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Image one: E-book titled The Mosquito Crusades: A History of the American Anti-Mosquito Movement from the Reed Commission to the First Earth Day - synopsis: Among the struggles of the twentieth century, the one between humans and mosquitoes may have been the most vexing. As vectors of diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, encephalitis, and dengue fever, mosquitoes forced open a new chapter in the history of medical entomology. Based on extensive use of primary sources, The Mosquito Crusades traces this saga and the parallel efforts of civic groups in New Jersey's Meadowlands and along San Francisco Bay's east side to manage the dangerous mosquito population.
Image two: E-book titled Crimes against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation - synopsis: Crimes against Nature reveals the hidden history behind three of the nation's first parklands: the Adirondacks, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon. Focusing on conservation's impact on local inhabitants, Karl Jacoby traces the effect of criminalizing such traditional practices as hunting, fishing, foraging, and timber cutting in the newly created parks. Jacoby reassesses the nature of these "crimes" and provides a rich portrait of rural people and their relationship with the natural world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Image one: Women's History Month
Image two: E-book titled Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World's Most Famous Heroine (2014) - synopsis: With her golden lasso and her bullet-deflecting bracelets, Wonder Woman is a beloved icon of female strength in a world of male superheroes. But this close look at her history portrays a complicated heroine who is more than just a female Superman. Exploring this lost history as well as her modern incarnations adds new dimensions to the world’s most beloved female character, and Wonder Woman Unbound delves into her comic book and its spin-offs as well as the myriad motivations of her creators to showcase the peculiar journey that led to Wonder Woman’s iconic status.
Image three E-book titled Woman, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay (2022) - synopsis: From award-winning author Merilyn Simonds, a remarkable biography of an extraordinary woman ― a Swedish aristocrat who survived the Russian Revolution to become an internationally renowned naturalist, one of the first to track the mid-century decline of songbirds. Referred to as a Canadian Rachel Carson, Louise de Kiriline Lawrence lived and worked in an isolated log cabin near North Bay. After her husband was murdered by Bolsheviks, she refused her Swedish privilege and joined the Canadian Red Cross, visiting her northern Ontario patients by dogsled. She later retreated to her wilderness cabin, where she devoted herself to studying the birds that nested in her forest. Author of six books and scores of magazine stories, de Kiriline Lawrence and her “loghouse nest” became a Mecca for international ornithologists.
Image one: E-books for Halloween
Image two: E-book titled Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds (2017) - synopsis: This edition of Frankenstein pairs the original 1818 version of the manuscript—meticulously line-edited and amended by Charles E. Robinson, one of the world’s preeminent authorities on the text—with annotations and essays by leading scholars exploring the social and ethical aspects of scientific creativity raised by this remarkable story. The result is a unique and accessible edition of one of the most thought-provoking and influential novels ever written.
Image three: E-book titled On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears (2009) - synopsis: A wide-ranging cultural and conceptual history of monsters—how they have evolved over time, what functions they have served for us, and what shapes they are likely to take in the future. Exploring sources as diverse as philosophical treatises, scientific notebooks, and novels, author Stephen T. Asma unravels traditional monster stories for the clues they offer about the inner logic of an era's fears and fascinations.
Image one: E-book titled Digging Up the Dead: A History of Notable American Reburials (2010) - synopsis: With Digging Up the Dead, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Michael Kammen reveals a treasure trove of fascinating, surprising, and occasionally gruesome stories of exhumation and reburial throughout American history. Taking us to the contested grave sites of such figures as Sitting Bull, John Paul Jones, Frank Lloyd Wright, Daniel Boone, Jefferson Davis, and even Abraham Lincoln, Kammen explores how complicated interactions of regional pride, shifting reputations, and evolving burial practices led to public and often emotional battles over the final resting places of famous figures. Simultaneously insightful and interesting, masterly and macabre, Digging Up the Dead reminds us that the stories of American history don’t always end when the key players pass on. Rather, the battle—over reputations, interpretations, and, last but far from least, possession of the remains themselves—is often just beginning.
Image two: E-book titled American Dinosaur Abroad: A Cultural History of Carnegie's Plaster Diplodocus (2019) - synopsis: In early July 1899, an excavation team of paleontologists sponsored by Andrew Carnegie discovered the fossil remains in Wyoming of what was then the longest and largest dinosaur on record. Named after its benefactor, the Diplodocus carnegii—or Dippy, as it’s known today—was shipped to Pittsburgh and later mounted and unveiled at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in 1907. An ardent philanthropist and patriot, Carnegie gifted his first plaster cast of Dippy to the British Museum at the behest of King Edward VII in 1902, an impulsive diplomatic gesture that would result in the donation of at least seven reproductions to museums across Europe and Latin America over the next decade, in England, Germany, France, Austria, Italy, Russia, Argentina, and Spain. In this largely untold history, Ilja Nieuwland explores the influence of Andrew Carnegie's prized skeleton on European culture through the dissemination, reception, and agency of his plaster casts, revealing much about the social, political, cultural, and scientific context of the early twentieth century.
Image one: E-book titled Learning Policy, Doing Policy: Interactions between Public Policy Theory, Practice, and Teaching (2021) - synopsis: Learning Policy, Doing Policy explores how policy theory is understood by practitioners and how it influences their practice. The book brings together insights from research, teaching and practice on an issue that has so far been understudied. Contributors include Australian and international policy scholars, and current and former practitioners from government agencies. The first part of the book focuses on theorizing, teaching and learning about the policymaking process; the second part outlines how current and former practitioners have employed policy process theory in the form of models or frameworks to guide and analyze policymaking in practice; and the final part examines how policy theory insights can assist policy practitioners.
Image two: E-book titled A Guide to the Scientific Career: Virtues, Communication, Research, and Academic Writing (2020) - synopsis: A concise, easy-to-read source of essential tips and skills for writing research papers and career management In order to be truly successful in the biomedical professions, one must have excellent communication skills and networking abilities. Of equal importance is the possession of sufficient clinical knowledge, as well as a proficiency in conducting research and writing scientific papers. This unique and important book provides medical students and residents with the most encountered topics in the academic and professional lifestyle, teaching them all the practical nuances that are often only learned through experience.
Image one: E-book titled The Motive for Metaphor: Brief Essays on Poetry and Psychoanalysis (2015) - synopsis: This book is a small anthology: each chapter a kind of meditation—on poetry and psychoanalysis; on a poem, sometimes two; on poetry in general; on thought itself. The poems, both contemporary and classical, are beautiful and well worth a reader’s attention. The chapters were originally poetry columns that the author wrote for Psychologist-Psychoanalyst and Division/Review (both journals of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association).
Image two: E-book titled The Poetry of Victorian Scientists: Style, Science, and Nonsense (2013) - synopsis: A surprising number of Victorian scientists wrote poetry. Many came to science as children through such games as the spinning-top, soap-bubbles and mathematical puzzles, and this playfulness carried through to both their professional work and writing of lyrical and satirical verse. This is the first study of an oddly neglected body of work that offers a unique record of the nature and cultures of Victorian science. Whereas science and literature studies have mostly focused upon canonical literary figures, this original and important book conversely explores the uses literature was put to by eminent Victorian scientists.
Image one - E-book titled Stranger in a Strange State: The Politics of Carpetbagging from Robert Kennedy to Scott Brown (2019) - synopsis: Candidates normally run for office in the places where they live. Occasionally, however, a politician will run as a carpetbagger—someone who moves to a new state for the express purpose of running, or who runs in one state after holding office in another. Stranger in a Strange State examines what makes some politicians take this drastic step and how that shapes their campaigns and chances for victory. Focusing on races for the US Senate from 1964 forward, Christopher J. Galdieri analyzes the campaigns of nine carpetbaggers, including nationally known figures such as Robert F. Kennedy and Hillary Rodham Clinton and less well-known candidates like Elizabeth Cheney and Scott Brown.
Image two - E-book titled Surveillance and Spies in the Civil War: Exposing Confederate Conspiracies in America's Heartland (2015) - synopsis: Surveillance and Spies in the Civil War represents path-breaking research on the rise of U.S. Army intelligence operations in the Midwest during the American Civil War and counters long-standing assumptions about Northern politics and society. Starting in 1862, army commanders took it upon themselves to initiate investigations of antiwar sentiment in several Southern states. By 1863, several of them had established intelligence operations staffed by hired civilian detectives and by soldiers detailed from their units to chase down deserters and draft dodgers, to maintain surveillance on suspected persons and groups, and to investigate organized resistance to the draft. By 1864, these spies had infiltrated secret organizations that, sometimes in collaboration with Confederate rebels, aimed to subvert the war effort.
Image three - E-book titled How Outer Space Made America: Geography, Organization, and the Cosmic Sublime (2014) - synopsis: Author Daniel Sage analyses how and why American space exploration reproduced and transformed American cultural and political imaginations by appealing to, and to an extent organizing, the transcendence of spatial and temporal frontiers. In so doing, he traces the development of a seductive, and powerful, yet complex and unstable American geographical imagination: the ‘transcendental state.’ While largely engaging with the historical development of space exploration, Sage shows how contemporary cultural and social, and indeed geographical, research themes (including national identity, critical geopolitics, gender, technocracy, trauma, and memory) can be informed by the study of space exploration.
Inderscience is a publisher that disseminates the latest research across the broad fields of science, engineering, and technology; management, public and business administration; environment, ecological economics and sustainable development; computing, ICT and internet/web services, and related areas. (Trial runs through April 21, 2022)
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Image one: E-book titled Histories of Maize: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Prehistory, Linguistics, Biogeography, Domestication, and Evolution of Maize (2006) - synopsis: The multidisciplinary evidence from the social and biological sciences presented in this volume have generated a much more complex picture of the economic, political, and religious significance of maize. The volume also includes ethnographic research on the uses and roles of maize in indigenous cultures and a linguistic section that includes chapters on indigenous folk taxonomies and the role and meaning of maize to the development of civilization.
Image two: E-book titled A Digital Bundle: Protecting and Promoting Indigenous Knowledge Online (2018) - synopsis: An essential contribution to Internet activism and a must read for Indigenous educators, A Digital Bundle frames digital technology as an important tool for self-determination and idea sharing, ultimately contributing to Indigenous resurgence and nation building. By defining Indigenous Knowledge online in terms of “digital bundles,” Jennifer Wemigwans elevates both cultural protocol and cultural responsibilities, grounds online projects within Indigenous philosophical paradigms, and highlights new possibilities for both the Internet and Indigenous communities.
Image one: E-book titled The CIA in Ecuador (2020) - synopsis: Draws on recently released US government surveillance documents on the Ecuadorian left to chart social movement organizing efforts during the 1950s. Emphasizing the competing roles of the domestic ruling class and grassroots social movements, this book details the struggles and difficulties that activists, organizers, and political parties confronted.
Image two: E-book titled The Mosquito Crusades: A History of the American Anti-Mosquito Movement from the Reed Commission to the First Earth Day (2009) - synopsis: Among the struggles of the twentieth century, the one between humans and mosquitoes may have been the most vexing, as demonstrated by the long battle to control these bloodsucking pests. As vectors of diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, encephalitis, and dengue fever, mosquitoes forced open a new chapter in the history of medical entomology. Based on extensive use of primary sources, The Mosquito Crusades traces this saga and the parallel efforts of civic groups in New Jersey's Meadowlands and along San Francisco Bay's east side to manage the dangerous mosquito population.
Image one: America - Government, History, Culture
Image two: E-book titled Atomic Frontier Days: Hanford and the American West (2011) - synopsis: The 586-square-mile Hanford compound on the Columbia River is known both for its origins as part of the Manhattan Project, which made the first atomic bombs, and for the monumental effort now under way to clean up forty-five years of waste from manufacturing plutonium for nuclear weapons. Atomic Frontier Days tells a complex story of production, community building, politics, and environmental sensibilities. In brilliantly structured parallel stories, the authors bridge the divisions that accompany the Hanford nuclear reservation's headlines and offer perspective on today's controversies.
Image three: E-book titled Woodstock Scholarship: An Interdisciplinary Annotated Bibliography (2016) - synopsis: Since August 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair looms large when recounting the history and impact of the baby boom generation and the societal upheavals of the Sixties. This interdisciplinary annotated bibliography records the details of over 400 English-language resources on the Festival, including books, chapters, articles, websites, transcriptions and videos. Divided into six main subsections―Culture & Society, History, Biography, Music, Film, Arts & Literature―for ease of consultation Woodstock Scholarship sheds light on all facets of a key happening in our collective history.
Image one: E-book titled The Soul in the Brain: The Cerebral Basis of Language, Art, and Belief (2007) - synopsis: In this provocative study, Michael R. Trimble, M.D., tackles the interrelationship between brain function, language, art—especially music and poetry—and religion. By examining the breakdown of language in several neuropsychiatric disorders, he identifies brain circuits that are involved with metaphor, poetry, music, and religious experiences. Drawing on this body of evidence, Trimble argues that religious experiences and beliefs are explicable biologically and relate to brain function, especially of the nondominant hemisphere.
Image two: E-book titled The Afterlives of Animals: A Museum Menagerie (2011) - synopsis: This collection of essays—from a broad array of contributors, including anthropologists, curators, fine artists, geographers, historians, and journalists—comprises short "biographies" of a number of famous taxidermized animals. Each essay traces the life, death, and museum "afterlife" of a specific creature, illuminating the overlooked role of the dead beast in the modern human-animal encounter through practices as disparate as hunting and zookeeping.
Image one: E-book titled Beyond the Finite: The Sublime in Art and Science (2011) - synopsis: The explorations within Beyond the Finite range from the images taken by the Hubble Telescope to David Bohm's quantum romanticism, from Kant and Burke to a "downward spiraling infinity" of the 21st century sublime, all lucid yet transcendent. Squarely positioned at the interface between science and art, this volume's chapters capture a remarkable variety of perspectives, with neuroscience, chemistry, astronomy, physics, film, painting and music discussed in relation to the sublime experience, topics surely to peak the interest of academics and students studying the sublime in various disciplines.
Image two: E-book titled Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art (2015) - synopsis: Medieval robots took such forms as talking statues, mechanical animals, and silent metal guardians; some served to entertain or instruct while others performed disciplinary or surveillance functions. Variously ascribed to artisanal genius, inexplicable cosmic forces, or demonic powers, these marvelous fabrications raised fundamental questions about knowledge, nature, and divine purpose in the Middle Ages. Medieval Robots recovers the forgotten history of fantastical, aspirational, and terrifying machines that captivated Europe in imagination and reality between the ninth and fourteenth centuries.
Image one: E-book titled Edgar Allan Poe: Beyond Gothicism (2011) - synopsis: Most frequently regarded as a writer of the supernatural, Poe was actually among the most versatile of American authors, writing social satire, comic hoaxes, mystery stories, science fiction, prose poems, literary criticism and theory, and even a play. As a journalist and editor, Poe was closely in touch with the social, political, and cultural trends of nineteenth-century America. Recent scholarship has linked Poe's imaginative writings to the historical realities of nineteenth-century America, including to science and technology, wars and politics, the cult of death and bereavement, and, most controversially, to slavery and stereotyped attitudes toward women.
Image two: E-book titled The Early American Daguerreotype: Cross-Currents in Art and Technology (2015) - synopsis: The daguerreotype, invented in France, came to America in 1839. By 1851, this early photographic method had been improved by American daguerreotypists to such a degree that it was often referred to as “the American process.” The daguerreotype—now perhaps mostly associated with stiffly posed portraits of serious-visaged nineteenth-century personages—was an extremely detailed photographic image, produced though a complicated process involving a copper plate, light-sensitive chemicals, and mercury fumes. It was, as Sarah Kate Gillespie shows in this generously illustrated history, something wholly and remarkably new: a product of science and innovative technology that resulted in a visual object.
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Image one: E-book titled Visualizing the Street: New Practices of Documenting, Navigating, and Imagining the City (2019) - synopsis: From user-generated images of streets to professional architectural renderings, and from digital maps and drone footages to representations of invisible digital ecologies, this collection of essays analyses the emergent practices of visualizing the street. Visualizing the Street investigates the social and cultural significance of these new developments at the intersection of visual culture and urban space. The interdisciplinary essays provide new concepts, theories and research methods that combine close analyses of street images and imaginaries with the study of the practices of their production and circulation.
Image two: E-book titled Shadows of Reality: The Fourth Dimension in Relativity, Cubism, and Modern Thought (2006) - synopsis: In this insightful book, which is a revisionist math history as well as a revisionist art history, Tony Robbin, well known for his innovative computer visualizations of hyperspace, investigates different models of the fourth dimension and how these are applied in art and physics.
Image one: E-book titled Gothic Art (2016) - synopsis: Gothic art finds its roots in the powerful architecture of the cathedrals of northern France. It is a medieval art movement that evolved throughout Europe over more than 200 years. Leaving curved Roman forms behind, the architects started using flying buttresses and pointed arches to open up cathedrals to daylight. A period of great economic and social change, the Gothic era also saw the development of a new iconography celebrating the Holy Mary – in drastic contrast to the fearful themes of dark Roman times. Full of rich changes in all of the various art forms (architecture, sculpture, painting, etc.), Gothic art paved the way for the Italian Renaissance and International Gothic movement.
Image two: E-book titled Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science (1996) - synopsis: The contributors to this volume examine the historical and philosophical issues concerning the role that scientific illustration plays in the creation of scientific knowledge. They regard both text and picture as resources that scientists employ in their practical activities, their value as scientific resources deriving from their ability to convey information.
Image one: E-book titled African American Women Chemists (2011) - synopsis: In this book, Jeannette Brown, an African American woman chemist herself, will present a wide-ranging historical introduction to the relatively new presence of African American women in the field of chemistry. It will detail their struggles to obtain an education and their efforts to succeed in a field in which there were few African American men, much less African American women. The book contains sketches of the lives of African America women chemists from the earliest pioneers up until the late 1960's when the Civil Rights Acts were passed and greater career opportunities began to emerge.
Image two: E-book titled Madame Wu Chien-Shiung: The First Lady of Physics Research (2013) - synopsis: Narrating the well-lived life of the “Chinese Madame Curie” — a recipient of the first Wolf Prize in Physics (1978), the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from Princeton University, as well as the first female president of the American Physical Society — this book provides a comprehensive and honest account of the life of Dr. Wu Chien-Shiung, an outstanding and leading experimental physicist of the 20th century.
Image one: E-book titled Heroines of the Qing: Exemplary Women Tell Their Stories (2016) - synopsis: Traditionally, “exemplary women” (lienu)--heroic martyrs, chaste widows, and faithful maidens, for example--were written into official dynastic histories for their unrelenting adherence to female virtue by Confucian family standards. However, despite the rich writing traditions about these women, their lives were often distorted by moral and cultural agendas. Binbin Yang, drawing on interdisciplinary sources, shows how they were able to cross boundaries that were typically closed to women--boundaries not only of gender, but also of knowledge, economic power, political engagement, and ritual and cultural authority.
Image two: E-book titled The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science (2010) - synopsis: In The Madame Curie Complex, Julie Des Jardins dismantles the myth of the lone male genius, reframing the history of science with revelations about women’s substantial contributions to the field. She explores the lives of some of the most famous female scientists, including Jane Goodall, the eminent primatologist; Rosalind Franklin, the chemist whose work anticipated the discovery of DNA’s structure; Rosalyn Yalow, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist; and, of course, Marie Curie, the Nobel Prize-winning pioneer whose towering, mythical status has both empowered and stigmatized future generations of women considering a life in science.
