100 Diagrams That Changed The World is a fascinating collection of the most significant plans, sketches, drawings and illustrations that have changed the way we think about the world. From primitive cave paintings to the complicated DNA double helix drawn by Crick and Watson, they chart dramatic breakthroughs in our understanding of the world and its history. This fascinating book encompasses everything from the triple spirals found on prehistoric megalithic tombs dating right up to the drawings sent out on the side of space exploration probes. Discover Leonardo da Vinci's beautiful technical drawings, pre-empting the invention of manned flight, Copernicus's bold diagrams that dared to tell us that Earth was not at the centre of the Universe, as well as the history of the more everyday diagrams that we now take for granted. Every diagram is clearly illustrated and placed into context with very accessible text even for the lay reader. Diagrams include: Egyptian Book of the Dead, Chauvet cave drawings, Aztec Calendar, sheet music, Vitruvian Man, Galileo's telescope, Hooke's Micrographia, the Porphyrian Tree, Dunhuang Star Map, Newcomen's steam engine, the Morse Code, Brooks Slave Ship, William Playfair's bar chart, Thomas Edison's light bulb, Nazi propaganda map, sewing patterns, Feynman Diagrams, the DNA double helix, IKEA flat-pack furniture instructions, the World Wide Web schematic, Carl Sagan's Pioneer Plaque.

A thought-provoking chronological journey through the world's most influential books. Many books have become classics, must-reads or overnight publishing sensations, but how many can genuinely claim to have changed the way we see and think? In 100 Books that Changed the World, authors Scott Christianson and Colin Salter bring together an exceptional collection of truly groundbreaking books – from scriptures that founded religions, to scientific treatises that challenged beliefs, to novels that kick-started literary genres. This elegantly designed book, first published in 2018 but updated with an exciting new cover, offers a chronological timeline of three millennia of human thought distilled in print, from the earliest illuminated manuscripts to the age of ebooks and audiobooks. Entries include: • The Iliad and The Odyssey, Homer (750 BC) • Shakespeare's First Folio (1623) • A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft (1792) • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) • The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank (1947) • Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe (1958) • A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking (1988) For literary lovers and rebellious readers, this book offers a fascinating overview of world history through the books that influenced and changed it.

This innovative title looks at the history of the Web from its early roots in the research projects of the US government to the interactive online world we know and use today. Fully illustrated with images of early computing equipment and the inside story of the online world’s movers and shakers, the book explains the origins of the Web’s key technologies, such as hypertext and mark-up language, the social ideas that underlie its networks, such as open source, and creative commons, and key moments in its development, such as the movement to broadband and the Dotcom Crash. Later ideas look at the origins of social networking and the latest developments on the Web, such as The Cloud and the Semantic Web. Following the design of the previous titles in the series, this book is in a new, smaller format. It provides an informed and fascinating illustrated history of our most used and fastest-developing technology.

In this groundbreaking book, Franco Moretti argues that literature scholars should stop reading books and start counting, graphing, and mapping them instead. In place of the traditionally selective literary canon of a few hundred texts, Moretti offers charts, maps and time lines, developing the idea of "distant reading" into a full-blown experiment in literary historiography, in which the canon disappears into the larger literary system. Charting entire genres-the epistolary, the gothic, and the historical novel-as well as the literary output of countries such as Japan, Italy, Spain, and Nigeria, he shows how literary history looks significantly different from what is commonly supposed and how the concept of aesthetic form can be radically redefined.

People find it difficult to express ideas and solve problems purely with words. They find it much easier to use diagrams. Distilled into this single, handy-sized volume are 60 of the most useful diagrams, which are used by the smartest managers and entrepreneurs globally, to aid their problem-solving and thinking. Triangles and pyramids, grids and axes, timelines, flows and concepts - the 60 diagrams are each visually presented, and then explained in an accessible manner, including tips and advice on how you can apply them to your own situations.

Experience the uplifting power of art on this breathtaking visual tour of 2,500 paintings and sculptures created by more than 700 artists from Michelangelo to Damien Hirst. This beautiful book brings you the very best of world art from cave paintings to Neoexpressionism. Enjoy iconic must-see works, such as Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper and Monet's Waterlilies and discover less familiar artists and genres from all parts of the globe. Art That Changed the World covers the full sweep of world art, including the Ming era in China, and Japanese, Hindu, and Indigenous Australian art. It analyses recurring themes such as love and religion, explaining key genres from Romanesque to Conceptual art. Art That Changed the World explores each artist's key works and vision, showing details of their technique, such as Leonardo's use of light and shade. It tells the story of avant-garde works like Manet's Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe (Lunch on the Grass), which scandalized society, and traces how one genre informed another - showing how the Impressionists were inspired by Gustave Courbet, for example, and how Van Gogh was influenced by Japanese prints. Lavishly illustrated throughout, look no further for your essential guide to the pantheon of world art.

From Columbus' voyages to the New World through today's prison expansion movements, incarceration has played an important, yet disconcerting, role in American history. In this sweeping examination of imprisonment in the United States over five centuries, Scott Christianson exposes the hidden record of the nation's prison heritage, illuminating the forces underlying the paradox of a country that sanctifies individual liberty while it continues to build and maintain a growing complex of totalitarian institutions. Based on exhaustive research and the author's insider's knowledge of the criminal justice system, With Liberty for Some provides an absorbing, well-written chronicle of imprisonment in its many forms. Interweaving his narrative with the moving, often shocking, personal stories of the prisoners themselves and their keepers, Christianson considers convict transports to the colonies; the international trade in captive indentured servants, slaves, and military conscripts; life under slavery; the transition from colonial jails to model state prisons; the experience of domestic prisoners of war and political prisoners; the creation of the penitentiary; and the evolution of contemporary corrections. His penetrating study of this broad spectrum of confinement reveals that slavery and prisons have been inextricably linked throughout American history. He also examines imprisonment within the context of the larger society. With Liberty for Some is a thought-provoking work that will shed new light on the ways in which imprisonment has shaped the American experience. As the author writes, "Prison is the black flower of civilization -- a durable weed that refuses to die."

A Turing Award-winning computer scientist and statistician shows how understanding causality has revolutionized science and will revolutionize artificial intelligence "Correlation is not causation." This mantra, chanted by scientists for more than a century, has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. Today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, instigated by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and established causality -- the study of cause and effect -- on a firm scientific basis. His work explains how we can know easy things, like whether it was rain or a sprinkler that made a sidewalk wet; and how to answer hard questions, like whether a drug cured an illness. Pearl's work enables us to know not just whether one thing causes another: it lets us explore the world that is and the worlds that could have been. It shows us the essence of human thought and key to artificial intelligence. Anyone who wants to understand either needs The Book of Why.

Teased at school about his younger brother, Jonno hopes his life will change when James goes to a school for autistic children. It does, but not in the way he expects.

Profiles over fifty important bridges around the world, presenting color photos and describing their histories; includes such structures as the Brooklyn Bridge, London's Tower Bridge, Venice's Bridge of Sighs, and the beam bridges of Afghanistan.