Smithsonian Books imprint: 162 books
Imagined Life
A Speculative Scientific Journey among the Exoplanets in Search of Intelligent Aliens, Ice Creatures, and Supergravity Animals
Language: English
Release Date: September 17, 2019
The captivating possibilities of extraterrestrial life on exoplanets, based on current scientific knowledge of existing worlds and forms of life
It is now known that we live in a galaxy with more planets than stars. The Milky Way alone encompasses 30 trillion potential home planets. Scientists...
by Peter J. Kuznick, James Gilbert
Language: English
Release Date: April 9, 2013
Language: English
Release Date: April 9, 2013
This anthology of essays questions many widespread assumptions about the culture of postwar America. Illuminating the origins and development of the many threads that constituted American culture during the Cold War, the contributors challenge the existence of a monolithic culture during the 1950s...
Cancer in the Community
Class and Medical Authority
Language: English
Release Date: April 9, 2013
Focusing on deep conflicts between the medical establishment and the working class, Martha Balshem chronicles a health education project in “Tannerstown,” a pseudonym for a blue-collar neighborhood in northeast Philadelphia.
Ethics on the Ark
Zoos, Animal Welfare, and Wildlife Conservation
Language: English
Release Date: January 11, 2012
Ethics on the Ark presents a passionate, multivocal discussion—among zoo professionals, activists, conservation biologists, and philosophers—about the future of zoos and aquariums, the treatment of animals in captivity, and the question of whether the individual, the species, or the ecosystem...
Museums, Objects, and Collections
A Cultural Study
Language: English
Release Date: August 15, 2017
This book examines the historical context of museums, their collections, and the objects that form them. Susan M. Pearce probes the psychological and social reasons that people collect and identifies three modes of collecting: collecting as souvenirs, as fetishes, and as systematic assemblages. She...
The Evolution of Washington, DC
Historical Selections from the Albert H. Small Washingtoniana Collection at the George Washington University
Language: English
Release Date: March 17, 2015
The Evolution of Washington, DC is a striking volume featuring select pieces of the extraordinary collection of Washingtoniana donated by Albert H. Small to the George Washington University in 2011. It showcases treasures such as an 1860 lithograph of the equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson in front...
by John C. Avise
Language: English
Release Date: May 27, 2014
Language: English
Release Date: May 27, 2014
Award-winning geneticist John C. Avise guides this delightful voyage around the planet in search of answers to nature's mysteries. He demonstrates how scientists directly examine DNA to address long-standing questions about wild animals, plants, and microbes. Through dozens of stories that span the...
Magnificent Failure
Free Fall from the Edge of Space
Language: English
Release Date: September 2, 2014
Locked in a desperate Cold War race against the Soviets to find out if humans could survive in space and live through a free fall from space vehicles, the Pentagon gave civilian adventurer Nick Piantanida’s Project Strato-Jump little notice until May Day, 1966. Operating in the shadows of well-funded,...
History of the Space Shuttle, Volume Two
Development of the Space Shuttle, 1972-1981
Language: English
Release Date: September 30, 2014
Basing his work on virtually untapped NASA archives, T. A. Heppenheimer has produced the second volume of his definitive history of the space shuttle. Volume Two traces the development of the shuttle through a decade of engineering setbacks and breakthroughs, program-management challenges, and political...
Time and Navigation
The Untold Story of Getting from Here to There
Language: English
Release Date: June 2, 2015
If you want to know where you are, you need a good clock. The surprising connection between time and place is explored in Time and Navigation: The Untold Story of Getting from Here to There, the companion book to the National Air and Space Museum exhibition of the same name.
Today we use...
Tupperware
The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America
Language: English
Release Date: September 30, 2014
From Wonder Bowls to Ice-Tup molds to Party Susans, Tupperware has become an icon of suburban living. Tracing the fortunes of Earl Tupper's polyethylene containers from early design to global distribution, Alison J. Clarke explains how Tupperware tapped into potent commercial and social forces, becoming...
Visions of a Flying Machine
The Wright Brothers and the Process of Invention
Language: English
Release Date: December 2, 2014
This acclaimed book on the Wright Brothers takes the reader straight to the heart of their remarkable achievement, focusing on the technology and offering a clear, concise chronicle of precisely what they accomplished and how they did it. This book deals with the process of the invention of the airplane...
The Shackled Continent
Power, Corruption, and African Lives
Language: English
Release Date: October 5, 2010
A former Africa editor for The Economist, Robert Guest addresses the troubled continent's thorniest problems: war, AIDS, and above all, poverty. Newly updated with a preface that considers political and economic developments of the past six years, The Shackled Continentis engrossing, highly readable,...
Mustang Designer
Edgar Schmued and the P-51
Language: English
Release Date: December 2, 2014
Mustang Designer tells the story of American wartime fighter development, including engines and armaments, as part of a nationwide program of aircraft builders and fliers, focusing on Edgar Schmued, the designer of the Mustang. The P-51 Mustang is widely regarded as the best propeller-driven fighter...