history

Examines the democratic system of government, its origins, history, and how it works, looks at different types of democracy, and describes the individual rights provided by democracies.

A discussion of anarchism as a political theory, examining the early history of anarchism, explaining the principles and ideals of the no-government system, and including case studies.

An eighteen-year-old stonecutter who is caught in the middle of political conflict in Florence, Italy, in the early 1500s, must flee for his life in disguise because his has become the best-known face and figure in Florence.

Chronicles the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which restricted Chinese immigration to the United States, including the conditions in China that led to the migration, the prejudices and acts of violence against the group, and the repeal of 1943.

"Bestselling popular science author Amir Aczel selects the most fascinating individuals and stories in the history of mathematics, presenting a colorful narrative that explores the quirky personalities behind some of the most profound, enduring theorems. Through such mathematical geniuses as Archimedes, Leonardo of Pisa (a.k.a. Fibonacci), Tartaglia ("the stutterer"), Descartes, Gottfried Liebniz, Carl Gauss, Joseph Fourier (Napoleon's mathematician), Evariste Galois, Georg Cantor, Ramanujan, and "Nicholas Bourbaki, " we gather little known details about the alliances and rivalries that profoundly impacted the development of what the scheming doctor-turned-mathematician Geronimo Cardano called "The Great Art." This story of mathematics is not your dry "college textbook" account; tales of duels, battlefield heroism, flamboyant arrogance, pranks, secret societies, imprisonment, feuds, theft, and even some fatal errors of judgment fill these pages (clearly, genius doesn't guarantee street smarts). Ultimately, readers will come away from this book entertained, with a newfound appreciation of the tenacity, complexity, eccentricity, and brilliance of the mathematical genius"--.

Discusses scientists throughout history who have performed dangerous experiments on themselves for the benefit of humankind, including a zoologist who ate slug soup and a Nobel Prize-winning surgeon who put a catheter into his own heart.

Describes the early cooperative relationships between Ice Age humans and dogs as well as human society's later efforts to domesticate and control dog species through reproduction, revealing how dogs and humans impacted eath other's evolution.

Traces how the works of Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew reflected the poor majority in mid-nineteenth-century London, citing the achievements of such influential figures as John Maynard Keyes, Paul Samuelson, and Amartya Sen.