{"title":"Alison Bashford","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAlison Bashford\u003c\/strong\u003e offers insightful explorations into the intricate intersections of history, science, and culture. Her works probe deep into themes such as evolution, human anatomy, and the shaping of the Pacific world, inviting readers to reconsider familiar narratives through a richly detailed lens.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eReaders interested in \u003cem\u003eBiography \u0026amp; Memoir\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eSelf-Help \u0026amp; Personal Development\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eEducation \u0026amp; Reference\u003c\/em\u003e will find Bashford’s books both illuminating and thought-provoking. Her writing combines meticulous research with an engaging style, making complex ideas accessible and compelling.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"an-intimate-history-of-evolution-by-alison-bashford-9780141992228","title":"An Intimate History of Evolution","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwo hundred years of modern science and culture, told through one family history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn his early twenties, poor, depressed, stranded in the Coral Sea on the HMS Rattlesnake, hopelessly in love with the young Englishwoman Henrietta Heathorn, Thomas Henry Huxley was a nobody. And yet together he and Henrietta would return to London and go on to found one of the great intellectual and scientific dynasties of their age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe Huxley family through four generations profoundly shaped how we all see ourselves, as individuals and as a species. They worked as scientists, novelists, mystics, film-makers, poets and above all, as public lecturers, educators and explainers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTheir speciality was evolution in all its forms. But perhaps their greatest subject was themselves. Alison Bashford's engaging and original book interweaves the Huxleys' momentous public achievements with their private triumphs and tragedies.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe result is the history of a family, but also a history of humanity grappling with its place in nature. \u003cem\u003eAn Intimate History of Evolution\u003c\/em\u003e shows how much we owe - for better or worse - to the unceasing curiosity, self-absorption and enthusiasms of a small, strange group of men and women.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Penguin Random House NZ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46369943847148,"sku":"9780141992228","price":32.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/14724263482238.jpg?v=1744800228"},{"product_id":"decoding-the-hand-by-alison-bashford-9780226831152","title":"Decoding the Hand","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe astonishing history of palmistry and biometrics—from occult physicians to the very foundations of modern science and medicine.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhy did Isaac Newton read books on chiromancy, the occult science of hand reading that revealed the secrets of the soul? Why did Charles Darwin claim that the hand gave humans dominion over all other species? Why did psychoanalyst Charlotte Wolff climb into the primate cages of the London Zoo, taking hundreds of delicate palm prints? Why did Francis Galton, the father of fingerprinting, take palm prints too? And why did world-leading geneticists study the geometry of palm lines in their search for the secrets of chromosomal syndromes?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eDecoding the Hand\u003c\/em\u003e is an astounding history of magic, medicine, and science, of an enduring search for how our bodily surfaces might reveal an inner self—a soul, a character, an identity. From sixteenth-century occult physicians influenced by the Kabbalah to twentieth-century geneticists, and from criminologists to eugenicists, award-winning historian Alison Bashford takes us on a remarkable journey into the strange world of hand readers. She reveals how signs on the hand—its shape, lines, marks, and patterns—have been elaborately decoded over the centuries. Sometimes learned, sometimes outrageously deceptive, sometimes earnest, and, more often than we ever expected, medically and scientifically trained, these palm readers of the past prove to be essential links in the human quest to peer into bodies, souls, minds, and selves.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNot only for fortune-telling palmists were the future and the past, health, and character laid bare in the hand, but for other experts in bodies and minds as well: anatomists, psychiatrists, embryologists, primatologists, evolutionary biologists, geneticists, and more.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDrawing telling parallels between the divination promised by palmistry and the appeal to self-knowledge offered by modern genetic testing, \u003cem\u003eDecoding the Hand\u003c\/em\u003e also makes clear that palm-reading is far from a relic or simple charlatanism. Bashford's sagacious history of human hands touching and connecting opens wide the essential human pursuit of what lies within and beyond.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46871394615532,"sku":"9780226831152","price":66.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/20539803482268.jpg?v=1759876456"},{"product_id":"pacific-histories-by-alison-bashford-9781137001634","title":"Pacific Histories","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first comprehensive account to place the Pacific Islands, the Pacific Rim and the Pacific Ocean into the perspective of world history. A distinguished international team of historians provides a multidimensional account of the Pacific, its inhabitants and the lands within and around it over 50,000 years, with special attention to the peoples of Oceania.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt provides chronological coverage along with analyses of themes such as the environment, migration and the economy; religion, law and science; race, gender and politics.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47597478281452,"sku":"9781137001634","price":74.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/80b81bc60c45b713debbb10b9e3a5614.jpg?v=1777958725"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.live\/collections\/alison-bashford.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}