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The Tale of Tea
The Tale of Tea presents a comprehensive history of tea from prehistoric times to the present day in a single volume, covering the fascinating social history of tea and the origins, botany and biochemistry of this singularly important cultigen.
Becoming Eloquent
Few topics of scientific enquiry have attracted more attention in the last decade than the origin and evolution of language. Few have offered an equivalent intellectual challenge for interdisciplinary collaborations between linguistics, cognitive science, prehistoric archaeology, palaeoanthropology, genetics, neurophysiology, computer science and robotics. The contributions presented in this volume reflect the multiplicity of interests and research strategy used to tackle this complex issue, summarize new relevant data and emerging theories, provide an updated view of this interdisciplinary venture, and, when possible, seek a future in this broad field of study.
The Tale of Tea
The Tale of Tea is the saga of globalisation. Tea gave birth to paper money, the Opium Wars and Hong Kong, triggered the Anglo-Dutch wars and the American war of independence, shaped the economies and military history of Táng and Sòng China and moulded Chinese art and culture. Whilst black tea dominates the global market today, such tea is a recent invention. No tea plantations existed in the world’s largest black tea producing countries, India, Kenya and Sri Lanka, when the Dutch and the English went to war about tea in the 17th century. This book replaces popular myths about tea with recondite knowledge on the hidden origins and detailed history of today’s globalised beverage in its many modern guises.
The Beauty of the Flower
Blooming with rare archival images, the story of scientific botanical illustrations over nearly seven hundred years. In a world flooded with images designed to create memories, validate perceptions, and influence others, botanical illustration is about something much more focused: creating technically accurate depictions of plants. Reproductions of centuries-old botanical illustrations frequently adorn greeting cards, pottery, and advertising, to promote heritage or generate income, yet their art is scientific: intended to record, display, and transmit scientific data. The Beauty of the Flower tells the backstory of these images, showing us how scientific botanical illustrations are collaborations among artists, scientists, and publishers. It explores the evolution and interchanges of these illustrations since the mid-fifteenth century, how they have been used to communicate scientific ideas about plants, and how views of botanical imagery change. Featuring unique images rarely seen outside of specialist literature, this book reveals the fascinating stories behind these remarkable illustrations.
Dispersals
A prize-winning memoirist and nature writer turns to the lives of plants entangled in our human world to explore belonging, displacement, identity, and the truths of our shared future A seed slips beyond a garden wall. A tree is planted on a precarious border. A shrub is stolen from its culture and its land. What happens when these plants leave their original homes and put down roots elsewhere? In fourteen essays, Dispersals explores the entanglements of the plant and human worlds: from species considered invasive, like giant hogweed; to those vilified but intimate, like soy; and those like kelp, on which our futures depend. Each of the plants considered in this collection are somehow perceived as being ‘out of place’—weeds, samples collected through imperial science, crops introduced and transformed by our hand. Combining memoir, history, and scientific research in poetic prose, Jessica J. Lee meditates on the question of how both plants and people come to belong, why both cross borders, and how our futures are more entwined than we might imagine.
Italy and the Islamic World
Italy and the Islamic World tells the story of how Italian cities have been centres of international exchange for centuries, linking Europe with the most storied marketplaces of the Middle East and North Africa. From the Ancient Roman period and the Renaissance to the rise of the Italian Republic, Italy has been a global crossroads for more than two millennia. In Ali Humayun Akhtar's new picture of European history, Italy's debates about trade with its southern neighbours evoke an earlier era of encounters - one that sheds light on where the EU is heading today.
Trans-Himalayan Linguistics
The Himalaya and surrounding regions are amongst the world's most linguistically diverse places. Of an estimated 600 languages spoken here at Asia's heart, few are researched in depth and many virtually undocumented. Historical developments and relationships between the region's languages also remain poorly understood. This book brings together new work on under-researched Himalayan languages with investigations into the complexities of the area's linguistic history, offering original data and perspectives on the synchrony and diachrony of the Greater Himalayan Region. The volume arises from papers given and topics discussed at the 16th Himalayan Languages Symposium in London in 2010. Most p...
