Math History

Starting with hands, abacus, and slide rule, humans have always reached for tools to simplify math. Pocket-sized calculators ushered in modern mathematics, helped build the atomic bomb, took us to the bottom of the ocean, and accompanied us to the moon. The pocket calculator changed our world, until it was supplanted by more modern devices that, in a cruel twist of irony, it helped to create. Keith Houston transports listeners from the nascent economies of the ancient world to World War II, and into the technological arms race that led to the first affordable electronic pocket calculators.

Imagine standing at the center of a Roman coliseum that is 20 miles across, with walls that soar 10 miles into the sky, towering walls with cascades of ice crystals falling along its brilliantly white surface. That's what it's like to stand in the eye of a hurricane. In Divine Wind, Kerry Emanuel, one of the world's leading authorities on hurricanes, gives us an engaging account of these awe-inspiring meteorological events, revealing how hurricanes and typhoons have literally altered human history, thwarting military incursions and changing the course of explorations.

We often think of mathematics and literature as polar opposites. But what if, instead, they were fundamentally linked? In her clear, insightful, laugh-out-loud funny debut, Once Upon a Prime, Professor Sarah Hart shows us the myriad connections between math and literature, and how understanding those connections can enhance our enjoyment of both. As the first woman to hold England’s oldest mathematical chair, Professor Hart is the ideal tour guide, taking us on an unforgettable journey through the books we thought we knew, revealing new layers of beauty and wonder.

From the simple to the intricate and the audacious to the absurd, Adam Kucharski reveals the long and tangled history between betting and science and explains why gambling continues to generate insights into luck and decision making today. Covering exploits and ideas from across the globe, he meets the teams behind hedge funds that capitalize on inaccurate sports betting odds and explains how PhD-level pundits are using methods originally developed for the US nuclear program to predict sports results.

Would you like to be able to choose to be happier? This audiobook busts the modern happiness myths that assert that we can find lasting happiness through having more money, buying more things, or being famous, successful, or powerful. Instead, it provides science-backed, actionable, effective, and simple practices that can make being happier a whole lot easier whoever and wherever you presently are. Choosing Happier will teach you the skills, mind-sets, and habits that will make it easy for you to live with more contentment and joy on a daily basis.

Personnage mystique et dépravé, favori de la cour de Nicolas II, il joua un rôle politique influent dans les dix dernières années de la Russie tsariste. Né en Sibérie dans une famille de paysans, le jeune Grigori Iefimovitch adhéra à la secte chrétienne Khlysty (les "flagellants") et tira profit de ses voyages à l'Est, notamment au mont Athos en Grèce, ainsi qu'en Terre sainte, pour se forger une réputation de mystique et de guérisseur doué de pouvoirs magiques, allant jusqu'à se proclamer saint prêtre.

Durant des siècles, le loup-garou a hanté l'âme des hommes. Déjà connu des grecs et des romains, le loup-garou connaît son apogée au XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Nous le verrons bientôt déguerpir, chassé des consciences par les lumières de la raison. Mais avant, poursuivons-le, accompagné d'historiens, d'ethnologues et d'analystes... Car au fond comprendre le loup-garou, c'est comprendre l'homme.

Abraham Lincoln est passé à la postérité comme le champion de l'anti-esclavagisme et celui qui a su conserver l'unité des États-Unis. "Abe l'honnête" comme il est surnommé, est né le 12 février 1809 dans l'État du Kentucky, à une époque où les États-Unis débutent leur expansion vers l'Ouest. Autodidacte tentant d'échapper à son sort malheureux de fils de pionnier, il est avide de tout apprendre et acquiert l'essentiel de ses connaissances par la lecture, tout en exerçant de nombreux métiers. Il devient avocat après des études de droit.

L'apparition et le développement des hérésies dès les premiers temps de l'Eglise Catholique la contraignirent, concile après concile, à mieux définir sa doctrine. Elle parvint à contenir l'hérésie jusqu'à l'an mil, date qui marque son grand réveil dans toute l'Europe. En Rhénanie et dans le midi de la France, entre Toulouse, Albi et Carcassonne se développèrent notamment des communautés hérétiques Cathares. L'église catholique ne put tolérer longtemps cette remise en question de son autorité spirituelle et temporelle.

Animal rights. Diane Beers demonstrates how the cause has shaped and reshaped itself as it has evolved within the broader social context of the shift from an industrial to a postindustrial society. For the Prevention of Cruelty tells an intriguing and important story that reveals society's often changing relationship with animals through the lens of those who struggled to shepherd the public toward a greater compassion.

From Hiroshima to Chernobyl, Fukushima to the growing legacy of lethal radioactive waste, humanity's struggle to conquer atomic energy is rife with secrecy, deceit, human error, blatant disregard for life, short-sighted politics and fear. Fallout is an eye-opening odyssey through the first eight decades of this struggle and the radioactive landscapes it has left behind. We are, he finds, forever torn between technological hubris and all-too-human terror about what we have created. 

Saint-Simon fut souvent considéré comme l'un des plus grands écrivains de la langue française. Il fut contemporain de Louis XIV et ses Mémoires, écrites en vingt volumes, constituent un témoignage essentiel de ce que fut cette époque et nous offrent une plongée fascinante dans l'univers du Roi Soleil, le plus célèbre de tous les rois. Les pages qui suivent sont issues d'une sélection effectuée au cœur de ces mémoires dont la teneur résume, sans avoir besoin de lire l'ensemble de l'œuvre, l'atmosphère qui régnait à la Cour du Roi.

There are many parallels between the ideas of Tao Te Ching, written 2,500 years ago by Lao Tzu, and those of Systems Thinking, which has come into prominence with the advent of modern personal computers, through people like Jay W. Forrester, and other thinkers such as Donella Meadows and Fritjof Capra. This book invites us to consider certain timeless wisdoms related to Systems Thinking and provides us with a few points to explore, as we face major challenges for resolving issues we confront for our future. 

It was Christmas Eve 1968. And the astronauts of Apollo 8 - Commander Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders - were participants in a mission that took them faster (24,000 mph) and farther from the Earth (240,000 miles) than any human had ever traveled. Apollo 8 was the mission that broke humanity's absolute bond to the Earth: it was the first manned vehicle to leave the Earth's orbit. Confined within a tiny spaceship, the astronauts were aided in their journey by a computer less powerful than one of today's handheld calculators.

This audiobook presents the complete cultural history of psilocybin mushrooms, from prehistory to modern times. It also systematically presents psilocybin’s medical, chemical, and healing properties. Magic mushrooms have unfortunately been wrongly presented in the media. Some abuse it by using it as a psychedelic drug, and these are the stories that the media most often cover. However, there have been many scientific experiments and research that have proven the healing properties of these mushrooms.

A pattern is a repeated design that is found everywhere in our world and even in outer space. All around you are both simple patterns and complicated patterns. The spiral of a seashell is very complex. But, there are patterns more complicated than a seashell. When did humans discover or invent patterns? There are cave paintings that are around 10,000 years old. They show hands in a pattern with 5 fingers.

Most claims of Native American ancestry rest on the mother's ethnicity. This can be verified by a DNA test determining what type of mitochondrial DNA she passed to you. A hundred participants in DNA Consultants multi-phase Cherokee DNA Study did just that. What they had in common is they were previously rejected - by commercial firms, genealogy groups, government agencies and tribes. Their mitochondrial DNA was not classified as Native American. These are the "anomalous" Cherokee.

There is a lot more to the story than just the light bulb, and there is a lot more to the invention of the light bulb than just Thomas Edison. One thing is for sure - he is still remembered as one of the greatest inventors of all time and perhaps the greatest that America has ever produced. In truth, Edison was a man who invented a lot of things while bringing about incredible advancements in many other things. With the stock ticker, the telegraph, the light bulb, and the motion picture, he may not have invented them, but he improved on them beyond any recognition.

The Medical Committee for Human Rights was organized in the summer of 1964 by medical professionals, mostly white and Northern, to provide care and support for Civil Rights activists who were organizing black voters in Mississippi. They left their lives and lucrative private practices to march beside and tend the wounds of demonstrators from Freedom Summer, to the March on Selma, to the Chicago Democratic Convention of 1968.

Galileo's oldest child was 13 when he placed her in a convent near him in Florence, where she took the most appropriate name of Suor Maria Celeste. Her support was her father's greatest source of strength. Her presence, through letters which Sobel has translated from Italian and masterfully woven into the narrative, graces her father's life now as it did then. Galileo's Daughter dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose 17th-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion.