Birth History

What if Isaac Newton had never lived? Robert Hooke and Edmond Halley, whose place in history has been overshadowed by the giant figure of Newton, were pioneering scientists within their own right and instrumental in establishing the Royal Society. Whilst Newton is widely regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time and the father of the English scientific revolution, John and Mary Gribbin uncover the fascinating story of Robert Hooke and Edmond Halley....

Far beyond simply being a sports league, the NBA has become an entertainment and pop culture juggernaut. From all kinds of team logo merchandise to officially branded video games and players crossing over into reality television, film, fashion lines, and more, there is an inseparable line between sports and entertainment. But only four decades ago, this would have been unthinkable.

Smartly dressed and smiling, Canada’s black train porters were a familiar sight to the average passenger - yet their minority status rendered them politically invisible, second-class in the social imagination that determined who was and who was not considered Canadian. Drawing on the experiences of these influential black Canadians, Cecil Foster’s They Call Me George demonstrates the power of individuals and minority groups in the fight for social justice and shows how a country can change for the better.

The first decade after India's independence, 1947-1957, was probably the most crucial in the nation's history. Opening a window to this period, this book weaves a story out of the complex ideas and events that have largely remained beneath the surface of public discourse. Thought-provoking, argumentative and thoroughly enjoyable, 1947-1957, India: The Birth of a Republic is a must-listen for anyone interested in Indian political history.

During a 30-year boom period in France between the end of World War II and the 1974 oil crisis, Paris was not only the world's most delicious, stylish, and exciting tourist destination; it was also the world capital of gastronomic genius and innovation. The Gourmands' Way explores the lives and writings of six Americans who chronicled the food and wine of this era, paying particular attention to their individual struggles as writers, to their life circumstances, and to their particular genius at sharing awareness of French food with mainstream American audiences.

Kendrick Mercer's Whole Self tells the story of the birth, evolution, and history of human consciousness and its impact on the human psyche. This is the most powerful unfolding force on the Earth, with the potential to lead us either to annihilate ourselves by generating conflict or to work together wisely and in common purpose.

Between 1965 and 1985, the world underwent profound social, political, and technological transformations. The Civil Rights Movement in the United States achieved key victories, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but racial tensions and systemic inequalities persisted. Meanwhile, the Vietnam War escalated, igniting widespread anti-war protests and fracturing American trust in government. This disillusionment culminated in the Watergate scandal, leading to President Nixon's resignation in 1974 and reshaping public perception of political leadership.

Inspired by Sarah DiGregorio’s harrowing experience giving birth to her premature daughter, Early is a compelling and empathetic blend of memoir and rigorous reporting that tells the story of neonatology - and explores the questions raised by premature birth. The heart of many hospitals is the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). It is a place where humanity, ethics, and science collide in dramatic and deeply personal ways as parents, doctors and nurses grapple with sometimes unanswerable questions: When does life begin? When and how should life end?

While many volumes devoted to the punk and hardcore scenes in America grace bookstore shelves, Canada’s contributions to the genre remain largely unacknowledged. For the first time, the birth of Canadian punk - a transformative cultural force that spread across the country at the end of the 1970s - is captured between the pages of this important resource. Delving deeper than standard band biographies, this book articulates how the advent of punk reshaped the culture of cities across Canada, speeding along the creation of alternative means of cultural production, consumption, and distribution.

The world is desperate for cobalt. It drives the proliferation of digital and clean technologies. But this "demon metal" has a horrific present and a troubled history. The modern search for cobalt has brought investors back to a small town in Northern Canada, a place called Cobalt. Like the demon metal, this town has a dark and turbulent history.

In these two lectures about Sandro Botticelli (1444-1510) and the meaning behind two of his best-loved paintings, Angela introduces you to the esoteric worldview which flourished in the early centuries CE in cultural centres such as Alexandria in Egypt, and was reborn in Renaissance Europe.

After a catastrophe in the real world leaves Kraven's broken body trapped in a regeneration capsule, his mind is connected to the latest new-generation virtual reality game, World of Noria. But things in game-world are not all they seem, and to survive, Kraven will need a strength he has little time to cultivate.

For more than a half century, television has played a primary role in securing college football's place as one of America's most popular spectator sports. But it has also been the common denominator in the sport's rise as a big business. Television, which multiplied the number of people who cared about the game, simultaneously increased the stakes.

In ancient Athens, thousands would attend theatre festivals that turned writing into a fierce battle for fame, money, and laughably large trophies. While the tragedies earned artistic respect, it was the comedies - the raunchy jokes, vulgar innuendo, outrageous invention, and barbed political commentary - that captured the imagination of the city.

Overturning familiar scripts, Splendid Liberators is the first work of narrative nonfiction to look at this far-flung war through American, Cuban, and Filipino eyes, and to gauge the consequences and costs of America's first major imperial adventure.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is the most popular personality test in the world. It has been harnessed by Fortune 100 companies, universities, hospitals, churches and the military. Its language - of extraversion vs. introversion, thinking vs. feeling - has inspired online dating platforms and Buzzfeed quizzes alike. And yet despite the test's widespread adoption, experts in the field of psychometric testing, a $500 million industry, struggle to account for its success - no less validate its results.

Margaret Sanger was an American sex educator and birth control activist. Woman and the New Race argues for the legality of birth control, which was closely tied to the labor and the Eugenics movements. Sanger believed that birth control would free women from the bondage of forced motherhood.

Starting from the two iconic dates of 753 BC (according to legend, the founding of Rome) and 476 AD (the deposition of the last Western Roman emperor Romulus Augustulus), the history of the Roman Empire spans more than 1200 years. This was not only a long period of time, but also an eventful one - after all, the inhabitants of the city on the Tiber River conquered an empire that, at its greatest expansion in 116 AD, encompassed most of Europe as well as parts of North Africa and Asia Minor.

Alone in a Spartan black cockpit, test pilot Mike Melvill rocketed toward space. He had 80 seconds to exceed the speed of sound and begin the climb to a target no civilian pilot had ever reached. He might not make it back alive. If he did he would make history as the world's first commercial astronaut. The spectacle defied reason, the result of a competition dreamed up by entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, whose vision for a new race to space required small teams to do what only the world's largest governments had done before.

The Whitsun Daughters is a story of three contemporary teenage girls - sisters and cousins - in a small Midwestern town, narrated by the ghost of a young woman who, over a century earlier, lived and loved on the same small patch of farmland the girls now call home. The book follows both the present-day story of the three Whitsun girls and the story of Jane Murphy a century earlier as they fight to assert their own desires in worlds determined to ignore and minimize them.