edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

    Diarmuid Jeffreys traces the story of aspirin from the drug's origins in ancient Egypt, through its industrial development at the end of the nineteenth century and its key role in the great flu pandemic of 1918, to its subsequent exploitation by the pharmaceutical conglomerates and the marvelous powers still being discovered today.

    . . It appeals to the kid in everybody." That same kind of magic captures "the kid in everybody" when they pick up Timeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them. Timeless Toys represents one of the finest documentaries and displays of modern toys ever written. Author Tim Walsh, a successful toy inventor himself, reveals a world of commerce, toys, and wonder that is equally fun, fascinating, and nostalgic. Readers of every age and background will find it impossible to pick up this book, turn a few pages, and not become spellbound by its insightful stories and the personal memories that the text and 420 brilliantly colored photographs bring forth. Slinky, Lego, Tonka trucks, Monopoly, Big Wheel, Frisbee, Hula Hoop, Super Ball, Scrabble, Barbie, Radio Flyer Wagons: All of these and many, many more are featured in this fascinating tome, along with the toys' histories, insider profiles, and rare interviews with toy industry icons. It's simply magic! Vote for your favorite toy and be part of VH1's "I Love Toys," a show currently in production, set to air next spring. It will be a five-hour toyathon on the top 100 toys of all time. Click here to vote for your favorite toy of all time!

    Linzmayer digs into forgotten archives and interviews the key players to give readers the real story of Apple Computer, Inc. This updated and expanded edition includes tons of new photos, timelines, and charts, as well as coverage of new lawsuit battles, updates on former Apple executives, and new chapters on Steve Wozniak and Pixar.

    Untouchables, a five year investigation which the Yard tried to stop, provides the essential context to the phone hacking and other scandals currently engulfing Britain's most powerful police force. Republished after seven years, it was the first book to question the cosy relationship between the Yard and sections of the media, to explain why cops are incapable of investigating themselves and to expose the lack of independence in the new police watchdog. From the 1983 Brinks Matt robbery, through the murders of Daniel Morgan, David Norris, Stephen Lawrence, Jill Dando and Damilola Taylor to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, Untouchables reveals the cover ups, double standards and miscarriages of justice during the Yard's phoney war on corruption. Sunday Times journalist Michael Gillard and TV producer Laurie Flynn expose how the discredited use of supergrasses in the war on corruption has re-emerged in the new wars on terror and crime, with the same disastrous effects: prosecution misconduct, collapsed trials, huge bills for the taxpayer, victims left without justice and the guilty walking free.

    Lacking funds and plagued by hunger, cruel weather, and unpredictable terrain, Shackleton and his party accomplished some of the most remarkable feats in the history of exploration. Not only were members of the expedition the first to climb the active volcano Mount Erebus and the first to reach the South Magnetic Pole, but Shackleton himself led a party of four that trudged hundreds of miles across uncharted wastelands and up to the terrible Antarctic Plateau to plant the Union Jack only ninety-seven miles from the South Pole itself. Based on extensive research and first-hand accounts Riffenburgh makes the expedition vivid while providing fascinating insight into the age of British exploration and Empire.

    Invented to frighten evil spirits rather than fuel guns or bombs—neither of which had been thought of yet—their simple mixture of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal went on to make the modern world possible. As word of its explosive properties spread from Asia to Europe, from pyrotechnics to battleships, it paved the way for Western exploration, hastened the end of feudalism and the rise of the nation state, and greased the wheels of the Industrial Revolution.With dramatic immediacy, novelist and journalist Jack Kelly conveys both the distant time in which the �devil’s distillate” rose to conquer the world, and brings to rousing life the eclectic cast of characters who played a role in its epic story, including Michelangelo, Edward III, Vasco da Gama, Cortés, Guy Fawkes, Alfred Nobel, and E. I. DuPont. A must-read for history fans and military buffs alike, Gunpowder brings together a rich terrain of cultures and technological innovations with authoritative research and swashbuckling style.

    Given as remembrances at wakes and funerals, communions and confirmations, holy cards are also a widely popular-and highly collectible-form of folk art. This handsome volume, the only book available on the subject, is both a rich illustrated survey of this devotional art and a gallery of saints organized thematically along with brief biographies, attributes, and powers.Prophets and angels, disciples and evangelists, martyrs and hermits, visionaries and mystics are among the religious figures in Catholicism represented here-in exquisite turn-of-the-century depictions that are at times dramatic or disturbing, at times moving or comforting. Barbara Calamari and Sandra Di Pasqua, who also collaborated on Novena and Holy Places, explain the often enigmatic symbolism in these cards in a beautiful book that makes an ideal gift for first communion, confirmation, or graduation. Author Bio: Barbara Calamari is a freelance writer who has worked in both film and television. Sandra Di Pasqua is a graphic designer and art director. Both authors live in New York City.

    Many mysterious questions about the Ice Age arise: What would cause the summer temperatures of the northern United States and Europe to plummet over 50... Full description

    In the course of his long career in the northern Italian city of Cremona, he created more than a thousand stringed instruments; approximately six hundred survive, their quality unequalled by any subsequent violin-maker. In this fascinating book, Toby Faber traces the rich, multilayered stories of six of these peerless creations–five violins and a cello–and the one towering artist who brought them into being. Blending history, biography, meticulous detective work, and an abiding passion for music, Faber takes us from the salons of Vienna to the concert halls of New York, and from the breakthroughs of Beethoven’s last quartets to the first phonographic recordings. This magnificent narrative invites us to share the life, the intrigue, and the incomparable beauty of the world’s most marvelous stringed instruments.

    First Farmers: the Origins of Agricultural Societies offers readers an understanding of the origins and histories of early agricultural populations in all parts of the world.Uses data from archaeology, comparative linguistics, and biological anthropology to cover developments over the past 12,000 yearsExamines the reasons for the multiple primary origins of agricultureFocuses on agricultural origins in and dispersals out of the Middle East, central Africa, China, New Guinea, Mesoamerica and the northern AndesCovers the origins and dispersals of major language families such as Indo-European, Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, Niger-Congo and Uto-Aztecan

    Recipes, games, costumes, party ideas, and decorations, along with excerpts from vintage periodicals, show the gaiety that epitomized historic Halloween celebrations.

    But was the “mechanical horse” truly destined to usher in a new era of road travel or would it remain merely a plaything for dandies and schoolboys? In Bicycle: The History (named by Outside magazine as the #1 book on bicycles), David Herlihy recounts the saga of this far-reaching invention and the passions it aroused. The pioneer racer James Moore insisted the bicycle would become “as common as umbrellas.” Mark Twain was more skeptical, enjoining his readers to “get a bicycle. You will not regret it—if you live.” Because we live in an age of cross-country bicycle racing and high-tech mountain bikes, we may overlook the decades of development and ingenuity that transformed the basic concept of human-powered transportation into a marvel of engineering. This lively and engrossing history retraces the extraordinary story of the bicycle—a history of disputed patents, brilliant inventions, and missed opportunities. Herlihy shows us why the bicycle captured the public’s imagination and the myriad ways in which it reshaped our world.