From the use of metals by prehistoric man to the alchemical experiments of medieval and renaissance man to the complex chemical skills of contemporary man, Asimov traces the development of this building block of our technological world.

    

    

    

    Starting with the Presocratics, Vlastos describes the intellectual revolution that began with the cosmogonies of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes in the sixth century B.C. and culminated a century later in the atomist system of Leucippus and Democritus. What united these men was that for all of them nature remained the inviolate, all-inclusive principle of explanation, precluding any appeal to a supernatural cause or ordering agency. In a detailed analysis of the astronomical and physical theories of the Timaeus, Vlastos demonstrates Plato's role in the reception and transmission of the discovery of the new conception of the universe. Plato gives us the chance to see that movement from a unique perspective: that of a fierce opponent of the revolution who was determined to wrest from its brilliant discovery, annex its cosmos, and redesign it on the pattern of his own idealistic and theistic metaphysics. This book is a reprint of the edition published in 1975 by the University of Washington Press. It includes a new Introduction by Luc Brisson.

    atomic diplomacy toward the Soviet Union.In his Preface to this new edition, the author describes and evaluates the lengthening trail of new evidence that has come to light concerning these often emotionally debated subjects. The author also invokes his experience as a historical advisor to the controversial, aborted 1995 Enola Gay exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. This leads him to analyze the impact on American democracy of one of the most insidious of the legacies of Hiroshima: the political control of historical interpretation.Reviews of Previous Editions"The quality of Sherwin's research and the strength of his argument are far superior to previous accounts."—New York Times Book Review"Probably the definitive account for a long time to come. . . . Sherwin has tackled some of the critical questions of the Cold War's origins—and has settled them, in my opinion."—Walter LaFeber,Cornell University"One of those rare achievements of conscientious scholarship, a book at once graceful and luminous, yet loyal to its documentation and restrained in its speculations."—Boston Globe

    Its reach extended from C�rdoba to Samarkand, and it maintained and developed the tradition of wealth, cultural and artistic achievement, and thriving urban life that it had absorbed from its predecessors, the civilizations of Greece, Egypt, and Persia, and the ancient cities of the Middle East. It is this Islamic economy and civilization that the author portrays at its height and brilliantly sets into its context of satellite, in part semi-civilized, peripheral worlds--black North Africa, the barbarian West, the region of Russian rivers, and the Byzantine Empire. The book is considered a masterpiece of the Annales school of French historians.