam IncWeight(grams) 261g

In 1942, a team at the University of Chicago achieved what no one had before: a nuclear chain reaction. At the forefront of this breakthrough stood Enrico Fermi. Straddling the ages of classical physics and quantum mechanics, equally at ease with theory...

Just 28,000 years ago, the blink of an eye in geological time, the last of Neanderthals died out in their last outpost, in caves near Gibraltar. Thanks to cartoons and folk accounts we have a distorted view of these other humans - for that is what they...

How Cold War America came to attribute human evolutionary success to our species' unique capacity for murderAfter World War II, the question of how to define a universal human nature took on new urgency. Creatures of Cain charts the rise and precipitous...

As early as 1910 Americans recognized that cars were easy to steal and, once stolen, hard to find, especially since cars looked much alike. Model styles and colors eventually changed, but so did the means of making a stolen car disappear. Though changing...

This is first intellectual history of the Caribbean written by a top Caribbean studies scholar. The book examines both the work of natives of the region as well as texts interpretive of the region produced by Western authors. Stressing the experimental...

Long before the European Enlightenment, scholars and researchers working from Samarkand in modern-day Uzbekistan to Cordoba in Spain advanced our knowledge of astronomy, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, medicine and philosophy.From Musa al-Khwarizmi...

The story of a nineteenth-century invention (essentially a tiny greenhouse) that allowed for the first time the movement of plants around the world, feeding new agricultural industries, the commercial nursery trade, botanic and private gardens, invasive...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780932813190Author Nikola TeslaFormat PaperbackPage Count 352Imprint Adventures Unlimited PressPublisher Adventures Unlimited PressWeight(grams) 1g

This 1993 volume is a lucid and accurate history of the technical research that led to the first atomic bombs. The authors explore how the 'critical assembly' of scientists, engineers and military personnel at Los Alamos, responding to wartime deadlines,...

Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe explores the history of gunpowder in Europe from the thirteenth century, when it was first imported from China, to the sixteenth century, as firearms became central to the conduct of war. Bridging the fields of...

Taking us on an incredible journey across centuries and galaxies, accompanied by his characteristic wit, Professor Luke O'Neill explains how it all began, how it all will end and everything in between. Readers will benefit from Luke's insatiable...

'Based on meticulous research in original sources ... Goodman illustrates vividly how adept [Banks] was ... Shining a light on individuals whose achievements are relatively uncelebrated' Jenny Uglow, New York...

For most of human history, sudden and unexpected deaths of a suspicious nature, when they were investigated at all, were examined by lay persons without any formal training. People often got away with murder. That is, until Frances Glessner Lee.Frances...

This book examines the deep roots of racism in the mental health system. Suman Fernando weaves the histories of racial discourse and clinical practice into a narrative of power, knowledge, and black suffering in an ostensibly progressive and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780060884611Author Simon WinchesterFormat PaperbackPage Count 336Imprint HarperCollins PublishersPublisher HarperCollins Publishers Inc

A fundamentally new approach to the history of science and technologyThis book presents a new way of thinking about the history of science and technology, one that offers a grand narrative of human history in which knowledge serves as a critical factor...

A stunning visual exploration of the power and behavior of light across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Light allows humans to see things around us, but we can only see a sliver of all the light in the universe, also known as the electromagnetic...

Were the first scientists hermetic philosophers? What do these occult origins of modern science tell us about the universe today? The Forbidden Universe reveals the secret brotherhood that defined the world, and perhaps discovered the mind of God.All...

A Sunday Times must read book of 2019 'An out-of-this-world read ... brilliant and compelling. Morton is a high-octane British science journalist, and every chapter is littered with material that strikes, amazes or haunts ... this is a book filled...

Before the discovery of insulin, a diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes was a death sentence. One hundred years after a milestone medical discovery, 'Insulin - The Crooked Timber' tells the story of how insulin was transformed from what one clinician called...

The social dynamics of "alternative facts": why what you believe depends on who you know"Empowering and thoroughly researched, this book offers useful contemporary analysis and possible solutions to one of the greatest threats to democracy."-Kirkus...

Often alchemy is seen as an example of medieval gullibility and the alchemists as a collection of eccentrics and superstitious fools. Sean Martin shows that nothing could be further from the truth. It is important to see the search for the philosopher's...

A historian of science examines key public debates about the fundamental nature of humans to ask why a polarized discourse about nature versus nurture became so entrenched in the popular sciences of animal and human behavior.Are humans innately...

With over fifty patents to his name and innumerable awards and accolades, James Lovelock was a distinguished and original thinker, widely recognized by the international scientific community. In this inspiring book, republished in the year of his...

Leading gender and science scholar Sarah S. Richardson charts the untold history of the idea that a woman's health and behavior during pregnancy can have long-term effects on her descendants' health and welfare. The idea that a woman may leave a...

Alan Turing has long proved a subject of fascination, but following the centenary of his birth in 2012, the code-breaker, computer pioneer, mathematician (and much more) has become even more celebrated with much media coverage, and several meetings,...

A groundbreaking new book about the misogynistic nineteenth century obsession with hysteria, focusing on the renowned Salpetriere Hospital in Paris. 'Fascinating and beautifully written' Guardian 'Fascinating ... gives us a disturbing insight into...

The industrial revolution stands out as a key event not simply in British history, but in world history, ushering in as it did a new era of sustained economic prosperity. But what exactly was the 'industrial revolution'? And why did it occur in Britain...

In this book (a translation of his well-known work L'esprit de la philosophie medievale), Etienne Gilson undertakes the task of defining the spirit of mediaeval philosophy. Gilson asks whether we can form the concept of a Christian philosophy and whether...

What is life? This was a question of particular concern for Mary Shelley and her contemporaries. But how did she, and her fellow Romantic writers, incorporate this debate into their work, and how much were they influenced by contemporary science,...

Lhwyd, the illegitimate son of a father ruined by the Civil War, had to make his own way in the world. A competent botanist before going up to Oxford as a student, he spent much time there at the Botanical Garden before being appointed to the newly...

Donald Michie was an extraordinary character. In a scientific career that spanned nearly 65 years, he was the pioneer in several fields including computing, mouse embryology, transplantation biology, and machine intelligence. Tragically, he died in a car...

A "brilliant and sobering" (Paul Kennedy, Wall Street Journal) look at the history and human costs of pandemic outbreaksAs seen on "60 Minutes" The World Economic Forum #1 book to read for context on the coronavirus outbreak This sweeping exploration...

This is the first transnational study of British, Norwegian, and Swedish engagement with the Antarctic. Rather than charting how Europeans unveiled the Antarctic, it uses the history of Antarctic activity as a window into the political and cultural...