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Explore the history and development of the airplane and find out how an airplane works. Learn about the inventors who helped influence the invention of the airplane.

The universe's Inventor designed us like he did the world: with passion and precision and purpose. He made us for confidence and significance, joy and relationship. He made us to be part of something massive and majestic―to contribute to his work of remaking this world and to play vital parts in his Kingdom. But we have a vicious enemy, hell-bent on thwarting us. Our enemy spins lies that convince us into distraction and dependence―on alcohol,...

A history and analysis of the development of domestic design in early modern Britain and America. How did our modern ideas of physical well-being originate? As John Crowley demonstrates in The Invention of Comfort, changes in sensible technology owed a great deal to fashion-conscious elites discovering discomfort in surroundings they earlier had felt to be satisfactory. Written in an engaging style that will appeal to historians and material culture...

With the publication of Essay on the Principle of Population and its projection of food shortages in the face of ballooning populations, British theorist Thomas Robert Malthus secured a leading role in modern political and economic thought. In this startling new interpretation, Deborah Valenze reveals how canonical readings of Malthus fail to acknowledge his narrow understanding of what constitutes food production. Valenze returns to the eighteenth-century...

Inventions are new things that nobody has made before. People think of new things to help us with our work and play. What are some new inventions that you use?

For the first time available in English, Licia do Prado Valladares's classic anthropological study of Brazil's vast, densely populated urban living environments reveals how the idea of the favela became an internationally established-and even attractive and exotic-representation of poverty. The study traces how the term "favela" emerged as an analytic category beginning in the mid-1960s, showing how it became the object of immense popular debate and...

Inside this Instaread Summary & Analysis of The Invention of Nature: • Summary of book • Introduction to the Important People in the book • Analysis of the Themes and Author's Style

A provocative account showing that "China"-and its 5,000 years of unified history-is a national myth, created only a century ago with a political agenda that persists to this day. China's current leadership lays claim to a 5,000-year-old civilization, but "China" as a unified country and people, Bill Hayton argues, was created far more recently by a small group of intellectuals. In this compelling account, Hayton shows how China's present-day geopolitical...

Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings and speculate about what those findings tell us about our earliest ancestors. We are obsessed with prehistory-and, in this respect, our current era is no different from any other in the last three hundred years. In this coruscating work, acclaimed historian Stefanos Geroulanos demonstrates how claims about...