History

Phosphorus is essential to the production of our food, and it also triggers algal blooms in lakes, rivers, and oceans when it slips through our hands. An understanding of this essential resource and how we have used and misused it over the years is...

An exploration of mankind's fascination with worlds beyond our own-by the bestselling author of The Physics of Star Trek Lawrence Krauss -an international leader in physics and cosmology-examines our long and ardent romance with parallel universes,...

Few people have done as much to change how we view the world as Charles Darwin. Yet On the Origin of Species is more cited than read. Some of it is considered outdated; in some ways, it has been consigned to the nineteenth century. In The Theory That...

Disheartened by the shrink-wrapped, Styrofoam-packed state of contemporary supermarket fruits and vegetables, many shoppers hark back to a more innocent time, to visions of succulent red tomatoes plucked straight from the vine, gleaming orange carrots...

As the threat of global climate change becomes a reality, many look to the Arctic Ocean to predict coming environmental phenomena. There, the consequences of Earth's warming trend are most immediately observable in the multi-year and perennial ice that...

Many of the things discovered by accident are important in our everyday lives: Teflon, Velcro, nylon, x-rays, penicillin, safety glass, sugar substitutes, and polyethylene and other plastics. And we owe a debt to accident for some of our deepest...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780375713453Author Alan LightmanFormat PaperbackPage Count 592Imprint Random House USA IncPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 482gDimensions(mm)...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780307743633Author Stephen BudianskyFormat PaperbackPage Count 352Imprint Vintage BooksPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 306gDimensions(mm) 202mm...

Born near Einsiedeln in 1493, Philip Theophrastus von Hohenheim, who later called himself Paracelsus, was the son of a physician. His thirst for knowledge led him to study arts in Vienna, then medicine in Italy, but the instruction left him disillusioned...

Depression has colonized the world. Today, more than 300 million of us have been diagnosed as depressed. But 150 years ago, "depression" referred to a mood, not a sickness. Does that mean people weren't sick before, only sad? Of course not. Mental...

In 1643/4 the once-famous Francis Cleyn painted the unhappy young heir of Corfe Castle, John Bankes, and his tutor, Dr Maurice Williams. The painter is now almost forgotten,the painting much neglected, and the sitters themselves have left little to mark...

Physicists will tell you that four forces control the universe. Of these, gravity may the most obvious, but it is also the most mysterious. Newton managed to predict the force of gravity but couldn't explain how it worked at a distance. Then Einstein...

When young children first begin to ask 'why?' they embark on a journey with no final destination. The need to make sense of the world as a whole is an ultimate curiosity that lies at the root of all human religions. It has, in many cultures, shaped and...

This lavishly illustrated book reveals the lives of the people who assembled the greatest botanical collection of the Early Modern period, with stories of adventure and discovery across every continent. Sir Hans Sloane's herbarium, housed at the Natural...

The iconic futurist artist and designer Syd Mead once described science fiction as "reality ahead of schedule". In From Science Fiction to Science Fact, Levy explores the visions of the writers, futurists and far-sighted inventors who made those...

The first book to map William James's preoccupation with medical ideas, concerns, and values across the breadth of his work. William James is known as a nineteenth-century philosopher, psychologist, and psychical researcher. Less well-known is how his...

Albert Einstein's travel diary to the Far East and Middle EastIn the fall of 1922, Albert Einstein, along with his then-wife, Elsa Einstein, embarked on a five-and-a-half-month voyage to the Far East and Middle East, regions that the renowned physicist...

The Geographical Tradition presents the history of an essentially contested tradition. By examining a series of key episodes in geography's history since 1400, Livingstone argues that the messy contingencies of history are to be preferred to the...

An in-depth look at the history of the environment.Is it possible for the economy to grow without the environment being destroyed? Will our lifestyles impoverish the planet for our children and grandchildren? Is the world sick? Can it be healed? Less...

How did we make reliable predictions before Pascal and Fermat's discovery of the mathematics of probability in 1654? What methods in law, science, commerce, philosophy, and logic helped us to get at the truth in cases where certainty was not attainable?...

It began with plutonium, the first element ever manufactured in quantity by humans. Fearing that the Germans would be the first to weaponise the atom, the United States marshalled brilliant minds and seemingly inexhaustible bodies to find a way to create...

Attractively illustrated with over a hundred halftones and drawings, this volume presents a series of vibrant profiles that trace the evolution of our knowledge about the brain. Beginning almost 5000 years ago, with the ancient Egyptian study of...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780143116349Author Charles SeifeFormat PaperbackPage Count 304Imprint Penguin USAPublisher Penguin Putnam IncWeight(grams) 255gDimensions(mm) 201mm * 133mm...

From the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, a personal meditation on the quest for objective reality in natural scienceA century ago, thoughtful people questioned how reality could agree with physical theories that keep changing, from a mechanical model of...

How scientists through the ages have conducted thought experiments using imaginary entities-demons-to test the laws of nature and push the frontiers of what is possible Science may be known for banishing the demons of superstition from the modern world...

Written by leading Leonardo experts from London and Florence, and accompanying a major British Library exhibition, this fascinating new book reveals the central importance of motion in Leonardo's art and thought. Large-scale reproductions of...

This book tells the exciting story of the ice ages-what they were like, why they occurred, and when the next one is due. The solution to the ice age mystery originated when the National Science Foundation organized the CLIMAP project to study changes in...

Phosphorus has played a critical role in some of the most lethal substances on earth: firebombs, rat poison, nerve gas. But it's also the key component of one of the most vital: fertilizer, which has sustained life for billions of people. In this major...

A marvelously annotated and illustrated edition of Einstein's South America travel diaryIn the spring of 1925, Albert Einstein embarked on an extensive lecture tour of Argentina before continuing on to Uruguay and Brazil. In his travel diary, the...

"A fascinating, well-documented biography." --New York Times Book Review "A monumental effort." --New York Review of Books "An excellent piece of science writing...Cassidy does not so much exculpate Heisenberg as explain him, with a transparency that...

'Mark Harrison's book illuminates the threats posed by infectious diseases since 1500. He places these diseases within an international perspective, and demonstrates the relationship between European expansion and changing epidemiological patterns. The...

The award-winning former editor of Science News shows that one of the most fascinating and controversial ideas in contemporary cosmology-the existence of multiple parallel universes-has a long and divisive history that continues to this day.We often...

This volume brings together the letters of the great Victorian naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) during his famous travels of 1854-62 in the Malay Archipelago (now Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia), which led him to come independently to the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780299018740Author Marshall ClagettFormat PaperbackPage Count 547Imprint University of Wisconsin PressPublisher University of Wisconsin Press

Lavishly illustrated with full-color geological maps, tables of strata, geological cross-sections, photographs, and fossil illustrations from the archives of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, the Geological Society, the London Natural...

Traces the history of the study of tumor viruses and its role in driving breakthroughs in cancer research.Worldwide, approximately one-fifth of human cancers are caused by tumor viruses, with hepatitis B virus and HPV being the leading culprits. While...

'Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin' On topics ranging from intelligent design and climate change to the politics of gender and race, the evolutionary writings of Charles Darwin occupy a pivotal position in...

The tiny, lungless Thorius salamander from southern Mexico, thinner than a match and smaller than a quarter. The lushly white-coated Saki, an arboreal monkey from the Brazilian rainforests. The olinguito, a native of the Andes, which looks part mongoose,...

An extraordinary account of the impending closure of the Holden factory in Adelaide. More than the end of a business - it's the end of an era, of a story, and of a great Australian dream.When Holden signalled that it would close its Adelaide factory, it...

In 1633 the Roman Inquisition condemned Galileo as a suspected heretic for defending the astronomical theory that the earth moves, and implicitly assuming the theological principle that Scripture is not scientific authority. This controversial event has...