Tom Standage
Author
Pub. Date
c2006
Description
Throughout human history, certain drinks have done much more than just quench thirst. As Standage relates with authority and charm, six of them have had a surprisingly pervasive influence on the course of history during pivotal epochs - from humankind's adoption of agriculture and the birth of cities to the advent of globalization.
Author
Description
For thousands of years people had communicated across distances only as quickly as the fastest ship or horse could travel. Generations of innovators tried to develop speedier messaging devices. Then, in the mid-1800s, a few extraordinary pioneers at last succeeded. Their invention--the telegraph--nullified distance and shrank the world quicker and further than ever before, or since. This book tells the story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable...
Author
Pub. Date
2009
Description
The bestselling author of A History of the World in 6 Glasses brilliantly charts how foods have transformed human culture through the ages--from ancient times when the first civilizations were built on barley and wheat in the Near East, millet and rice in Asia, and corn and potatoes in the Americas, to modern times when the foods we choose in the supermarket connect us to global debates about trade, development, the environment, and the adoption of...
Author
Pub. Date
[2002]
Description
"On an autumn day in 1769, a Hungarian nobleman named Wolfgang von Kempelen attended a conjuring show at the court of Maria Theresa, empress of Austria-Hungary. So unimpressed was Kempelen by the performance that he declared he could do better himself. Maria Theresa held him to his word and gave him six months to prepare a show of his own.
Kempelen did not disappoint; he returned to the court the following spring with a mechanical man, fashioned...
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