Showing titles in History

Christmas, 1859. Just one month after the publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin received an unsettling letter. He had expected criticism; in fact, letters were arriving daily, most expressing outrage and accusations of heresy. But this letter was different. It accused him of failing to acknowledge his predecessors, of taking credit for a theory that had already been discovered by others. Darwin realized that he had made an error in omitting from Origin of Species any mention of his intellectual forebears.

A rollicking, myth-busting history of sex that moves from historical attempts at birth control to Hildegard von Bingen’s treatise on the female orgasm, demystifying plenty of urban legends along the way. Roman physicians told female patients they should sneeze out as much semen as possible...

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics and author of the classic The First Three Minutes, Weinberg shares his views on some of the most fundamental and fascinating aspects of physics and the universe. But he does not seclude science behind disciplinary walls or shy away from politics, taking on what he sees as the folly of manned spaceflight, the harms of inequality, and the importance of public goods. His point of view is rationalist, realist, reductionist, and devoutly secularist. 

The secret history of our most vital organ: the human heart. The Man Who Touched His Own Heart tells the raucous, gory, mesmerizing story of the heart, from the first "explorers" who dug up cadavers and plumbed their hearts' chambers, through the first heart surgeries -- which had to be...

Shoulders of Giants is a narrative history of how mathematics revealed the hidden forces shaping the modern world. From the geometry of ancient Greece to the emergence of electromagnetic theory, this audiobook follows the thinkers who transformed abstract symbols into practical tools — ideas that eventually carried signals, voices, and energy across continents. Along the way appear vivid portraits of mathematicians and physicists grappling with space, motion, light, and invisible fields, driven as much by obsession and rivalry as by curiosity.

Why would anyone research how elephants pee? Or study worms who tie themselves into a communal knot? Or quantify the squishability of a cockroach? It all sounds pointless, silly, or even disgusting. Maybe it is. But in The Salmon Cannon and the Levitating Frog, Carly Anne York shows how unappreciated, overlooked, and simply curiosity-driven science has led to breakthroughs big and small.

Award-winning broadcaster, best-selling author and zoologist Lucy Cooke has produced and presented numerous natural history shows on TV and radio, and has been tipped by The Times as 'the next David Attenborough'. In this BBC Radio 4 series, first broadcast under the title The Power Of..., she delves into the animal kingdom, exploring what gives certain species the evolutionary edge over their rivals.

For decades we've delighted in dreaming about a sci-fi utopia, from flying cars and bionic humans to hoverboards; with driverless cars first proposed at the 1939 World's Fair. And why not? Building a better world, be it a free-flying commute or an automated urban lifestyle is a worthy dream. Given the pace of technological change, nothing seems impossible anymore. But why are these innovations always out of reach? Delving into the history of technology, this book also looks at what lies ahead, showing how the origins of our technology may provide insight into how it realistically evolves.

Award-winning author and mathematician Joseph Mazur provides an engaging exploration of how the understanding of time has evolved throughout human history and offers a compelling new vision, submitting that time lives within us. Our cells, he notes, have a temporal awareness, guided by environmental cues in sync with patterns of social interaction. Listeners learn that, as a consequence of time's personal nature, a 48-hour journey on the Space Shuttle can feel shorter than a six-hour trip on the Soyuz capsule and that the Amondawa of the Amazon do not have ages.

Size is the most fundamental structural variable of the universe. Neither bacteria nor empires are immune to its laws. Measuring it is challenging, especially where complex systems like economies are concerned, yet mastering it offers rich rewards. Grounded in history and drawing on the latest science, with much recourse to art and classic literature, Size explains the regularities—and peculiarities—of the key processes shaping life, the Earth, technical advances and societies and economies.

Brought to you by Penguin. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter was presented with the findings of scientists who had been investigating whether human activities might change the climate in harmful ways. "A wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late," their report said. They were right...

Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems compares the Copernican or Heliocentric system with the Ptolemaic or Peripatetic, system of the cosmos. Published in Florence in 1632, it resulted in him being tried before the Inquisition. Using the dialogue form, Galileo masterfully shows the truth of the Copernican system that the Earth revolves around the Sun. The Dialogue is one of the most important treatises ever written. A work of supreme clarity and accessibility, it remains as accessible now as when it was published.

Are the ways we look at menopause all wrong? Historian Susan Mattern says yes, and The Slow Moon Climbs reveals just how wrong we have been. Taking listeners from the rainforests of Paraguay to the streets of Tokyo, Mattern draws on historical, scientific, and cultural research to reveal how our perceptions of menopause developed from prehistory to today. For most of human history, people had no word for menopause and did not view it as a medical condition. Rather, in traditional foraging and agrarian societies, it was a transition to another important life stage.

*Winner of the 2025 Utah Book Award in Memoir/Narrative* *A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2024* An immersive exploration of the nightly presence that has captured our imagination for the entirety of human history. In the luminously told Still As Bright, the story of the Moon traverses time and...

Inspiring life stories from BBC Radio 4's hit series The Life Scientific 'In showing non-scientists why science offers so many paths to discovery it has no equal' Gillian Reynolds, Telegraph Based on Jim Al-Khalili's ground-breaking interviews, The Life Scientific: Explorers takes science out of...

A pediatrician and infectious disease specialist warns of the resurgence of measles, the antivaccine movement, and how we can prepare for the next pandemic Every single child diagnosed with measles represents a system failure—an inexcusable unforced error. The technology to prevent essentially...

Benjamin Franklin was a pioneering scientist, leader of the Enlightenment and founding father of the USA. But perhaps less well known is that he was also the first person to use artificial respiration to revive an electric shock victim. Odder still, it was actually mouth-to-beak resuscitation on...

In 1610, Galileo published the Siderius nuncius, or Starry Messenger, a "hurried little masterpiece" in John Heilbron's words. Presenting to the world his remarkable observations using the recently invented telescope, Galileo dramatically challenged our idea of the perfection of the heavens and the centrality of the Earth in the universe. Indeed, the appearance of the little book is regarded as one of the great moments in the history of science.

Life innovates constantly, producing perfectly adapted species—but there's a catch. Many animals and plants eke out seemingly unremarkable lives. Passive, constrained, modest, threatened. Then, in a blink of evolutionary time, they flourish spectacularly. Once we start to look, these 'sleeping beauties' crop up everywhere. But why? Looking at the book of life, from apex predators to keystone crops, and informed by his own cutting-edge experiments, renowned scientist Andreas Wagner demonstrates that innovations can come frequently and cheaply to nature, well before they are needed.

When acclaimed science writer Stefan Klein asks Nobel Prize-winning chemist Roald Hoffmann what sets scientists apart, Hoffmann says, "First and foremost, curiosity." In this collection of intimate conversations with 19 of the world's best-known scientists (including three Nobel Laureates), Klein lets us listen in as today's leading minds reveal what they still hope to discover - and how their paradigm-changing work entwines with their lives outside the lab.