Science

A fully illustrated edition of the international best-seller Longitude.

The Illustrated Longitude recounts in words and images the epic quest to solve the greatest scientific problem of the eighteenth and three prior centuries: determining how a captain could pinpoint his ship's location at sea. All too often throughout the ages of exploration, voyages ended in disaster when crew and cargo were either lost at sea or destroyed upon the rocks of an unexpected landfall. Thousands of lives and the fortunes of nations hung on a resolution to the longitude problem.

To encourage a solution, governments established prizes for anyone whose method or device proved successful. The largest reward of 20,000-- truly a king's ransom-- was offered by Britain's Parliament in 1714. The scientific establishment-- from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton-- had been certain that a celestial answer would be found and invested untold effort in this pursuit. By contrast, John Harrison imagined and built the unimaginable: a clock that told perfect time at sea, known today as the chronometer. Harrison's trials and tribulations during his forty-year quest to win the prize are the culmination of this remarkable story.

The Illustrated Longitude brings a new and important dimension to Dava Sobel's celebrated story. It contains the entire original narrative of Longitude, redesigned to accompany 183 images chosen by William Andrewes-- from portraints of every important figure in the story to maps and diagrams, scientifc instruments, and John Harrison's remarkable sea clocks themselves. Andrewes's elegant captions and sidebars on scientific and historical events tell their own story of longitude, paralleling and illuminating Sobel's memorable tale.

The Inquisition of Climate Science is the first book to comprehensively take on the climate science denial movement and the deniers themselves, exposing their lack of credentials, their extensive industry funding, and their failure to provide any alternative theory to explain the observed evidence of warming. In this book, readers meet the most prominent deniers while dissecting their credentials, arguments, and lack of objectivity. James Lawrence Powell shows that the deniers use a wide variety of deceptive rhetorical techniques, many stretching back to ancient Greece. Carefully researched, fully referenced, and compellingly written, his book clearly reveals that the evidence of global warming is real and that an industry of denial has deceived the American public, putting them and their grandchildren at risk.

Joel Sartore's quest to photograph all the animal species under human care celebrates its 15th year with this glorious and heartwrenching collection of photographs. The animals featured in these pages are either destined for extinction or already extinct in the wild but still alive today, thanks to dedication of a heroic group committed to their continued survival. From the majestic Sumatran rhinoceros to the tiny Salt Creek tiger beetle, Sartore's photographs bring us eye to eye with the kaleidoscopic diversity of shapes, colors, personalities, and attitudes of the animal world.

In these vivid pages, Sartore singles out the species most likely to disappear in the next decades, as well as some that have already been lost. Alongside these indelible images are the words of scientists and conservationists who are working to protect and restore populations of endangered species. With Sartore's distinctive portrait photography, he invites us to look closer--and to care more.

Through family interviews, diaries, letters, and workbooks that had been sealed for over sixty years, Barbara Goldsmith reveals the Marie Curie behind the myth--an all-too-human woman struggling to balance a spectacular scientific career, a demanding family, the prejudice of society, and her own passionate nature. Obsessive Genius is a dazzling portrait of Curie, her amazing scientific success, and the price she paid for fame.

The compelling story If one of history's most intriguing yet little-known natural philosophers -- a sixteenth-century Dominican priest whose radical theories influenced some of the greatest thinkers in Western culture -- and the world's first martyr to science

A visionary and rationalist philosopher, Giordano Bruno did not limit himself to one discipline; instead, his erudite intellect accepted nothing and challenged everything in his pursuit of an all-embracing system of thought. It was an openmindedness that brought him patronage from some of the most powerful figures of the day, such as Henry III of France and Elizabeth I of England, but that also put him into direct conflict with the Catholic Church, which defrocked and excommunicated him. Returning to Italy after years spent enjoying intellectual freedom in France, England, and Germany, Bruno was arrested by the Inquisition and tried as a heretic. He endured almost eight years of imprisonment and brutal torture before being burned at the stake in Rome in 1600. And although the Vatican now says that it "regrets" burning Bruno, to this day it has refused to clear him of the charge of heresy.

But the Inquisition's attempts to obliterate Bruno failed, a. his philosophy and influence spread: Galileo, Isaac Newton, Christian Huygens, and Gottfried Leibniz all built upon his ideas; his thought experiments predated the work of such twentieth-century luminaries as Karl Popper; his religious thinking inspired such radicals as Baruch Spinoza; and his work on the art of memory had a profound effect on, among others, William Shakespeare.

The Pope and the Heretic chronicles the work, life, and extraordinary legacy of a genius whose musings helped bring about the modern world. Michael White brilliantly pieces together Bruno's dramatic final years, his capture, and his trial and explains why the Catholic Church felt so threatened by Bruno that it made him a martyr to free thought.

Finalist for the 2017 International Book Awards

Runner-up for the 2016 New England Book Festival Award

Finalist for the 2015 Chautauqua Prize (longlist)

They have done time as jewelry and tools, as medicines, currency, and symbols of industry--and they have intrigued people, from beach-combing toddlers to serious scientists, since time began. Native interest meets natural history in this exquisitely illustrated account of the science and culture of seashells.

With closeup photography and basic explanations of different shell types--univalves, bivalves, and cephalopods--how they are formed, what mollusks inhabit them, their morphology and life cycles, and much more, this is the book for anyone with an interest in seashells.

This book includes information on the bewildering array of shell shapes, colors, sizes, and types, and describes where the different shells can be found throughout the world. As informative as it is visually arresting, the book will appeal to amateur and expert, collector and casual beachcomber.