Science & Technology

This timely and lucid guide is intended for students and scholars working on all historical periods and topics in the humanities and social sciences--especially for those who do not think of themselves as experts in quantification, "big data," or "digital humanities."The authors reveal... More

Sir Isaac Newton’s publications, and those he inspired, were among the most significant works published during the long eighteenth century in Britain. Concepts such as attraction and extrapolation—detailed in his landmark monograph Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica—found their way into... More

Climate disruption is often discussed on a global scale, affording many a degree of detachment from what is happening in their own backyards. Yet the consequences of global warming are of an increasingly acute and serious nature.In Virginia Climate Fever, environmental journalist Stephen Nash... More

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century were a brutal time for American wildlife, with many species pushed to the brink of extinction. (Some are endangered to this day.) And yet these decades also saw the dawn of the conservationist movement. Into this contradictory era came William Temple... More

In the quiet halls of the natural history museum, there are some creatures still alive with stories, whose personalities refuse to be relegated to the dusty corners of an exhibit. The fame of these beasts during their lifetimes has given them an iconic status in death. More than just museum... More

Over the past two decades, Harriet Ritvo has established herself as a leading scholar in animal studies and one of those most responsible for establishing this field of study as a crucial part of environmental and social history. Her two well-known books, The Platypus and the Mermaid and The Animal... More

The view of nature and technology inhabiting totally different, even opposite, spheres persists across time and cultures. Most people would consider an English countryside or a Louisiana bayou to be "natural," though each is to an extent the product of technology. Pollution, widely thought to be a... More

Although the animal may be, as Nietzsche argued, ahistorical, living completely in the present, it nonetheless plays a crucial role in human history. The fascination with animals that leads not only to a desire to observe and even live alongside them, but to capture or kill them, is found in all... More

Freeman Dyson’s latest book does not attempt to bring together all of the celebrated physicist’s thoughts on science and technology into a unified theory. The emphasis is, instead, on the myriad ways in which the universe presents itself to us--and how, as observers and participants in its... More

The fire extinguisher; the airline safety card; the lifeboat. Until September 11, 2001, most Americans paid homage to these appurtenances of disaster with a sidelong glance, if at all. But John Stilgoe has been thinking about lifeboats ever since he listened with his father as the kitchen radio... More

With more than two hundred editions, Gilbert White’s The Natural History of Selborne is one of the most published books in the English language. An environmental study of the eighteenth-century Hampshire parish where White was born and later served as curate, the book is distinguished by the author... More

Host to a large and diverse bird population as well as a long human history, Virginia is arguably the birthplace of ornithology in North America. David W. Johnston’s History of Ornithology in Virginia,the result of over a decade of research, is the first book to address this fascinating element of... More

The pathbreaking essays in this collection explore the history of consumption by synthesizing discrete historical literatures on consumer culture, gender, and the history of technology. Luxury hotels and the chocolate industry are among the diverse array of topics these authors use to demonstrate... More

Can anyone speak a language he or she has not learned normally, in childhood or later? Claims to have accomplished this are made from time to time, but only rarely do they receive support when carefully examined. In this volume, Dr. Stevenson presents detailed reports of two cases that seem... More