In these days of ever-increasing specialization, it is important to gain a broad appreciation of science. Entertaining and informative, Scientifically Speaking: A Dictionary of Quotations, Second Edition contains the words and wisdom of several hundred scientists, writers, philosophers, poets, and academics. The largest compilation of published sci

In these days of ever-increasing specialization, it is important to gain a broad appreciation of the subject. With this in mind, Naturally Speaking: A Dictionary of Quotations on Biology, Botany, Nature and Zoology, Second Edition presents the largest compilation of published quotations on the natural world available so that readers can get a feel

Medically Speaking: A Dictionary of Quotations on Dentistry, Medicine, and Nursing contains over 1,500 quotes pertinent and especially illuminating to these disciplines. Here you will find quotations from the most famous to the unknown. Some are profound, some are witty, some are wise but none are frivolous. The extensive author and subject indexes

This book brings together over 1,100 quotes pertinent and illuminating to engineering, technology and architecture. It includes extensive author and subject indexes for locating quotations. The book can be read for entertainment or used as a handy reference by students and professional engineers.

Statistically Speaking is a book of quotations. It brings together the best expressed thoughts that are especially illuminating and pertinent to the disciplines of probability and statistics. The book is an aid for the individual who loves to quote – and to quote correctly.

The enduring and engaging guide to educating yourself in the classical tradition.Have you lost the art of reading for pleasure? Are there books you know you should read but haven’t because they seem too daunting? In The Well-Educated Mind, Susan Wise Bauer provides a welcome and encouraging antidote to the distractions of our age, electronic and otherwise.Newly expanded and updated to include standout works from the twenty-first century as well as ...

Every literary household in nineteenth-century Britain had a commonplace book, scrapbook, or album. Coleridge called his collection "Fly-Catchers", while George Eliot referred to one of her commonplace books as a "Quarry," and Michael Faraday kept quotations in his "Philosophical Miscellany." Nevertheless, the nineteenth-century commonplace book, along with associated traditions like the scrapbook and album, remain under-studied. This book tells the story of how technological and social ch...

Without it, life on earth would cease to exist. Air is invisible and yet always present in one way or another, and people have long associated air with flight, spirit, transcendence and optimism. But as humans have progressively taken control of air through communications, warfare, travel and scientific exploration, the perception of air has changed. No longer is air a completely reliable part of our daily life but is instead another piece of the environment that must be watched closely fo...

The rainbow is a compelling spectacle in nature – a rare bridge between subjective experience and objective reality – and no less remarkable as a cultural phenomenon. A symbol of the Left since the German Peasants’ War of the 1520s, it has been adopted by movements for gay rights, the environment, multiculturalism and peace around the globe, and inspired poets, artists and writers including John Keats, Caspar David Friedrich, Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The scientific ‘discove...

From the bestselling author of The Clockwork Universe and The Writing of the Gods, an “utterly delightful…hugely entertaining” (Air Mail) book about the eccentric Victorians who discovered dinosaur bones, leading to a whole new understanding of human history.In the early 1800s the natural world was a safe and cozy place, or so people believed. But then a twelve-year-old farm boy in Massachusetts stumbled on a row of fossilized three-toed ...

From the bestselling author of the acclaimed Chaos and Genius comes a thoughtful and provocative exploration of the big ideas of the modern era: Information, communication, and information theory.Acclaimed science writer James Gleick presents an eye-opening vision of how our relationship to information has transformed the very nature of human consciousness. A fascinating intellectual journey through the history of communication and information, from the language o...

Winner of the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books 2012, the world's leading prize for popular science writing.We live in the information age. But every era of history has had its own information revolution: the invention of writing, the composition of dictionaries, the creation of the charts that made navigation possible, the discovery of the electronic signal, the cracking of the genetic code.In ‘The Information’ James Gleick tells the story of how human beings us...