The Sky Atlas unveils some of the most beautiful maps and charts ever created during humankind's quest to map the skies above us. This richly illustrated treasury showcases the finest examples of celestial cartography—a glorious art often overlooked by modern map books—as well as medieval manuscripts, masterpiece paintings, ancient star catalogs, antique instruments, and other curiosities.
This is the sky as it has never been presented before: the realm of stars and planets, but also of gods, devils, weather wizards, flying sailors, ancient aliens, mythological animals, and rampaging spirits.
With thrilling stories and gorgeous artwork, this remarkable atlas explores our fascination with the sky across time and cultures to form an extraordinary chronicle of cosmic imagination and discovery.
The Sky Atlas is a wonderful book for map lovers, history buffs, and stargazers, but also for those who are intrigued by the many wonderful and bizarre ways in which humans have sought to understand the cosmos and our place in it.
CHRONICLE BOOKS
|
9781797201184
|
The First Shots
By Borrell, Brendan
Heroic science. Unleashed billionaire entrepreneurs. Chaotic politics. Award-winning journalist Brendan Borrell brings the defining story of our times alive through compulsively readable, first-time reporting on the players driving the race against a vicious pandemic. The First Shots, soon to be the subject of an HBO limited series with superstar director and producer Adam McKay (Succession, Vice, The Big Short) , draws on exclusive, high-level access to weave together the intense vaccine-race conflicts among hard-driving, heroic scientists and the epic rivalries among Washington power players that shaped 18 months of fear, resolve, and triumph. From infectious disease expert Michael Callahan, an American doctor secretly on the ground in Wuhan in January 2020 to gauge the terrifying ravages of Disease X; to Robert (Dr.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
|
9780358569848
|
Hardcover
Otherlands
By Halliday, Thomas
The past is past, but it does leave clues, and Thomas Halliday has used cutting-edge science to decipher them more completely than ever before. In Otherlands, Halliday makes sixteen fossil sites burst to life on the page.
This book is an exploration of the Earth as it used to exist, the changes that have occurred during its history, and the ways that life has found to adapt―or not. It takes us from the savannahs of Pliocene Kenya to watch a python chase a group of australopithecines into an acacia tree; to a cliff overlooking the salt pans of the empty basin of what will be the Mediterranean Sea just as water from the Miocene Atlantic Ocean spills in; into the tropical forests of Eocene Antarctica; and under the shallow pools of Ediacaran Australia, where we glimpse the first microbial life.
Otherlands also offers us a vast perspective on the current state of the planet. The thought that something as vast as the Great Barrier Reef, for example, with all its vibrant diversity, might one day soon be gone sounds improbable. But the fossil record shows us that this sort of wholesale change is not only possible but has repeatedly happened throughout Earth history.
Even as he operates on this broad canvas, Halliday brings us up close to the intricate relationships that defined these lost worlds. In novelistic prose that belies the breadth of his research, he illustrates how ecosystems are formed; how species die out and are replaced; and how species migrate, adapt, and collaborate. It is a breathtaking achievement: a surprisingly emotional narrative about the persistence of life, the fragility of seemingly permanent ecosystems, and the scope of deep time, all of which have something to tell us about our current crisis.
Random House
|
9780593132883
|
Hardcover
Bears of North America
By Tekiela, Stan
Get to know black bears, brown bears, and polar bears like never before - through Stan Tekiela's wildlife photography, personal anecdotes, and years of research.They are icons of our wild places. They are powerful and intimidating, yet they signify calmness, comfort, and peace. Bears are adored around the world. They are magnificent animals that capture our fascination. Enter the world of bears with award-winning author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer Stan Tekiela. Crawling into black bear dens in northern Wisconsin, trekking across the Manitoba tundra in search of polar bears, traversing the Rocky Mountains in pursuit of grizzly bears, Stan spent more than 20 years traveling across the United States and Canada to observe and photograph bears.
Adventure Publications
|
9781647554132
|
Paperback
Water
By Boccaletti, Giulio
Writing with authority and brio, Giulio Boc-caletti-honorary research associate at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Univer-sity of Oxford-shrewdly combines environmental and social history, beginning with the earliest civ-ilizations of sedentary farmers on the banks of the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates Rivers. Even as he describes how these societies were made possible by sea-level changes from the last glacial melt, he incisively examines how this type of farming led to irrigation and multiple cropping, which, in turn, led to a population explosion and labor specialization.
We see with clarity how irrigation's structure informed social structure (inventions such as the calendar sprung from agricultural necessity); how in ancient Greece, the communal ownership of wells laid the groundwork for democracy; how the Greek and Roman experiences with water security resulted in systems of taxation; and how the modern world as we know it began with a legal framework for the development of water infrastructure.
Extraordinary for its monumental scope and piercing insightfulness, Water- A Biography richly enlarges our understanding of our relationship to-and fundamental reliance on-the most elemental substance on earth.
Publisher: n/a
|
9781524748234
|
Hardcover
Delicious
By Dunn, Rob
Nature, it has been said, invites us to eat by appetite and rewards by flavor. But what exactly are flavors? Why are some so pleasing while others are not? Delicious is a supremely entertaining foray into the heart of such questions.
With generous helpings of warmth and wit, Rob Dunn and Monica Sanchez offer bold new perspectives on why food is enjoyable and how the pursuit of delicious flavors has guided the course of human history. They consider the role that flavor may have played in the invention of the first tools, the extinction of giant mammals, the evolution of the world’s most delicious and fatty fruits, the creation of beer, and our own sociality. Along the way, you will learn about the taste receptors you didn't even know you had, the best way to ferment a mastodon, the relationship between Paleolithic art and cheese, and much more.
Blending irresistible storytelling with the latest science, Delicious is a deep history of flavor that will transform the way you think about human evolution and the gustatory pleasures of the foods we eat.
Princeton University Press
|
9780691242088
|
hardcover
The Polymath
By Burke, Peter
From Leonardo Da Vinci to John Dee and Comenius, from George Eliot to Oliver Sacks and Susan Sontag, polymaths have moved the frontiers of knowledge in countless ways. But history can be unkind to scholars with such encyclopedic interests. All too often these individuals are remembered for just one part of their valuable achievements.
In this engaging, erudite account, renowned cultural historian Peter Burke argues for a more rounded view. Identifying 500 western polymaths, Burke explores their wide-ranging successes and shows how their rise matched a rapid growth of knowledge in the age of the invention of printing, the discovery of the New World and the Scientific Revolution. It is only more recently that the further acceleration of knowledge has led to increased specialization and to an environment that is less supportive of wide-ranging scholars and scientists.
Spanning the Renaissance to the present day, Burke changes our understanding of this remarkable intellectual species.
Yale University Press
|
9780300260465
|
hardcover
Empire of the Scalpel
By M.d., Ira Rutkow
From a renowned surgeon and historian with five decades of experience comes a remarkable history of surgery's development-spanning the Stone Age to the present day-blending meticulous medical studies with lively and skillful storytelling. Empire of the Scalpel reveals the fascinating history of surgery's evolution from its earliest roots in Europe through its rise to scientific and social dominance in the United States.
Sky Atlas
By Edward, Brooke-hitching,
The Sky Atlas unveils some of the most beautiful maps and charts ever created during humankind's quest to map the skies above us. This richly illustrated treasury showcases the finest examples of celestial cartography—a glorious art often overlooked by modern map books—as well as medieval manuscripts, masterpiece paintings, ancient star catalogs, antique instruments, and other curiosities.
This is the sky as it has never been presented before: the realm of stars and planets, but also of gods, devils, weather wizards, flying sailors, ancient aliens, mythological animals, and rampaging spirits.
With thrilling stories and gorgeous artwork, this remarkable atlas explores our fascination with the sky across time and cultures to form an extraordinary chronicle of cosmic imagination and discovery.
The Sky Atlas is a wonderful book for map lovers, history buffs, and stargazers, but also for those who are intrigued by the many wonderful and bizarre ways in which humans have sought to understand the cosmos and our place in it.
The First Shots
By Borrell, Brendan
Heroic science. Unleashed billionaire entrepreneurs. Chaotic politics. Award-winning journalist Brendan Borrell brings the defining story of our times alive through compulsively readable, first-time reporting on the players driving the race against a vicious pandemic. The First Shots, soon to be the subject of an HBO limited series with superstar director and producer Adam McKay (Succession, Vice, The Big Short) , draws on exclusive, high-level access to weave together the intense vaccine-race conflicts among hard-driving, heroic scientists and the epic rivalries among Washington power players that shaped 18 months of fear, resolve, and triumph. From infectious disease expert Michael Callahan, an American doctor secretly on the ground in Wuhan in January 2020 to gauge the terrifying ravages of Disease X; to Robert (Dr.
Otherlands
By Halliday, Thomas
The past is past, but it does leave clues, and Thomas Halliday has used cutting-edge science to decipher them more completely than ever before. In Otherlands, Halliday makes sixteen fossil sites burst to life on the page.
This book is an exploration of the Earth as it used to exist, the changes that have occurred during its history, and the ways that life has found to adapt―or not. It takes us from the savannahs of Pliocene Kenya to watch a python chase a group of australopithecines into an acacia tree; to a cliff overlooking the salt pans of the empty basin of what will be the Mediterranean Sea just as water from the Miocene Atlantic Ocean spills in; into the tropical forests of Eocene Antarctica; and under the shallow pools of Ediacaran Australia, where we glimpse the first microbial life.
Otherlands also offers us a vast perspective on the current state of the planet. The thought that something as vast as the Great Barrier Reef, for example, with all its vibrant diversity, might one day soon be gone sounds improbable. But the fossil record shows us that this sort of wholesale change is not only possible but has repeatedly happened throughout Earth history.
Even as he operates on this broad canvas, Halliday brings us up close to the intricate relationships that defined these lost worlds. In novelistic prose that belies the breadth of his research, he illustrates how ecosystems are formed; how species die out and are replaced; and how species migrate, adapt, and collaborate. It is a breathtaking achievement: a surprisingly emotional narrative about the persistence of life, the fragility of seemingly permanent ecosystems, and the scope of deep time, all of which have something to tell us about our current crisis.
Bears of North America
By Tekiela, Stan
Get to know black bears, brown bears, and polar bears like never before - through Stan Tekiela's wildlife photography, personal anecdotes, and years of research.They are icons of our wild places. They are powerful and intimidating, yet they signify calmness, comfort, and peace. Bears are adored around the world. They are magnificent animals that capture our fascination. Enter the world of bears with award-winning author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer Stan Tekiela. Crawling into black bear dens in northern Wisconsin, trekking across the Manitoba tundra in search of polar bears, traversing the Rocky Mountains in pursuit of grizzly bears, Stan spent more than 20 years traveling across the United States and Canada to observe and photograph bears.
Water
By Boccaletti, Giulio
Writing with authority and brio, Giulio Boc-caletti-honorary research associate at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Univer-sity of Oxford-shrewdly combines environmental and social history, beginning with the earliest civ-ilizations of sedentary farmers on the banks of the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates Rivers. Even as he describes how these societies were made possible by sea-level changes from the last glacial melt, he incisively examines how this type of farming led to irrigation and multiple cropping, which, in turn, led to a population explosion and labor specialization.
We see with clarity how irrigation's structure informed social structure (inventions such as the calendar sprung from agricultural necessity); how in ancient Greece, the communal ownership of wells laid the groundwork for democracy; how the Greek and Roman experiences with water security resulted in systems of taxation; and how the modern world as we know it began with a legal framework for the development of water infrastructure.
Extraordinary for its monumental scope and piercing insightfulness, Water- A Biography richly enlarges our understanding of our relationship to-and fundamental reliance on-the most elemental substance on earth.
Delicious
By Dunn, Rob
Nature, it has been said, invites us to eat by appetite and rewards by flavor. But what exactly are flavors? Why are some so pleasing while others are not? Delicious is a supremely entertaining foray into the heart of such questions. With generous helpings of warmth and wit, Rob Dunn and Monica Sanchez offer bold new perspectives on why food is enjoyable and how the pursuit of delicious flavors has guided the course of human history. They consider the role that flavor may have played in the invention of the first tools, the extinction of giant mammals, the evolution of the world’s most delicious and fatty fruits, the creation of beer, and our own sociality. Along the way, you will learn about the taste receptors you didn't even know you had, the best way to ferment a mastodon, the relationship between Paleolithic art and cheese, and much more. Blending irresistible storytelling with the latest science, Delicious is a deep history of flavor that will transform the way you think about human evolution and the gustatory pleasures of the foods we eat.
The Polymath
By Burke, Peter
From Leonardo Da Vinci to John Dee and Comenius, from George Eliot to Oliver Sacks and Susan Sontag, polymaths have moved the frontiers of knowledge in countless ways. But history can be unkind to scholars with such encyclopedic interests. All too often these individuals are remembered for just one part of their valuable achievements. In this engaging, erudite account, renowned cultural historian Peter Burke argues for a more rounded view. Identifying 500 western polymaths, Burke explores their wide-ranging successes and shows how their rise matched a rapid growth of knowledge in the age of the invention of printing, the discovery of the New World and the Scientific Revolution. It is only more recently that the further acceleration of knowledge has led to increased specialization and to an environment that is less supportive of wide-ranging scholars and scientists. Spanning the Renaissance to the present day, Burke changes our understanding of this remarkable intellectual species.
Empire of the Scalpel
By M.d., Ira Rutkow
From a renowned surgeon and historian with five decades of experience comes a remarkable history of surgery's development-spanning the Stone Age to the present day-blending meticulous medical studies with lively and skillful storytelling. Empire of the Scalpel reveals the fascinating history of surgery's evolution from its earliest roots in Europe through its rise to scientific and social dominance in the United States.