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Natural World
Correspondence of John Tyndall, Volume 2, The Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 444
ISBN: 9780822944713
Pub Date: 01 Sep 2016
Series: The Correspondence of John Tyndall
Description:
The 161 letters in this volume encompass a period of dramatic change for the young John Tyndall, who would become one of Victorian Britain's most famous physicists. They begin in September 1843, in the midst of a fiery public conflict with the Ordnance Survey of England, and end in December 1849 with him as a doctoral student of mathematics and experimental science at the University of Marburg, Germany. In between, Tyndall was fired from his position in the Ordnance Survey, worked as a railway surveyor at the height of British railway mania, read the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle, and Lord Byron, taught mathematics, and seriously contemplated emigration to the thriving new city of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Environmental Reconstruction in Mediterranean Landscape Archaeology Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 225
ISBN: 9781785704000
Pub Date: 31 Aug 2016
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Archaeology of Mediterranean Landscapes
Description:
Nineteen essays present wide-ranging approaches to environmental reconstruction across Mediterranean Europe with case studies from southern and central France, central Italy, Spain, Greece, Slovenia and Turkey. It is Volume Two in the Archaeology of Mediterranean Landscapes series, which published five volumes as part of the POPULUS Project which aimed to establish a series of research goals and standards in Mediterranean landscape archaeology, so as to advance the study of ancient demography of the region on a broad comparative front.
Ancient Irrigation Systems of the Aral Sea Area Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 300
ISBN: 9781842173848
Pub Date: 24 Jul 2016
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: American School of Prehistoric Research Monograph
Description:
Ancient Irrigation Systems in the Aral Sea Area is the English translation of Boris Vasilevich Andrianov's work, Drevnie orositelnye sistemy priaralya, concerning the study of ancient irrigation systems and the settlement pattern in the historical region of Khorezm, south of the Aral Sea (Uzbekistan). This work holds a special place within the Soviet archaeological school because of the results obtained through a multidisciplinary approach combining aerial survey and fieldwork, surveys, and excavations. This translation has been enriched by the addition of introductions written by several eminent scholars from the region regarding the importance of the Khorezm Archaeological-Ethnographic Expedition and the figure of Boris V.
RRP: £35.00
Global Scientific Practice in an Age of Revolutions, 1750-1850 Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 392
ISBN: 9780822944546
Pub Date: 08 Jul 2016
Description:
The century from 1750 to 1850 was a period of dramatic transformations in world history, fostering several types of revolutionary change beyond the political landscape. Independence movements in Europe, the Americas, and other parts of the world were catalysts for radical economic, social, and cultural reform. And it was during this age of revolutions—an era of rapidly expanding scientific investigation—that profound changes in scientific knowledge and practice also took place.
Exploratory Experiments Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 544
ISBN: 9780822944508
Pub Date: 18 May 2016
Description:
The nineteenth century was a formative period for electromagnetism and electrodynamics. Hans Christian Orsted's groundbreaking discovery of the interaction between electricity and magnetism in 1820 inspired a wave of research, led to the science of electrodynamics, and resulted in the development of electromagnetic theory. Remarkably, in response, Andre-Marie Ampere and Michael Faraday developed two incompatible, competing theories.
Andean Wonder Drug, The Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 336
ISBN: 9780822944522
Pub Date: 12 May 2016
Description:
In the eighteenth century, malaria was a prevalent and deadly disease, and the only effective treatment was found in the Andean forests of Spanish America: a medicinal bark harvested from cinchona trees that would later give rise to the antimalarial drug quinine. In 1751, the Spanish Crown asserted control over the production and distribution of this medicament by establishing a royal reserve of "fever trees" in Quito. Through this pilot project, the Crown pursued a new vision of imperialism informed by science and invigorated through commerce.
Old Age, New Science Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 384
ISBN: 9780822944492
Pub Date: 12 May 2016
Description:
Between 1870 and 1940, life expectancy in the United States skyrocketed while the percentage of senior citizens age sixty-five and older more than doubled—a phenomenon owed largely to innovations in medicine and public health. At the same time, the Great Depression was a major tipping point for age discrimination and poverty in the West: seniors were living longer and retiring earlier, but without adequate means to support themselves and their families. The economic disaster of the 1930s alerted scientists, who were actively researching the processes of aging, to the profound social implications of their work—and by the end of the 1950s, the field of gerontology emerged.
What Makes a Good Experiment? Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 384
ISBN: 9780822944416
Pub Date: 03 May 2016
Description:
What makes a good experiment? Although experimental evidence plays an essential role in science, as Franklin argues, there is no algorithm or simple set of criteria for ranking or evaluating good experiments, and therefore no definitive answer to the question. Experiments can, in fact, be good in any number of ways: conceptually good, methodologically good, technically good, and pedagogically important.
Return to Nature? Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 228
ISBN: 9780813166346
Pub Date: 31 Dec 2015
Description:
Sustainability has become a compelling topic of domestic and international debate as the world searches for effective solutions to accumulating ecological problems. In Return to Nature? An Ecological Counterhistory, Fred Dallmayr demonstrates how nature has been marginalized, colonized, and abused in the modern era.
Sacred Mountains Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 212
ISBN: 9780813165998
Pub Date: 18 Dec 2015
Series: Place Matters: New Directions in Appalachian Studies
Illustrations: 6 b&w photos
Description:
On a misty morning in eastern Kentucky, cross-bearing Christians gather for a service on a surface-mined mountain. They pray for the health and renewal of the land and for their communities, lamenting the corporate greed of the mining companies. On another day, in southern West Virginia, Andrew Jordon hosts Bible study in a small cabin overlooking a disused 1,400-acre surface mine.
Science as It Could Have Been Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 472
ISBN: 9780822944454
Pub Date: 30 Nov 2015
Description:
Could all or part of our taken-as-established scientific conclusions, theories, experimental data, ontological commitments, and so forth have been significantly different? Science as It Could Have Been focuses on a crucial issue that contemporary science studies have often neglected: the issue of contingency within science. It considers a number of case studies, past and present, from a wide range of scientific disciplines—physics, biology, geology, mathematics, and psychology—to explore whether components of human science are inevitable, or if we could have developed an alternative successful science based on essentially different notions, conceptions, and results.
Crown and the Cosmos, The Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 328
ISBN: 9780822944430
Pub Date: 18 Nov 2015
Description:
Despite its popular association today with magic, astrology was once a complex and sophisticated practice, grounded in technical training provided by a university education. The Crown and the Cosmos examines the complex ways that political practice and astrological discourse interacted at the Habsburg court, a key center of political and cultural power in early modern Europe. Like other monarchs, Maximilian I used astrology to help guide political actions, turning to astrologers and their predictions to find the most propitious times to sign treaties or arrange marriage contracts.
World's Fairs on the Eve of War Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 216
ISBN: 9780822944447
Pub Date: 06 Nov 2015
Description:
Since the first world's fair in London in 1851, at the dawn of the era of industrialization, international expositions served as ideal platforms for rival nations to showcase their advancements in design, architecture, science and technology, industry, and politics. Before the outbreak of World War II, countries competing for leadership on the world stage waged a different kind of war—with cultural achievements and propaganda—appealing to their own national strengths and versions of modernity in the struggle for power. World's Fairs on the Eve of War examines five fairs and expositions from across the globe—including three that were staged (Paris, 1937; Dusseldorf, 1937; and New York, 1939-40), and two that were in development before the war began but never executed (Tokyo, 1940; and Rome, 1942).
Venerable Trees Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 288
ISBN: 9780813165660
Pub Date: 23 Oct 2015
Illustrations: 120 b&w photos, 118 color photos, 29 maps, 1 figure
Description:
When the first settlers arrived in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, they found an astonishing landscape of open woodland grazed by vast herds of bison. Farmers quickly replaced the bison with cattle, sheep, and horses, but left many of the trees to shade their pastures. Today, central Kentucky and central Tennessee still boast one of the largest populations of presettlement trees in the nation, found in both rural and urban areas.
Animals in the Neolithic of Britain and Europe Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9781842172148
Pub Date: 31 Aug 2015
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers
Description:
The twelve papers in this edited volume originated from the Neolithic Studies Group seminar held at the British Museum on 10th November 2003 on the subject of Animals in the Neolithic. This book includes most of the papers delivered and debated at the meeting and others contributed later. The aim of the book is to cover the range of current approaches to animals in the Neolithic, and to encompass as wide a geographical scope as possible in Europe.
Soviet Space Mythologies Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9780822963639
Pub Date: 26 Jun 2015
Description:
From the start, the Soviet human space program had an identity crisis. Were cosmonauts heroic pilots steering their craft through the dangers of space, or were they mere passengers riding safely aboard fully automated machines? Tensions between Soviet cosmonauts and space engineers were reflected not only in the internal development of the space program but also in Soviet propaganda that wavered between praising daring heroes and flawless technologies.