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From Paleolithic flax to 3D knitting, explore the global history of textiles and the world they weave together in this enthralling and educational guide. The story of humanity is the story of textiles -- as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world. Textiles funded the Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; they gave us banks and bookkeeping, Michelangelo's David and the Taj Mahal. The cloth business spread the alphabet and arithmetic, propelled chemical research, and taught people to think in binary code. Assiduously researched and deftly narrated, The Fabric of Civilization tells the story of the world's most influential commodity.
We tend to see history and evolution springing from separate roots, one grounded in the human world and the other in the natural world. Human beings have, however, become probably the most powerful species shaping evolution today, and human-caused evolution in other species has probably been the most important force shaping human history. This book introduces readers to evolutionary history, a new field that unites history and biology to create a fuller understanding of the past than either can produce on its own. Evolutionary history can stimulate surprising new hypotheses for any field of history and evolutionary biology. How many art historians would have guessed that sculpture encouraged the evolution of tuskless elephants? How many biologists would have predicted that human poverty would accelerate animal evolution? How many military historians would have suspected that plant evolution would convert a counter-insurgency strategy into a rebel subsidy? With examples from around the globe, this book will help readers see the broadest patterns of history and the details of their own life in a new light.
"Cotton, 2nd edition, edited by David D. Fang and Richard G. Percy, is a long awaited, much needed comprehensive update on the science of cotton. This book epitomizes the thorough coverage of an Agronomy Monograph. Readers will find essential coverage of the many scientific advancements in the field, from fiber handling to the transgenic cotton revolution. This amazing and versatile crop, cultivated for more than 7000 years, is one of the most powerful stories in agricultural science. More than 50 experts who contributed to this volume represent the leading edge of this exciting story."
Transmitting and Circulating the Late Antique and Byzantine Worlds seeks to be a crucial contribution to the history of medieval connectedness. Using one of the methodological tools associated with the global history movement, this volume aims to use connectedness to revitalise local and regional networks of exchange and movement. Its case studies collectively point caution toward assuming or asserting global-scale transmission of meaning or items unchanged, and show instead how meaning is locally produced and regionally formulated, and how this is no less dynamic than any global-level connectedness. These case studies by early career scholars range from the movement of cotton growing practi...
The field of molecular and genomic evolution has been catalysed by the ever increasing availability of high throughput data such as transcriptome evolution, genotype-phenotype evolution, and genetic robustness. However, there is also an urgent requirement for the emergence of new paradigms (universally accepted scientific frameworks) supported by conceptual breakthroughs, since there is now widespread agreement that genome evolution research should be far more than a static pattern characterized by some well-known arguments and yet more big data for testing or extension. Furthermore, while the internet has made a vast body of literature and data widely accessible, researchers are increasingl...
Echinacea has emerged from the realm of folklore medicine and into the territory of valued and potentially fundamental therapy. While an understanding of the promising medicinal applications of Echinacea is important, knowledge of the herb's chemistry, cultivation, and analytical profiles is equally as significant. Echinacea: The genus Echin
We’ve always dreamed of perfect places: Eden, heaven, Utopia. Imagine gambling without loss, love without heartbreak, sex without exposure, experience without risk. Welcome to the fascinating world of online virtual reality, the land of invented places and populations that is entered and inhabited every week by nearly fifty million people worldwide. Each participant creates a virtual body, works at virtual jobs, and makes virtual friends and family. In Second Lives, Tim Guest, an internationally acclaimed young journalist, takes us on a revelatory journey through the electronic looking glass as he investigates one of the most bizarre phenomena of the twenty-first century. From Second Life ...