Books with author WILLIAM D. BURT

One of India’s two greatest epics, the Ramayana pervades the country’s moral and cultural consciousness. For generations it has served as a bedtime story for Indian children, while at the same time engaging the interest of philosophers and theologians. Now this magnificent translation makes the monumental work available to a new audience. Believed to have been composed by Valmiki sometime between the eighth and sixth centuries BC, the Ramayana tells the tragic and magical story of Rama, the prince of Ayodhya, an incarnation of Lord Visnu, born to rid the earth of the terrible demon Ravana. Exiled for fourteen years because of his stepmother’s fit of jealousy on the eve of his coronation, Rama enters the forests of Dandaka with his beautiful wife Sita and devoted brother Laksmana. Sita is abducted from the forest by Ravana who takes her to his isolated kingdom on the far side of the southern ocean. The two brothers set out to rescue her and, along the way, make an alliance with a dispossessed monkey, king Sugriva. At the end of a bloody war Ravana is killed and Sita, reunited with her husband, and victorious Rama returns to Ayodhya to claim the throne that is rightfully his. An idealized heroic tale ending with the inevitable triumph of good over evil, the Ramayana is also an intensely personal story of family relationships, love and loss, duty and honour, of harem intrigue, petty jealousies and destructive ambitions. All this played out in a universe populated by larger-than-life humans, gods and celestial beings, wondrous animals and terrifying demons. In her translation Arshia Sattar has successfully bridged both time and space to make this ancient classic accessible to the present-day English reader. An added attraction is her superb introduction which provides new insights and background information for both the general reader and scholar alike.

An encyclopedic collection of key scientists and the tools and concepts they developed that transformed our understanding of the physical world.Many are familiar with the ideas of Copernicus, Descartes, and Galileo. But here the reader is also introduced to lesser known ideas and contributors to the Scientific Revolution, such as the mathematical Bernoulli Family and Andreas Vesalius, whose anatomical charts revolutionized the study of the human body. More marginal characters include the magician Robert Fludd. The encyclopedia also discusses subjects like Arabic science and the bizarre history of blood transfusions, and institutions like the Universities of Padua and Leiden, which were dominant forces in academic medicine and science.• Includes over 200 A–Z entries covering topics ranging from Gregorian reform of the calendar to Thomas Hobbes, navigation, thermometers, and the trial of Galileo• Provides a chronology of the scientific revolution from the founding of the Casa de la Contratacion, a repository of navigational and cartographic knowledge, in 1503, to the death of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek in 1727

The first introductory A–Z resource on the dynamic achievements in science from the late 1600s to 1820, including the great minds behind the developments and science's new cultural role.Though the Enlightenment was a time of amazing scientific change, science is an often-neglected facet of that time. Now, Science in the Enlightenment redresses the balance by covering all the major scientific developments in the period between Newton's discoveries in the late 1600s to the early 1800s of Michael Faraday and Georges Cuvier.Over 200 A-Z entries explore a range of disciplines, including astronomy and medicine, scientists such as Sir Humphry Davy and Benjamin Franklin, and instruments such as the telescope and calorimeter. Emphasis is placed on the role of women, and proper attention is given to the shifts in the worldview brought about by Newtonian physics, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier's "chemical revolution," and universal systems of botanical and zoological classification. Moreover, the social impact of science is explored, as well as the ways in which the work of scientists influenced the thinking of philosophers such as Voltaire and Denis Diderot and the writers and artists of the romantic movement.• Over 200 A–Z entries on scientific disciplines, organizations, instruments, events, practices, and cultural influences during the period• Over 40 illustrations present some of the inventions and instruments of the age

Jonny, along with his Siamese cat, Mister E, discovers a magical icon on his Nexus 7 tablet, an icon that when opened, allows them to time travel into the future. The Atlanta they arrive in is nothing like the one they left. It is a city made of glass because hundreds of years of drought have caused all growing things to die. All oil is gone so there are no plastic products. All mining has been depleted so there is no metal. Only sand is left out of which glass is produced and used for houses, furniture, toys, and flying cars. Mister E, strangely, has been transformed by time travel into a huge cat the size of a lion and can speak. Jonny and Mister E rescue Cindi, a young girl running from her mean stepfather. Adventure after adventure follow as the three of them try to escape mutated outlanders, her angry father, and the hated pet police before making a lifesaving time jump to ....