The Triumph of Human Empire explores the overarching historical event of our time: the rise and triumph of human empire, the apotheosis of the modern ambition to increase knowledge and power in order to achieve world domination, which Williams explores through the lives and works of three writers: Jules Verne, William Morris, and Robert Louis Stevenson.
The twentieth century was one of astonishing change in science, especially as pursued in the United States. Science and the American Century offers some of the most significant contributions to the study of the history of science, technology, and medicine during the twentiety century, all drawn from the pages of the journal Isis.
In Hide and Seek, Hanna Rose Shell traces the evolution of camouflage as it developed in counterpoint to technological advances in photography, innovations in warfare, and as-yet-unsolved mysteries of natural history.
In the 1970s, an eccentric group of physicists in Berkeley, California, banded together to explore the wilder side of science. Dubbing themselves the “Fundamental Fysiks Group,” they pursued an audacious, speculative approach to physics, studying quantum entanglement in terms of Eastern mysticism and psychic mind reading.
How the twenty-one-layer Apollo spacesuit, made by Playtex, was a triumph of intimacy over engineering.
When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the lunar surface in July of 1969, they…
Technology has become the architect of our intimacies. Online, we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication.
A Reader in Medical Anthropology: Theoretical Trajectories, Emergent Realities brings together articles from the key theoretical approaches in the field of medical anthropology as well as related science and…
Becoming MIT examines a series of turning points, crucial decisions that helped to define MIT. Many of these issues have relevance today: the moral implications of defense contracts, the optimal balance between government funding and private investment, and the right combination of basic science, engineering, and humanistic scholarship in the curriculum.