This volume scrutinizes the questions of conceptualization, method and history in the fields of kinship, social anthropology and structuralism. It puts forward a radical revision of the conventional approaches and criteria. Exploring analysis and method in the disparity between relative age and kinship categories as means of social classification, the book makes theoretical readjustments, largely inspired by the precepts of Wittgenstein. Originally published in 1971.

This informative and occasionally bizarre collection of American inventions will help you discover successful and significant ideas—along with the frivolous and utterly useless ones lost to history. Innovation and entrepreneurism appear inextricably woven into the American DNA. Throughout American history, the great inventors and innovators gazed into the future and saw the products and services that would transform the world. While passionate about creating this new thing called a democracy, our Founding Fathers were also driven to change the way humans lived and worked—to complete everyday tasks faster, easier, and more efficiently. As of 2018, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office had granted its ten millionth patent. But with over 500,000 applications now being filed annually, fewer than half of these applicants will be granted patents and far fewer still—an estimated one percent—will realize commercial success, according to the Office. Some are flawed by mistakes or missing details, others too ridiculous to take seriously, still others simply ahead of their time. From the brightest and most innovative to the wackiest, most bizarre, and downright crazy, this collection of 100 patents includes funny and informative descriptions and original illustrations, all the while letting you in on what most successful patents have in common, what inspired their creators, and how great inventors view the world.

In How Invention Begins, Lienhard reconciles the ends of invention with the individual leaps upon which they are built, illuminating the vast web of individual inspirations that lie behind whole technologies. He traces, for instance, the way in which thousands of people applied their combined genius to airplanes, trains, and automobiles, revealing how a collective desire, an upwelling of fascination, a spirit of the times--a Zeitgeist--laid its hold upon inventors. The thing they all sought to create was speed itself. Can we speak of speed as an invention? To do so, he concludes, is certainly no greater a stretch than to call the car an "invention."

A captivating, humorous, and downright perplexing selection of nineteenth-century inventions as revealed through remarkable–and hitherto unseen–illustrations from the British National Archive Inventions that Didn’t Change the World is a fascinating visual tour through some of the most bizarre inventions registered with the British authorities in the nineteenth century. In an era when Britain was the workshop of the world, design protection (nowadays patenting) was all the rage, and the apparently lenient approval process meant that all manner of bizarre curiosities were painstakingly recorded, in beautiful color illustrations and well-penned explanatory text, alongside the genuinely great inventions of the period. Irreverent commentary contextualizes each submission as well as taking a humorous view on how each has stood the test of time. This book introduces such gems as a ventilating top hat; an artificial leech; a design for an aerial machine adapted for the arctic regions; an anti-explosive alarm whistle; a tennis racket with ball-picker; and a currant-cleaning machine. Here is everything the end user could possibly require for a problem he never knew he had. Organized by area of application—industry, clothing, transportation, medical, health and safety, the home, and leisure—Inventions that Didn’t Change the World reveals the concerns of a bygone era giddy with the possibilities of a newly industrialized world.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The acclaimed author of Founding Gardeners reveals the forgotten life of Alexander von Humboldt, the visionary German naturalist whose ideas changed the way we see the natural world—and in the process created modern environmentalism. "Vivid and exciting.... Wulf’s pulsating account brings this dazzling figure back into a dazzling, much-deserved focus.” —The Boston Globe Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was the most famous scientist of his age, a visionary German naturalist and polymath whose discoveries forever changed the way we understand the natural world. Among his most revolutionary ideas was a radical conception of nature as a complex and interconnected global force that does not exist for the use of humankind alone. In North America, Humboldt’s name still graces towns, counties, parks, bays, lakes, mountains, and a river. And yet the man has been all but forgotten. In this illuminating biography, Andrea Wulf brings Humboldt’s extraordinary life back into focus: his prediction of human-induced climate change; his daring expeditions to the highest peaks of South America and to the anthrax-infected steppes of Siberia; his relationships with iconic figures, including Simón Bolívar and Thomas Jefferson; and the lasting influence of his writings on Darwin, Wordsworth, Goethe, Muir, Thoreau, and many others. Brilliantly researched and stunningly written, The Invention of Nature reveals the myriad ways in which Humboldt’s ideas form the foundation of modern environmentalism—and reminds us why they are as prescient and vital as ever.

Previously published in English in 2017. Originally published in Poland in 2014.