History Science Life

Connected at the chest by a band of flesh, Chang and Eng Bunker toured the United States and the world from the 1820s to the 1870s, placing themselves and their extraordinary bodies on exhibit as "freaks of nature". More famously known as the Siamese twins, they eventually settled in rural North Carolina, married two white sisters, became slave owners, and fathered 21 children between them. More than a biography of the twins, this is a study of 19th-century American culture and society that reveals how Americans projected onto the twins their own hopes and fears.

Abolitionism was the movement that strove to end slavery in the United States. The abolitionists saw slavery as a stain and an affliction on the United States and made it their goal to eradicate slave ownership. Abolitionists produced anti-slavery literature, sent petitions to Congress, and ran for political office.

Permanent Present Tense tells the incredible story of Henry Gustav Molaison, known only as H. M. until his death in 2008. In 1953, at the age of 27, Molaison underwent a dangerous "psychosurgical" procedure intended to alleviate his debilitating epilepsy. The surgery went horribly wrong, and when Molaison awoke he was unable to store new experiences. For the rest of his life, he would be trapped in the moment. But Molaison’s tragedy would prove a gift to humanity.

From poverty to pets, from medicine to magic, from slang to sex, from wallpaper to women's rights. A glorious portrait of life in London from 1660-1670 by the bestselling author of ELIZABETH'S LONDON.

Important and provocative, The Undead examines why even with the tools of advanced technology, what we think of as life and death, consciousness and nonconsciousness, is not exactly clear - and how this problem has been further complicated by the business of organ harvesting.

Thomas Edison was born into a hard-working but attentive family. He struggled in school and became deaf at an early age. Born on February 11, 1847, Edison would become, arguably, the best-known American inventor of all time. His invention of the light bulb was one of more than 1,000 patents he held during his lifetime. Others included the phonograph, the electrical grid, and motion pictures. His work changed the way we see and hear the world around us.

In recent years, scientists have hypothesized life-forms that can only be called "weird": organisms that live off acid rather than water, microbes that thrive at temperatures and pressure levels so extreme that their cellular structures should break down, perhaps even organisms that reproduce without DNA. Some of these strange life-forms, unrelated to all life we know, might be nearby: on rock surfaces in the American southwest, hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, or even in our own bodies. Some, stranger still, might live in Martian permafrost, swim in the dark oceans of Jupiter's moons, or survive in the exotic ices on comets.

In 2009, scholars at Yale University came across a startling manuscript: the memoir of Austin Reed, a free Black man born in the 1820s who spent most of his early life ricocheting between forced labor in prison and forced labor as an indentured servant. Lost for more than 150 years, the handwritten document is the first known prison memoir written by an African American.

In 1904 Ota Benga, a young Congolese "pygmy" - a person of petite stature - arrived from central Africa and was featured in an anthropology exhibit at the St. Louis World's Fair. Two years later the New York Zoological Gardens displayed him in its Monkey House, caging the slight 103-pound, 4-foot 11-inch tall man with an orangutan. The attraction became an international sensation, drawing thousands of New Yorkers and commanding headlines across the nation and in Europe.

300,000 years ago a planet called Mars is dying, once a rich planet full of life, now it's quickly heading towards extinction as the magnetic field fails hundreds of feet above the planet. To restore Mars' core to how it once was a rare element called Raidem must be found, because it's the only element that can jumpstart Mars' core and reignite its atmosphere to help save all life on Mars. Captain Franz (Mar) Leir will have to pilot his starship through dangers in deep space to attempt to get the resources that could save Mars. If he can get back in time it's possible that the planet could ...

As the 32nd president of the United States of America, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is a common household name in both his home country and the world. Known as the man who led the United States through the Great Depression and World War II, Roosevelt was a leader and a statesman, a scholar, and a politician. Franklin D. Roosevelt is the only president to have served for three consecutive terms and voted in for a fourth, a fact that allows him to stand out among the long list of American presidents.

In early 20th-century Vienna, Annika is raised by Ellie and Sigrid, a cook and housemaid for a household of three professors. Abandoned when she was a baby, Annika dreams of the day her mother will come back to claim her. Then one day, it happens. A glamorous woman arrives and sweeps Annika away to a crumbling castle in Germany. But there is much more to this new woman than meets the eye - and none of it is good.

Best known as a monumental achievement of the civil rights movement, the 1964 Civil Rights Act also revolutionized the lives of America's working women. Title VII of the law made it illegal to discriminate "because of sex". But that simple phrase didn't mean much until ordinary women began using the law to get justice on the job - and some took their fights all the way to the Supreme Court.

Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Book VI is devoted to the Cynics, like Antisthenes, Diogenes of Sinope, Monimus, Onesicritus, Crates of Thebes, Metrocles, and Hipparchia of Maroneia.

In the summer of 2000, the most decorated soldier in Israel's history - Ehud Barak - set himself a challenge as daunting as any he had faced on the battlefield: to secure a final peace with the Palestinians. He would propose two states for two peoples, with a shared capital in Jerusalem. He knew the risks of failure. But he also knew the risks of not trying: letting slip perhaps the last chance for a generation to secure genuine peace. It was a moment of truth.

Obsessive, brilliant, and tortured, Nikola Tesla was lauded for his invention of the alternating current (AC) and other significant contributions to science. His claim that “harnessing the forces of nature was the only worthwhile scientific endeavor" both impressed and enraged the scientific community. Eventually his peers could no longer dismiss his eccentricities and began to view him as a crackpot - a potentially dangerous one.

Physics informs our understanding of how the world works - but more than that, key breakthroughs in physics have transformed everyday life. We journey back to 10 separate days in history to understand how particular breakthroughs were achieved, meet the individuals responsible and see how each breakthrough has influenced our lives.

Milad is five years old and excited for his school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but tragedy awaits: his bus is involved in a horrific accident. His father, Abed, rushes to the chaotic site, only to find Milad has already been taken away. Abed sets off on a journey to learn Milad's fate, navigating a maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must face as a Palestinian. Interwoven with Abed's odyssey are the stories of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and pasts unexpectedly converge.

In Life Finds a Way, biologist Andreas Wagner reveals the deep symmetry between innovation in biological evolution and human cultural creativity. Rarely is either a linear climb to perfection - instead, "progress" is typically marked by a sequence of peaks, plateaus, and pitfalls. For instance, in Picasso's 40-some iterations of Guernica, we see the same combination of small steps, incessant reshuffling, and large, almost reckless, leaps that characterize the way evolution transformed a dinosaur's grasping claw into a condor's soaring wing.

How did species wind up where they are today? Scientists have long conjectured that plants and animals dispersed throughout the world by drifting on large landmasses as they broke up, but in The Monkey’s Voyage, biologist Alan de Queiroz offers a radical new theory that displaces this passive view.