History Science Life

"Life Insurance and Slavery: The Dark History of Profit and Human Commodification" by Elvin Lee Blake Thompson is a revealing exploration of the disturbing intersection between the financial industry and the transatlantic slave trade. This meticulously researched work uncovers how several prominent American insurance companies played a pivotal role in perpetuating and profiting from the institution of slavery by insuring the lives of enslaved individuals and the ships that transported them.

Thomas Hargrove's Long March to Freedom is a record of his 11 months as a hostage of Colombian guerillas and was the basis for the recent movie hit Proof of Life that starred Meg Ryan, Russell Crowe, and David Morse.

As featured in the 6-part CNN SERIES "Finding Jesus" FINDING JESUS explores six major artifacts, including the Shroud of Turin, the True Cross, and John the Baptist, that give us the most direct evidence about the life and world of Jesus. The book and attendant CNN series provide a dramatic way...

The story of the twentieth century is largely the story of the power of science and technology. Within that story is the incredible tale of the human conflict between Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller—the scientists most responsible for the advent of weapons of mass destruction. How did science—and its practitioners—enlisted in the service of the state during the Second World War, become a slave to its patron during the Cold War?

Isambard Kingdom Brunel: one of the most famous engineers the United Kingdom has ever produced. A man who put his stamp on his own country in the most visible way possible: through the construction of bridges and tunnels that stand to this day and by transforming both the landscape and the nature of society. This audiobook will tell the story of the man known affectionately as “The little giant,” through telling the stories of the incredible achievements that made him a household name in his own lifetime and to the present day.

Initially a victory line where Allies met at the end of WWII, the Iron Curtain quickly became the front of a new kind of war. But what has the Iron Curtain left in its wake? Timothy Phillips travels its full 3,000-mile route to craft this new people's history of a defining twentieth-century conflict. Here, in the borderlands where a powerful clash of civilizations took form in concrete and barbed wire, he uncovers the remarkable stories of everyday people forever imprinted by life in the Curtain's shadow.

This is the story of the Universe including life as we know it.

Given how bad some of Rome's emperors were, it's a testament to just how insane and reviled Caligula was that he is still remembered, nearly 2,000 years later, as the epitome of everything that could be wrong with a tyrant. The Romans had high hopes for him after he succeeded Tiberius in AD 37, and by all accounts he was a noble and just ruler during his first few months in power. But after that, he suffered a mysterious illness that apparently rendered him insane. Indeed, the list of Caligula's strange actions is long.

As a child growing up in Detroit, Ben Carson (1951-) has a dream of becoming a physician, a dream that rose out of struggles with poverty, racism, and poor grades. As Ben persevered and strove for academic excellence, his life became one of compassion and service. Today, Benjamin Carson, MD, is known as the American neurosurgeon with gifted hands.

Rosalind Franklin was what can only be called an overlooked genius. Although she was not fully credited for the feat at the time, her work led to major breakthroughs in our understanding of DNA. In fact, she took the first X-ray photo of DNA in all of its double helix glory. By the time her former colleagues were being showered with accolades for results they made at least partially based on her findings, Franklin would not be around to see it. Sadly, it’s believed that her use of X-ray equipment gave her terminal cancer, cutting her life short at age 37.

This essay comes from the NPR series This I Believe, which features brief personal reflections from both famous and unknown Americans. The pieces that make up the series compel listeners to rethink not only what and how they have arrived at their beliefs, but also the extent to which they share them with others.

Thirty-five years after the publication of Ronald Blythe's classic portrait of an English village, Akenfield, Craig Taylor returned to the Suffolk village on which the book was based. He sought out locals who appeared in the original book to learn how their lives had changed, met newcomers, and interviewed Ronald Blythe himself.

In The Time of My Life, celebrated music journalist Andrea Warner excavates the layers of Dirty Dancing, from its anachronistic, chart-topping soundtrack, to Baby and Johnny’s chemistry, to Bergstein’s political intentions, to the abortion subplot that is more relevant today than ever. The film’s remarkable longevity would never have been possible if it was just a throwaway summer fling story. It is precisely because of its themes—deeply feminist, sensitively written—that we, over 30 years later, are still holding our breath during that last, exhilarating lift.

They were banishing him from the austere world that was his home; from the people he loved, the place he had lived, and the things he loved to do. He would never see their new city Rubin built.

A Hudson Booksellers Staff Pick for the Best Books of 2013 One of Publishers Weekly's Top Ten Spring Science Books A Bookshop Santa Cruz Staff Pick Dinosaurs, with their awe-inspiring size, terrifying claws and teeth, and otherworldly abilities, occupy a sacred place in our childhoods. They loom...

On August 18, 1920, American women finally won the right to vote. Ratification of the 19th Amendment was the culmination of an almost 80-year fight in which some of the fiercest, most passionate women in history marched, protested, and sometimes broke the law in to achieve this huge leap toward equal rights. In this expansive yet personal volume, author Winifred Conkling covers not only the suffragists' achievements and politics but also the private journeys that fueled their passion and led them to become women's champions.

“This in-depth, beautifully illustrated biography of Mary Anning sings with the passion and perseverance of the woman herself, who from girlhood on scoured the shifting cliffs of her native Dorset to dig out prehistoric mysteries and make sense of them—altering forever our view of the past...

On Wilde Island, Rosalind and her mother live their lives in exile, awaiting the time they can reclaim their rightful place on the throne. And there is reason to hope - a 600-year-old prophesy has decreed that they will do just that. But little do they know, their destinies hinge on Rosalind's amazing, shameful secret. Beneath her gold gloves, the fourth finger of her left hand is in truth a dragon's claw.

Benjamin Franklin was not only a son, husband, brother, and scientist; he was also very popular and highly respected in the American colonies, England, and France. Franklin was highly intelligent and a very generous and compassionate human being, who often woke up early and would ask himself what good he could accomplish that day.

Isaac Newton seemed to be a most unwanted child of the world. Ignored by his mother, scorned by contemporaries, seemingly at war with the world in which he lived, Newton turned his energies to things unseen. His laws of motion and law of universal gravitation would set the stage for a most extraordinary life. Follow along as you travel from a rugged stone farmhouse to Trinity College, Cambridge to the halls of London exhibitions where Newton found himself the celebrity of the age. Looking back on Aristotle, and inspired by all that Galileo had brought the world, Newton made his life work much of what is heralded as the modern age. He saw what no one else did, and his vision saw into the universe. See how he did it, and why.