The Triumph Of Discovery

As seen on PBS's American Spring LIVE, the award-winning author of Buzz and Feathers presents a natural and human history of seeds, the marvels of the plant kingdom. "The genius of Hanson's fascinating, inspiring, and entertaining book stems from the fact that it is not about how all kinds of things grow from seeds; it is about the seeds themselves." -- Mark Kurlansky, New York Times Book Review We live in a world of seeds. From our morning toast to the cotton in our clothes, they are quite literally the stuff and staff of life: supporting diets, economies, and civilizations around the globe. Just as the search for nutmeg and pepper drove the Age of Discovery, coffee beans fueled the Enlightenment and cottonseed sparked the Industrial Revolution. Seeds are fundamental objects of beauty, evolutionary wonders, and simple fascinations. Yet, despite their importance, seeds are often seen as commonplace, their extraordinary natural and human histories overlooked. Thanks to this stunning new book, they can be overlooked no more. This is a book of knowledge, adventure, and wonder, spun by an award-winning writer with both the charm of a fireside story-teller and the hard-won expertise of a field biologist. A fascinating scientific adventure, it is essential reading for anyone who loves to see a plant grow.

English tourist Meredith Pink (Merry) has just made the most momentous discovery in Egypt since Howard Carter's opening of Tutankhamun's tomb. There's just one problem: she can't admit to it without linking herself to the dead body that's inconveniently turned up in the Valley of the Kings. Besides, she has other things to distract her. Her boyfriend Dan is back in Egypt, intent on making a grand romantic gesture. There's the small matter of rescuing a damsel-in-distress she's never even met from the evil clutches of antiquities thieves in Cairo. And it seems there may be some "precious jewels" dating back to Tutankhamun's time still buried beneath the sands of time, awaiting discovery. Once more teaming up with the dashing Adam Tennyson - possibly the biggest distraction of all - Merry sets out to unlock a tantalising secret from Egypt's ancient past.

From the pyramids to mortality tables, Galileo to Florence Nightingale, a vibrant history of numbers and the birth of statistics. The great historian of science I. B. Cohen explores how numbers have come to assume a leading role in science, in the operations and structure of government, in marketing, and in many other aspects of daily life. Consulting and collecting numbers has been a feature of human affairs since antiquity—taxes, head counts for military service—but not until the Scientific Revolution in the twelfth century did social numbers such as births, deaths, and marriages begin to be analyzed. Cohen shines a new light on familiar figures such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Charles Dickens; and he reveals Florence Nightingale to be a passionate statistician. Cohen has left us with an engaging and accessible history of numbers, an appreciation of the essential nature of statistics.

An illuminating and authoritative account, greatly expanded from a 13-part television series, of the history of western civilization from its earliest roots. J.M. Roberts uncovers what it was that gave European culture its confident energy for so many centuries while exposing its flaws and its irreversible impact on the rest of the world.

Examines the lives of Barbara McClintock, Maria Mayer, Rosalyn Yalow, and Rita Levi-Montalcini, women scientists who won the Nobel Prize against extraordinary odds, in different fields and under different circumstances.

for saxophone quartetA slow movement which explores the beautiful sonorities of saxophones played softly.

"Opioids. Concussions. Obesity. Climate change. America is a country of everyday crises -- big, long-spanning problems that persist, mostly unregulated, despite their toll on the country's health and vitality. And for every case of government inaction on one of these issues, there is a set of familiar, doubtful refrains: The science is unclear. The data is inconclusive. Regulation is unjustified. It's a slippery slope. Is it? The Triumph of Doubt traces the ascendance of science-for-hire in American life and government, from its origins in the tobacco industry in the 1950s to its current manifestations across government, public policy, and even professional sports. Well-heeled American corporations have long had a financial stake in undermining scientific consensus and manufacturing uncertainty; in The Triumph of Doubt, former Obama and Clinton official David Michaels details how bad science becomes public policy -- and where it's happening today. Amid fraught conversations of "alternative facts" and "truth decay," The Triumph of Doubt wields its unprecedented access to shine a light on the machinations and scope of manipulated science in American society. It is an urgent, revelatory work, one that promises to reorient conversations around science and the public good for the foreseeable future"--Provided by publisher.