Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Published: November 11, 2009

Type: BOOK

The companion volume for the award-winning PBS and BBC series from “one of the most intriguing minds in the western world” ( The Washington Post ). The Day the Universe Changed  presents a sweeping view of the history of science, technology, and human civilization and examines the moments in history when a change in knowledge radically altered man’s understanding of himself and the world around him. James Burke examines eight periods in history when our view of the world shifted dramatically:In the eleventh century, when extraordinary discoveries were made by Spanish crusadersIn fourteenth-century Florence, where perspective in painting emergedIn the fifteenth century, when the advent of the printing press shook the foundations of an oral societyIn the sixteenth century, when gunnery developments triggered the birth of modern scienceIn the early eighteenth century, when hot English summers brought on the Industrial RevolutionIn the battlefield surgery stations of the French revolutionary armies, where people first became statisticsIn the nineteenth century, when the discovery of dinosaur fossils led to the theory of evolutionIn the 1820s, when electrical experiments heralded the end of scientific certainty Based on the popular television documentary series,  The Day the Universe Changed  is a bestselling history that challenges the reader to decide whether there is absolute knowledge to discover—or whether the universe is “ultimately what we say it is.” “A masterful job. The result is a fascinating, focused view that boggles the mind.” — Charleston Evening Post

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Published: February 7, 2017

Type: BOOK

"A real jewel of science history...brims with suspense and now-forgotten catastrophe and intrigue...Wadman’s smooth prose calmly spins a surpassingly complicated story into a real tour de force." —The New York Times “Riveting . . . [ The Vaccine Race ] invites comparison with Rebecca Skloot's 2007  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks .”— Nature  The epic and controversial story of a major breakthrough in cell biology that led to the conquest of rubella and other devastating diseases.   Until the late 1960s, tens of thousands of American children suffered crippling birth defects if their mothers had been exposed to rubella, popularly known as German measles, while pregnant; there was no vaccine and little understanding of how the disease devastated fetuses. In June 1962, a young biologist in Philadelphia, using tissue extracted from an aborted fetus from Sweden, produced safe, clean cells that allowed the creation of vaccines against rubella and other common childhood diseases. Two years later, in the midst of a devastating German measles epidemic, his colleague developed the vaccine that would one day wipe out homegrown rubella. The rubella vaccine and others made with those fetal cells have protected more than 150 million people in the United States, the vast majority of them preschoolers. The new cells and the method of making them also led to vaccines that have protected billions of people around the world from polio, rabies, chicken pox, measles, hepatitis A, shingles and adenovirus.   Meredith Wadman’s masterful account recovers not only the science of this urgent race, but also the political roadblocks that nearly stopped the scientists. She describes the terrible dilemmas of pregnant women exposed to German measles and recounts testing on infants, prisoners, orphans, and the intellectually disabled, which was common in the era. These events take place at the dawn of the battle over using human fetal tissue in research, during the arrival of big commerce in campus labs, and as huge changes take place in the laws and practices governing who “owns” research cells and the profits made from biological inventions. It is also the story of yet one more unrecognized woman whose cells have been used to save countless lives.   With another frightening virus--measles--on the rise today, no medical story could have more human drama, impact, or urgency than The Vaccine Race.

Publisher: ReAnimus Press

Published: December 15, 2014

Type: BOOK

John and Mary Gribbin tell the remarkable story of how we came to understand the phenomenon of Ice Ages. They focus on the key personalities obsessed with the quest for answers to tantalizing questions. How frequently do Ice Ages occur? How do astronomical rhythms affect the Earth's climate? Have there always been two polar ice caps? What does the future have in store? With startling new material on how the last major Ice Epoch could have hastened human evolution, Ice Age explains why and how we learned the Earth was once covered in ice—and how that made us human. "Best work of science exposition and history that I've read in many years!" —Charles Munger, Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Corporation

Publisher: DK

Published: June 25, 2024

Type: BOOK

Learn how 30,000 bath toys and the work of amateur beachcombers have helped scientists study ocean currents. Explore how the search for a death ray led to the creation of the microwave oven and ready-made meals. Discover the surprising link between sticky tape and the Nobel Prize. Uncover the extraordinary stories of ordinary objects in this perfect gift for curious minds. From the creators of the A Brief History of Stuff podcast and inspired by the incredible artifacts in the Science Museum Group Collection, this collection of entertaining essays reveals the fascinating history behind some of the most mundane items in our homes.

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Published: October 19, 2006

Type: BOOK

A National Bestseller, a  New York Times  Notable Book, and an  Entertainment Weekly  Best Book of the Year from the author of Extra Life   “By turns a medical thriller, detective story, and paean to city life, Johnson's account of the outbreak and its modern implications is a true page-turner.” — The Washington Post “Thought-provoking.”  —Entertainment Weekly It's the summer of 1854, and London is just emerging as one of the first modern cities in the world. But lacking the infrastructure-garbage removal, clean water, sewers-necessary to support its rapidly expanding population, the city has become the perfect breeding ground for a terrifying disease no one knows how to cure. As the cholera outbreak takes hold, a physician and a local curate are spurred to action-and ultimately solve the most pressing medical riddle of their time. In a triumph of multidisciplinary thinking, Johnson illuminates the intertwined histories of the spread of disease, the rise of cities, and the nature of scientific inquiry, offering both a riveting history and a powerful explanation of how it has shaped the world we live in.

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Published: March 1, 2011

Type: BOOK

From the bestselling author of the acclaimed Chaos and Genius comes a thoughtful and provocative exploration of the big ideas of the modern era: Information, communication, and information theory.    Acclaimed science writer James Gleick presents an eye-opening vision of how our relationship to information has transformed the very nature of human consciousness. A fascinating intellectual journey through the history of communication and information, from the language of Africa’s talking drums to the invention of written alphabets; from the electronic transmission of code to the origins of information theory, into the new information age and the current deluge of news, tweets, images, and blogs. Along the way, Gleick profiles key innovators, including Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Samuel Morse, and Claude Shannon, and reveals how our understanding of information is transforming not only how we look at the world, but how we live. A  New York Times  Notable Book A  Los Angeles Times  and  Cleveland Plain Dealer  Best Book of the Year Winner of the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award  

Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

Published: November 5, 2018

Type: BOOK

This scholarly and accessible study presents “a provocative new reading” of the late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century advances in scientific inquiry ( Kirkus Reviews ). In The Scientific Revolution , historian Steven Shapin challenges the very idea that any such a “revolution” ever took place. Rejecting the narrative that a new and unifying paradigm suddenly took hold, he demonstrates how the conduct of science emerged from a wide array of early modern philosophical agendas, political commitments, and religious beliefs. In this analysis, early modern science is shown not as a set of disembodied ideas, but as historically situated ways of knowing and doing. Shapin shows that every principle identified as the modernizing essence of science—whether it’s experimentalism, mathematical methodology, or a mechanical conception of nature—was in fact contested by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century practitioners with equal claims to modernity. Shapin argues that this contested legacy is nevertheless rightly understood as the origin of modern science, its problems as well as its acknowledged achievements. This updated edition includes a new bibliographic essay featuring the latest scholarship. “An excellent book.” —Anthony Gottlieb, New York Times Book Review