Contains instructional essays on a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to: the art of making gun flints, the construction of a movable table for the use of engravers, preparing ox-gall, blowing up rocks under water, the manufacture of iron and steel wire and gilt buttons, methods of telegraphic signalling (including smoke signals), and methods for preparing varnishes. Also contains numerous reports on topics such as: spontaneous combustion, the effect of magnetism on time-pieces, the remains of a woolly mammoth, the wines and champagne of France, the construction of theaters (and their acoustical properties), the qualities of rapeseed oil, and many other topics.

Contains instructional essays on a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to: the art of making gun flints, the construction of a movable table for the use of engravers, preparing ox-gall, blowing up rocks under water, the manufacture of iron and steel wire and gilt buttons, methods of telegraphic signalling (including smoke signals), and methods for preparing varnishes. Also contains numerous reports on topics such as: spontaneous combustion, the effect of magnetism on time-pieces, the remains of a woolly mammoth, the wines and champagne of France, the construction of theaters (and their acoustical properties), the qualities of rapeseed oil, and many other topics.

Body art meets popular science in this elegant, mind-blowing collection, written by renowned science writer Carl Zimmer. This fascinating book showcases hundreds of eye-catching tattoos that pay tribute to various scientific disciplines, from evolutionary biology and neuroscience to mathematics and astrophysics, and reveals the stories of the individuals who chose to inscribe their obsessions in their skin. Best of all, each tattoo provides a leaping-off point for bestselling essayist and lecturer Zimmer to reflect on the science in question, whether its the importance of an image of Darwins finches or the significance of the uranium atom inked into the chest of a young radiologist.

With a few exceptions, historiography has paid little attention to the impact of French economic thought during the American Revolution, focusing instead on the Revolution’s links with Britain. This book outlines how, from the mid-eighteenth to the early-nineteenth century, the political and social dimension of French economic thought, and particularly of Physiocracy, spurred American Republicans to a radical shaping of American agrarian ideology. Such a perspective allows for a reconsideration of several questions that lie at the heart of contemporary historiographic debate: the connection between politics and economics; the meaning of republicanism; the foundations of representation; the role of Europe in the Atlantic world; and the interaction between national histories and global context. In particular, the research methodology adopted here makes it possible to reconstruct how American national identity, conceived as an expression of society in economic terms, emerged through a cosmopolitan way of thinking focused on the uniqueness of the new state.