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The Newton Papers: The Strange and True Odyssey of Isaac Newton's Manuscripts

Sarah Dry · Oxford University Press

When Isaac Newton died in 1727 without a will, he left behind a wealth of papers that, when examined, gave his followers and his family a deep sense of unease. Some of what they contained was wildly heretical and alchemically obsessed, hinting at a Newton altogether stranger and less...
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The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar: Living with a Tawny Owl

Martin Windrow · Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The story of an odd couple—a British military historian and the Tawny Owl with whom he lived for fifteen yearsMartin Windrow was a war historian with little experience with pets when he adopted an owl the size of a corncob. Adorable but with knife-sharp talons, Mumble became...
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The Meaning of Human Existence

Edward O. Wilson · Liveright; 1 edition

National Book Award Finalist. How did humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the most difficult question of all, "Why?" In The Meaning of Human Existence,...
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Enlightening Symbols: A Short History of Mathematical Notation and Its Hidden Powers

Joseph Mazur · Princeton University Press
Pages: 312

While all of us regularly use basic math symbols such as those for plus, minus, and equals, few of us know that many of these symbols weren't available before the sixteenth century. What did mathematicians rely on for their work before then? And how did mathematical notations evolve...
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The Long and the Short of It: The Science of Life Span and Aging

Jonathan Silvertown · University Of Chicago Press

Everything that lives will die. That’s the fundamental fact of life. But not everyone dies at the same age: people vary wildly in their patterns of aging and their life spans—and that variation is nothing compared to what’s found in other animal and plant species. A giant...
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