city. Its buildings were monuments to its success and vitality in the first half of the twentieth century. At the start of the twenty-first century, those same monuments are now ruins: the United Artists Theater, the Whitney Building, the Farwell Building and the once ravishing Michigan Central Station (unused since 1988) today look as if a bomb had dropped on Motor City, leaving behind the ruins of a once great civilization. In a series of weekly photographic bulletins for Time magazine called "Detroit's Beautiful, Horrible Decline," photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre have been revealing to an astonished America the scale of decay in Detroit. "The state of ruin is essentially a temporary situation that happens at some point, the volatile result of change of era and the fall of empires," write Marchand and Meffre. "Photography appeared to us as a modest way to keep a little bit of this ephemeral state." As Detroit's white middle class continues to abandon the city center for its dispersed suburbs, and its downtown high-rises empty out, these astounding images, which convey both the imperious grandeur of the city's architecture and its genuinely shocking decline, preserve a moment that warns us all of the transience of great epochs.

    Whether you’re enraged by Ikea’s Verdanagate, want to know what the Beach Boys have in common with easy Jet or why it’s okay to like Comic Sans, Just My Type will have the answer. Learn why using upper case got a New Zealand health worker sacked. Refer to Prince in the Tafkap years as a Dingbat (that works on many levels). Spot where movies get their time periods wrong and don’t be duped by fake posters on eBay. Simon Garfield meets the people behind the typefaces and along the way learns why some fonts – like men – are from Mars and some are from Venus. From type on the high street and album covers, to the print in our homes and offices, Garfield is the font of all types of knowledge.

    Yet the great majority of fatalities from arsenic in the nineteenth century came not from intentional poisoning, but from accident.Kept in many homes for the purpose of poisoning rats, the white powder was easily mistaken for sugar or flour and often incorporated into the family dinner. It was also widely present in green dyes, used to tint everything from candles and candies to curtains, wallpaper, and clothing (it was arsenic in old lace that was the danger). Whether at home amidst arsenical curtains and wallpapers, at work manufacturing these products, or at play swirling about the papered, curtained ballroom in arsenical gowns and gloves, no one was beyond the poison's reach.Drawing on the medical, legal, and popular literature of the time, The Arsenic Century paints a vivid picture of its wide-ranging and insidious presence in Victorian daily life, weaving together the history of its emergence as a nearly inescapable household hazard with the sordid story of its frequent employment as a tool of murder and suicide. And ultimately, as the final chapter suggests, arsenic in Victorian Britain was very much the pilot episode for a series of environmental poisoning dramas that grew ever more common during the twentieth century and still has no end in sight.

    It rescued ancient learning from obscurity, transformed knowledge of the natural and physical world, and brought the thrill of book ownership to the masses. But, as Andrew Pettegree reveals in this work of great historical merit, the story of the post-Gutenberg world was rather more complicated than we have often come to believe.The Book in the Renaissance reconstructs the first 150 years of the world of print, exploring the complex web of religious, economic, and cultural concerns surrounding the printed word. From its very beginnings, the printed book had to straddle financial and religious imperatives, as well as the very different requirements and constraints of the many countries who embraced it, and, as Pettegree argues, the process was far from a runaway success. More than ideas, the success or failure of books depended upon patrons and markets, precarious strategies and the thwarting of piracy, and the ebb and flow of popular demand. Owing to his state-of-the-art and highly detailed research, Pettegree crafts an authoritative, lucid, and truly pioneering work of cultural history about a major development in the evolution of European society.

    It focuses on key movements and innovations in style for both men and women, and explores these through the work of the most original and influential designers. Chapters are organized around crucial shifts in style and major world events, and exciting advances in fashion are placed within their socioeconomic, political, and cultural contexts.International in scope, this new edition includes updates on the most important new designers and the reinvention of brands. The reference section includes an extensive bibliography.

    It appears that no communication system of equivalent power exists elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Any normal human child will learn a language based on rather sparse data in the surrounding world, while even the brightest chimpanzee, exposed to the same environment, will not. Why not? How, and why, did language evolve in our species and not in others? Since Darwin's theory of evolution, questions about the origin of language have generated a rapidly-growing scientific literature, stretched across a number of disciplines, much of it directed at specialist audiences. The diversity of perspectives - from linguistics, anthropology, speech science, genetics, neuroscience and evolutionary biology - can be bewildering. Tecumseh Fitch cuts through this vast literature, bringing together its most important insights to explore one of the biggest unsolved puzzles of human history.

    The Columbian Exposition opened on May 1, 1893, and more than 21,000,000 people visited the fair during the six months it was open to the public. The White City was a seminal event in America’s history that changed the way the world viewed Chicago. Fortunately, the fair was documented in stunning photographs by commercial and amateur photographers. This volume tells the story of the fair from its construction in Jackson Park to its destruction by fire after the fair had closed. Photographs of the exhibition halls, state buildings, foreign buildings, indoor and outdoor exhibits, the attractions of the Midway, and the various ways to move about the fairgrounds give a sense of how visitors experienced this extraordinary time and place.

    Every day people drink coffee on European terraces and kava in Pacific villages; chew betel nut in Indonesian markets and coca leaf on Andean mountainsides; swallow ecstasy tablets in the clubs of Amsterdam and opium pills in the deserts of Rajastan; smoke hashish in Himalayan temples and tobacco and marijuana in every nation on earth. Exploring the spectrum of drug use throughout history--from its roots in animal intoxication to its future in designer neurochemicals--High Society paints vivid portraits of the roles drugs play in different cultures as medicines, religious sacraments, status symbols, and coveted trade goods. From the botanicals of the classical world through the mind-bending self-experiments of 18th- and 19th-century scientists to the synthetic molecules that have transformed our understanding of the brain, Mike Jay reveals how drugs such as tobacco, tea, and opium drove the global trade and cultural exchange that created the modern world and examines the forces that led to the prohibition of opium and cocaine a century ago and the “war on drugs” that rages today.

    Prosek travels the globe to tell the story of the eel--from New York to New Zealand; from Europe to Japan and the small island of Pohnpei in Micronesia, where freshwater eels are worshipped by members of the eel clan.

    The Invention of Enterprise gathers together, for the first time, leading economic historians to explore the entrepreneur's role in society from antiquity to the present. Addressing social and institutional influences from a historical context, each chapter examines entrepreneurship during a particular period and in an important geographic location.The book chronicles the sweeping history of enterprise in Mesopotamia and Neo-Babylon; carries the reader through the Islamic Middle East; offers insights into the entrepreneurial history of China, Japan, and Colonial India; and describes the crucial role of the entrepreneur in innovative activity in Europe and the United States, from the medieval period to today. In considering the critical contributions of entrepreneurship, the authors discuss why entrepreneurial activities are not always productive and may even sabotage prosperity. They examine the institutions and restrictions that have enabled or impeded innovation, and the incentives for the adoption and dissemination of inventions. They also describe the wide variations in global entrepreneurial activity during different historical periods and the similarities in development, as well as entrepreneurship's role in economic growth. The book is filled with past examples and events that provide lessons for promoting and successfully pursuing contemporary entrepreneurship as a means of contributing to the welfare of society.The Invention of Enterprise lays out a definitive picture for all who seek an understanding of innovation's central place in our world.

    All was well until that day when they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and went scrambling for fig leaves to cover their bodies. Since then, lucrative businesses have arisen to provide many stylish ways to cover our nakedness, for the naked human body now evokes powerful and often contradictory ideas—it thrills and revolts us, signifies innocence and sexual experience, and often marks the difference between nature and society. In A Brief History of Nakedness psychologist Philip Carr-Gomm traces our inescapable preoccupation with nudity.            Rather than studying the history of the nude in art or detailing the ways in which the naked body has been denigrated in the media, A Brief History of Nakedness reveals the ways in which religious teachers, politicians, protesters, and cultural icons have used nudity to enlighten or empower themselves as well as entertain us. Among his many examples, Carr-Gomm discusses how advertisers and the media employ images of bare skin—or even simply the word “naked”—to garner our attention, how mystics have used nudity to get closer to God, and how political protesters have discovered that baring all is one of the most effective ways to gain publicity for their cause. Carr-Gomm investigates how this use of something as natural as nakedness actually gets under our skin and evokes complicated and complex emotional responses.            From the naked sages of India to modern-day witches and Christian nudists, from Lady Godiva to Lady Gaga, A Brief History of Nakedness surveys the touching, sometimes tragic and often bizarre story of our relationships with our naked bodies.

    By looking at how popular culture uses different digital technologies, Digital Fandom bolsters contemporary media theory by introducing new methods of analysis. Using the exemplars of alternate reality gaming and fan studies, this book takes into account a particular �philosophy of playfulness� in today's media in order to establish a �new media studies�. Digital Fandom augments traditional studies of popular media fandom with descriptions of the contemporary fan in a converged media environment. The book shows how changes in the study of fandom can be applied in a larger scale to the study of new media in general, and formulates new conceptions of traditional media theories.

    It is found in manga, anime, novels, movies, electronic games, and fan-created fiction, artwork, and video. This collection of 14 essays addresses boys' love as it has been received and modified by fans outside Japan as a commodity, controversy, and culture.

    More than just a speedy, but lazy, character in popular children’s fables, the hare is remarkable for its actual behavior and the intriguing myths that have developed around it. Here, Simon Carnell examines how this animal has been described, symbolized, visually depicted, and sought for its fur, flesh, and exceptional speed.              Carnell tracks the hare from ancient Egypt, where a hieroglyph of a hare stood for the concept of existence itself, to Crucifixion scenes, Buddhist lore, and Algonquin creation myths, to the serial works of Joseph Beuys, and even to an art installation in a Dutch brothel. The hare shows up in both surprising and expected places—it was the principal subject of the first hunting treatise, it appears in the first signed and dated picture of a single animal, and it was credited in early medicine with the most curative properties of any animal.            Combining recent natural history with an extensive and richly illustrated focus on visual art, Hare is highly accessible and packed with details about a historically fascinating animal.

    All the important aspects of the war are covered, from what JFK and his assassin had in common to a discussion of whether the tension ended after the fall of the Berlin Wall.Give yourself the opportunity to understand the global reach of this 45-year-long conflict, which shaped the latter half of the twentieth century.NOT GOT MUCH TIME?One, five and ten-minute introductions to key principles to get you started.AUTHOR INSIGHTSLots of instant help with common problems and quick tips for success, based on the author's many years of experience.EXTEND YOUR KNOWLEDGEExtra online articles at www.teachyourself.com to give you a richer understanding.THINGS TO REMEMBERQuick refreshers to help you remember the key facts.TRY THISInnovative exercises illustrate what you've learnt and how to use it.

    It looks set to establish itself as the definitive history of the Queen of Flowers.Ever since Sappho planted roses at the shrine of Aphrodite, no flower has captured the imagination in quite the same way. Wherever it has grown, human beings have projected on to it their dreams and aspirations. Celebrated as a sacred symbol and as a token of womanhood, the rose unites Venus with the Virgin Mary, the blood of Christ with the sweat of Muhammad, the sacred and the profane, life and death, the white rose of chastity and the red rose of consummation.In The Rose, the acclaimed horticultural historian Jennifer Potter shows what, exactly, gives this most fragrant flower its potency in societies around the world. Beginning her story in the Greek and Roman empires, she travels across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas to unravel its evolution from a simple briar of the northern hemisphere to the height of cultivated perfection found in rose gardens today. Whether laying bare the flower's long association with sexuality and secret societies, questioning the Crusaders' role in bringing roses back from the Holy Land, or hunting for its elusive blooms in the gardens of the Empress Josephine at Malmaison, Jennifer Potter reveals why this flower, above all others, has provoked such fascination.

    This, however, is just a very small part of their story—throughout history the otter has also been widely hunted for its fur and flesh.  In Otter, human geographer Daniel Allen reveals how the animal’s identity has been shaped by this variety of human interactions. As Allen explains, otters, while feared by some communities, were hunted to near extinction by others—killed for their valuable pelts in the north Pacific and chased with hounds for sport in Britain. In contrast, Allen describes how Native Americans revered the otter and how indigenous fishermen in parts of Asia trained otters to assist them. Sadly, now all thirteen species of otter are considered threatened, and their survival is by no means certain.In this wide-ranging look at the otter, Allen incorporates anecdotes from folklore,  sports, popular literature, media, and conservation studies in order to unravel this complicated cultural history. Otter isa lively book that offers a new way of thinking about this admired and endangered animal.

    It has been set in silver and gold jewelry, cut and shaped into fetish animals, and even formed to represent gods in many religions. This gemstone is displayed in museums around the world, representing the arts and traditions of prehistoric, historic, and modern societies. Turquoise focuses on the latest information in science and art from the greatest turquoise collections around the globe.

    Get ready for a rip-roaring ride through the political, religious and cultural life of the Middle Ages, one of the most talked-about periods in history. Medieval History for Dummies includes:Part I: The Early Middle Ages Chapter 1: The Middle Ages: When, Where, What, Who? Chapter 2: The end of Rome and the not so 'Dark Ages'. Chapter 3: Angles, Saxons and Feudalism. Chapter 4: The Carolingians grab their chance. Chapter 5: Charlemagne - A new empire is born.Part II: The Making of Europe Chapter 6: The (Holy Roman) Empire Strikes Back. Chapter 7: East Meets West: Islam in the Western Mediterranean. Chapter 8: The Vikings: A threat from the north. Chapter 9: Schism: The Church splits itself in two. Chapter 10: The Normans: The 'real' Middle Ages begin.Part III: 'Holy War': Crusading at home and abroad. Chapter 11: Crusade: A call to arms. Chapter 12: The First Crusade Chapter 13: England vs France & Pope vs Emperor Chapter 14: The Second Crusade & The 'Crusades at Home' Chapter 15: Richard vs Saladin: The Third Crusade Chapter 16: The later Crusades and other failures.Part IV: Parliament, Priories, Provisions & Plague Chapter 17: John, Henry, Rudolf & Edward. Chapter 18: Monks & Merchants: The new power brokers Chapter 19: The Papacy on Tour: Avignon and the Anti-Popes Chapter 20: 'God's Judgement?': The Black DeathPart V: The End of the Middle and the start of discovery. Chapter 21: One Hundred Years of War Chapter 22: The Peasants are Revolting Chapter 23: Agincourt, Joan of Arc & the French recovery Chapter 24: Columbus & The New WorldPart VI: The Part of Tens Chapter 25: Ten Rubbish Kings Chapter 26: Ten Curious Medieval Pastimes Chapter 27: Ten Great Castles Chapter 28: Ten People Who Changed The World Chapter 29: Ten Great Books (To read next)

    He was carrying $200,000 and a briefcase he said contained a bomb. No trace of the man known as D.B. Cooper has ever been found. Who was he? Where is he? Will the D. B.Cooper mystery ever be solved?