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Author
Language
English
Description
"Some of humanity's mightiest engineering achievements are small in scale--and, without them, the complex machinery on which our modern world runs would not exist. In Nuts and Bolts, structural engineer Roma Agrawal examines seven of these extraordinary elements: the nail, the wheel, the spring, the magnet, the lens, the string, and the pump. Tracing the evolution from Egyptian nails to modern skyscrapers, and Neanderthal string to musical instruments,...
Author
Publisher
W. W. Norton & Company
Pub. Date
[2024]
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"In After Eden, prominent Latin American historian John Charles Chasteen provided a concise history of the world, in which he explores the origins and persistence of the timeless phenomena of humanity's inhumanity to itself. Where did it come from? Why has it been so prevalent throughout our history? And, most importantly, can we overcome it? Chasteen argues that to do so, we must understand our shared past. While much of that past is violent, we...
Author
Publisher
Basic Books, Hachette Book Group
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
"Beginning in 69AD, the so-called Year of the Four Emperors and spanning to 138AD, the death of Hadrian, Pax presents a narrative history of Rome at the height of its power. From the gilded capital to the barbarous realms beyond the frontier, historian Tom Holland offers a tour of the most famous episodes in Roman history"--
Author
Publisher
W.W. Norton & Company
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Description
A revealing history of the formative period when voices of dissent and innovation defied power and created visions of America still resonant today.
The early decades of the nineteenth century saw the expansion of slavery, Native dispossession, and wars with Canada and Mexico. Mass immigration and powerful religious movements sent tremors through American society. Even as the powerful defended the status quo, others defied voices from the margins...
Author
Publisher
Alfred A. Knopf
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
"Papyrus is an enthralling journey through the history of books and libraries in the ancient world and those who have helped preserve their rich literary traditions. Long before books were mass-produced, those made of reeds from along the Nile were worth fighting and dying for. Journeying along the battlefields of Alexander the Great, beneath the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, at Cleopatra's palaces and the scene of Hypatia's murder, award-winning author...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Far from being a lifeless ornament in the sky, the Moon holds the answers to some of science's central questions. Silent, dry, and barren, Earth's 4.34-billion-year-old companion is essential to life on earth. Its gravity stabilized the Earth's orbit, and, as it once guided evolution, its tide stirring up nutrients that fostered complex life, it now influences everything from animal migrations and reproduction to the movements of plants' leaves....
Author
Publisher
Pegasus Books
Pub. Date
2024.
Language
English
Description
Unlocking the human stories behind millennia of art, the eminent curator, taking us from ancient Babylon to contemporary Pyongyang, explains art's power to illuminate our lives and reveals how great art resonates powerfully by transcending the boundaries of time.
Author
Publisher
Simon & Schuster
Pub. Date
2024.
Language
English
Description
From the Founding to today, this book tells the stories of seven former presidents who each changed history and offered lessons about how to decide what to do in the next chapter of life as they handled human problems of ego, finances and questions about their legacy and mortality. Thomas Jefferson was the first former president to accomplish great things after the White House, shaping public debates and founding the University of Virginia, an accomplishment...
Author
Publisher
Rowman & Littlefield
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Description
"How many female artists can you name? Artemisia Gentileschi, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keefe? Here's a 360-degree look at the role women have played in art history, including the influence and empowerment of women through art beyond those who have taken up a brush or a chisel"--
Author
Publisher
Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Description
"A vibrant cultural history investigating the tangled and complex history of pandemics and vaccines, by bestselling author and historian Simon Schama"--Dust jacket flap.
Pandemics have been a constant presence throughout human history, as humans and disease have lived side by side for millennia. Over the centuries, our ability to react to these sweeping killers has evolved, most notably through the development of vaccines. The story of disease eradication...
Author
Publisher
Alfred A. Knopf
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"The epic story of the buffalo in America, from prehistoric times to today--a moving and beautifully illustrated work of natural history. The American buffalo--our nation's official mammal-is an improbable, shaggy beast that has found itself at the center of many of our most mythic and sometimes heartbreaking tales. The largest land animals in the Western Hemisphere, they are survivors of a mass extinction that erased ancient species that were even...
Author
Publisher
W. W. Norton & Company
Pub. Date
[2024]
Language
English
Description
"When a Parisian crowd stormed the Bastille in July 1789, it triggered an event of global consequence: the overthrow of the monarchy and the birth of a new society. Most historians account for the French Revolution by viewing it in retrospect as the outcome of underlying conditions such as a faltering economy, social tensions, or the influence of Enlightenment thought. But what did Parisians themselves think they were doing--how did they understand...
Author
Publisher
Little, Brown and Company
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
An award-winning scholar of white supremacy tackles her toughest research assignment yet: the unsolved murder of a black man in rural Mississippi while her grandfather was the local sheriff--a cold case that sheds new light on the hidden legacy of racial terror in America.
Author
Publisher
Pantheon Books
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Description
"In the fall of 1871, Chicagoans knew they were due for the "big one" -- a massive, uncontrollable fire that would decimate the city. It had been bone-dry for months, and a recent string of blazes had nearly outstripped the fire department's already scant resources. Then, on October 8, a minor fire broke out in the barn of Irishwoman Kate Leary. A series of unfortunate mishaps and misunderstandings along with insufficient preparation and a high southwesterly...
Author
Publisher
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
Where do human societies come from? The drive to answer this question took on a new urgency in the nineteenth century, when a generation of archaeologists began to look beyond the bible for the origins of different cultures and civilizations. A child of the San Francisco Gold Rush whose mother was born in Mexico City, Zelia Nuttall threw herself into the study of Aztec customs and cosmology, eager to use the tools of the emerging science of anthropology...
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