Showing results for "Science" in Americas

In the 1970s, amid severe cutbacks in physics funding, a small group of underemployed physicists in Berkeley decided to throw off the constraints of academia and explore the wilder side of science. Dubbing themselves the “Fundamental Fysiks Group,” they pursued a freewheeling, speculative approach to physics. Some dabbled with LSD while conducting experiments. They studied quantum theory alongside Eastern mysticism and psychic mind reading, discussing the latest developments while lounging in hot tubs.

It’s the height of the Vietnam War when a new generation of doctors, including a young Dr. Anthony Fauci, arrive at the National Institutes of Health as part of the doctor’s draft.

Political Thinkers for Our Time explains the principles that are foundational to the Anglo-American political tradition by looking at leading thinkers and statesmen who wrote about them. In discussing each thinker, William T. Reddinger introduces such principles as the rule of law, property rights, religious liberty, and limited government. Throughout, Reddinger shows how these figures can inform our thinking about important issues in contemporary American political discourse.

Operation Chrome Dome uncovers one of the Cold War’s most astonishing and unsettling secrets: for years, the United States kept nuclear-armed B-52 bombers flying around the clock, ready to launch a retaliatory strike at a moment’s notice. This gripping, factual narrative takes readers inside the hidden world of airborne deterrence—where “peace” was protected by aircraft carrying weapons capable of ending entire cities, and where routine missions depended on perfect discipline, flawless technology, and a constant battle against fatigue, weather, and human error.

In On the Record: Music That Changed America, Anna Harwell Celenza uncovers the sometimes surprising influence of music on American politics and culture. From "The Star–Spangled Banner" and Billie Holiday's haunting "Strange Fruit" to Paul Simon's Graceland and Lin-Manuel Miranda's groundbreaking Hamilton, Celenza explores moments where music wound its way through the halls of Congress, influencing decisions and reshaping culture.

A "Manchurian Candidate" is an unwitting assassin brainwashed and programmed to kill. In this book, former State Department officer John Marks tells the explosive story of the CIA's highly secret program of experiments in mind control. His curiosity first aroused by information on a puzzling suicide, Marks worked from thousands of pages of newly released documents as well as interviews and behavioral science studies, producing a book that "accomplished what two Senate committees could not" (Senator Edward Kennedy).

James McPherson calls the election of 1860 "undeniably the most important—and pivotal—in all of American history." The nation was not merely divided over the issue of slavery; the opposing camps were at each other's throats. The moment John Brown and his men attacked the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in the fall of 1859 the compromises that had stitched the country together for decades unraveled. The presidential election was therefore about more than who the next president would be. It was about how soon war would follow his inauguration.

A hundred and fifty years ago, naval warfare entered a new phase with the introduction of ironclad vessels. On March 9, 1862, the USS Monitor, prototype of this new class of warships, fought the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads, Virginia, after the Virginia had ravaged the Union fleet blockading the James River, sinking larger, seemingly more powerful wooden warships in a potent demonstration of the power of an armored, heavily-gunned, steam-powered warship.

Indigenous naturopathic doctor Nicole Redvers pairs evidence-based research with traditional healing modalities, addressing modern health problems and medical processes Modern medical science has finally caught up to what traditional healing systems have known for centuries. Many traditional...

In the late 1930s, legendary financier, philanthropist, and society figure Alfred Lee Loomis gathered the most visionary scientific minds of the 20th century at his state-of-the-art laboratory in Tuxedo Park, New York. He established a top-secret defense laboratory at MIT and personally bankrolled pioneering research into new, high-powered radar detection systems that helped defeat the German Air Force and U-boats. With Ernest Lawrence, he pushed Franklin Delano Roosevelt to fund research in nuclear fission, which led to the development of the atomic bomb.

From the national bestselling author of The Food Explorer comes the untold story of Alice Hamilton, a trailblazing doctor and public health activist who took on the booming auto industry—and the deadly invention of leaded gasoline, which would poison millions of people across America. At noon...

The belief that all life-forms are interconnected and share the same breath - known in the Rarámuri tribe as iwigara - has resulted in a treasury of knowledge about the natural world, passed down for millennia by native cultures. Ethnobotanist Enrique Salmon builds on this concept of connection and highlights 80 plants revered by North America's indigenous peoples. Salmon teaches us the ways plants are used as food and medicine, the details of their identification and harvest, their important health benefits, plus their role in traditional stories and myths.

The Berzelius Secret Society remains one of the most enigmatic organizations within the landscape of American collegiate traditions. Established at Yale University, it stands as the oldest of the university’s junior societies and the third oldest of its prestigious senior societies. Throughout its existence, the group has balanced an outward-facing commitment to scientific excellence with a deeply private internal culture characterized by mystery and ritual.

A Los Angeles Times Bestseller One of The New Yorker's Best Books of 2024 A bold and brilliant revisionist take on the history of psychedelics in the twentieth century, illuminating how a culture of experimental drugs shaped the Cold War and the birth of Silicon Valley. "Brilliant and original...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Scopes Trial and the battle over evolution and creation in America's schools In the summer of 1925, the sleepy hamlet of Dayton, Tennessee, became the setting for one of the twentieth century's most contentious courtroom dramas, pitting William Jennings...

The untold story of how America once created the most successful economy the world has ever seen—and how we can do it again. The American economy glitters on the outside, but the reality is quite different. Job opportunities and economic growth are increasingly concentrated in a few crowded...

In Native American DNA, Kim TallBear shows how DNA testing is a powerful - and problematic - scientific process that is useful in determining close biological relatives. But tribal membership is a legal category that has developed in dependence on certain social understandings and historical contexts, a set of concepts that entangles genetic information in a web of family relations, reservation histories, tribal rules, and government regulations.

Life in Space explores the many aspects and outcomes of NASAs research in life sciences, a little-understood endeavor that has often been overlooked in histories of the space agency. Maura Mackowski details NASAs work in this field from spectacular promises made during the Reagan era to the major new directions set by George W. Bush's Vision for Space Exploration.

Gorgeous War argues that the Nazis used the swastika as part of a visually sophisticated propaganda program that was not only modernist, but also the forerunner of contemporary brand identity. When the United States military tried to answer Nazi displays of graphic power, it failed. In the end the best graphic response to the Nazis was produced by the Walt Disney Company.

The question of teaching evolution in the public schools is a continuing and frequently heated political issue in America. From Tennessee's Scopes Trial in 1925 to recent battles that have erupted in Louisiana, Kansas, Ohio, and countless other localities, the critics and supporters of evolution have fought nonstop over the role of science and religion in American public life. In American Genesis, Jeffrey P. Moran explores the ways in which the evolution debate has reverberated beyond the confines of state legislatures and courthouses.