history of science

This work, translated by Henry M. Labouchere and William Jesse from the second edition of Das Leben der Vögel, was written by A.E. Brehm, the author of the very well-known zoological encyclopedia Brehms Tierleben (Brehm’s Life of Animals). The first half of the book consists of essays describing various behavioral, social, morphological, and even economic characteristics of birds. The last half is a study of fifty individual species. The book is dedicated to Brehm’s father, Christian, a pastor and noted ornithologist in his own right.

The stark black publisher’s binding—contrasted with brilliant gold, blue, green, and red embellishments—would certainly have attracted any child to this astronomical children’s text. This book broke with the more traditional format of the dissemination of astronomical knowledge in France at the time, which often took place in a belles-lettres format under the pretext of a knowledgeable man conversing with a young and pretty woman.

David Rickard gives gold’s poor relation the royal treatment in this scholarly work on the mineral pyrite. Rickard presents both the social uses of pyrite—from historical accounts—and the scientific nature of the mineral. Whether a scientist is researching the history of an older piece of metalwork or the chemical properties of the raw material, Rickard’s work is useful for the scholar and layman alike. This nicely illustrated book is from the Minerals Library at the National Museum of Natural History.

Written by former National Air and Space Museum curator for rocketry Frank H. Winter, this Smithsonian publication is considered to be the first comprehensive history of the use of rockets as artillery in the late-18th and 19th centuries. Englishmen William Congreve and William Hale developed and refined the rocket as a piece of technology. Gunpowder rockets have been used in a variety of military and non-military applications, including life-saving (rescues at sea), whaling, and torpedoes.