The founding of the university in 1867 created a unique community in what had been a prairie. Within a few years, this creative mix of teachers and scholars produced innovations in agriculture, engineering and the arts that challenged old ideas and stimulated dynamic new industries. Projects ranging from the Mosaic web browser to the discovery of Archaea and pioneering triumphs in women's education and wheelchair accessibility have helped shape the university's mission into a double helix ...

It's one thing we all have in common. We've all been to school. But as Zander Sherman shows in this fascinating, often shocking account of institutionalized education, sending your kids off to school was not always normal. In fact, school is a very recent invention. Taking the reader back to 19th-century Prussia, where generals, worried about soldiers' troubling individuality, sought a way to standardize every young man of military age, through to the most controversial debates that swirl ...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERCNN host and best-selling author Fareed Zakaria argues for a renewed commitment to the world’s most valuable educational tradition.**The liberal arts are under attack. The governors of Florida, Texas, and North Carolina have all pledged that they will not spend taxpayer money subsidizing the liberal arts, and they seem to have an unlikely ally in President Obama. While at a General Electric plant in early 2014, Obama remarked, "I promise ...

The ongoing assault on climate science in the United States has never been more aggressive, more blatant, or more widely publicized than in the case of the Hockey Stick graph—a clear and compelling visual presentation of scientific data, put together by MichaelE. Mann and his colleagues, demonstrating that global temperatures have risen in conjunction with the increase in industrialization and the use of fossil fuels. Here was an easy-to-understand graph that, in a glance, posed a threat t...

"Mind-opening, thought-provoking and incredibly timely… An absolutely spectacular read."—Cory Doctorow, BoingBoingA million listeners trust NPR's Brooke Gladstone to guide them through the complexities of the modern media. Bursting onto the page in vivid comics by acclaimed artist Josh Neufeld, this brilliant radio personality guides us through two millennia of media history, debunking the notion that "The Media" is an external force beyond our control and...

The fully updated fourth edition of the go-to guide for crafting winning essays for any type of graduate program or scholarship, including PhD, master’s, MBA, MD, JD, postdocs, DDS, DVM, Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright--you name it.Based on thousands of interviews with successful grad students and graduate admissions officers, Graduate Admissions Essays deconstructs and demystifies the ever-challenging and seemingly more impersonal application process...

"Whenever the people are well informed," Thomas Jefferson wrote, "they can be trusted with their own government."But what happens in a world dominated by complex science? Are the people still well-enough informed to be trusted with their own government? And with less than 2 percent of Congress with any professional background in science, how can our government be trusted to lead us in the right direction?Will the media save us? Don't count on it. In early 2008, of the 2,975...

Few today realize that electric cabs dominated Manhattan's streets in the 1890s; that Boise, Idaho, had a geothermal heating system in 1910; or that the first megawatt turbine in the world was built in 1941 by the son of publishing magnate G. P. Putnam -- a feat that would not be duplicated for another forty years. Likewise, while many remember the oil embargo of the 1970s, few are aware that it led to a corresponding explosion in green-technology research that was only derailed when energ...

The ostensible purpose of a library is to preserve the printed word. But for fifty years our country’s libraries–including the Library of Congress–have been doing just the opposite, destroying hundreds of thousands of historic newspapers and replacing them with microfilm copies that are difficult to read, lack all the color and quality of the original paper and illustrations, and deteriorate with age.With meticulous detective work and Baker’s well-known explanatory power, D...

To most people, technology has been reduced to computers, consumer goods, and military weapons; we speak of "technological progress" in terms of RAM and CD-ROMs and the flatness of our television screens. In Human-Built World, thankfully, Thomas Hughes restores to technology the conceptual richness and depth it deserves by chronicling the ideas about technology expressed by influential Western thinkers who not only understood its multifaceted character but who also explored its cr...

"Tells a story of a period when the quest for accurate timekeeping became an obsession in the US." — ChoiceThe public spaces and buildings of the United States are home to many thousands of timepieces—bells, time balls, and clock faces—that tower over urban streets, peek out from lobbies, and gleam in store windows. And in the streets and squares beneath them, men, women, and children wear wristwatches of all kinds. Americans have decorated their homes with...

"Written with clarity and a lively eye both for detail and for the progress of feminism in the United States."SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLEIn this fascinating study of American women inventors, historian Anne Macdonald shows how creative, resourceful, and entrepreneurial women helped to shatter the ancient stereotypes of mechanically inept womanhood. In presenting their stories, Anne Macdonald's thorough research in patent archives and her engaging use of period magazine, journals,...