The Core is an important resource that helps parents create ways to incorporate study into daily routines involving the entire family. --Book Jacket.

"A remarkable work which will remain a document of the first rank for the historian of mechanics." — Louis de Broglie In this masterful synthesis and summation of the science of mechanics, Rene Dugas, a leading scholar and educator at the famed Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, deals with the evolution of the principles of general mechanics chronologically from their earliest roots in antiquity through the Middle Ages to the revolutionary developments in relativistic mechanics, wave and quantum mechanics of the early 20th century. The present volume is divided into five parts: The first treats of the pioneers in the study of mechanics, from its beginnings up to and including the sixteenth century; the second section discusses the formation of classical mechanics, including the tremendously creative and influential work of Galileo, Huygens and Newton. The third part is devoted to the eighteenth century, in which the organization of mechanics finds its climax in the achievements of Euler, d'Alembert and Lagrange. The fourth part is devoted to classical mechanics after Lagrange. In Part Five, the author undertakes the relativistic revolutions in quantum and wave mechanics. Writing with great clarity and sweep of vision, M. Dugas follows closely the ideas of the great innovators and the texts of their writings. The result is an exceptionally accurate and objective account, especially thorough in its accounts of mechanics in antiquity and the Middle Ages, and the important contributions of Jordanus of Nemore, Jean Buridan, Albert of Saxony, Nicole Oresme, Leonardo da Vinci, and many other key figures. Erudite, comprehensive, replete with penetrating insights, AHistory of Mechanics is an unusually skillful and wide-ranging study that belongs in the library of anyone interested in the history of science.

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

Ancient Greek literature, Athenian civic ideology, and modern classical scholarship have all worked together to reinforce the idea that there were three neatly defined status groups in classical Athens--citizens, slaves, and resident foreigners. But this book--the first comprehensive account of status in ancient democratic Athens--clearly lays out the evidence for a much broader and more complex spectrum of statuses, one that has important implications for understanding Greek social and cultural history. By revealing a social and legal reality otherwise masked by Athenian ideology, Deborah Kamen illuminates the complexity of Athenian social structure, uncovers tensions between democratic ideology and practice, and contributes to larger questions about the relationship between citizenship and democracy. Each chapter is devoted to one of ten distinct status groups in classical Athens (451/0-323 BCE): chattel slaves, privileged chattel slaves, conditionally freed slaves, resident foreigners (metics), privileged metics, bastards, disenfranchised citizens, naturalized citizens, female citizens, and male citizens. Examining a wide range of literary, epigraphic, and legal evidence, as well as factors not generally considered together, such as property ownership, corporal inviolability, and religious rights, the book demonstrates the important legal and social distinctions that were drawn between various groups of individuals in Athens. At the same time, it reveals that the boundaries between these groups were less fixed and more permeable than Athenians themselves acknowledged. The book concludes by trying to explain why ancient Greek literature maintains the fiction of three status groups despite a far more complex reality.

For the past three decades, many history professors have allowed their biases to distort the way America’s past is taught. These intellectuals have searched for instances of racism, sexism, and bigotry in our history while downplaying the greatness of America’s patriots and the achievements of “dead white men.” As a result, more emphasis is placed on Harriet Tubman than on George Washington; more about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II than about D-Day or Iwo Jima; more on the dangers we faced from Joseph McCarthy than those we faced from Josef Stalin. A Patriot’s History of the United States corrects those doctrinaire biases. In this groundbreaking book, America’s discovery, founding, and development are reexamined with an appreciation for the elements of public virtue, personal liberty, and private property that make this nation uniquely successful. This book offers a long-overdue acknowledgment of America’s true and proud history.

A beautifully illustrated compilation of classic stories and poems from around the world.