Forty years after first chewing on sugar cane in New Guinea, the home of sugar, the author underwent some complex dental work as a direct result of his sweet tooth. This led him to explore sugar cane's journey from New Guinea to Shakespeare's England. In the days before dentistry, people paid dearly for this sweet new food from exotic places. Queen Elizabeth I became so partial to hippocras, sugared almonds and pastilles that her teeth turned completely black.Bittersweet i...

A triumphantly toxic tome. As a dedicated Macinnis fan, I relish this latest display of erudition, story-telling and fun. One of his very best.'Robyn Williams, Head, ABC Science UnitWas Abraham Lincoln really as mad as a hatter?Who poisoned Phar Lap?Can wallpaper really kill?Was Jack the Ripper an arsenic eater?Painting a broad canvas, from the early Egyptians to the arsenical tube wells in Bangladesh and the Sarin gas attacks in a Tokyo subw...

Our story starts around 700 BC when the Chinese used a form of gunpowder to fumigate their houses. The first real rockets were gunpowder filled sections of bamboo thrown under horses to scare them; the next development was to tie these to arrows.The Mongols took rockets from China to Europe where only some, including Admiral Nelson and the Crown Prince of Sweden, were impressed. The Royal Navy used them in all sorts of odd actions against restless natives in Tierra Del Fuego, Austr...

Poisons permeate our world. They are in the environment, the workplace, the home. They are in food, our favorite whiskey, medicine, and well water. They have been used to cure diseases as well as incapacitate and kill. They smooth wrinkles, block pain, stimulate and enhance athletic ability. In this entertaining and fact-filled book, science writer Peter Macinnis considers poisons in all their aspects. He recounts stories of the celebrated poisoners in history and literature, from Nero to ...

Throughout history, momentous, enabling discoveries have led to a giant leap in our understanding of the workings of the universe and fast-tracked human progress. 100 Discoveries presents the greatest 100 breakthroughs in science and technology, medicine, and the major areas of human endeavour of the past 10,000 years, from the development of agriculture in 10,000BC to the discovery of genomics and the unravelling and manipulation of genes in living things. In identifying and desc...

Psst! It's true! This is the best book on POISONS you'll ever read!There's poison in pips, harm in herbs and definitely death in dyes. Poison is everywhere!Read about toxic wallpaper that killed even bedbugs. Find out why buns were bad for bun-buyers and how a poison might cure cancer. Bone up on murder mysteries, including the one about glow-in-the-dark soup. But don't tell anyone how much you know, or they might lock you up.WARNINGcontains toxic tales and ...

"The Ostrich Paradox boldly addresses a key question of our time: Why are we humans so poor at dealing with disastrous risks, and what can we humans do about it? It is a must-read for everyone who cares about risk."—Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and author of Thinking, Fast and SlowWe fail to evacuate when advised. We rebuild in flood zones. We don't wear helmets. We fail to purchase insurance. We would rather ...

In the New York Times bestseller Everything All at Once, Bill Nye shows you how thinking like a nerd is the key to changing yourself and the world around you.Everyone has an inner nerd just waiting to be awakened by the right passion. In Everything All at Once, Bill Nye will help you find yours. With his call to arms, he wants you to examine every detail of the most difficult problems that look unsolvable—that is, until you find ...

Many of the world’s most important and life-saving devices and techniques were often discovered purely by accident. Serendipity, timing, and luck played a part in the discovery of unintentional cures and breakthroughs:A plastic shard in an RAF pilot’s eye leads to the use of plastic for contact lenses.The inability to remove a titanium chamber from rabbit’s bone leads to dental implants.Viagra was discovered by a group of chemists, working in the lab to find a new dru...

Have you ever wondered why we wear the type of clothes we do? Packed with outlandish outfits, this exciting history of fashion trends reveals the flamboyant fashions adopted (and discarded) by our ancestors.In the days before cosmetic surgery, people used bum rolls and bombastic breeches to augment their figures, painted their faces with poisonous concoctions, and doused themselves with scent to cover body odor.Take a fresh look at history’s hidden fashion disasters and disco...

For thousands of years, pirates have terrorized the ocean voyager and the coastal inhabitant, plundered ship and shore, and wrought havoc on the lives and livelihoods of rich and poor alike. Around these desperate men has grown a body of myths and legends-fascinating tales that today strongly influence our notions of pirates and piracy. Most of these myths derive from the pirates of the Golden Age,” from roughly 1655 to 1725. This was the age of the Spanish Main, of Henry Morgan and Black...

For word nerds and grammar geeks, a witty guide to the most commonly mispronounced words, along with their correct pronunciations and pithy forays into their fascinating etymologies and histories of use and misuse.With wit and good humor, this handy little book not only saves us from sticky linguistic situations but also provides fascinating cocktail-party-ready anecdotes. Entries reveal how to pronounce boatswain like an old salt on the deck of a ship, trompe ...