The History Bookshelf

The Mechanical Mind in History. Philip Husbands, Owen Holland and Michael Wheeler. MIT Press.

Sat, 03 May 2008 17:17:54 -0800

From the book cover... The idea of intelligent machines has become part of popular culture, and tracing the history of the actual science of machine intelligence reveals a rich network of cross-disciplinary contributions -- the unrecognized origins of ideas now central to artificial intelligence, artificial life, cognitive science, and neuroscience. In The Mechanical Mind in History, scientists, artists, historians, and philosophers discuss the multidisciplinary quest to formalize and understand the generation of intelligent behavior in natural and artificial systems as a wholly mechanical process.

The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations. By Brian Fagan. Bloomsbury Press.

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:17:01 -0800

From the book cover... As he did in his bestselling The Little Ice Age, Fagan unfolds both a scientific detective story, showing how centuries-old weather patterns can be reconstructed from scattered clues, and a vivid and timely historical narrative. A study of the first Great Warming suggests we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives today. And our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the "silent elephant in the room."

The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice. By Michael Krondl. Ballantine Books.

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 12:40:36 -0800

From the book cover... The Taste of Conquest offers up a riveting, globe-trotting tale of unquenchable desire, fanatical religion, raw greed, fickle fashion, and mouthwatering cuisine -- in short, the very stuff of which our world is made. In this engaging, enlightening, and anecdote-filled history, Michael Krondl, a noted chef turned writer and food historian, tells the story of three legendary cities -- Venice, Lisbon, and Amsterdam -- and how their single-minded pursuit of spice helped to make (and remake) the Western diet and set in motion the first great wave of globalization.

How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor. Erik S. Reinert. Carroll & Graf Publishers.

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 06:57:03 -0800

From the book cover... From Renaissance Italy to the modern Far East, the development of the world's wealthy nations has been driven by a combination of government intervention, initial protectionism, and the strategically timed introduction of free trade and investments. So says Erik Reinert, a leading economist who does not subscribe to the orthodoxy. Yet despite its demonstrable success, when it comes to development in the poorer nations, Western powers have largely ignored this approach and have taken the toughest of hard lines on the importance of free trade. Reinert sets out his revisionist history of economics and shows how the discipline has long been torn between the continental Renaissance tradition on one hand and the free market theories of English and later American economics on the other.

When Asia Was the World. Stewart Gordon. Da Capo Press.

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 12:07:17 -0800

From the book cover... While European intellectual, cultural, and commercial life stagnated during the Middle Ages, Asia flourished as the wellspring of science, philosophy, and religion, and as the world's epicenter of commerce and diplomacy. Common cultural and intellectual traditions linked its great civilizations throughout the Middle East, Central Asia, India, Southeast Asia, and China. Thousands of monks, warriors, scholars, and merchants traveled its caravan routes and seaways. Their works, clashes, studies, and exchanges created a literate, elegant, glittering world -- the stuff of legend in Europe, the true riches of the East. Stewart Gordon has examined original texts in science and history, philosophy and courtly culture in order to understand and re-create the vast network of international, interethnic, and intercontinental activity that made Asia the center of the world.

The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance. By Fritjof Capra. Doubleday.

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 10:36:29 -0800

From the book cover... Leonardo da Vinci’s pioneering scientific work was virtually unknown during his lifetime. Now, acclaimed scientist and bestselling author Fritjof Capra reveals that Leonardo was in many ways the unacknowledged “father of modern science. Drawing on an examination of over 6,000 pages of Leonardo’s surviving Notebooks, Capra explains that Leonardo approached scientific knowledge with the eyes of an artist. Through his studies of living and nonliving forms, from architecture and human anatomy to the turbulence of water and the growth patterns of grasses, he pioneered the empirical, systematic approach to the observation of nature -- what is now known as the scientific method.

The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity’s Greatest Scientist. By Reviel Netz and William Noel. Da Capo Press.

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 18:48:09 -0800

From the book cover... Part archaeological detective story, part science, and part history, The Archimedes Codex tells the remarkable story of a lost manuscript, from its creation in Constantinople to its sale on the auction block at Christie’s, and how a team of scholars used the latest imaging technology to reveal and decipher the original text. What they found was the earliest surviving manuscript by Archimedes (287 BC – 212 BC), the greatest mathematician of antiquity -- a manuscript that revealed, for the first time, the full range of his mathematical genius, which was two thousand years ahead of modern science.

The Great Arab Conquests. By Hugh Kennedy. Da Capo Press.

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:22:26 -0800

From the book cover... In just over one hundred years following the death of Mohammed in 632, the Arab followers of the Prophet had subjugated a territory with an east-west expanse greater than the Roman Empire, and they accomplished it in about half the time. By the mid-eighth century, Arab armies had conquered the thousand-year-old Persian Empire, reduced the Byzantine Empire to little more than a city-state based around Constantinople, and destroyed the Visigoth kingdom of Spain. The cultural and linguistic effects of this early Islamic expansion still reverberate today. Hugh Kennedy's compelling new history, The Great Arab Conquests, tells the story of this astonishing remaking of the political and religious map of the world.

"Live from Cape Canaveral." By Jay Barbree. Smithsonian Books.

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:01:49 -0800

From the book cover... Some fifty years ago, while a cub reporter, Jay Barbree caught space fever the night that Sputnik passed over Georgia. He moved to the then-sleepy village of Cocoa Beach, Florida, right outside Cape Canaveral, and began reporting on rockets that fizzled as often as they soared. In "Live from Cape Canaveral," Barbree -- the only reporter who has covered every mission flown by astronauts -- offers his unique perspective on the space program.

Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. By Sherry Turkle, ed. MIT Press.

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 21:44:46 -0800

From the book cover... For Sherry Turkle, “We think with the objects we love; we love the objects we think with..” In Evocative Objects, Turkle collects writings by scientists, humanists, artists, and designers that trace the power of everyday things. These essays reveal objects as emotional and intellectual companions that anchor memory, sustain relationships, and provoke new ideas. This volume’s special contribution is its focus on everyday riches: the simplest of objects -- an apple, a datebook, a laptop computer -- are shown to bring philosophy down to earth. The poet contends, “No ideas but in things.” The notion of evocative objects goes further: objects carry both ideas and passions. In our relations to things, thought and feeling are inseparable.

Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization. By Nayan Chanda. Yale University Press.

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 21:10:52 -0800

From the book cover... Since humans migrated from Africa and dispersed throughout the world, they have found countless ways and reasons to reconnect with each other. In this entertaining book, Nayan Chanda follows the exploits of traders, preachers, adventurers, and warriors throughout history as they have shaped and reshaped the world. For Chanda, globalization is a process of ever-growing interconnectedness and interdependence that began thousands of years ago and continues to this day with increasing speed and ease.

A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium. By Robert Friedel. MIT Press.

Thu, 24 May 2007 08:51:16 -0800

From the book cover... The most comprehensive attempt to tell the story of western technology in many years, engagingly written and lavishly illustrated, A Culture of Improvement documents the ways in which the drive for improvement has shaped our modern world.

Who Are You: Identification, Deception, and Surveillance in Early Modern Europe. By Valentin Groebner. Zone Books.

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 13:22:46 -0800

From the book cover... Who are you? And how can you prove it? How were individuals described and identified by people who had never seen them before, in the centuries before photography and fingerprinting, in a world without centralized administrations, where names and addresses were constantly changing? In Who Are You? Valentin Groeber traces the early modern European history of identification practices and identity papers. The documents, seals. stamps, and signatures were – and are – powerful tools that created the double of a person in writ and bore the indelible signs of bureaucratic authenticity. Ultimately, as Groeber lucidly explains, they revealed as much about their makers’ illusory fantasies as they did about their bearers’ actual identity.

After Sputnik: 50 Years of the Space Age. By Martin Collins. Harper Collins.

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 13:09:38 -0800

From the book cover... On October 4, 1957, The Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first human-made object to orbit the Earth. This single act jump-started a new era in history – a broad effect to explore, learn about, survive in, utilize, and fully understand the implications of humanity’s first steps beyond Earth. As much as any other twentieth century undertaking the achievement of sending humans and machines into space has transformed and shaped the way we live. From Sputnik to today, from heroic first journeys to the everyday application of space technologies, spaceflight has cut a broad swath through the contemporary experience. After Sputnik: 50 Years of the Space Age presented by the National Air and Space Museum, offers a unique perspective on the remarkable changes wrought by spaceflight.

The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War. By Robert Bevan. Reaktion Books.

Sun, 21 Jan 2007 14:52:14 -0800

From the book cover... In The Destruction of Memory, Robert Bevan examines the effects of conflict on architecture over the last century. His global survey -- the first ever of its kind -- includes World War II area bombing, the Holocaust, the Chinese destruction of Tibetan Lhasa, Israel and Palestine, the Soviet assault on religious architecture, and the Coalition’s invasion of Iraq. He also discusses the architectural destruction that accompanied ethnic cleansing and genocide in the former Yugoslavia, including the bombing of Dubrovnik, the razing of the bridge at Mostar and the shelling of the National Library, Sarajevo. These incidents are cultural cleansing, and "collateral damage," examples of genocide by other means, and as such, Bevan argues, are human rights issues.