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When Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his gothic horror story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he based the house of the genial doctor-turned-fiend on the home of John Hunter. The choice was understandable, for Hunter was both widely acclaimed and greatly feared. From humble origins, John Hunter rose...

In 20 captivating lectures, Professor Suzanne Pilaar Birch shares her expertise and passion for discovery as she peels back the years to expose the emergence and lives of early humans. You will learn about their environmental challenges, the methods they used to meet their basic needs, cultural development, and the fascinating advances in our own technologies that have allowed us to take their few physical remains and develop a much fuller picture.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, North American and European governments generously funded the discoveries of such famous paleontologists and geologists as Henry de la Beche, William Buckland, Richard Owen, Thomas Hawkins, Edward Drinker Cope, O. C. Marsh, and Charles W. Gilmore. In this book, Jane Davidson explores the motivation behind this rush to fund exploration, arguing that eagerness to discover strategic resources like coal deposits was further fueled by patrons who had a genuine passion for paleontology and the fascinating creatures that were being unearthed.

Reason has done much of the heavy lifting throughout history. In this second volume, this book presents quotations from many of history's key figures who both recognize the importance—and also the limitations—of reason.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Reality is Not What it Seems by Carlo Rovelli, read by Roy McMillan. From the best-selling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics comes a new book about the mind-bending nature of the universe Penguin presents the unabridged...

The shocking full story of the “human zoos” that exploited thousands of Indigenous people In the 19th century, as colonial expansion exposed previously unknown civilizations to the Western gaze, a small group of entrepreneurs, adventurers, and anthropologists created a new form of...

"A thorough, illuminating exploration of the most consequential controversy raging in modern science." --New York Times Book Review An Editor's Choice, New York Times Book Review Longlisted for PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing Longlisted for Goodreads Choice Award Every...

The discovery of DNA’s structure is the story of five towering minds in pursuit of the advancement of science, and for almost all of them, the prospect of fame and immortality: Watson, Crick, Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins, and Linus Pauling. Howard Markel skillfully recreates the intense intellectual journey, and fraught personal relationships, that ultimately led to a spectacular breakthrough. But it is Rosalind Franklin - fiercely determined, relentless, and an outsider at Cambridge and the University of London in the 1950s - who becomes a focal point for Markel.

By an award-winning astrophysicist and coauthor of Where Did the Universe Come From?, a brisk, lucid tour of the human quest to uncover reality's fundamentals, from the atomic to the cosmological Making sense of our reality has burdened humanity since the very beginning. In their search for...

By an award-winning astrophysicist and coauthor of Where Did the Universe Come From?, a brisk, lucid tour of the human quest to uncover reality's fundamentals, from the atomic to the cosmological Making sense of our reality has burdened humanity since the very beginning. In their search for...

A hilarious look at how the line between 'genius' and 'extremely lucky idiot' is finer than we'd like to admit. The more you delve into the stories behind history's greatest names, the more you realise they have something in common: a mystifying lack of common sense. Take Marie Curie, famous for...

The rich and fascinating history of the scientific revolution of the Victorian Era, leading to transformative advances in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Victorians invented the idea of the future. They saw it as an undiscovered country, one ripe for exploration and colonization...

Charles Darwin's masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, shook society to its core on publication in 1859. Darwin was only too aware of the storm his theory of evolution would provoke but he would surely have raised an incredulous eyebrow at the controversy still raging a century and a half later...

A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A NEW STATESMAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A DAILY TELEGRAPH BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A NEW REPUBLIC BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A TIME MAGAZINE TOP 10 NONFICTION BOOK OF 2013 From ambitious scientists rising above the clouds to analyse the air to war generals floating across...

When people look up into the night sky, the stars seem fixed and immutable, as unchanging as the darkness of space itself, but the truth is that stars are born, live, and die in a never-ending cycle of creation and annihilation. These cycles stretch over such vast spans of time that to short-lived humans, they seem to last forever. No one knows just how many stars there are, but their number is almost beyond comprehension.

The dramatic inside story of the first four historic flights that launched SpaceX—and Elon Musk—from a shaky startup into the world's leading edge rocket company. In 2006, SpaceX—a brand-new venture with fewer than 200 employees—rolled its first, single-engine rocket onto a launch pad at...

 Over the past 70 years, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, has evolved from a virtually unknown and little-used pamphlet to an imposing and comprehensive compendium of mental disorder. Its nearly 300 conditions have become the touchstones for the diagnoses that patients receive, students are taught, researchers study, insurers reimburse, and drug companies promote. 

From the moment radiation was discovered in the late nineteenth century, nuclear science has had a rich history of innovative scientific exploration and discovery, coupled with mistakes, accidents, and downright disasters.

Asked to name a great physicist, most people would mention Newton or Einstein, Feynman or Hawking. But ask a physicist and there’s no doubt that James Clerk Maxwell will be near the top of the list. Maxwell, an unassuming Victorian Scotsman, explained how we perceive color. He uncovered the way gases behave. And, most significantly, he transformed the way physics was undertaken in his explanation of the interaction of electricity and magnetism, revealing the nature of light and laying the groundwork for everything from Einstein’s special relativity to modern electronics.

Collections of preserved plant specimens, known as herbaria, have existed for nearly five centuries. These pressed and labeled plants have been essential resources for scientists, allowing them to describe and differentiate species and to document and research plant changes and biodiversity over time—including changes related to climate. Maura C. Flannery tells the history of herbaria, from the earliest collections belonging to such advocates of the technique as sixteenth-century botanist Luca Ghini, to the collections of poets, politicians, and painters, and to the digitization today.