Only once we understand the long history of human efforts to draw sustenance from the land can we grasp the nature of the crisis that faces humankind today, as hundreds of millions of people are faced with famine or flight from the land. From Neolithic times through the earliest civilizations of the ancient Near East, in savannahs, river valleys and the terraces created by the Incas in the Andean mountains, an increasing range of agricultural techniques have developed in response to very different conditions. These developments are recounted in this book, with detailed attention to the ways in which plants, animals, soil, climate, and society have interacted.,Mazoyer and Roudart???s A History of World Agriculture is a path-breaking and panoramic work, beginning with the emergence of agriculture after thousands of years in which human societies had depended on hunting and gathering, showing how agricultural techniques developed in the different regions of the world, and how this extraordinary wealth of knowledge, tradition and natural variety is endangered today by global capitialism, as it forces the unequal agrarian heritages of the world to conform to the norms of profit.,During the twentieth century, mechanization, motorization and specialization have brought to a halt the pattern of cultural and environmental responses that characterized the global history of agriculture until then. Today a small number of corporations have the capacity to impose the farming methods on the planet that they find most profitable. Mazoyer and Roudart propose an alternative global strategy that can safegaurd the economies of the poor countries, reinvigorate the global economy, and create a livable future for mankind.
While the physical sciences are a continuously evolving source of technology and of understanding about our world, they have become so specialized and rely on so much prerequisite knowledge that for many people today the divide between the sciences and the humanities seems even greater than it was when C. P. Snow delivered his famous 1959 lecture, “The Two Cultures.”,In A Cultural History of Physics, Hungarian scientist and educator Karoly Simonyi succeeds in bridging this chasm by describing the experimental methods and theoretical interpretations that created scientific knowledge, from ancient times to the present day, within the cultural environment in which it was formed. Unlike any other work of its kind, Simonyi’s seminal opus explores the interplay of science and the humanities to convey the wonder and excitement of scientific development throughout the ages.,These pages contain an abundance of excerpts from original resources, a wide array of clear and straightforward explanations, and an astonishing wealth of insight, revealing the historical progress of science and inviting readers into a dialogue with the great scientific minds that shaped our current understanding of physics.,Beautifully illustrated, accurate in its scientific content and broad in its historical and cultural perspective, this book will be a valuable reference for scholars and an inspiration to aspiring scientists and humanists who believe that science is an integral part of our culture.
Now with a new introduction describing the fallout of America???s consumer credit boom, 1994???s wildly acclaimed bestseller A Piece of the Action tells the story of how millions of middle class Americans went from being savers to borrowers and investors through the invention of credit cards, mutual funds, and IRAs???resulting in profound societal change.,???America began to change on a mid-September day in 1958, when the Bank of America dropped its first 60,000 credit cards on the unassuming city of Fresno, California.??? So begins Joe Nocera???s riveting account of one of the most astonishing revolutions in modern American life???what Nocera labels ???the money revolution.??? In the decades since, the middle class has gained access to credit cards, to mutual funds, to retirement accounts???and to hundreds of other financial vehicles that have allowed everyone to get ???a piece of the action.??? In this lively, engaging book, some of the great financial characters of modern times???from Charles Merrill to Charles Schwab to Peter Lynch???strut across the stage as the course of this great financial shift is charted.,In an all-new introduction, Nocera takes a look back at the consequences of the money revolution. Were members of the middle class as prepared as the innovators claimed to take control of their financial lives? Or did events like the dot-com and the housing bubbles suggest something else: that far too many of us lacked the wherewithal to make sound investment decisions?
In a wonderful synthesis of science, history, and imagination, Gino Segr??, an internationally renowned theoretical physicist, embarks on a wide-ranging exploration of how the fundamental scientific concept of temperature is bound up with the very essence of both life and matter. Why is the internal temperature of most mammals fixed near 98.6??? How do geologists use temperature to track the history of our planet? Why is the quest for absolute zero and its quantum mechanical significance the key to understanding superconductivity? And what can we learn from neutrinos, the subatomic “messages from the sun” that may hold the key to understanding the birth-and death-of our solar system? In answering these and hundreds of other temperature-sensitive questions, Segr?? presents an uncanny view of the world around us.
A new edition of the best-selling work from one of the most forward-thinking and important philosophers of our time.,Join one of the greatest contemporary philosophers on a breathtaking tour of time and the Kosmos???from the Big Bang right up to the eve of the twenty-first century. This accessible and entertaining summary of Ken Wilber???s great ideas has been expanding minds now for two decades, providing a kind of unified field theory of the universe and, along the way, treating a host of issues related to that universe, from gender roles, to multiculturalism, to environmentalism, and even the meaning of the Internet. This special anniversary edition contains as an afterword a dialogue between the author and Lana Wachowski, the award-winning writer-director of the Matrix film trilogy, in which we???re offered an intimate glimpse into the evolution of Ken???s thinking and where he stands today. A Brief History of Everything may well be the best introduction to the thought of this man who has been called the ???Einstein of Consciousness??? (John White).
In volume 2 of this monumental work, Mircea Eliade continues his magisterial progress through the history of religious ideas. The religions of ancient China, Brahmanism and Hinduism, Buddha and his contemporaries, Roman religion, Celtic and German religions, Judaism, the Hellenistic period, the Iranian syntheses, and the birth of Christianity???all are encompassed in this volume.
Yesterday???s World of Tomorrow.,In a narrow corridor of time between the Great Depression and the most destructive war in history, a World???s Fair was held in the city of New York. It was an event that transformed an entire generation with its vision of things to come. Millions of people came from every corner of the globe to gaze in awe at the Trylon and Perisphere, and to experience for an afternoon a thrilling yet humane utopia in which every citizen lived ???the good life??? that art, science, technology, and moral fervor had created. In 1939, David Gelernter gives us an intensely evocative picture of the World’s Fair ??? and of a fleeting era of innocent expectation when the world looked forward in wonder rather than backward with regret.
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Most children go through a dinosaur phase. Learning all the tongue twisting names, picking favorites based on ferocity, armor, or sheer size. For many kids this love of ???terrible lizards??? fizzles out at some point between starting and leaving primary school. All those fancy names slowly forgotten, no longer any need for a favorite.,For all those child dino fanatics who didn???t grow up to become paleontologists, dinosaurs seem like something out of mythology. They are dragons, pictures in books, abstract, other, extinct.,They are at the same time familiar and mysterious. And yet we???re in an age of rapid discovery???new dinosaur species and genera are being discovered at an accelerating rate, we???re learning more about what they looked like, how they lived, how they evolved and where they all went.,This series isn???t just a top trumps list of dino facts???we???re interested in the why and the how and like all areas of science there is plenty of controversy and debate.
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Most children go through a dinosaur phase. Learning all the tongue twisting names, picking favorites based on ferocity, armor, or sheer size. For many kids this love of ???terrible lizards??? fizzles out at some point between starting and leaving primary school. All those fancy names slowly forgotten, no longer any need for a favorite.,For all those child dino fanatics who didn???t grow up to become paleontologists, dinosaurs seem like something out of mythology. They are dragons, pictures in books, abstract, other, extinct.,They are at the same time familiar and mysterious. And yet we???re in an age of rapid discovery???new dinosaur species and genera are being discovered at an accelerating rate, we???re learning more about what they looked like, how they lived, how they evolved and where they all went.,This series isn???t just a top trumps list of dino facts???we???re interested in the why and the how and like all areas of science there is plenty of controversy and debate.
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