A radical retelling of the history of science that challenges the Eurocentric narrative. We are told that modern science was invented in Europe, the product of great minds like Nicolaus Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. But this is wrong. Science is not, and has never been, a uniquely European endeavour. Copernicus relied on mathematical techniques borrowed from Arabic and Persian texts. When Newton set out the laws of motion, he relied on astronomical observations made in Asia and Africa. When Darwin was writing On the Origin of Species, he consulted a sixteenth-century Chinese encyclopaedia. And when Einstein was studying quantum mechanics, he was inspired by the Bengali physicist, Satyendra Nath Bose. Horizons pushes beyond Europe, exploring the ways in which scientists from Africa, America, Asia and the Pacific fit into the history of science, and arguing that it is best understood as a story of global cultural exchange. Challenging both the existing narrative and our perceptions of revered individuals, above all this is a celebration of the work of scientists neglected by history. Among many others, we meet Graman Kwasi, the seventeenth-century African botanist who discovered a new cure for malaria, Hantaro Nagaoka, the nineteenth-century Japanese scientist who first described the structure of the atom, and Zhao Zhongyao, the twentieth-century Chinese physicist who discovered antimatter (but whose American colleague received the Nobel prize). Scientists today are quick to recognise the international nature of their work. In this ambitious and revisionist history, James Poskett reveals that this tradition goes back much further than we think.

A radical retelling of the history of science that foregrounds the scientists erased from history In this major retelling of the history of science from 1450 to the present day, James Poskett explodes the myth that science began in Europe. The blinkered Western gaze focusing on individual 'genius' - Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Einstein - was only one part of the story. The reality was an utterly global, non-linear pattern of cross-fertilization, competition, cooperation and outright conflict. Each rupture in history carved fresh channels for global exchange. Here, for the first time, Poskett celebrates how scientists from Africa, America, Asia and the Pacific were integral to this very human story. We meet Graman Kwasi, the African botanist who discovered a new cure for malaria; Hantaro Nagaoka, the Japanese scientist who first described the structure of the atom; and Zhao Zhongyao, the Chinese physicist who discovered antimatter.

This yearbook is the fourth in the series with the title Globalistics and Globalization Studies. The subtitle of the present volume is Global History & Big History. The point is that today our global world really demands global knowledge. Thus, there are a few actively developing multidisciplinary approaches and integral disciplines among which one can name Global Studies, Global History and Big History. They all provide a connection between the past, present, and future. Big History with its vast and extremely heterogeneous field of research encompasses all the forms of existence and all timescales and brings together constantly updated information from the scientific disciplines and the humanities. Global History is transnational or world history which examines history from a global perspective, making a wide use of comparative history and of the history of multiple cultures and nations. Global Studies express the view of systemic and epistemological unity of global processes. Thus, one may argue that Global Studies and Globalistics can well be combined with Global History and Big History and such a multi-disciplinary approach can open wide horizons for the modern university education as it helps to form a global view of various processes.

A copiously illustrated global history of magic books, from ancient papyri to pulp paperbacks“A beautiful production: a typographic and calligraphic treat as treasurable as a rare magical text itself. Almost every page is filled with wonder.”—Suzi Feay, The SpectatorGrimoires, textbooks of magic and occult knowledge, have existed through the ages alongside other magic and religious texts in part because of the need to create a physical record of magical phenomena, but also to enact magic through spells and rituals. To understand the history of these texts is to understand the influence of the major religions, the development of early science, the cultural influence of print, the growth of literacy, the social impact of colonialism, and the expansion of esoteric cultures across the oceans.In more than two hundred color illustrations from ancient times to the present, renowned scholar Owen Davies examines little-studied artistic qualities of grimoires, revealing a unique world of design and imagination. The book takes a global approach, considering Egyptian and Greek papyri, ancient Chinese bamboo scripts, South American pulp prints, and Japanese demon encyclopedias, among other examples.This book will enchant readers interested in the history of magic and science, as well as in book and manuscript history.

A copiously illustrated global history of magic books, from ancient papyri to pulp paperbacks“A beautiful production: a typographic and calligraphic treat as treasurable as a rare magical text itself. Almost every page is filled with wonder.”—Suzi Feay, The SpectatorGrimoires, textbooks of magic and occult knowledge, have existed through the ages alongside other magic and religious texts in part because of the need to create a physical record of magical phenomena, but also to enact magic through spells and rituals. To understand the history of these texts is to understand the influence of the major religions, the development of early science, the cultural influence of print, the growth of literacy, the social impact of colonialism, and the expansion of esoteric cultures across the oceans.In more than two hundred color illustrations from ancient times to the present, renowned scholar Owen Davies examines little-studied artistic qualities of grimoires, revealing a unique world of design and imagination. The book takes a global approach, considering Egyptian and Greek papyri, ancient Chinese bamboo scripts, South American pulp prints, and Japanese demon encyclopedias, among other examples.This book will enchant readers interested in the history of magic and science, as well as in book and manuscript history.

A breath-taking collection of new science fiction from the South Asian subcontinent, collected together for the very first time. The citizens of Karachi wake up and discover the sea missing from their shores, the last Parsi on Earth must escape to other worlds when debt collectors come knocking, and a family visiting a Partition-themed park gets more entertainment than they bargained for. These stories and others showcase the epic scope of science fiction from the South Asian subcontinent. Offering a fresh perspective on our hyper-global, often alienating and always paranoid world, New Horizons brings together tales of masterful imagination where humanity and love may triumph yet.

There is not just one story of silk. In silk is science, history and mythology. In silk is the future. Aarathi Prasad's Silk is a gorgeous new history weaving together the story of a unique material that has fascinated the world for millennia. Through the scientists who have studied silk, and the biology of the animals from which it has been drawn, Prasad explores the global history, natural history, and future of a unique material that has fascinated the world for millennia. For silk, prized for its lightness, luminosity, and beauty is also one of the strongest biological materials ever known. More than a century ago, it was used to make the first bulletproof vest, and yet science has barely even begun to tap its potential. As the technologies it has inspired - from sutures to pharmaceuticals, replacement body parts to holograms - continue to be developed in laboratories around the world, they are now also beginning to offer a desperately needed, sustainable alternative to the plastics choking our planet. Prasad's Silk is a cultural and biological history from the origins and ancient routes of silk to the biologists who learned the secrets of silk-producing animals, manipulating the habitats and physiologies of moths, spiders and molluscs. Because there is more than one silk, there is more than one story of silk. More than one road, more than one people who discovered it, and wove its threads. From the moths of China, Indonesia and India to the spiders of South America and Madagascar, to the silk-producing molluscs of the Mediterranean, Silk is a book rich in the passionate connections made by women and men of science to the diversity of the animal world. It is an intoxicating mix of biography, intellectual history and science writing that brings to life the human obsession with silk.

Winner of the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books 2012, the world's leading prize for popular science writing. We live in the information age. But every era of history has had its own information revolution: the invention of writing, the composition of dictionaries, the creation of the charts that made navigation possible, the discovery of the electronic signal, the cracking of the genetic code. In 'The Information' James Gleick tells the story of how human beings use, transmit and keep what they know. From African talking drums to Wikipedia, from Morse code to the 'bit', it is a fascinating account of the modern age's defining idea and a brilliant exploration of how information has revolutionised our lives.

When a history professor - Alfred Clayton, the hero of John Updike's fifteenth novel - is asked to record his impressions of the Ford Administration, he recalls a turbulent piece of personal history as well: his unfinished book on 19th-century president James Buchanan.

A beguiling cultural history of colour by the BAFTA nominated broadcaster and art historian James Fox 'This book is a triumph. James Fox's passionate and illuminating exploration of the extraordinary relationship we have with colour is itself extraordinary. It is an intellectual feast as well as a visual one - a true biography of colour which will delight readers.' Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes The subject of this book is humankind's extraordinary relationship with colour. It is composed of a series of voyages, ranging across the world and throughout history, which reveal the meanings that have been attached to the colours we see around us and the ways these have shaped our culture and imagination. It takes seven primary colours - black, red, yellow, blue, white, purple and green - and uncovers behind each a root idea, based on visual resemblances or properties so rudimentary as to be common to all societies. The book traces these meanings to show how they changed and multiplied, the role that they have played in our culture and history, and how understanding them allows us to see many of the milestones in the history of art - from Bronze Age gold-work to Turner, Titian to Yves Klein - in a new way. It proceeds by stories, which cumulatively tell another, larger one: a history of the world from the black nothing which preceded existence to the birth of our red-blooded species; the gilded gods who animated the world in antiquity to the blue horizons which framed the Age of Discovery; the pristine aspirations of Enlightenment, the technicolour innovation which fuelled the Industrial Revolution and the colour which most embodies the environmental crisis which now faces us.

An impressive debut from an exciting new Scottish voice - a stunning novel about history, identity and redemption. A no. 2 best-seller in Scotland. It is Spring 1997 and Hugh Hardie needs a ghost for his Tours of Old Edinburgh. Andrew Carlin is the perfect candidate. So, with cape, stick and a plastic rat, Carlin is paid to pretend to be the spirit of Colonel Weir and to scare the tourists. But who is Colonel Weir, executed for witchcraft in 1670. In his research, Carlin is drawn into the past, in particular to James Mitchel, the fanatic and co-congregationist of Weir's, who was tried in 1676 for the attempted assassination of the Archbishop of St Andrews, James Sharp. Through the story of two moments in history, 'The Fanatic' is an extraordinary history of Scotland. It is also the story of betrayals, witch hunts, Puritan exiles, stolen meetings, lost memories, smuggled journeys and talking mirrors which will confirm James Robertson as a distinctive and original Scottish writer.

Edited and introduced by Bill Bryson, with contributions from Richard Dawkins, Margaret Atwood, Richard Holmes, Martin Rees, Richard Fortey, Steve Jones, James Gleick and Neal Stephenson amongst others, this beautiful, lavishly illustrated book tells the story of science and the Royal Society, from 1660 to the present. Since its inception in 1660, the Royal Society has pioneered scientific discovery and exploration. The oldest scientific academy in existence, its backbone is its Fellowship of the most eminent scientists in history including Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. Today, its Fellows are the most influential men and women in science, many of whom have contributed to this ground-breaking volume alongside some of the world's most celebrated novelists, essayists and historians. This book celebrates the Royal Society's vast achievements in its illustrious past as well as its huge contribution to the development of modern science. With unrestricted access to the Society's archives and photographs, Seeing Further shows that the history of scientific endeavour and discovery is a continuous thread running through the history of the world and of society - and is one that continues to shape the world we live in today.

From the acclaimed science writer and broadcaster, a dazzling tour of the latest genetic discoveries which are blurring the boundaries between science and history This is a story about you. It is the history of who you are and how you came to be. It is unique to you, as it is to each of the 100 billion modern humans who have ever drawn breath. But it is also our collective story, because in every one of our genomes we each carry the history of our species - births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration and a lot of sex. In this captivating journey through the expanding landscape of genetics, Adam Rutherford reveals what our genes now tell us about human history, and what history can now tell us about our genes. From Neanderthals to murder, from redheads to race, dead kings to plague, evolution to epigenetics, this is a demystifying and illuminating new portrait of who we are and how we came to be.

Most things you 'know' about science and religion are myths or half-truths that grew up in the last years of the nineteenth century and remain widespread today. The true history of science and religion is a human one. It's about the role of religion in inspiring, and strangling, science before the scientific revolution. It's about the sincere but eccentric faith and the quiet, creeping doubts of the most brilliant scientists in history - Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Darwin, Maxwell, Einstein. Above all it's about the question of what it means to be human and who gets to say - a question that is more urgent in the twenty-first century than ever before. From eighth-century Baghdad to the frontiers of AI today, via medieval Europe, nineteenth-century India and Soviet Russia, Magisteria sheds new light on this complex historical landscape. Rejecting the thesis that science and religion are inevitably at war, Nicholas Spencer illuminates a compelling and troubled relationship that has definitively shaped human history.

Discover the world of science as never before in this richly illustrated guide bringing key milestones and events to life in visual timelines. Offering a uniquely accessible and visual approach, this visual science book shows as never before where scientific ideas came from and how they have shaped all of our lives. The history of humankind has been driven by scientific discovery. From our distant ancestors learning to use tools and fire for the first time, to the modern breakthroughs that have shaped the world we live in today, science has defined the story of humans for thousands of years. Using beautiful illustrations and clear, easy-to-read text, Timelines of Science explains the history of science as it unfolded across the globe, and delves into the story of scientific ideas, practice, and progress one step at a time.

Journey through time and space with this graphic novel history of the science fiction genre, from Jules Verne, Jonathan Swift, and Mary Shelley to William Gibson and Philip K. Dick to Ken Liu and Ted Chiang, and beyond. Trace the progress of SF through modern times and learn why key figures and inventors like Thomas Edison have looked to science fiction to predict the future. For the first time in illustrated form, this comprehensive history of science fiction traces its origins and, in fascinating detail, charts its history from its beginnings as a "schlock" genre to its respected status today. Join author/historian Xavier Dollo and artist Djibril Morissette-Phan (All-New Wolverine, X-Men: Gold, Star-Lord) in their visual journey into the expansive universe of science fiction. Who is considered the world's first science fiction author? How did American science fiction begin? What sci-fi novel is the alltime best-seller? What were the "Pulps" and how did they predict with uncanny accuracy the 21st century world around us? The answers are here, along with detailed chapters dedicated to the founders of the genre and their modern-day successors. Discover the origins of your favorite page-to-screen science fiction movies. Marvel at the behind-the-scenes stories of some of literature's most imaginative writers. Find out why science fiction so effortlessly captures our imaginations and makes us dream of new worlds. Far more than just a list of facts, The History of Science Fiction is a roaring analytical reflection on the genre that continues to shape our world, presented in a stunning 8" x 11" hardcover sure to stand out on any bookshelf or serve as the coffee-table conversation starter for all things sci-fi!