Paris at the time of the French Revolution was the world capital of science. Its scholars laid the foundations of today`s physics, chemistry & biology. They were true revolutionaries: agents of an upheaval both of understanding & of politics. Many had an astonishing breadth of talents. The Minister of Finance just before the upheaval did research on crystals & the spread of animal disease. After it, Paris`s first mayor was an astronomer, the general who fought off invaders was a mathematician while Marat, a major figure in the Terror, saw himself as a leading physicist. Paris in the century around 1789 saw the first lightning conductor, the first flight, the first estimate of the speed of light & the invention of the tin can & the stethoscope. The metre replaced the yard & the theory of evolution came into being. The city was saturated in science & many of its monuments still are. The Eiffel Tower, built to celebrate the Revolution`s centennial, saw the world`s first wind-tunnel & first radio message, & first observation of cosmic rays. Perhaps the greatest Revolutionary scientist of all, Antoine Lavoisier, founded modern chemistry & physiology, transformed French farming, & much enhanced gunpowder manufacture. His political activities brought him a fortune, but in the end led to his execution. The judge who sentenced him
- & many other researchers
- claimed that `the Revolution has no need for geniuses`. In this enthralling & timely book Steve Jones shows how wrong this was & takes a sideways look at Paris, its history, & its science, to give a dazzling new insight into the City of Light.

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No Need To Ask!
- Early Maps of London's Underground Railways by David Leboff & Tim Demuth, published by Capital Transport in
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The Non-Nonsense Guide to International Development explains what ‘development’ actually is
- & explores its political & economic
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This is a clear yet wide-ranging introduction to the state of health worldwide, exploring the ways in which health provision is often determined by ethnicity, class, & gender. Starting with a brief history of medical progress, this guide delves into current politics of health in the contexts of big business & private health provision, media, gender, & the environment. ...

In No One Left to Lie To, Christopher Hitchens portrays President Bill Clinton as one of the most ideologically skewed & morally negligent politicians of recent times. In a blistering polemic which shows that Clinton was at once philanderer & philistine, crooked & corrupt, Hitchens challenges perceptions
- of liberals & conservatives alike
- of this highly divisive figure.

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It is December 2001 & Argentina is in political & economic meltdown. Pablo Martelli, once in an elite branch of the police force known to all as the ` National Shame`, is a shadow of his former self, scraping by as a bathroom salesman. He cannot forget the enigmatic woman he met in a dance hall. She left him when she found out who he was working for, & he has never recovered from the blow. Late one evening, Martelli is summoned to a friend`s coastal retreat. He arrives to find his friend dead & is drawn into a bewildering sequence of events, on an odyssey that leads him through vast, empty pampas, along endless highways & into ghost towns seething with danger & brutality, to the ailing heart of his country. Before long he is forced to uncover the truth of his past life. It is a dangerous confession: after all, no-one loves a policeman. A highly original crime novel with a rich, dark humour, a host of extraordinary characters & plenty of smoking guns. ...

The colonel took the top off the coffee can & saw that there was only one little spoonful left. Fridays are different. Every other day of the week, the Colonel & his ailing wife fight a constant battle against poverty & monotony, scraping together the dregs of their savings for the food & medicine that keeps them alive. But on Fridays the postman comes
- & that sets a fleeting wave of hope rushing through the General's aging heart. For fifteen years he's watched the mail launch come into harbour, hoping he'll be handed an envelope containing the army pension promised to him all those years ago. Whilst he waits for the cheque, his hopes are pinned on his prize bird & the upcoming cockfighting season. But until then the bird
- like the Colonel & his wife
- must somehow be fed...


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Hope, resignation, despair, sadness, humour, confusion, ruthlessness, compassion, kindness, generosity & love inhabit Pete Ayrton`s anthology of writings from the Spanish Civil War: there is little sense of certainty & still less of triumphalism among the bewilderingly diverse Republican & Nationalist coalitions, all shades of which are represented here. Previous collections privileged the writings of the International Brigades over those of the Spanish, sometimes excluding them altogether.! No Pasaran! corrects the balance: by far the largest contingent of its thirty-five writers are Spanish, including Luis Bunuel, Manuel Rivas, Javier Cercas, Arturo Barea, Joan Sales & Chaves Nogales. The remainder offer contrasting perspectives of participants in the conflict from America (among them John Dos Passos, Muriel Rukeyser & Langston Hughes); Italy (Curzio Malaparte & Leonardo Sciascia); France (Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Malraux & others); Germany (Gustav Regler); Russia (Victor Serge); Great Britain (including Arthur Koestler, George Orwell & Laurie Lee); Cuba, Argentina & Mexico. Pete Ayrton brings together hauntingly vivid stories from a bitterly fought war. This is powerful writing that allows the reader to witness life behind & at the front lines of both sides. ...

In the shadow of Mount Kenya, surrounded by the forests & creatures of the savannah, life drags interminably for the inmates of P.O.W. Camp 354. Confined to an endless cycle of boredom & frustration, it is little wonder when one prisoner realises he can bear it no longer. When the clouds covering Mount Kenya part one morning to reveal its towering peaks for the first time, Felice Benuzzi is transfixed. The tedium of camp life is broken by the beginnings of a sudden idea
- an outrageous, dangerous, brilliant idea. There are not many people who would break out of a P.O.W. camp, trek for days across perilous terrain before climbing the north face of Mount Kenya with improvised equipment, meagre rations, & with a picture of the mountain on a tin of beef among their more accurate guides. There are probably fewer still who would break back in to the camp on their return. This is the remarkable story of three such men. No Picnic on Mount Kenya is a powerful testament to the human spirit of revolt & adventure in even the darkest of places.
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