A History of Chemistry from Alchemy to the Buckyball
Chemistry explores the way atoms interact, the constitution of the stars, and the human genome. Knowledge of chemistry makes it possible for us to manufacture dyes and antibiotics, metallic alloys, and other materials that contribute to the necessities and luxuries of human life. In Transforming Matter, noted historian Trevor H. Levere emphasizes ......
Roger E. Bilstein's Flight in America has won acclaim as the foremost history of one of the twentieth century's landmark achievements--human flight. In this revised and expanded third edition, Bilstein chronicles changes in military, commercial, and space aviation in the 1990s. He offers a glimpse of the developments one might expect in the new ......
Science, Risk, and the Politics of Hazard Mitigation
In 1906, after an earthquake wiped out much of San Francisco, leading California officials and scientists described the disaster as a one-time occurrence and assured the public that it had nothing to worry about. California Earthquakes explains how, over time, this attitude changed, and Californians came to accept earthquakes as a significant ......
Railroads, Engineering, and Architecture in New York City
Grand Central Terminal, one of New York City's preeminent buildings, stands as a magnificent Beaux-Arts monument to America's Railway Age, and it remains a vital part of city life today. Completed in 1913 after ten years of construction, the terminal became the city's most important transportation hub, linking long-distance and commuter trains to ......
'Hysteria,' the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction
From the time of Hippocrates until the 1920s, massaging female patients to orgasm was a staple of medical practice among Western physicians in the treatment of ''hysteria,'' an ailment once considered both common and chronic in women. Doctors loathed this time-consuming procedure and for centuries relied on midwives. Later, they substituted the ......
The American Social Science Association and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Authority
Thomas L. Haskell's The Emergence of Professional Social Science signaled the beginning of his distinguished career as a historian of ideas and critic of historical logic. His first book, now available in this paperback edition with a new preface by the author, explores the background and premises of the American Social Science Association ......
Navies have always been technologically sophisticated, from the ancient world's trireme galleys and the Age of Sail's ships-of-the-line to the dreadnoughts of World War I and today's nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines. Yet each large technical innovation has met with resistance and even hostility from those officers who, adhering to ......
Distinguished French immunologist and physician Patrice Debré offers an extensive, balanced, and detailed account of Louis Pasteur's life, struggles, and contributions. Drawing heavily on Pasteur's own scientific notebooks and writings, Debré presents a complete critical account of his discoveries and the controversies they raised with other ......
Few federal agencies have more extensive ties to the private sector than NASA. NASA's relationships with its many aerospace industry suppliers of rocket engines, computers, electronics, gauges, valves, O-rings, and other materials have often been described as ''partnerships.'' These have produced a few memorable catastrophes, but mostly technical ......
