The Fascinating account of one of the greatest adventures of all time, recounted here in its entire breadth, from Reformation backgrounds to the nineteenth century.
A fully illustrated edition of the international best-seller Longitude.
The Illustrated Longitude recounts in words and images the epic quest to solve the greatest scientific problem of the eighteenth and three prior centuries: determining how a captain could pinpoint his ship's location at sea. All too often throughout the ages of exploration, voyages ended in disaster when crew and cargo were either lost at sea or destroyed upon the rocks of an unexpected landfall. Thousands of lives and the fortunes of nations hung on a resolution to the longitude problem.
To encourage a solution, governments established prizes for anyone whose method or device proved successful. The largest reward of £20,000-- truly a king's ransom-- was offered by Britain's Parliament in 1714. The scientific establishment-- from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton-- had been certain that a celestial answer would be found and invested untold effort in this pursuit. By contrast, John Harrison imagined and built the unimaginable: a clock that told perfect time at sea, known today as the chronometer. Harrison's trials and tribulations during his forty-year quest to win the prize are the culmination of this remarkable story.
The Illustrated Longitude brings a new and important dimension to Dava Sobel's celebrated story. It contains the entire original narrative of Longitude, redesigned to accompany 183 images chosen by William Andrewes-- from portraints of every important figure in the story to maps and diagrams, scientifc instruments, and John Harrison's remarkable sea clocks themselves. Andrewes's elegant captions and sidebars on scientific and historical events tell their own story of longitude, paralleling and illuminating Sobel's memorable tale.
Poetry. "Noah Eli Gordon can spin, scratch, sample, and dub to mix a sound all his own. THE FREQUENCIES tunes in desire, poetry, static, and laughter - all the while broadcasting with the intensity and joy of first things"--Peter Gizzi. "This is the new music - listen to it"--Lisa Jarnot.
Canadian Library Association Honour BookRed Cedar Book Award Nomination
When the construction of monster houses alters Ivy's Vancouver neighborhood, she plans a defiant prank. When it backfires, she wonders if her life will ever be the same again.
"There Goes the Neighborhood" deals not only with issues of race and cultural values, but also addresses how we cope with change.
Malik Solanka, historian of ideas and world-famous dollmaker, steps out of his life one day, abandons his family in London without a word of explanation, and flees for New York. There’s a fury within him, and he fears he has become dangerous to those he loves. He arrives in New York at a time of unprecedented plenty, in the highest hour of America’s wealth and power, seeking to “erase” himself. But fury is all around him. An astonishing work of explosive energy, Fury is by turns a pitiless and pitch-black comedy, a love story of mesmerizing force, and a disturbing inquiry into the darkest side of human nature.
A sweeping history of weapons -- their origins and impact on warfare and society -- from prehistory to the present, including "The Halberd"
In the 13th century, Swiss confederates relied on lightweight breastplates, halberd lances, and a democratic style of phalanx warfare that succeeded by agility and speed but ultimately failed against powerful cannons and firearms.
"The First Hand Cannon"
In the 15th century in France and the Low Countries, arms makers first shrunk down cannons by using bronze, allowing for new mobility. Hand cannons were transported on two-wheeled horsedrawn carriages and could be positioned and fired within minutes. No fortified city in Europe was immune to the threat.
"The WheeL Lock Pistol"
In one of the serendipitous technological borrowings that helped the West dominate in gun development, arms and clock-makers in Germany in the 16th century developed a new firing mechanism, using a serrated wheel to strike iron pyrite. When the fuse was eliminated, guns could suddenly be carried, shot, and reloaded by fast-moving cavalry.
"The Pariskanone"
First fired by Germany in March 1918, this cannon shelled Paris from a distance of 80 miles, firing shot as high as 24 miles in the air. Although it killed fewer than 260 citizens, the Pariskanone prefigured the constant terror of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
