Humans have always had the ability to influence the genetic makeup of their children. Individuals who wanted tall and attractive children, for instance, could find tall and attractive partners to reproduce with, thereby raising the probability that their progeny would be tall and attractive. However, until very recently, this power was limited. Individuals …
True to its name, DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Top 10 Cuba covers all the island nation's major sights and attractions in easy-to-use "top 10" lists that help you plan the vacation that's right for you.
The jewel of the Veneto, Venice is a dreamlike city filled with architectural wonders and incredible collections of art. But this region offers far more than this watery oasis. Lake Garda boasts beautiful scenery, Verona features the world's third-largest Roman Arena, and the Dolomites are rich with alpine forests and verdant hills.
The Roman Empire was a remarkable achievement. It had a population of sixty million people spread across lands encircling the Mediterranean and stretching from northern England to the sun-baked banks of the Euphrates, and from the Rhine to the North African coast. It was, above all else, an empire of force--employing a mixture of violence, suppression, order, and tactical use of power to develo…
Postmodernism has become the buzzword of contemporary society over the last decade. But how can it be defined? In this highly readable introduction the mysteries of this most elusive of concepts are unraveled, casting a critical light upon the way we live now, from the politicizing of museum culture to the cult of the politically correct. The key postmodernist ideas are explored and challenged,…
Japan is arguably today's most successful industrial economy, combining almost unprecedented affluence with social stability and apparent harmony. Japanese goods and cultural products--from animated movies and computer games to cars, semiconductors, and management techniques--are consumed around the world. In many ways, Japan is an icon of the modern world, and yet it remains something of an en…
Landscape is a subject of study that belongs to nobody. It has long been studied in various ways and under various guises by geologists, social and cultural geographers, planners, ecologists, historians and art historians, archaeologists and anthropologists. Landscapes form the basis for much poetry and innumerable novels and are thus of interest to…
Undeniably, water, the nutrient comprising the greatest percentage of mass in the human body, has the most dramatic impact on function and structure when its balance is upset. The human body is resilient to some change. However, during physical activities, such as athletics, the effects of water deficit can be magnified to that point where physical and mental functions are diminis…
A common- sense understanding of the ‘longue durée’ might be that it simply refers to the long term, a long period of chronological time. This notion of clock or objective chronological time is ultimately uninteresting and helps us to explain and understand nothing. It is empty time, time as a container segmented by dates and events, befores and afters.The Annales approach to t…
ooking back upon the operations of 1916, and in anticipation of the battles to come, the French prime minister, Aristide Briand, remarked that military offensives had become ‘really like a great industrial undertaking. There were so many miles of front, so many troops, and so many guns required; all had to be calculated to a nicety, and all kinds of preparations made’.1 In the…