Throughout history, momentous, enabling discoveries have led to a giant leap in our understanding of the workings of the universe and fast-tracked human progress. 100 Discoveries presents the greatest 100 breakthroughs in science and technology, medicine, and the major areas of human endeavour of the past 10,000 years, from the development of agriculture in 10,000BC to the discovery of genomics and the unravelling and manipulation of genes in living things. In identifying and desc...

Forty years after first chewing on sugar cane in New Guinea, the home of sugar, the author underwent some complex dental work as a direct result of his sweet tooth. This led him to explore sugar cane's journey from New Guinea to Shakespeare's England. In the days before dentistry, people paid dearly for this sweet new food from exotic places. Queen Elizabeth I became so partial to hippocras, sugared almonds and pastilles that her teeth turned completely black.Bittersweet i...

Poisons permeate our world. They are in the environment, the workplace, the home. They are in food, our favorite whiskey, medicine, and well water. They have been used to cure diseases as well as incapacitate and kill. They smooth wrinkles, block pain, stimulate and enhance athletic ability. In this entertaining and fact-filled book, science writer Peter Macinnis considers poisons in all their aspects. He recounts stories of the celebrated poisoners in history and literature, from Nero to ...

A triumphantly toxic tome. As a dedicated Macinnis fan, I relish this latest display of erudition, story-telling and fun. One of his very best.'Robyn Williams, Head, ABC Science UnitWas Abraham Lincoln really as mad as a hatter?Who poisoned Phar Lap?Can wallpaper really kill?Was Jack the Ripper an arsenic eater?Painting a broad canvas, from the early Egyptians to the arsenical tube wells in Bangladesh and the Sarin gas attacks in a Tokyo subw...

Our story starts around 700 BC when the Chinese used a form of gunpowder to fumigate their houses. The first real rockets were gunpowder filled sections of bamboo thrown under horses to scare them; the next development was to tie these to arrows.The Mongols took rockets from China to Europe where only some, including Admiral Nelson and the Crown Prince of Sweden, were impressed. The Royal Navy used them in all sorts of odd actions against restless natives in Tierra Del Fuego, Austr...

Psst! It's true! This is the best book on POISONS you'll ever read!There's poison in pips, harm in herbs and definitely death in dyes. Poison is everywhere!Read about toxic wallpaper that killed even bedbugs. Find out why buns were bad for bun-buyers and how a poison might cure cancer. Bone up on murder mysteries, including the one about glow-in-the-dark soup. But don't tell anyone how much you know, or they might lock you up.WARNINGcontains toxic tales and ...

A revealing look at the history and production of spices, with modern, no-nonsense advice on using them at home.Every home cook has thoughts on the right and wrong ways to use spices. These beliefs are passed down in family recipes and pronounced by television chefs, but where do such ideas come from? Many are little better than superstition, and most serve only to reinforce a cook’s sense of superiority or cover for their insecurities. It doesn’t have to be this w...

Finally, a paperback version of the bestselling One Pan To Rule Them All!Let’s face it. If your kitchen had just one pan, one single tool to accomplish any cooking concoction of which you dare to dream, it should be a pretty awesome one, right? The one true pan to rule them all—it should be a cast iron skillet!Cast iron cookware is a proven hero, never goes out of style, and cannot be destroyed, despite how you feel about yourself ...

Have you ever wondered why we wear the type of clothes we do? Packed with outlandish outfits, this exciting history of fashion trends reveals the flamboyant fashions adopted (and discarded) by our ancestors.In the days before cosmetic surgery, people used bum rolls and bombastic breeches to augment their figures, painted their faces with poisonous concoctions, and doused themselves with scent to cover body odor.Take a fresh look at history’s hidden fashion disasters and disco...

The captivating, untold story of Hermann Rorschach and his famous inkblot testNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • New York Post • Sunday Times (UK) • Irish IndependentIn 1917, working alone in a remote Swiss asylum, psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach devised an experiment to probe the human mind: a set of ten carefully designed inkblots. For years he had grappled with the theories of Freud and Jung while ...

From an award-winning historian: "A new and convincing likeness of medieval England's most iconic king" ( The Sunday Times).This biography by the bestselling author of The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England takes an insightful look at the life of Henry V, casting new light on a period in history often held up as legend.A great English hero, Henry V was lionized by Shakespeare and revered by his countrymen for his religious commitmen...

From the author of Jews, God, and History, this comprehensive history of the Jewish people is "an epic drama, searching and nobly conceived" ( Publishers Weekly).A compelling and readable account of the four thousand year history of a people that spans the globe and transcends the ages. From the ancient and simple faith of a small tribe to a global religion with adherents in every nation, the path of the Jews is traced through countless expulsi...