For many the dawn of the twentieth century ushered in an era where the world map had few if any blank spaces left to discover. The age of exploration was supposedly dead. "New Spaces of Exploration" challenges this assumption. Focusing specifically on exploration in the twentieth century, the authors demonstrate how new technologies and changing geopolitical configurations have ensured that exploration has remained a key feature of our rapidly globalizing world. Ranging widely in their geo...

While the cultural history of the British Empire has recently attracted much interest, relatively little attention has been paid to the significance of its visualization. Yet the Empire was pictured across a wide spectrum of imagery, from paintings to postcards, maps to documents. Focusing on the role of photography, this wide-ranging book explores the aesthetics of empire.The development of photography in the Victorian era coincided with the dramatic expansion of the British Empir...

When Ferdinand Magellan set out to circumnavigate the globe in 1519, he wasn’t able to take a digital camera or a smartphone with him. Yet, as the eagerly awaited images from the Mars Rover prove, modern exploration is inconceivable without photography. Since its invention in 1839, photography was integral to exploration and used by explorers, sponsors and publishers alike, and in the early twentieth century, advances in technology – and photography’s newfound cultural currency as a truthf...

No matter how practised we are at history, it always humbles us. No matter how often we visit the past, it always surprises us.Winner of the Ernest Scott Prize and Shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Non-fiction'A rare feat of imagination and generosity' —Mark McKennaWith every sentence they write, historians must walk the tightrope between discipline and imagination, empathy and evidence. In this landmar...

Most people who have taken a biology course in the past 50 years are familiar with the work of David Lack, but few remember his name. Almost all general biology texts produced during that period have a figure showing the beak size differences among the finches of the Galapagos Islands from Lack's 1947 classic, Darwin's Finches. Lack's pioneering conclusions in Darwin's Finches mark the beginning of a new scientific discipline, evolutionary ecology. Tim Birkhead, in his acclaimed book, The ...

In ancient, pre-literate cultures across the globe, tribal elders had encyclopedic memories. They could name all the animals and plants across a landscape, identify the stars in the sky, and recite the history of their people. Yet today, most of us struggle to memorize more than a short poem. Using traditional Aboriginal Australian song lines as a starting point, Dr. Lynne Kelly has since identified the powerful memory technique used by our ancestors and indigenous people around the world....

A hard-hitting, timely, and provocative book about the history and future of the Canadian Arctic. With passion and sharp words, Arctic Front confronts Canada's longstanding neglect of the Far North and outline what needs to be done to protect our national interest.Through a lively and engaging history of the region, Arctic Front reveals how Canadians and their governments have:ignored this region for generationsexpanded Canadian sovereignty...

The Antarctic is one the most hostile natural environments in the world. It is an extraordinary physical space, which changes significantly in shape and size with the passing of the seasons. Politically, it is unique as it contains one of the few areas of continental space not claimed by any nation-state. Scientifically, the continental ice sheet has provided us with vital evidence about the Earth's past climate. In this Very Short Introduction, Klaus Dodds provides a modern accou...

When Sir John Franklin disappeared in the Arctic in the 1840s, the British Admiralty launched the largest rescue mission in its history. Among the search vessels was HMS Investigator, which left England in 1850 under the command of Captain Robert McClure. While the ambitious McClure never found Franklin, he and his crew did discover the fabled Northwest Passage.Like Franklin’s ships, though, Investigator disappeared in the most remote, bleak and unknown place on E...

The Secret Museum is a unique treasure trove of the most intriguing artifacts hidden away in museum archives from all over the world – curated, brought to light, and brought to life by Molly Oldfield in a beautifully illustrated collection.Who knows what’s hidden from view? Locked away in cabinets, secure storage and aircraft hangars.Most of a museum’s collection never gets seen. It sits in the quiet dark of an archive waiting for a treasure hunter or obsessive researcher t...

Peter Burke follows up his magisterial Social History of Knowledge, picking up where the first volume left off around 1750 at the publication of the French Encyclopédie and following the story through to Wikipedia. Like the previous volume, it offers a social history (or a retrospective sociology of knowledge) in the sense that it focuses not on individuals but on groups, institutions, collective practices and general trends.The book is divided into 3 parts. The first argu...

The ecologist and author of Soil & Soul makes a compelling and provocative argument for a new way of life in the face of climate change.Climate change is the greatest challenge that the world has ever faced. In this groundbreaking book, Alastair McIntosh summarizes the science of what is happening to the planet using his home country of Scotland as a case study. He then argues that the root of our climate crisis is not in our politics but in our consumeris...