From the host of the ArtCurious podcast, this book looks at the world of art history, revealing some of the strangest, funniest, and most fascinating stories behind the world's great artists and masterpieces.
John Medina explores the neurological and evolutionary factors that drive teenage behavior and can affect both achievement and engagement. Then he proposes a research-supported counterattack: a bold redesign of educational practices and learning environments to deliberately develop teens' cognitive capacity to manage their emotions, plan, prioritize, and focus.
Using a healthy dose of humor, The Bearded Lady Project celebrates the achievements of the women who study the history of life on Earth, revealing the obstacles they’ve faced because of their gender as well as how they push back.
LEGO® artist and designer Ekow Nimako shows that this iconic toy has an unexpected and innovative use: recreating beasts found in nature in stunning detail.
Call Number: QL675 H38 2014 - and - available online
A visually stunning and scientifically engaging guide to six hundred of the most intriguing eggs, from the pea-sized progeny of the smallest of hummingbirds to the eggs of the largest living bird, the ostrich, which can weigh up to five pounds, The Book of Eggs offers readers a rare, up-close look at these remarkable forms of animal life.
Call Number: GA108.7 B39 2015 - and - available online
With The Curious Map Book, Ashley Baynton-Williams gathers an amazing, chronologically ordered variety of cartographic gems, mainly from the vast collection of the British Library. He has unearthed a wide array of the whimsical and fantastic, from maps of board games to political ones, maps of the Holy Land to maps of the human soul.
This is an entertaining and compelling tour de force highlighting the paradoxes inherent to the modern financial system. Presented as a series of striking case studies, this book explores certain enigmatic or philosophical puzzles in the finance industry.
Call Number: TX353 .S85 2019 - and - available online
The foods we eat have a deep and often surprising past. From almonds and apples to tea and rice, many foods that we consume today have histories that can be traced out of prehistoric Central Asia along the tracks of the Silk Road to kitchens in Europe, America, China, and elsewhere in East Asia.
Some of the greatest inventions came from the Victorian age, the successors of which are still with us today. But this book is not entirely about those. Its about some of the weird and wonderful inventions, ideas and projects some successful, others less so that have largely been forgotten.
This book introduces us to an incredible, essential, and oft-overlooked kingdom of life--fungi--and all the potential it holds for our future, through the work and research being done by an unforgettable community of mushroom-mad citizen scientists and microbe devotees.
Call Number: TL789.4 .H649 2019 - and - available online
Midwestern Strange chronicles B.J. Hollars's exploration of the mythic, lesser-known oddities of flyover country. The mysteries, ranging from bipedal wolf sightings to run-ins with pancake-flipping space aliens to a lumberjack-inspired "Hodag hoax," make this book a little bit X-Files, a little bit Ghostbusters, and a whole lot of Sherlock Holmes.
Call Number: PS3607 R387 A84 2010 - and - available online
A monogrammed cube appears in your town. Your landlord cheats you out of first place in the annual Christmas decorating contest. You need to learn how to love and care for your mate--a paring knife. These situations and more reveal the wondrous play and surreal humor that make up the stories in this book. Characters find their footing in these bizarre scenarios and manage to fall into redemption and rebirth.
Turn your Raspberry Pi into a multi-purpose secret agent gadget for audio and video surveillance, Wi-Fi exploration, or playing pranks on your friends. Detect an intruder on camera or with sensors and set off an alarm or receive messages to your phone. Find out what the other computers on your network are up to and make yourself anonymous on the Internet.
Despite the controversy that often surrounds it, metal music has found fans--and performers--in every corner of the globe. This book provides a fascinating glimpse into the Indigenous heavy metal scene.
Call Number: QA63 M34 2010 - and - available online
This engaging book is an antidote to the rigor mortis brought on by too much mathematical rigor, teaching us how to guess answers without needing a proof or an exact calculation. Sanjoy Mahajan builds, sharpens, and demonstrates tools for educated guessing and down-and-dirty, opportunistic problem solving across diverse fields of knowledge--from mathematics to management.
Journalists and their readers seem to need no explanation for the line, "The internet is made of cats." Everyone understands the joke, but few know how it started. A Unified Theory of Cats on the Internet is the first book to explore the history of how the cat became the internet's best friend.
Call Number: QD467 Y6613 2012 - and - available online
Japanese artist Bunpei Yorifuji provides a unique, illustrated guide to the periodic table. Every element is a unique character whose properties are represented visually: heavy elements are fat, man-made elements are robots, and noble gases sport impressive afros. Every detail is significant, from the length of an element's beard to the clothes on its back.
Step right up! Get your tickets for WTF?! An Economic Tour of the Weird! This rollicking tour through a museum of the world's weirdest practices is guaranteed to make you say, "WTF?!" Did you know that "preowned" wives were sold at auction in nineteenth-century England? That today, in Liberia, accused criminals sometimes drink poison to determine their fate? How about the fact that, for 250 years, Italy criminally prosecuted cockroaches and crickets? Do you wonder why? Then this tour is just for you!