100 Diagrams That Changed The World is a fascinating collection of the most significant plans, sketches, drawings and illustrations that have changed the way we think about the world. From primitive cave paintings to the complicated DNA double helix drawn by Crick and Watson, they chart dramatic breakthroughs in our understanding of the world and its history. This fascinating book encompasses everything from the triple spirals found on prehistoric megalithic tombs dating right up to the drawings sent out on the side of space exploration probes. Discover Leonardo da Vinci's beautiful technical drawings, pre-empting the invention of manned flight, Copernicus's bold diagrams that dared to tell us that Earth was not at the centre of the Universe, as well as the history of the more everyday diagrams that we now take for granted. Every diagram is clearly illustrated and placed into context with very accessible text even for the lay reader. Diagrams include: Egyptian Book of the Dead, Chauvet cave drawings, Aztec Calendar, sheet music, Vitruvian Man, Galileo's telescope, Hooke's Micrographia, the Porphyrian Tree, Dunhuang Star Map, Newcomen's steam engine, the Morse Code, Brooks Slave Ship, William Playfair's bar chart, Thomas Edison's light bulb, Nazi propaganda map, sewing patterns, Feynman Diagrams, the DNA double helix, IKEA flat-pack furniture instructions, the World Wide Web schematic, Carl Sagan's Pioneer Plaque.

A fascinating collection of some of the most significant, interesting, and groundbreaking letters ever written. The written word has the power to inspire, astonish, and entertain, as this collection of 100 letters that changed history will show. Ordered chronologically, the letters range from ink-inscribed tablets that vividly describe life in the Roman Empire to remarkable last wills and testaments, passionate outpourings of love and despair, and succinct notes with deadly consequences. Entries include: A job application from Leonardo da Vinci, with barely a mention of his artistic talents. Henry VIII’s love letters to Anne Boleyn, which eventually led to the dissolution of the monasteries. The scrawled note that brought about Oscar Wilde’s downfall. Emile Zola’s “J’accuse!” open letter, in support of an alleged spy and against anti-Semitism. Beatrix Potter’s correspondence with a friend’s son that introduced the character of Peter Rabbit. A last letter from the Titanic. Nelson Mandela’s ultimatum to the South African president. A stunning new edition with an elegant new cover, this fascinating book is perfect both for reading cover-to-cover and dipping into to discover the delights within.

A thought-provoking chronological journey through the world's most influential books. Many books have become classics, must-reads or overnight publishing sensations, but how many can genuinely claim to have changed the way we see and think? In 100 Books that Changed the World, authors Scott Christianson and Colin Salter bring together an exceptional collection of truly groundbreaking books – from scriptures that founded religions, to scientific treatises that challenged beliefs, to novels that kick-started literary genres. This elegantly designed book, first published in 2018 but updated with an exciting new cover, offers a chronological timeline of three millennia of human thought distilled in print, from the earliest illuminated manuscripts to the age of ebooks and audiobooks. Entries include: • The Iliad and The Odyssey, Homer (750 BC) • Shakespeare's First Folio (1623) • A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft (1792) • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) • The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank (1947) • Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe (1958) • A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking (1988) For literary lovers and rebellious readers, this book offers a fascinating overview of world history through the books that influenced and changed it.

This innovative book builds on the fact that there is now a large body of statistical information about today's highly unequal world. Bob Sutcliffe looks at current affairs, development, and international relations. For anyone wanting to understand the contemporary world, this book probes complex economic issues using innovative diagrams and charts.

This innovative title looks at the history of the Web from its early roots in the research projects of the US government to the interactive online world we know and use today. Fully illustrated with images of early computing equipment and the inside story of the online world’s movers and shakers, the book explains the origins of the Web’s key technologies, such as hypertext and mark-up language, the social ideas that underlie its networks, such as open source, and creative commons, and key moments in its development, such as the movement to broadband and the Dotcom Crash. Later ideas look at the origins of social networking and the latest developments on the Web, such as The Cloud and the Semantic Web. Following the design of the previous titles in the series, this book is in a new, smaller format. It provides an informed and fascinating illustrated history of our most used and fastest-developing technology.

Everything around us is designed and the word 'design' has become part of our everyday experience. But how much do we know about it? Fifty Cars That Changed the World imparts that knowledge listing the top 50 cars that have made a substantial impact in the world of British design today. From the1908 Ford Model T to the 1998 smart car, each entry offers a short appraisal to explore what has made their iconic status to give them a special place in design history.

In this groundbreaking book, Franco Moretti argues that literature scholars should stop reading books and start counting, graphing, and mapping them instead. In place of the traditionally selective literary canon of a few hundred texts, Moretti offers charts, maps and time lines, developing the idea of "distant reading" into a full-blown experiment in literary historiography, in which the canon disappears into the larger literary system. Charting entire genres-the epistolary, the gothic, and the historical novel-as well as the literary output of countries such as Japan, Italy, Spain, and Nigeria, he shows how literary history looks significantly different from what is commonly supposed and how the concept of aesthetic form can be radically redefined.