Evolution History

If you could bring back one living being from the whole of the history of time, what would you choose? Comedian and former stem-cell biologist Helen Pilcher has thought about this problem - a lot. In Bring Back the King, Helen explains the cutting-edge science that makes the resurrection of extinct animals a very real possibility and highlights her choices from eras gone by, from the king of the dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex, to the King of Rock 'n' Roll, Elvis Presley.

In the land of the Southern Hemisphere, where the Andes Mountains towered high and the Pampas stretched far and wide, there once existed a country of great and turbulent history. This country was known as Argentina, and its tale is as epic and enchanting as any told in Latin America. Come journey through the ages with this audibook. From the early indigenous civilizations to the arrival of Spanish conquistadors, from the heroic struggle for independence to the rise and fall of Peronism, this chronicle is rich with heroes, villains, triumphs, and tragedies.

When faced with new challenges, it’s easy to feel our solutions need to be equally unprecedented. We think we need a revolution. But what if this is a big mistake? In Evolutionary Ideas, Sam Tatam shows how behavioral science and evolutionary psychology can help us solve tomorrow’s challenges, not by divining something the world has never seen, but by borrowing from yesterday’s solutions–often in the most unexpected ways.

In The Synthetic Age, Christopher Preston argues that what is most startling about this coming epoch is not only how much impact humans have had but, more important, how much deliberate shaping they will start to do. Emerging technologies promise to give us the power to take over some of Nature's most basic operations. It is not just that we are exiting the Holocene and entering the Anthropocene; it is that we are leaving behind the time in which planetary change is just the unintended consequence of unbridled industrialism.

Our understanding of the ‘tree of life’, with powerful implications for human genetics, human health and our own human nature, has recently completely changed. This book is about a new method of telling the story of life on earth - through molecular phylogenetics. It involves a fairly simple method - the reading of the deep history of life by looking at the variation in protein molecules found in living organisms. For instance, we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived not through traditional inheritance from directly ancestral forms, but sideways by viral infection.

In the early 1800s, a century before there was any concept of the gene, physicians in insane asylums began to record causes of madness in their admission books. Almost from the beginning, they pointed to heredity as the most important of these causes. As doctors and state officials steadily lost faith in the capacity of asylum care to stem the terrible increase of insanity, they began emphasizing the need to curb the reproduction of the insane. They became obsessed with identifying weak or tainted families and anticipating the outcomes of their marriages.

A History of the Transportation Revolution covers the history of the evolution of major modes of human transportation. The book provides interesting events in the development of walking, roads, airships, bicycles, aviation, kites, railroads, jet engines and rockets. Additional sections cover the history of canals, boats, ships and more.

We are all familiar with the "march of progress," the representation of evolution that depicts a series of apelike creatures becoming progressively taller and more erect before finally reaching the upright human form. Its emphasis on linear progress has had a decisive impact on public understanding of evolution, yet the image contradicts modern scientific conceptions of evolution as complex and branching.

Experience Earth from the big bang to the dinosaurs and beyond in this beautifully written, vibrant overview of our home planet's journey from creation to our time today.

A vibrant young Hispano woman, Shonnie Medina, inherits a breast-cancer mutation known as BRCA1.185delAG. It is a genetic variant characteristic of Jews. The Medinas knew they were descended from Native Americans and Spanish Catholics, but they did not know that they had Jewish ancestry as well. The mutation most likely sprang from Sephardic Jews hounded by the Spanish Inquisition. The discovery of the gene leads to a fascinating investigation of cultural history and modern genetics by Dr. Harry Ostrer and other experts on the DNA of Jewish populations.

Rethinking Evolution links Darwin's early insights to the molecular realm inside living cells. This updated evolutionary synthesis provides an accessible explanation for biological complexity that cuts through the confusion surrounding evolutionary theory in a practical way. In addition to a wide-ranging survey of proposed updates to the modern synthesis, this title provides extraordinary new insights, including emergent evolutionary potential and the generative phenotype.

The specter of global war loomed large in President Franklin Roosevelt's mind as he prepared to present his 1941 State of the Union address, yet his rallying cry to the nation was about more than just national security or why Americans should care about a fight still far overseas. He instead identified how Americans defined themselves as a people, with words that resonated and defined the parameters of American politics and foreign policy for generations.

Combining the scope of Yuval Noah Harari with the political savvy of Francis Fukuyama, The Origin of Politics, Wade’s work draws from anthropology, evolutionary biology, and historical analysis to explore how human nature shapes the direction of society—and how policies which ignore human nature risk chaos and even extinction. Political scientists agree that the roots of politics must lie in human nature, but then assume that human behavior is infinitely flexible. The Origin of Politics shows that limits set by human evolution cannot be ignored without penalty.

A brief essay by James J. Caterino, the author of Reviews and Essays, 50 Films, Watch the Skies, Why I Don't Drink, and much more.

Marooned at the edge of Terran space, engineer Hemlocke Shaw must join forces with his sworn enemy and combat his greatest fears in an effort to save his friends, and the countless other souls on the isolated Outpost 21. And corporate Peacekeeper Paige Angstrom, teenage outcast Volara, and bounty hunter Emrald Re hurtle towards a secret research facility hidden in the volcanic wilds. As they fight to unmask the nefarious forces behind a ring of disappearances and gene-splicing experiments, it becomes clear that their failure will mean the end of humanity itself.

The history of the Panama Canal is a journey of dreams, challenges, and triumphs that spans more than a century. From the earliest explorations in the 19th century (1887) to the efficient Panamanian administration of the 21st century (2024), over 137 years, the canal’s story has unfolded, and since 1914, it has been a crucial connecting point for global commerce and a symbol of Panamanian resilience and sovereignty, though Panama’s geographic position had long been where the world gathered to transport its trade. This novelized chronicle of the Panama Canal begins with the French, who, ...

Welcome to "A History Of Modesty: Why Are We Ashamed?" - a thought-provoking yet humorous exploration of the concept of modesty. This isn't your typical dry history book. It's a witty, engaging dive into how our societal norms, cultural contexts, and personal beliefs have shaped the way we perceive and feel about our 'private' parts. Spanning from the days of Adam and Eve to the rise of the digital age, this book illuminates the fascinating transformations of body covering norms across cultures and centuries. Ever wondered how Victorian corsets came to be, or what nudists have to say about ...

Taking us on an incredible journey across centuries and galaxies, accompanied by his characteristic wit, Professor Luke O’Neill explains how it all began, how it will all end and everything in between. Listeners will benefit from Luke’s insatiable curiosity for life when they dive into this ultimate journey through life and death. Among other fascinating facts, you’ll discover the science behind how we got to be so smart, why sex with a caveman was a good idea, the science of finding love, why we follow religions and how robots will become part of everyday life.

In Eve, Cat Bohannon answers questions scientists should have been addressing for decades. With boundless curiosity and sharp wit, she covers the past 200 million years to explain the specific science behind the development of the female sex. Eve is not only a sweeping revision of human history, it’s an urgent and necessary corrective for a world that has focused primarily on the male body for far too long.

Palaeontologist Steve Brusatte weaves together the history and evolution of our mammal forebears with stories of the scientists whose fieldwork and discoveries underlie our knowledge, both of iconic mammals like the mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers of which we have all heard, and of fascinating species that few of us are aware of. For what we see today is but a very limited range of the mammals that have existed; in this fascinating and groundbreaking book, Steve Brusatte tells their—and our—story.