In this "personal encyclopedia of nature's seasons", lifetime naturalist Bruce Beehler reflects on his three decades of encountering nature in Washington, D.C. The author takes the reader on a year?long journey through the seasons as he describes the...

At the dawn of the space age, technological breakthroughs in Earth orbit flight were both breathtaking feats of ingenuity and disturbances to a delicate global balance of power. In this short book, aerospace historian Roger D. Launius concisely and e...

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, "Apollo's Muse" honors the rich history of photographic representations of the moon, from rarely seen early daguerreotypes to contemporary video art. Engaging and accessible, the book explore...

Every map tells a story. Some provide a narrative for travellers, explorers and surveyors or offer a visual account of changes to people's lives, places and spaces, while others tell imaginary tales, transporting us to fictional worlds created by wri...

People form enduring emotional bonds with other animal species, such as dogs, cats, and horses. For the most part, these are domesticated animals, with one notable exception: Many people form close and supportive relationships with parrots, even thou...

A beautiful and insightful book commemorating the Apollo 11 mission, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of that momentous event. 'First to the Moon' tells the incredible story of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins with compelling first...

In 1910, Mary Acworth Evershed (1867-1949) sat on a hill in southern India staring at the moon as she grappled with apparent mistakes in Dante's "Divine Comedy". Was Dante's astronomy unintelligible? Or was he, for a man of his time and place, as ins...

Dating from the seventeenth century at the height of the Ming Dynasty, the Selden Map of China reveals a country very different from popular conceptions of the time, looking not inward to the Asian landmass but outward to the sea. Discovered in the s...

Although Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) was one of the most famous scientists in the world at the time of his death at the age of ninety, today he is known to many as a kind of "almost-Darwin", a secondary figure relegated to the footnotes of Darw...

Today's science tells us that our bodies are filled with molecular machinery that orchestrates all sorts of life processes. When we think, microscopic "channels" in our brain cells' membranes open and close; when we run, tiny "motors" in our muscle c...