`Just make sure you stay on the pavement, said Tims father. 'Why? asked Tim. `Because its dangerous to leave the paving stones, his father said. As promised, Tim stayed on the paving stones. Even when the stones were carried off by workmen, a lorry driver, dockworkers and even a huge crane

Constantijn Huygens was a poet, composer and connoisseur of art and the classics. He was also secretary and confidant to three princes of Orange for 62 years. Hofwijck was also the place where Constantijn’s son Christiaan spent a significant part of his life. Christiaan Huygens was a member of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge and became one of the greatest inventors and scientists. At the end of his life, at Hofwijck, he wrote Cosmotheoros, his magnum op...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'If only chemistry had been like this at school' Matt Ridley, Prospect________________Elements. Everything in the universe is made of them, including you. And like you, the elements have personalities, attitudes, talents, shortcomings, stories rich with meaning.Here you'll meet iron that rains from the heavens. You'll learn how lead can tell your f...

"Fascinating and beautiful . . . if only chemistry had been like this at school." —Matt Ridley, New York Times–bestselling author of Genome, in Prospect magazineLike the alphabet, the calendar, or the zodiac, the periodic table of the chemical elements has a permanent place in our imagination. But aside from the handful of common ones (iron, carbon, copper, gold), the elements themselves remain wrapped in mystery. We do not know what most ...

"A hugely entertaining achievement." –Esquire“An engaging survey through a period of intellectual history that reveals as much about people who wear watches as the objects on their wrists." – Wall Street Journal"As impeccably crafted and precisely engineered as any of the watches on which the author has worked so lovingly over the years, this book is a joy to behold and a wonder to enjoy.” –Simon Winchester, author...

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 ...

This biography of "the Protestant Galileo" and 16th century mathematician and astronomer reveals the spiritual nature of the quest of early modern science.In the style of Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter, James A. Connor's Kepler's Witch brings to life the tidal forces of Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and social upheaval. Johannes Kepler, who discovered the three basic laws of planetary motion, was persecuted for his support of the Copernican s...

Now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age, Johannes Vermeer specialised in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life in his home city of Delft. The artist’s reputation fell into obscurity after his death and it was not until the 19th century that his work was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing 66 pictures to him. Since that time, Vermeer’s reputation has continued to grow, recogni...

Dr Jacob Bronowksi's The Ascent of Man traces the development of human society through our understanding of science.First published in 1973 to accompany the groundbreaking BBC television series, it is considered one of the first works of 'popular science', illuminating the historical and social context of scientific development for a generation of readers. In his highly accessible style, Dr Bronowski discusses human invention from the flint tool to geometry, agriculture to...

From the bestselling author of The Knowledge Web come fifty mesmerizing journeys into the history of technology, each following a chain of consequential events that ends precisely where it began. Whether exploring electromagnetic fields, the origin of hot chocolate, or DNA fingerprinting, these essays -- which originally appeared in James Burke's popular Scientific American column -- all illustrate the serendipitous and surprisingly circular nature of cha...

"[A] lively biography of Chartres Cathedral . . . Ball's account of its construction reveals fascinating details." — The New YorkerChartres Cathedral, south of Paris, is revered as one of the most beautiful and profound works of art in the Western canon. But what did it mean to those who constructed it in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—and why was it built at such immense height and with such glorious play of light, in the soaring manner we now call G...

Enter the mysterious world of sixteenth-century science, where astronomers and alchemists shared laboratories.In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus declared the earth revolved around the Sun, overturning centuries of scholastic presumption. A new age was coming into view – one guided by observation, technology and logic.But omens and elixirs did not disappear from the sixteenth-century laboratory. Charms and potions could still be found nestled between glistening br...