Books with author John Townsend

Read this history of disease and infection and find out what part pox, pus, and plague played in the spread and treatment of illness. Learn why British sailors were called limeys, and which disease turns the skin bright yellow. Discover why disease spread quickly. Read these real-life stories and fascinating news reports to learn how hospitals and medical treatment has changed throughout the years. Eye-catching photographs help you visualize medical treatment and conditions in this painful history of medicine book.

Chemicals are everywhere, and some are deadly they can burn flesh, choke us or even blast us to bits. This book shows how chemists through the ages risked their lives with poison gases, lethal liquids and dangerous reactions. Read how they tried to turn ordinary metals into gold, how urine was made into a glow-in-the-dark explosive, and how chemistry can catch murderers.

This title explores different types of fish in the world around us. The series is divided according to animal classifications in order to establish a firm scientific basis for each title. This differentiates the series from other ‘animal attack/weird animal’ series and cover aspects of the curriculum in a more comprehensive way. Each title focuses on weird and wonderful examples of creatures that are not the norm after an introduction describing the animal’s normal characteristics. The titles also include predatory behavior. A variety of text types such as newspaper reports are used to represent real life stories about the creatures covered. A conservation angle is also included to demonstrate how animals are in danger from humans and our activities and to stress what needs to be done to protect them and their environments.