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  The Poisoner's Handbook - Murder...

  Deborah Blum

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  Deborah Blum, writing with the high style and skill for suspense that is characteristic of the very best mystery fiction, shares the untold story of how poison rocked Jazz Age New York City. 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, while 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 compelling account of a forgotten New York.

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  Borneo Clinic's unique payment...

  PBS NewsHour

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  An environmentally friendly health clinic on the Southeast Asian island of Borneo that offers patients living in extreme poverty access to affordable health care.

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  Up to Heaven and Down to Hell -...

  Colin Jerolmack

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  A riveting portrait of a rural Pennsylvania town at the center of the fracking controversyShale gas extraction—commonly known as fracking—is often portrayed as an energy revolution that will transform the American economy and geopolitics. But in greater Williamsport, Pennsylvania, fracking is personal. Up to Heaven and Down to Hell is a vivid and sometimes heartbreaking account of what happens when one of the most momentous decisions about the well-being of our communities and our planet—whether or not to extract shale gas and oil from the very land beneath our feet—is largely a private choice that millions of ordinary people make without the public's consent.The United States is the only country in the world where property rights commonly extend "up to heaven and down to hell," which means that landowners have the exclusive right to lease their subsurface mineral estates to petroleum companies. Colin Jerolmack spent eight months living with rural communities outside of Williamsport as they confronted the tension between property rights and the commonwealth. In this deeply intimate book, he reveals how the decision to lease brings financial rewards but can also cause irreparable harm to neighbors, to communal resources like air and water, and even to oneself.

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  The Age of the Horse - An Equine...

  Susanna Forrest

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  A “superb” account of the enduring connection between humans and horses—“Full of the sort of details that get edited out of more traditional histories” (The Economist).   Fifty-six million years ago, the earliest equid walked the earth—and beginning with the first-known horse-keepers of the Copper Age, the horse has played an integral part in human history. It has sustained us as a source of food, an industrial and agricultural machine, a comrade in arms, a symbol of wealth, power, and the wild.   Combining fascinating anthropological detail and incisive personal anecdote, equestrian expert Susanna Forrest draws from an immense range of archival documents as well as literature and art to illustrate how our evolution has coincided with that of horses. In paintings and poems (such as Byron’s famous “Mazeppa”), in theater and classical music (including works by Liszt and Tchaikovsky), representations of the horse have changed over centuries, portraying the crucial impact that we’ve had on each other.   Forrest combines this history with her own experience in the field, and travels the world to offer a comprehensive look at the horse in our lives today: from Mongolia where she observes the endangered takhi, to a show-horse performance at the Palace of Versailles; from a polo club in Beijing to Arlington, Virginia, where veterans with PTSD are rehabilitated through interaction with horses.   “For the horse-addicted, a book can get no better than this . . . original, cerebral and from the heart.” —The Times (London)

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  Eutaw Springs - The Final Battle...

  Robert M. Dunkerly, Irene B. Boland

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  An in-depth analysis of one of the War for Independence’s bloodiest and least understood conflicts. 
   
  The Battle of Eutaw Springs took place on September 8, 1781, and was among the last in the War of Independence. It was brutal in its combat and reprisals, with Continental and Whig militia fighting British regulars and Loyalist regiments. Although its outcome was seemingly inconclusive, the battle, fought near present-day Eutawville, South Carolina, contained all the elements that defined the war in the South. In Eutaw Springs: The Final Battle of the American Revolution’s Southern Campaign, Robert M. Dunkerly and Irene B. Boland tell the story of this lesser known and under-studied battle of the Revolutionary War’s Southern Campaign. Shrouded in myth and misconception, the battle has also been overshadowed by the surrender of Yorktown. 
   
  Eutaw Springs represented lost opportunities for both armies. The American forces were desperate for a victory in 1781, and Gen. Nathanael Greene finally had the ground of his own choosing. British forces under Col. Alexander Stewart were equally determined to keep a solid grip on the territory they still held in the South Carolina lowcountry. 
   
  In one of the bloodiest battles of the war, both armies sustained heavy casualties with each side losing nearly twenty percent of its soldiers. Neither side won the hard-fought battle, and controversies plagued both sides in the aftermath. Dunkerly and Boland analyze the engagement and its significance within the context of the war’s closing months, study the area’s geology and setting, and recount the action using primary sources, aided by recent archaeology. 
   
  “A well put together book that is easy to read, and it makes good use of graphic material. Eutaw Springs is recommended.” —The Journal of America’s Military Past 
   
  “A long-overdue study of . . . Nathanael Greene’s last main force Southern campaign engagement. Drawing from a wealth of resources including new research, archaeology and pension documents, the authors have created an easy reading account. . . . For students of the Revolutionary War, this is must reading because so much focus has been directed at Yorktown where the British abandoned an army instead of the more mobile war in the South where the war was finally won by wearing down the British.” —Lawrence Babits, George Washington Distinguished Professor of History, East Carolina University 
   
  “A very good analysis of the political, military, and physical environment, with some profiles of a number of interesting people, most notably Nathanael Greene, after Washington the most important American general of the war, though he never won a battle.” —New York Military Affairs Symposium Review

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  The Engineering Revolution - How...

  Angus Buchanan

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  Over the past two million years that human species have inhabited the Planet Earth they have distinguished themselves by their ability to make and do things creatively to ensure their survival. From the beginning, therefore, they have been defined by their technology, and the history of technology is the history of the species. For most of this period, the development of human technical skills has been extremely slow and repetitive, limited to basic tools and weapons and the ability to control fire. The utilization of animal power and the invention of the means of harnessing the power of wind and falling water added gradually to their technical skills, but it was the discovery of ways of using power from heat engines a mere three hundred years ago that accelerated this process into a prodigious expansion of technical power that fundamentally transformed human societies . It is this development which deserves to be to be called The Engineering Revolution and provides the primary focus of this book.

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