Microhistories

"Carpet specialist Dorothy Armstrong tells the stories surrounding twelve of the world's most fascinating carpets. Dorothy Armstrong's Threads of Empire is a spellbinding look at the history of the world through the stories of twelve carpets. Beautiful, sensuous, and enigmatic, great carpets follow power. Emperors, shahs, sultans and samurai crave them as symbols of earthly domination. Shamans and priests desire them to evoke the spiritual realm. The world's 1% hunger after them as displays of extreme status. And yet these seductive objects are made by poor and illiterate weavers, using the most basic materials and crafts; hedgerow plants for dyes, fibers from domestic animals, and the millennia-old skills of interweaving warps, wefts and knots. In Threads of Empire, Armstrong tells the histories of some of the world's most fascinating carpets, exploring how these textiles came into being then were transformed as they moved across geography and time in the slipstream of the great. She shows why the world's powerful were drawn to them, but also asks what was happening in the weavers' lives, and how they were affected by events in the world outside their tent, village or workshop. In its wide-ranging examination of these dazzling objects, from the 5th century BCE contents of the tombs of Scythian chieftains, to the carpets under the boots of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at the 1945 Yalta Peace Conference, Threads of Empire uncovers a new, hitherto hidden past right beneath our feet"-- Provided by publisher.

"The definitive, no-holds-barred oral history of 1990s alt-rock festival Lollapalooza--told by the musicians, roadies, and industry insiders who lived it. From the New York Times bestselling authors of Nothin' But A Good Time. In Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock's Wildest Festival, New York Times bestselling authors Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour tell the no-holds-barred history of the iconic music festival. Through hundreds of new interviews with artists, tour founders, festival organizers, promoters, publicists, sideshow freaks, stage crews, record label execs, reporters, roadies and more, Lollapalooza chronicles the tour's pioneering 1991-1997 run, and, in the process, alternative rock's rise--as well as the reverberations that led to a massive shift in the music industry and the culture at large. Lollapalooza features original interviews with some of the biggest names in music, including Perry Farrell and Jane's Addiction, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, Sonic Youth, Tool, Smashing Pumpkins, Ice-T, Rage Against the Machine, Green Day, Patti Smith, Alice in Chains, Metallica and many more. Conceived by Farrell as a farewell tour for Jane's Addiction, Lollapalooza's inaugural outing across the U.S. in the summer of 1991 helped to coalesce an ideology and aesthetic that not only washed over popular music but seeped into fashion, film, television, literature, food, politics and more. Throughout the decade, Lollapalooza offered a vast and diverse ensemble of bands, breaking barriers of genre and uniting alternative rock, heavy metal, punk, hip-hop, industrial, goth, avant-garde, spoken word, electronic dance music and other styles under one big tent, and setting the template for the modern American music festival and the scores of other contemporary destination fests that are now an integral part of how audiences experience live music. Unorthodox not just in music, Lollapalooza also spotlighted visual arts, nonprofit organizations, political outfits and even the occasional freak show, offering a tantalizing cocktail of culture, art, and activism that, taken together, defined the alternative mindset that dominated the 1990s. Echoes of its impact reverberate strongly today - cemented by annual sell-outs at destination events all over the world, an estimation of 400,000 attendees at the flagship Chicago fest each summer, and a spot among the world's largest and longest-running music festivals. A nostalgic look back at 1990s music and culture, Lollapalooza traces the festival's groundbreaking origins, following the tour as it progresses through the decade, and documenting the action onstage, backstage, and behind-the-scenes in detailed and uncensored and sometimes shocking first-person accounts. This is the story of Lollapalooza and the 1990s alternative rock revolution"-- Provided by publisher.

From one of the most beloved authors of our time, a fascinating excursion into the history behind the place we call home. Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as found in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to "write a history of the world without leaving home." The bathroom provides the occasion for the history of hygiene, the bedroom for an account of sex, death, and sleep, the kitchen for a discussion of nutrition and the spice trade, and so on, showing how each has figured in the evolution of private life. From architecture to electricity, from food preservation to epidemics, from the telephone to the Eiffel Tower, from crinolines to toilets -- and the brilliant, creative, and often eccentric talents behind them -- Bryson demonstrates that whatever happens in the world ends up in our houses, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture. - Jacket flap.

Flashes of Brilliance by Anika Burgess recounts the wild, experimental early days of photography from the 1830s to the early 20th century, spotlighting the eccentric inventors and artists who pushed its boundaries. Blending art, science, and social history, Burgess explores how pioneers captured never-before-seen worlds--from the ocean depths to the moon's surface--and revolutionized how we see motion, anatomy, and identity. The book also examines early photo manipulation, surveillance, and photography's role in political and cultural expression, all richly illustrated and compellingly told.

"A social and design history of the sewn-in pocket, from the mid-1500s up to today, that uncovers what pockets reveal about us, our place in society, and how we move through the world"-- Provided by publisher.

Provides a scholarly and scientific examination of the unrecognized role of trees in the planet's ecosystem reveals wood's unexpected influence on human evolution, civilization, and the global economy.

Humans have always revered long-lived trees. But as historian Jared Farmer reveals in Elderflora, our veneration took a modern turn in the eighteenth century, when naturalists embarked on a quest to locate and precisely date the oldest living things on earth. The new science of tree time prompted travelers to visit ancient specimens and conservationists to protect sacred groves. Exploitation accompanied sanctification, as old-growth forests succumbed to imperial expansion and the industrial revolution. Taking us from Lebanon to New Zealand to California, Farmer surveys the complex history of the world's oldest trees, including voices of Indigenous peoples, religious figures, and contemporary scientists who study elderflora in crisis. In a changing climate, a long future is still possible, Farmer shows, but only if we give care to young things that might grow old. -- Provided by publisher

"This book traces the evolution of our understanding of the heart from the dawn of civilization 15,000 years ago to today. It examines how we humans have evolved our beliefs about the purpose of the heart to try to understand what life forces it contains. Throughout our history, the heart has played an important role for the poet, the philosopher, and the physician. Until modern times, the heart was considered the home of our emotions, thoughts, memories and the soul. The brain has now taken over as the center of our consciousness and feelings, even though the heart continues to play a central role in our cultural iconography. It is only recently that medical science is finding the heart may indeed hold feelings, and in fact, is part of a two-way "heart-brain connection." A new area of medical science called neurocardiology suggests the heart directs the brain as much as the brain directs the heart. This book chronologically examines how the once 'king' of the organs became dismissed as a mere mechanistic blood pump subservient to the brain, yet remains so central to our daily lives as a symbol of love and health. As a physician fascinated with this extraordinary organ, Vincent Michael Figueredo has included a section on how the heart works, heart diseases, and gender and racial/ethnic differences in heart disease. He explores advancements in heart therapies in modern times, and what the future may hold. What we are now learning shows our ancestors weren't so wrong about the heart after all. That is, the heart is a part of a two-way interaction with the brain, together ensuring our mental, spiritual, and physical health"-- Provided by publisher.

"An affectionate and engaging history of the American bookstore and its central place in American cultural life, from department stores to indies, from highbrow dealers trading in first editions to sidewalk vendors, and from chains to special-interest community destinations Bookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts, and politics. They nurture local communities while creating new ones of their own. Bookshops are powerful spaces, but they are also endangered ones. In The Bookshop, we see those stakes: what has been, and what might be lost. Evan Friss's history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, catalogs, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many-not just as a merchant, but as a gathering place for likeminded people who cherish books. The story begins with Benjamin Franklin's first bookstore in Philadelphia, and takes us to a range of booksellers including The Strand, Chicago's Marshall Field & Co., Gotham Book Mart, specialty stores like Oscar Wilde and Drum and Spear, sidewalk sellers of used books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books, and Parnassus. The Bookshop is also a history of the leading figures in American bookselling, often impassioned eccentrics, and a history of how books have been marketed and sold over the course of more than two centuries-including, for example, a 3,000-pound elephant who appeared to sign books at Marshall Field's in 1944. The Bookshop is a book every bookstore will want to carry, as there has never been a more affectionate and engaging celebration of this beloved institution"-- Provided by publisher.

"Plastic is everywhere in our daily lives. But the companies that make it-petrochemical companies which are often subsidiaries of Big Oil like ExxonMobil and Dow Chemical-seem to be hiding in plain sight. For all the vivid coverage of where plastic ends up, there is remarkably little discussion of where it comes from. Plastic, it turns out, is a financial lifeline for oil companies that are concerned about diminishing demand for oil and gas in the future, and these companies are doing everything they can to double and eventually triple plastic production by 2050. Award-winning journalist Beth Gardiner gives readers an up-close look at the plastic industry's relentless growth, its extraordinary profits, its toxic pollution and its hidden role in exacerbating climate change. Every chapter in Plastic Inc brings new revelations, including: how Big Oil invented the idea of recycling, even though they always knew that recycling plastic at scale would never work (and by doing so, they created the playbook that big tobacco and big pharma would later follow); how microplastics are becoming a health crisis; how oil companies have linked with political forces to fight against bans on single use plastic like plastic bags, even creating laws that ban bans; the major characters and personalities behind what amounts to a hidden corporate and political scandal perpetuated over decades. The stories in Plastic Inc will reframe for readers a problem many of us think we understand, but which has deeper roots and a more complicated future than we can have possibly imagined"-- Provided by publisher.

"The encyclopedia once shaped our understanding of the world. Created by thousands of scholars and the most obsessive of editors, a good set conveyed a sense of absolute wisdom on its reader. Contributions from Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Orville Wright, Alfred Hitchcock, Marie Curie and Indira Gandhi helped millions of children with their homework. Adults cleared their shelves in the belief that everything that was explainable was now effortlessly accessible in their living rooms. Now these huge books gather dust and sell for almost nothing on eBay. Instead, we get our information from our phones and computers, apparently for free. What have we lost in this transition? And how did we tell the progress of our lives in the past? All the Knowledge in the World is a history and celebration of those who created the most ground-breaking and remarkable publishing phenomenon of any age. Simon Garfield, who "has a genius for being sparked to life by esoteric enthusiasm and charming readers with his delight" (The Times), guides us on an utterly delightful journey, from Ancient Greece to Wikipedia, from modest single-volumes to the 11,000-volume Chinese manuscript that was too big to print. He looks at how Encyclopedia Britannica came to dominate the industry, how it spawned hundreds of competitors, and how an army of ingenious door-to-door salesmen sold their wares to guilt-ridden parents. He reveals how encyclopedias have reflected our changing attitudes towards sexuality, race, and technology, and exposes how these ultimate bastions of trust were often riddled with errors and prejudice. With his characteristic ability to tackle the broadest of subjects in an illuminating and highly entertaining way, Simon Garfield uncovers a fascinating and important part of our shared past and wonders whether the promise of complete knowledge--that most human of ambitions--will forever be beyond our grasp"-- Provided by publisher.

The stunning, never-before-told story of the quixotic attempt to recreate small-town America in the heart of the Amazon, "Fordlandia" depicts a desperate quest to salvage the bygone America that the Ford factory system did much to dispatch.

"In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year. In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry's story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis." -- Provided by publisher.

"The color of one's skin and passport have long dictated the conditions of travel. For Shahnaz Habib, travel and travel writing have always been complicated pleasures. Habib threads the history of travel with her personal story as a child on family vacations in India, an adult curious about the world, and an immigrant for whom roundtrips are an annual fact of life. Tracing the power dynamics that underlie tourism, this ... debut parses who gets to travel, and who gets to write about the experience. Threaded through the book are ... analyses of obvious and not-so-obvious travel artifacts: passports, carousels, bougainvilleas, guidebooks, trains, the idea of wanderlust itself. Together, they tell a subversive history of travel as a Euro-American mode of consumerism--but as any traveler knows, travel is more than that"-- Provided by publisher.

A vibrant exploration of the world's newest language--where it came from, how it works, and where it's going.

"This book reveals the social history behind how the Cuban sandwich evolved from its origins in the midnight cafés of Havana to claim a spot on menus around the world"-- Provided by publisher.

"From James Beard Award-winner Rowan Jacobsen, the thrilling story of the farmers, activists, and chocolate makers fighting all odds to revive ancient cacao and produce the world's finest bar" -- Provided by the publisher.

"For centuries, the human heart seemed beyond our understanding: an inscrutable shuddering mass that was the spark of life as well as somehow the driver of emotion and the seat of the soul. As the cardiologist and bestselling author Sandeep Jauhar shows in [this book], it was only recently that we demolished age-old taboos and developed the science to change the way we live. Deftly weaving together his own experiences with the defining discoveries of the past, Jauhar tells the colorful and little-known story of the doctors who risked their careers and the patients who risked their lives to know and heal this most vital organ."--Jacket.

"What won't we try in our quest for perfect health, beauty, and the fountain of youth? Well, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When liquefied gold was touted as immortality in a glass. And when strychnine--yes, that strychnine, the one used in rat poison--was dosed like Viagra. Looking back with fascination, horror, and not a little dash of dark, knowing humor, Quackery recounts the lively, at times unbelievable, history of medical misfires and malpractices. Ranging from the merely weird to the outright dangerous, here are dozens of outlandish, morbidly hilarious "treatments"--conceived by doctors and scientists, by spiritualists and snake oil salesmen (yes, they literally tried to sell snake oil)--that were predicated on a range of cluelessness, trial and error, and straight-up scams. With vintage illustrations, photographs, and advertisements throughout, Quackery seamlessly combines macabre humor with science and storytelling to reveal an important and disturbing side of the ever-evolving field of medicine"-- Provided by publisher.

Chuck Klosterman-- New York Times bestselling critic, journalist, and, yes, football psychotic--did not write this book to deepen your appreciation of the game. He's not trying to help you become that person at the party, or to teach you how to make better bets, or to validate any preexisting views you might have about the sport (positive or negative). Football does, in fact, do all of those things. But not in the way such things have been done in the past, and never in a way any normal person would expect. Cultural theorists talk about hyperobjects--phenomena that bulk so large that their true dimensions are hidden in plain sight. In 2023, 93 of the 100 most-watched programs on U.S. television were NFL football games. This is not an anomaly. This is how society is best understood. Football is not merely the country's most popular sport; it is engrained in almost everything that explains what America is, even for those who barely pay attention. Klosterman gets to the bottom of all of it. He takes us to a metaphorical projection of Texas, where the religion of six-man football merges with America's Team [ sic] and makes an inexplicable impact on a boy in North Dakota. He dissects the question of natural greatness, the paradox of gambling and war, and the timeless caricature of the uncompromising head coach. He interrogates the perfection of football's marriage with television and the morality of acceptable risk. He even conjures an extinction-level event. If Zizek liked the SEC more than he liked cinema, if Stephen Jay Gould cared about linebackers more than he cared about dinosaurs, if Steve Martin played quarterback instead of the banjo . . . it would still be nothing like this. A century ago, Yale's legendary coach Walter Camp wrote his unified theory of the game. He called it Football. Chuck Klosterman has given us a new Camp for the new age, rooted in a personal history he cannot escape.

"Are you a Molly (a patriotic overachiever with a flair for drama)? Felicity (the original horse girl)? Kirsten (a cottagecore fan who seems immune to cholera), Samantha (a savior complex in a sailor suit), or Josefina (who dealt with grief by befriending a baby goat)? Have you ever wondered how Britney Spears or Michelle Kwan would answer that question? And why do we care so much which girl we are? Combining history, travelogue, and memoir, Dolls of Our Lives follows Allison Horrocks and Mary Mahoney on an unforgettable journey to the past as they delve into the origins of this iconic brand. Continuing the conversations that began on their podcast, they set out to answer the lingering questions that keep them up at night. What did American Girl inventor Pleasant Rowland hope to say to children with these dolls? Was girl power something that could be ordered from a catalogue, described by a magazine, or modeled in the plot lines of books? And how - and why - did this brand shape an entire generation? Through interviews with a legion of devoted doll lovers, a field trip to Colonial Williamsburg, a place that inspired Pleasant to create American Girl, and an exploration of their own (complicated) fandom, this is a deep dive into one of the 90s most coveted products - the American Girl doll" -- Publisher's description.

"Marc Masters explores the surprising ups and downs of the cassette tape's journey through international music culture, showing us the cultural impact of cassettes on music listening, music portability, and music making itself. Winding through early hip-hop tape trading, the deeply personal act of making a mixtape, and even contemporary composers who use cassettes to create musique concrète compositions, this book chronicles the resilient do-it-yourself spirit of cassettes through conversations with scene-setters coupled with deep explorations into music history. More than just the most comprehensive history of how cassettes have changed music, this is also a vivid tribute to a format that refuses to fade away"-- Provided by publisher.

A fascinating exploration of the uncrackable codes and secret cyphers that helped win wars, spark revolutions and change the faces of nations.

"A lively tour through the history of US cemeteries that explores how, where, and why we bury our dead. The summer before his senior year in college, Greg Melville worked at the cemetery in his hometown, and thanks to hour upon hour of pushing a mower over the grassy acres, he came to realize what a rich story the place told of his town and its history. Thus was born Melville's lifelong curiosity with how, where, and why we bury and commemorate our dead." -- Amazon.

"In the Land of Ninkasi: A History of Beer in Mesopotamia presents the narrative surrounding the world's first great beer culture. It focuses on the beers of ancient Mesopotamia while also considering the people who brewed and drank them and the places where they were drunk. The clear roadmap into the ancient source material provides insights from archaeological remains, ancient works of art, and cuneiform texts. Moreover, narrative vignettes and thought experiments were used to analyze and interpret the culture of beer drinking in ancient Mesopotamia. Additionally, In the Land of Ninkasi provides an overview of drinking styles, brewing equipment, and the gods and goddesses who governed the lives of people"-- Provided by publisher.

Famed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold leaf and frescoes, or filled with beanbags and children's drawings--the history of the library is rich, varied, and stuffed full of incident. In The Library, the first major work of its kind, historians Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen trace this extraordinary history, from the famous collections of the ancient world to the embattled public resources we cherish today. Along the way, they introduce us to the antiquarians and philanthropists who shaped the world's great collections, trace the rise and fall of technologies, ideologies, and tastes, and reveal the high crimes and misdemeanors committed in pursuit of rare and valuable manuscripts. Very often, they find, libraries flourish in the hands of their first owner, then waste away as collections that represented the values and interests of one generation fail to speak to the one that follows. Yet while collections themselves fall victim to damp, dust, moths, and bookworms, the idea of the library persists, as each generation makes--and remakes-- the institution anew. Beautifully written and deeply researched, The Library is essential reading for book lovers, collectors, and anyone who has ever gotten blissfully lost in the stacks. -- From dust jacket.

"In the rich naturalist tradition of H Is for Hawk and The Soul of an Octopus, Beaverland tells the tumultuous, eye-opening story of how beavers and the beaver fur trade shaped America's history, culture, and environment. Before the American empires of steel and coal and oil, before the railroads, there was the empire of fur. Beginning with the early trans-Atlantic trade in North America, Leila Philip traces the beaver's profound influence on our nation's early economy and feverish western expansion, its first corporations and multi-millionaires. As Leila's passion for this weird and wonderful rodent widens from her careful observation of its dams in her local pond, she chronicles the many characters she meets in her pursuit of the beaver: fur trappers and fur traders, biologists and fur auctioneers, wildlife managers, PETA activists, Native American environmental vigilantes, scientists, engineers and beaver enthusiasts. What emerges is a startling portrait of the secretive, largely hidden world of the contemporary fur trade and an immersive ecological and historical investigation of these animals that, once trapped to the point of extinction, have rebounded to become one of the greatest conservation stories of the 20th century. Now, beavers offer surprising solutions to some of the most urgent problems caused by climate change. Beautifully written and filled with the many colorful characters-fur trappers and fur traders and fur auctioneers, wildlife managers and biologists, Native American environmental vigilantes. She meets a Harvard scientist from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, using drones to create 3-dimensional images of beaver dams. She meets an environmental restoration consultant in the Chesapeake whose nickname is the beaver whisperer. Beaverland transports readers into scenes of beavers in their ponds and the scientists and fur trappers in pursuit of them, widening arcs of information to reveal the profound ways in which beavers and the beaver trade shaped history, culture, and our environment"-- Provided by publisher.

"With its origins rooted in one of the Wall Street Journal's most emailed stories, The Monopolists is the inside story of how the game of Monopoly came into existence, the heavy embellishment of its provenance by Parker Brothers and multiple media outlets, the lost female originator of the game, and one man's lifelong obsession to tell the true story about the game's questionable origins. Most Americans who play Monopoly think it was invented by an unemployed Pennsylvania man who sold his game to Parker Brothers in 1935 and lived happily ever after on royalties. That story, however, is not exactly true. Ralph Anspach, an economist and refugee of Hitler's Danzig, unearthed the real story and it traces back to Abraham Lincoln, the Quakers, and to a forgotten feminist named Lizzie Magie. The Monopolists is in part Anspach's David-versus-Goliath tale of his 1970s battle against Parker Brothers, one of the most beloved companies of all time. Anspach was a professor fighting to sell his Anti-Monopoly board game, which hailed those who busted up trusts and monopolies instead of those who took control of all the properties. While he and his lawyers researched previous Parker Brothers lawsuits, he accidentally discovered the true history of the game, which began with Magie's Landlord's Game. That game was invented more than thirty years before Parker Brothers sold their version of Monopoly and she waged her own war with Parker Brothers to be credited as the real originator of the game. More than just a book about board games, The Monopolists illuminates the cutthroat nature of American business over the last century--a social history of American corporate greed that reads like the best detective fiction, told through the real-life winners and losers in the Monopoly wars"-- Provided by publisher.

"In a gorgeous history that spans continents and millennia, Aarathi Prasad weaves together the complex story of the queen of fabrics. Through the scientists who have studied silk, and the biology of the animals from which it has been drawn, Prasad explores the global, natural, and cultural history (and future) of a unique material that has fascinated the world for thousands of years"-- Provided by publisher.

A unique and compelling adventure through the history of rope and its impact on civilization, in the vein of single-subject bestsellers like Salt and Cod Tim Queeney is a sailor who knows more about rope and its importance to humankind than most. In Rope, Queeney takes readers on a ride through the history of rope and the way it weaves itself through the story of civilization. From Magellan's world-circling ships, to the 15th-century fleet of Admiral Zheng He, to Polynesian multihulls with crab claw sails, he shows how without rope, none of their adventurous voyages and discoveries would have been possible. Time traveling, he describes the building of the pyramids, the Roman Coliseum, Hagia Sofia, Notre Dame, the Sultan Hasan Mosque, the Brooklyn Bridge, and countless other constructions that would not have been possible without rope. Not content to just look at rope's past, Queeney looks at its present and possible future and how the re-invention of rope with synthetic fibers will likely provide the strength for cables to support elevators into space. Making the story of rope real for readers, Queeney tells remarkable nautical stories of his own reliance on rope at sea. Rope is history, adventure, and the story of one of the world's most common tools that has made it possible for humans to advance throughout the centuries.

This book is an exploration of human digestion. Few of us realize what strange wet miracles of science operate inside us after every meal. In her trademark style, the author investigates the beginning, and end, of our food, addressing such questions as: why crunchy food is so appealing, why it is hard to find words for flavors and smells, why the stomach doesn't digest itself, how much we can eat before our stomachs burst, and whether constipation killed Elvis. Here we meet scientists who tackle the questions no one else thinks of, or has the courage to ask. We go on location to a pet-food taste-test lab, a fecal transplant, and into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal.

"A lively account of our age-old quest for brighter colors, which changed the way we see the world, from the best-selling author of Proof: The Science of Booze"-- Provided by publisher.

"A book exploring the emerging science on plant intelligence, uncovering plants' complex and unimaginable capabilities and calling into question what we consider to be conscious agents in the natural world"-- Provided by publisher.

A look at how alcohol and other intoxicants helped spark the rise of the first large-scale societies by enhancing creativity, alleviating stress and building trust among conflicting tribes to allow them to cooperate with each other.

An award-winning watchmaker chronicles the invention of time and human society through the centuries-long story of one of mankind's most profound technological achievements: the watch.

"From New York Times bestselling author of The Mosquito, the incredible story of how the horse shaped human history"-- Provided by publisher.