In the second half of the nineteenth century, American cities began to go dark. Hulking new buildings overspread blocks, pollution obscured the skies, and glass and smog screened out the health-giving rays of the sun. Doctors fed anxities about these new conditions with claims about a rising tide of the "diseases of darkness," especially rickets and tuberculosis.In American Sunshine, Daniel Freund tracks the obsession with sunlight from those bleak days into the twentieth c...

Infonomics is a unique and groundbreaking work that utilizes the science of economics to study the flow of information. Based on the premise that information is filtered through a "marketplace of ideas", the author examines this marketplace through the economic framework of market structure. Drawing upon the work of famed economist John Kenneth Galbraith, the book transforms our understanding of how knowledge and information is and should be processed. Infonomics is a fascinating explorati...

“Thought-provoking…[Allen] writes without sanctimony and never simplifies the people in his book or the moral issues his story inevitably raises." —Wall Street JournalFew diseases are more gruesome than typhus. Transmitted by body lice, it afflicts the dispossessed—refugees, soldiers, and ghettoized peoples—causing hallucinations, terrible headaches, boiling fever, and often death. The disease plagued the German army on the Eastern Front and left the Reich...

Secret wartime projects in code-breaking, radar and ballistics produced a wealth of ideas and technologies that kick-started the development of digital computers. This is the story of the people and projects that flourished in the post-war period. By 1955 computers had begun to appear in the market-place. The Information Age was dawning and Alan Turing and his contemporaries held centre stage. Their influence is still discernable deep down within today’s hardware and software.

An illustrated history of American innovators—some well known, some unknown, and all fascinating—by the author of the bestselling The American Century.The real inventor of the steam engine. The creator of the bra. The man who invented modern banking. The creator of the computer operating system. These and scores of others are the characters who populate Harold Evans's rollicking, brilliant history of the men and women who made America what it is.Va...

There’s a revolution going on, as ever-accelerating developments in digital information technologies change nearly every aspect of how we live, work, play, do business and engage in politics. Share and share alike—the numbers say it all as billions of people worldwide flock to online media and use social networks to discover and spread news and information.In the process, ever-growing networks of “ordinary people” are using these powerful new tools to trim the influence long held b...

The story of the Great Pestilence of 1348 - 9 has never been fully told. In fact, until comparatively recent times, little attention was paid to an event which, nevertheless, whether viewed in the magnitude of the catastrophe, or in regard to its far-reaching results, is certainly one of the most important in the history of our country...

From the early 1990s, allegations that servicemen had been duped into taking part in trials with toxic agents at top-secret Allied research facilities throughout the twentieth century featured with ever greater frequency in the media. In Britain, a whole army of over 21,000 soldiers had participated in secret experiments between 1939 and 1989. Some remembered their stay as harmless, but there were many for whom the experience had been all but pleasant, sometimes harmful, and in isolated ca...

After World War II, the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began mass-producing radioisotopes, sending out nearly 64,000 shipments of radioactive materials to scientists and physicians by 1955. Even as the atomic bomb became the focus of Cold War anxiety, radioisotopes represented the government's efforts to harness the power of the atom for peace—advancing medicine, domestic energy, and foreign relations.In Life Atomic, Angela N. H. Creager tells the story of how these rad...

In the years immediately following Napoleon's defeat, French thinkers in all fields set their minds to the problem of how to recover from the long upheavals that had been set into motion by the French Revolution. Many challenged the Enlightenment's emphasis on mechanics and questioned the rising power of machines, seeking a return to the organic unity of an earlier age and triggering the artistic and philosophical movement of romanticism. Previous scholars have viewed romanticism and indus...

Tuberculosis is an ancient disease, but it's not a disease of history. With more than a million victims every year – more than any other disease, including malaria – and antibiotic resistance now found in every country worldwide, tuberculosis is once again proving itself to be one of the smartest killers humanity has ever faced. But it's hardly surprising considering how long it's had to hone its skills. Forty-thousand years ago, our ancestors set off from the cradle of ci...

A thoughtful evaluation of the vaccine debate, its history, and its consequences.Since 1990, the number of mandated vaccines has increased dramatically. Today, a fully vaccinated child will have received nearly three dozen vaccinations between birth and age six. Along with the increase in number has come a growing wave of concern among parents about the unintended side effects of vaccines. In Vaccine, Mark A. Largent explains the history of the debate and ...