Washoe County Library System

Within the pages of this eclectic pop-history, scientist and educator Sten Odenwald at NASA examines 100 objects that forever altered what we know and how we think about the cosmos. From Sputnik to Skylab and Galileos telescope to the Curiosity rover, some objects are iconic and some obscurebut all are utterly important. The Nebra sky disk (1600 BCE) features the first realistic depiction of the Sun, Moon, and stars.The Lunar Laser Ranging RetroReflector...

A #1 international bestseller, this “epic and remarkable” (Sunday Times) sweeping history of the British in India as seen through the experiences of a single Scottish family is destined to become a classic. For a century, the Lows of Clattothe family of the authors grandmothersurvived mutiny, siege, debt, and disease, everywhere from the heat of Madras to the Afghan snows. They lived through appalling atrocities and retaliated with some of their...

The Oxford Illustrated History of Science is the first-ever fully illustrated global history of science, from Aristotle to the atom bomb - and beyond. The first part of the book tells the story of science in both the East and West from antiquity to the Enlightenment: from the ancient Mediterranean world to ancient China; from the exchanges between Islamic and Christian scholars in the Middle Ages to the Chinese invention of gunpowder, paper, and the...

In public estimation and scientific investigations, sloths have undergone an astonishing transformation in the course of the past few years. Thanks largely to YouTube clips posted by the sloth orphanage in Costa Rica, sloths have attracted a vast audience of admirers. Instead of seeing them as ridiculous anachronisms of which we know little, they have turned into creatures considered by many to be the most endearing on earth. Over much the same period,...

For centuries, people have talked of a powerful bodily disorder called migraine, which currently affects about a billion people around the world. Yet until now, the rich history of this condition has barely been told. In Migraine, award-winning historian Katherine Foxhall reveals the ideas and methods that ordinary people and medical professionals have used to describe, explain, and treat migraine since the Middle Ages. Touching on classical theories...

Ever since the giant sequoias of California's Calaveras Grove first captivated the American public, this towering, ancient tree species has provoked the imagination and motivated us to action on a national scale. In a narrative that spans centuries and continents, former National Park Service ranger-naturalist William C. Tweed explores the evolution of the unique relationship between humans and the Big Trees: from their early status as tourist attractions...

"The New Bread Basket tells the story of how a radical band of grain pioneers--farmers, millers, bakers, brewers, and maltsters--are reinventing community grain systems and reintroducing grains as a viable food crop. Today's commodity grain industry has let many Americans to avoid eating gluten and carbohydrates altogether. Yet our long history with grains suggests that changes in farming and processing could be the real reason wheat has become suspect...

"Genteel society ladies who compare notes on their husbands' suicides. A hilariously foul-mouthed black drag queen. A voodoo priestess who works her roots in the graveyard at midnight. A prominent antiques dealer who hangs a Nazi flag from his window to disrupt the shooting of a movie. And a redneck gigolo whose conquests describe him as a "walking streak of sex". These are some of the real residents of Savannah, Georgia, a city whose eccentric mores...

"In Greater Gotham Mike Wallace, co-author of GOTHAM, picks up the story of New York at the critical juncture of 1898 and carries it forward during the period when it became not just the country's greatest urban center but a megapolis on an international scale, and with global reach. Between consolidation and the end of World War One, New York was transformed and transforming, mirroring the juggernauting dynamism of the country at large--and largely...

"Bison. Horses. Coyotes. Wolves. Grizzly Bears. Pronghorns. A la John McPhee and Edward Hoagland, noted Western and environmental historian Flores dazzles with his vivid, informed, and richly detailed essays on six iconic animals of the American Great Plains. Diving into their genetic past as far back as the Pleistocene epoch and on up to restoration efforts in recent times, Flores is especially evocative and illuminating about the lives of these...