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THE GLASS UNIVERSE - The hidden history of the women who took the measure of the starsBy Dava Sobel. Hardback, 0.62kgs, 160mm x 240mm, 324 pages, full colour and black & White illustrations. Published 2016.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or “human computers,” to interpret the observations made via telescope by their male counterparts each night. At the outset this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of the resident astronomers, but by the 1880s the female corps included graduates of the new women's colleges—Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates. The “glass universe” of half a million plates that Harvard amassed in this period—thanks in part to the early financial support of another woman, Mrs. Anna Draper, whose late husband pioneered the technique of stellar photography—enabled the women to make extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim. They helped discern what stars were made of, divided the stars into meaningful categories for further research, and found a way to measure distances across space by starlight.
Their ranks included Williamina Fleming, a Scottish woman originally hired as a maid who went on to identify ten novae and more than three hundred variable stars, Annie Jump Cannon, who designed a stellar classification system that was adopted by astronomers the world over and is still in use, and Dr. Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin, who in 1956 became the first ever woman professor of astronomy at Harvard—and Harvard’s first female department chair.
Elegantly written and enriched by excerpts from letters, diaries, and memoirs, The Glass Universe is the hidden history of a group of remarkable women who, through their hard work and groundbreaking discoveries, disproved the commonly held belief that the gentler sex had little to contribute to human knowledge.
NZ$50.00 + delivery.
AND SOON I HEARD A ROARING WINDBy Bill Streever. Hardback, 0.54kgs, 160mm x 240mm, 308 pages, some black & White illustrations. Published 2016.
The gnashing teeth of an oncoming storm. Wind-launched missiles and wind-tossed airplanes. Sand dunes and the Dust Bowl, shipwrecks and wind-riding spiders, weather forecasting, wind power, windmills, and wars: on page after page of his brisk and fascinating new book, Bill Streever reveal’s wind’s real nature – an its history- shaping force.
Seeking a deep immersion in his subject, Streever will go to any extreme. So after a three-day course, this novice sailor set out on a vintage fifty-year-old sailboat named after don Quixote’s horse, and sailed east from Texas to Guatemala over forty-three days and a thousand miles. How better for Streever to explore and experience the winds that built empires, the storms that wrecked them, and the surprising history and science of moving air?
From history’s great violent storms to the impacts of weather on life and business, from wind’s energy to its power to give and destroy life, And soon I heard a Roaring Wind is a singular and thrilling read. With keen observations, scientific rigor, whimsy, and wit, Bill Streever vividly proves that wind is far more than a passing breeze.
NZ$55.00 + delivery.
HOW TO READ WATERBy Tristan Gooley. Hardback, 140mm x 195mm, 393 pages, 0.45 kgs. Line Drawings Published 2016.
Clues and Patterns from Puddles to the Sea.
Learn to gauge depth, navigate, forecast weather and other predictions of the natural world using our greatest resource - water.
In his previous books, Tristan Gooley helped readers reconnect with nature by finding direction from the trees, stars, clouds, and more. Now, he turns his attention to our most abundant—yet perhaps least understood resource.
Distilled from his far-flung adventures—sailing solo across the Atlantic, navigating with Omani tribespeople, canoeing in Borneo, and walking in his own backyard—Gooley shares hundreds of techniques in this, his latest book.
Techniques include -
NZ$45.00 + delivery.
THE NATURAL NAVIGATORBy Tristan Gooley. Softback, 140mm x 295mm, 289 pages, 0.32 kgs. Line Drawings Published 2012.
The Rediscovered Art of Letting Nature be Your Guide.
Before GPS, before the compass, and even before cartography, humankind was navigating. Now this singular guide helps us rediscover what our ancestors long understood—that a windswept tree, the depth of a puddle, or a trill of birdsong can help us find our way, if we know what to look and listen for.
Adventurer and navigation expert Tristan Gooley unlocks the directional clues hidden in the sun, moon, stars, clouds, weather patterns, lengthening shadows, changing tides, plant growth, and the habits of wildlife. Rich with navigational anecdotes collected across ages, continents, and cultures, The Natural Navigator will help keep you on course and open your eyes to the wonders of the Natural world.
NZ$35.00 + delivery.
FINDING NORTH How Navigation makes us Human.By George Michesen Fox, Hardback, 148mm x 215mm, 291 pages. Published 2016
Navigation is the key human skill. It's something we do everywhere, whether feeling our way through a bedroom in the dark, or charting a ship's course. But how does navigation affect our brains, our memory, ourselves? Blending scientific research and memoir, and written in beautiful prose, Finding North starts with a quest by the author to understand this most basic of human skills---and why it's in mortal peril.
In 1844, Foy's great-great grandfather, captain of a Norwegian cargo ship, perished at sea after getting lost in a snowstorm. Foy decides to unravel the mystery surrounding Halvor Michelsen's death---and the roots of his own obsession with navigation---by re-creating his ancestor's trip using only period instruments.
Beforehand, he meets a colorful cast of characters to learn whether men really have better directional skills than women, how cells, eels, and spaceships navigate; and how tragedy results from GPS glitches. He interviews a cabby who has memorized every street in London, sails on a Haitian cargo sloop, and visits the site of a secret navigational cult in Greece.
At the heart of Foy's story is this fact: navigation and the brain's memory centers are inextricably linked. As Foy unravels the secret behind Halvor's death, he also discovers why forsaking our navigation skills in favor of GPS may lead not only to Alzheimers and other diseases of memory, but to losing a key part of what makes us human.
NZ$45.00 + Delivery
FINDING LONGITUDEBy Royal Museums Greenwich. Hardback, 230mm x 275mm, 255 pages, Colour, black and white photographs.
Official publication of the National Maritime Museum's exhibition "Ships, Clocks and Stars: The Quest for Longitude".
300 years ago, amidst growing frustration from the naval community and pressure from the increasing importance of international trade, the British government passed the 1714 Longitude Act. It was an attempt to solve one of the most pressing problems of the age: how to determine a ship's longitude (east-west position) at sea. With life-changing rewards on offer, the challenge captured the imaginations and talents of astronomers, skilled craftsmen, politicians, seamen and satirists. This beautifully illustrated book is a detailed account of these stories, and how the longitude problem was solved.
Highlights of the book include:
From the same publisher as Dava Sobel's Longitude, Finding Longitude tells a new story of one of the great achievements of the Georgian age, and how it changed our understanding of the world.
NZ$60.00 + delivery.
SEXTANTBy David Barrie. Paperback, 123mm x 195mm, 347 pages, Colour, black and white photographs. Published 2015
This is the history and story of the instrument that changed the world. An eloquent elergy to celestial navigation.
David Barrie tells how and why the sextant was invented: how offshore navigators depended on it for their lives in wild and uncharted waters: and how it played a vital role in the stirring history of exploration.
Much of the Sextant is set amidst the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, where generations of explorers searched for the fabled Southern Continent and the North-West passage, eventually discovering Polynesia and charting the coasts of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Alaska. Stories of Captain Cook and the great French navigator La Perouse, (whose disappearance long remained a mystery), George Vancouver, Mathew Flinders and Captain Fitzroy of the Beagle. Great single-handed or open boat voyages feature with the heroic tales of Joshua Slocum, Captain Bligh and Ernest Shackleton.
Interwoven with the author's account of his own transatlantic voyage in a small yacht, Sextant is a heady mix of adventure, science, mathematics and derring-do. Infused with a sense of wonder and discovery,this is a tribute to the sea and sky, the ships and the sailors, and the difference this instrument made to the world. A marvellous book and a great read.
NZ$27.00 + delivery.
Also available in Hardback:
NZ$45.00 + delivery.
LONGITUDEBy Dava Sobel, Pbk, 110mm x 175mm, 184 pages.
Longitude is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest. The 'longitude problem' was the thorniest dilemma of the eighteenth century. Lacking the ability to measure longitude accurately, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea.
At the heart of Dava Sobel's fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation and horology stands the figure of John Harrison, self taught Yorkshire clockmaker, and his forty-year obsession with building the perfect timekeeper. Battling against the establishment, Harrison stood alone in pursuit of his solution and the GBP20,000 reward offered by Parliament.
NZ$25.00 + Delivery
LONGITUDE - HARDBACKBy Dava Sobel, Hbk, 144mm x209mm, 184 pages, full colour photographs and illustrations.
The text in this hardback edition is identical to the paperback described above. The differences are in the binding and this harback has 8 pages of colour photographs and illustrations. it is a beautifully presented book.
NZ$41.00 + Delivery
THE ILLUSTRATED LONGITUDE.
By Dava Sobel, Pbk, 255mm x 230mm, 216 pages, full colour photographs and reproductions.
This book recounts in words and images the epic quest to solve the greatest scientific problem of the eighteenth and three prior centuries: determining how a captain could pinpoint his ship's location at sea. All too often throughout the ages of exploration, voyages ended in disaster when crew and cargo were either lost at sea or destroyed upon the rocks of an unexpected landfall. Thousands of lives and the fortunes of nations hung on a resolution to the longitude problem.
To encourage a solution, governments established prizes for anyone whose method or device proved successful. The largest reward of 20,000 pounds - truly a king's ransom - was offered by Britain's Parliament in 1714. The scientific establishment - from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton - had been certain that a celestial answer would be found and invested untold effort in this pursuit. By contrast, John Harrison imagined and built the unimaginable: a clock that told perfect time at sea, known today as the chronometer. Harrison's trials and tribulations during his forty-year quest to win the prize are the culmination of this remarkable story.
The Illustrated Longitude brings a new and important dimension to Dava Sobel's celebrated story. It contains the entire original narrative of Longitude, redesigned to accompany 183 images chosen by William Andrews - from portraits of every important figure in the story to maps and diagrams, scientific instruments, and John Harrison's remarkable sea clocks themselves. Andrew's elegant captions and sidebars on scientific and histotical events tell their own story of longitude, paralleling and illuminating Sobel's memorable tale.
NZ$50.00 + Delivery
NAVIGATION THROUGH THE AGES.by Donald Launer. Paperback, 149mm X 226mm, 192 pages, monochrome photographs and drawings.
Sailors have been navigating the seas for thousands of years, and navigational technology has progressed exponentially during that time. This concise yet comprehensive volume from popular author Donald Launer begins with the impressive developments in navigation undertaken by early seafarers and follows the art and science of navigation through the ages to their culmination in the huge advances made by our contemporaries. Launer explores the navigational tools invented by each civilization and includes generous illustrations to help readers envision the tools used.
The topics covered are ;
Written in an accessible style, with no unexplained jargon or terminology Navigation Through the Ages will appeal especially to sailors and to anyone with an interst in the history of science and the exploration of our world.
NZ$46.00 + Delivery.
THE TELESCOPE - A SHORT HISTORY. By Richard Dunn. Hardback, 0.5kg, 147mm x 207mm, 192 pages, colour and monochrome illustrations. Published 2009.
The history of the telescope is far from short. Its invention in 1608 marked a turning point in progress: not just of science, but of astronomy and philosophy. In this lively narrative, Richard Dunn introduces us to the extraordinary characters and events that have shaped the four hundred years of the telescope's existence and the future of this iconic instrument.
NZ$35.00 + Delivery.
ON THE MAP.
By Simon Garfield. Paperback, 0.43kg, 134mm x 200mm, 464 pages,Black and white photographs and line drawings. Published 2013.
From the early sketches of philosophers and explorers through to google maps and beyond, Simon Garfield examines how maps both relate and realign our history. His compelling narratives range from the quest to create the perfect globe to the challenge of mapping Africa and Antarctic, from spell binding treasure maps, to the naming of America, from ordinance survey to Monopoly!
On the Map a fascinating, witty and irrepressible mini history and exploration of maps and our world, where we've been, where we're going, and how we actually got there! En route there are 'pocket map' tales of dragons and undergrounds, a 19th century murder map, research on the different ways that men and women approach a map, and an explanation of the curious long-term cartographic role played by animals.
NZ$29.00 + delivery.
THE INVENTION OF NATURE.By Andrea Wulf. Paperback, 0.36kg, 128mm x 198mm, 473 pages, Colour photographs and B&w IMAGES. Published 2015.
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist - more things are named after him than anyone else. There are towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the South American coast, there's a penguin, a giant squid - even the Mare Humboldtianum on the moon.
His colourful adventures read like something out of a Boy's Own story: Humboldt explored deep into the rainforest, climbed the world's highest volcanoes and inspired princes and presidents, scientists and poets alike. Napoleon was jealous of him; Simon Bolívar's revolution was fuelled by his ideas; Darwin set sail on the Beagle because of Humboldt; and Jules Verne's Captain Nemo owned all his many books. He simply was, as one contemporary put it, 'the greatest man since the Deluge'.
Taking us on a fantastic voyage in his footsteps - racing across anthrax-infected Russia or mapping tropical rivers alive with crocodiles - Andrea Wulf shows why his life and ideas remain so important today. Humboldt predicted human-induced climate change as early as 1800, and The Invention of Nature traces his ideas as they go on to revolutionize and shape science, conservation, nature writing, politics, art and the theory of evolution. He wanted to know and understand everything and his way of thinking was so far ahead of his time that it's only coming into its own now. Alexander von Humboldt really did invent the way we see nature.
NZ$30.00 + delivery.
THE WEATHER EXPERIMENT.By Peter Moore. Paperback, 0.35kg, 130mm x 198mm, 395 pages, Full colour illustrations. Published 2016.
In 1856 a broken Admiral Robert FitzRoy locked himself in his dressing room and cut his throat. His grand meteorological project had failed. Yet only a decade later, FitzRoy’s storm warning system and ‘forecasts’ would return, the model for what we use today.
In an age when a storm at sea was evidence of God’s great wrath, nineteenth-century meteorologists had to fight against convention and religious dogma. But buoyed by the achievements of the Enlightenment a generation of mavericks set out to explain the secrets of the atmosphere. Among them were Luke Howard, the first to classify the clouds, Francis Beaufort who quantified the winds, James Glaisher, who explored the upper atmosphere in a hot-air balloon, Samuel Morse whose electric telegraph gave scientists the means by which to transmit weather warnings, and FitzRoy himself, master sailor, scientific pioneer and founder of the Met Office.
Reputations were built and shattered. Fractious debates raged over decades between scientists from London to Galway, Paris to New York. Explaining the atmosphere was one thing, but predicting what it was going to do seemed a step too far. In 1854, when a politician suggested to the Commons that Londoners might soon know the weather twenty-four hours in advance the House roared with laughter.
Peter Moore’s exhilarating account navigates treacherous seas, rough winds and uncovers the obsession that drove these men to great invention and greater understanding.
NZ$30.00 + delivery.
THE BAROMETER HANDBOOK.,By David Burch. Paperback, 191mm x 235mm, 239 pages, black and white photographs and illustration.
Since the first public appearance of barometers some three hundred years ago, the barometer has traveled through history along two seperate paths.
There has been the lineage of instrument makers and engineering scientists who focus on how barometers work, how to make and repair them, how to calibrate them, and how to tell a good one from not so good; and along the other path is the lineage of barometer users whose focus is one the meaning of atmospheric pressure and how to use that information to analyze and forecast the weather.
The barometer remains the most important tool for evaluating and predicting the weather. This book explains why knowing accurate values of the atmospheric pressure can improve this process and benefit all applications. Ways to evaluate and calibrate aneroid and electronic barometers using readily available data by Internet or telephone are clearly described. Tactical applications to marine navigation are covered. The book also includes worldwide average monthly pressures and their standard deviations.
NZ$56.50 + Delivery
DEFINING THE WIND.By Scott Huler. Paperback, 132mm x 204mm, 290 pages, monochrome illustrations.
Defining the Wind is a wonderfully written account of one man's crusade to learn about what the wind is made of by tracing the history of the Beaufort Scale and its eccentric creator, Sir Francis Beaufort. It's as much about the language we use to describe our world as it is an exhortation to observe it more closely.
Was NZ$40.00 + delivery.
Now NZ$25.00 + delivery.
NORTH POLE SOUTH POLE.
By Gillian Turner. Paperback. 274 pages, 140mm x 210mm, black and white illustrations.
This engrossing book tells, for the first time, the complete story of the quest to understand earth’s magnetism – from the fascination of ancient Greeks with magnetised rocks to the astonishing modern discoveries that finally revealed the truth. North Pole South Pole gives us an extraordinary window into science, passion and the brilliance of the human mind.
NZ$41.00 + delivery.
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