Showing titles in History

Vitamin C begins with scurvy, which afflicted Europe for four hundred years and killed millions. The reasons that a disease whose cure was known from the outset persisted over that time are at once baffling and familiar, and these trials eventually lead to invention of the science of epidemiology. Author Stephen M. Sagar MD then chronicles the discovery of vitamins at the beginning of the twentieth century, a story that encapsulates the rise of a scientific approach to nutrition but with surprising twists and turns.

Modern Physics and Ancient Faith argues that the great discoveries of modern physics are more compatible with the central teachings of Christianity and Judaism about God, the cosmos, and the human soul than with the atheistic viewpoint of scientific materialism.

When does a scientific discovery become accepted fact? Why have scientific facts become easy to deny? And what can we do about it? In The Workshop and the World, philosopher and science historian Robert P. Crease answers these questions by describing the origins of our scientific infrastructure - the “workshop” - and the role of 10 of the world’s greatest thinkers in shaping it. As today’s politicians and government officials increasingly accuse scientists of dishonesty, conspiracy, and even hoaxes, engaged citizens wonder how we got to this level of distrust....

The Very Best of Charles Darwin comprises On the Origin of Species and The Voyage of the Beagle. The first introduced the theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. The evidence was gathered on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s, recounted in The Voyage of the Beagle, which is both a travel memoir and a scientific field journal of anthropological, biological, and geological interest.

How did species wind up where they are today? Scientists have long conjectured that plants and animals dispersed throughout the world by drifting on large landmasses as they broke up, but in The Monkey’s Voyage, biologist Alan de Queiroz offers a radical new theory that displaces this passive view.

From a psychiatrist on the frontlines of addiction medicine and an expert on the history of drug use comes the "authoritative, engaging, and accessible" history of the flower that helped to build (Booklist) -- and now threatens -- modern society. Opioid addiction is fast becoming the most deadly...

Are we alone in the universe? Mars has always seemed where we were likeliest to find the answer. Yet, since the Viking landers touched down in 1976, no mission has returned to the Martian surface to search directly for life living there now. Instead we’re searching the moons of outer planets...

The Sunday Times (UK) Best Science Book of 2014 A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2014 An NBC News Top Science and Tech Book of 2014 A Politics & Prose 2014 Staff Pick In the sixteenth century, Nicolaus Copernicus dared to go against the establishment by proposing that Earth...

Discover the fascinating science that shapes our world. Written for curious minds and complete newcomers, Chemistry for Beginners by Hereward Carrington provides a clear, engaging introduction to the principles of chemistry and the remarkable discoveries that transformed humanity's understanding...

The early history of Earth covers such vast stretches of time that years, centuries, and even millennia become virtually meaningless. Instead, paleontologists and scientists who study geochronology divide time into periods and eras. What humans commonly refer to as the “Ice Age” is actually a series of fluctuating climate events that have occurred throughout the planet’s history. These ongoing historical phenomena are difficult to conceptualize because of both the time frame involved and the natural process by which they cyclically unfold.

Discover the the life and accomplishments of Max Planck, theoretical physicist whose revolutionary discovery of energy quanta and formulation of fundamental quantum theory allowed for countless others to expand on the knowledge of atomic processes.

If you've replaced a computer lately - or a cell phone, a camera, a television - chances are, the old one still worked. And chances are even greater that the latest model won't last as long as the one it replaced. Welcome to the world of planned obsolescence - a business model, a way of life, and a uniquely American invention that this eye-opening book explores from its beginnings to its perilous implications for the very near future.

The Sky Is for Everyone is an internationally diverse collection of autobiographical narratives by women who broke down barriers and changed the face of modern astronomy. This audiobook vividly describes how, before 1900, a woman who wanted to study the stars had to have a father, brother, or husband to provide entry, and how the considerable intellectual skills of women astronomers were still not enough to enable them to pry open doors of opportunity for much of the twentieth century. After decades of difficult struggles, women are closer to equality in astronomy than ever before.

While it would be impossible to name every individual who has contributed to the ever-advancing field of science, it almost goes without saying that one of the most important was Louis Pasteur, father of microbiology and modern immunology. Apart from propelling the field of vaccination to new heights, this visionary scientist would also revolutionize a significant part of the beverage industry, and highlight the importance of sterilization. These are only some of the extraordinary achievements on Louis' glaring résumé, one so well-rounded and extensive that it beggars belief.

Biologist Rob Dunn's Every Little Thing is the story of man's obsessive quest to catalog life, from nanobacteria to new monkeys. In the tradition of E. O. Wilson, this engaging and fascinating work of popular science follows humanity's unending quest to discover every living thing in our natural world-from the unimaginably small in the most inhospitable of places on earth to the unimaginably far away in the unexplored canals on Mars. 

An enchanting biography of the most resonant - and most necessary - chemical element on Earth. Carbon. It's in the fibers in your hair, the timbers in your walls, the food that you eat, and the air that you breathe. It's worth billions as a luxury and half a trillion as a necessity, but there are still mysteries yet to be solved about the element that can be both diamond and coal. Where does it come from, what does it do, and why, above all, does life need it?

In December 1872, HMS Challenger embarked on the first round-the-world oceanographic expedition. Its goal: to shine a light on the mysteries of the deep sea. For the next four years, Challenger's naturalists explored the oceans, encountering never-before-seen marvels of marine life. The expedition’s achievements are the stuff of legend. It identified major ocean currents and defining features of the seafloor. It measured worldwide sea temperatures and chemistry. And, most spectacularly of all, it collected nearly five thousand sea creatures and plants new to science.

Vaccine hesitancy in America didn't begin with the uproar over the mRNA vaccines for Covid-19. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw resistance to a wide variety of vaccines. In Unvaccinated Under God, Kira Ganga Kieffer shows that debates over vaccine safety and mandatory...

“Readers should come away from Crisis Averted with a better comprehension of what public health does and why it is such a crucial endeavor.” —The Washington Post "A master class in how we can pinpoint and prevent health crises before they spiral out of control."—Scott Gottlieb, MD...

" 18 avril 2018 : Shojiro Takejama appuie sur le bouton rouge qui déclenche son expérience. Boum ! Dans l'explosion qui s'ensuit et qui manque de détruire le laboratoire, le chercheur parvient à produire le champ magnétique le plus intense au monde : 1 000 fois celui qui règne dans un tunnel d'IRM.