Can a person think herself to orgasm? Why doesn't Viagra help women-or, for that matter, pandas? Can a dead man get an erection? Is vaginal orgasm a myth? Mary Roach shows us how and why sexual arousal and orgasm-two of the most complex, delightful, and amazing scientific phenomena on earth-can be so hard to achieve and what science is doing to make the bedroom a more satisfying place.

    This title provides a complete guide to the mythical beasts and beings from a variety of cultures around the world, including Mesopotamian, ancient Greek, ancient Egyptian and Chinese, Japanese, Nordic, Celtic and Native American.

    Featuring more than 600 color illustrations, this is a treasure trove of fun and fascination for the entire family.

    Rather than fruitless speculation, Messner - the first person to climb Mount Everest without oxygen and the first to climb all 14 of the world's tallest peaks - provides his own first hand account. He begins by recounting his own terrifying run-ins with the Yeti - while hiking alone in remote parts of Nepal - and how they led to his determination to solve their mystery through subsequent expeditions.Yeti is a fascinating account of a quest, taking readers on hair-raising climbs through Nepal, Bhutan, Ladakh, Northern India, and even Tibet - where Messner was a fugitive from Chinese authorities. Messner reveals the truth behind these strange and wonderful creatures.

    Delving into the 15th century to uncover the origins of the werewolf legend, it is an eye-opening, blood-pounding tour through the ages, landing on the doorstep of creatures like hirsute mass-murderer Charles Manson and canine-directed Son of Sam. A helpful chronology of lycanthropic activities dates back 140,000 years, to the first mixing of human and lupine blood.

    From the world’s most painful hornet, to the flies that transmit deadly diseases, to millipedes that stop traffic, to the “bookworms” that devour libraries, to the Japanese beetles munching on your roses, Wicked Bugs delves into the extraordinary powers of many-legged creatures. With wit, style, and exacting research, Stewart has uncovered the most terrifying and titillating stories of bugs gone wild. It’s an A to Z of insect enemies, interspersed with sections that explore bugs with kinky sex lives (“She’s Just Not That Into You”), creatures lurking in the cupboard (“Fear No Weevil”), insects eating your tomatoes (“Gardener’s Dirty Dozen”), and phobias that feed our (sometimes) irrational responses to bugs (“Have No Fear”). Intricate and strangely beautiful etchings and drawings by Briony Morrow-Cribbs capture diabolical bugs of all shapes and sizes in this mixture of history, science, murder, and intrigue that begins—but doesn’t end—in your own backyard.

    Now Lost Star of Myth and Time shows evidence the Ancients were not just weaving fanciful tales - science is on the verge of an amazing discovery - our Sun has a companion star carrying us through a great cycle of stellar influences. If true, it means the Ancients were right and our views of space and time and the history of civilization will never be the same. More than that, it would mean we are now at the dawn of a new age in human development and world conditions.

    A fascinating exploration of sea monsters.

    In these pages you will meet extraordinary beings from Hindu and Navajo religions, Scandinavian tales, Russian folklore, Lithuanian stories, Irish oral history, American tall tales, and Aztec myth. Just some of the monstrous entourage:• Baku, a benevolent Japanese monster with the body of a horse, the head of a lion, and the legs of a tiger, who helps people by devouring their nightmares.• Kurma, the giant tortoise of Hindu myth, whose upper shell forms the heavens and lower part the earth.• Missipissy, the feared fish serpent of North America's Great Lakes region.This illustrated encyclopedia not only identifies and describes individual beasts in their cultural context but also groups them together across cultures and discusses common mythological strands and conceits.

    In The Poisoner's Handbook Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days when a pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. Drama unfolds case by case as the heroes of The Poisoner's Handbook—chief medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler—investigate a family mysteriously stricken bald, Barnum and Bailey's Famous Blue Man, factory workers with crumbling bones, a diner serving poisoned pies, and many others. Each case presents a deadly new puzzle and Norris and Gettler work with a creativity that rivals that of the most imaginative murderer, creating revolutionary experiments to tease out even the wiliest compounds from human tissue. Yet in the tricky game of toxins, even science can't always be trusted, as proven when one of Gettler's experiments erroneously sets free a suburban housewife later nicknamed "America's Lucretia Borgia" to continue her nefarious work. From the vantage of Norris and Gettler's laboratory in the infamous Bellevue Hospital it becomes clear that killers aren't the only toxic threat to New Yorkers. Modern life has created a kind of poison playground, and danger lurks around every corner. Automobiles choke the city streets with carbon monoxide; potent compounds, such as morphine, can be found on store shelves in products ranging from pesticides to cosmetics. Prohibition incites a chemist's war between bootleggers and government chemists while in Gotham's crowded speakeasies each round of cocktails becomes a game of Russian roulette. Norris and Gettler triumph over seemingly unbeatable odds to become the pioneers of forensic chemistry and the gatekeepers of justice during a remarkably deadly time. A beguiling concoction that is equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is a page-turning account of a forgotten New York.

    It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a maritime tragedy.Now, a new crew has been assembled. But this time they’re not out to entertain. Some seek to validate their life’s work. Some seek the greatest hunt of all. Some seek the truth. But for the ambitious young scientist Victoria Stewart this is a voyage to uncover the fate of the sister she lost.Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the waves. But the secrets of the deep come with a price.

    Something unknown that we cannot define; something that others have had the misfortune to encounter. People snatched soundlessly, never to be seen again. Or returned; dead. A strange and highly unusual predator. Highly intelligent. Very successful. And able to overpower someone in an instant. This is a puzzle. An often deadly one. Here follows some very troubling and disturbing accounts. Something in the Woods is taking people....

    Cox and Forshaw's contention? There is no need for quantum mechanics to be viewed this way. There is a lot of mileage in the 'weirdness' of the quantum world, and it often leads to confusion and, frankly, bad science. The Quantum Universe cuts through the Wu Li and asks what observations of the natural world made it necessary, how it was constructed, and why we are confident that, for all its apparent strangeness, it is a good theory.The quantum mechanics of The Quantum Universe provide a concrete model of nature that is comparable in its essence to Newton’s laws of motion, Maxwell’s theory of electricity and magnetism, and Einstein’s theory of relativity.

    The most fatal virus known to science, rabies — a disease that spreads avidly from animals to humans — kills nearly one hundred percent of its victims once the infection takes root in the brain. In this critically acclaimed exploration, journalist Bill Wasik and veterinarian Monica Murphy chart four thousand years of the history, science, and cultural mythology of rabies. From Greek myths to zombie flicks, from the laboratory heroics of Louis Pasteur to the contemporary search for a lifesaving treatment, Rabid is a fresh and often wildly entertaining look at one of humankind’s oldest and most fearsome foes.

    Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with - and perished from - for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive—and to increase our understanding of this iconic disease. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.