{"title":"Series: Synthesis","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSynthesis\u003c\/strong\u003e brings together a diverse range of subjects, weaving threads from \u003cem\u003eHome \u0026amp; Garden\u003c\/em\u003e to \u003cem\u003eEngineering \u0026amp; Technology\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eArts \u0026amp; Culture\u003c\/em\u003e. Readers can explore practical guides alongside reflective historical accounts, each volume inviting a deeper understanding of its field through thoughtful, accessible writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFrom detailed technical insights to evocative explorations of history and social change, this series fosters a dialogue between disciplines. It appeals to curious minds eager to connect knowledge across \u003cem\u003eComputing \u0026amp; Technology\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003ePolitics \u0026amp; Current Affairs\u003c\/em\u003e, and beyond, offering a well-rounded journey through contemporary and classic themes.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"unrefined-by-david-singerman-9780226837376","title":"Unrefined","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA surprising look at how modern capitalism changed sugar from a natural food to a scientific commodity.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSugar is everywhere in the western diet, blamed for epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and other modern maladies. Our addiction to sweetness has a long and unsavoury history. Over the past five hundred years, sugar has shaped empires, made fortunes for a few, and brought misery for millions of workers both enslaved and free. How did sugar become a defining modern food and an essential global commodity?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eUnrefined\u003c\/i\u003e, David Singerman recasts our thinking about this crucial substance in the history of capitalism. Before the nineteenth century, sugar’s value depended on natural qualities: its colour, its taste, where it was grown, and who had made it. But beginning around 1850, a combination of plantation owners, industrialists, and scientists set out to redefine sugar itself. Deploying the tools and rhetoric of science, they transformed not just how sugar was produced or traded but even how people thought about it. By changing sugar into a pure chemical object, these forces stripped power from workers and enabled—and obscured—new kinds of fraud, corruption, and monopoly.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTaking us to unexplored spaces in the world of sugar, from laboratories and docks to refineries and the halls of Congress, Singerman illuminates dark intersections of the histories of corruption, science, and capitalism.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46795527291116,"sku":"9780226837376","price":66.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/20602043482268.jpg?v=1757038603"},{"product_id":"genentech-by-sally-smith-hughes-9780226359182","title":"Genentech","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the fall of 1980, Genentech, Inc., a little-known California genetic engineering company, became the overnight darling of Wall Street, raising over $38 million in its initial public stock offering. Lacking marketed products or substantial profit, the firm nonetheless saw its share price escalate from $35 to $89 in the first few minutes of trading, marking the largest gain in stock market history at that time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eComing at a time of economic recession and declining technological competitiveness in the United States, the event provoked banner headlines and ignited a period of speculative frenzy over biotechnology as a revolutionary means for creating new and better kinds of pharmaceuticals, untold profit, and a possible solution to national economic malaise. Drawing from an unparalleled collection of interviews with early biotech players, Sally Smith Hughes offers the first book-length history of this pioneering company, depicting Genentech’s improbable creation, precarious youth, and ascent to immense prosperity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHughes provides intimate portraits of the people significant to Genentech’s science and business, including cofounders Herbert Boyer and Robert Swanson, and in doing so sheds new light on how personality affects the growth of science. By placing Genentech’s founders, followers, opponents, victims, and beneficiaries in context, Hughes also demonstrates how science interacts with commercial and legal interests, university research, government regulation, venture capital, and commercial profits.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIntegrating the scientific, the corporate, the contextual, and the personal, \u003ci\u003eGenentech\u003c\/i\u003e tells the story of biotechnology as it is not often told, as a risky and improbable entrepreneurial venture that had to overcome a number of powerful forces working against it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46854551175404,"sku":"9780226359182","price":66.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/bbe05d038c7d4be74ab1947b349c37c7.jpg?v=1759268638"},{"product_id":"membranes-to-molecular-machines-by-mathias-grote-9780226625157","title":"Membranes to Molecular Machines","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\nToday's science tells us that our bodies are filled with molecular machinery that orchestrates all sorts of life processes. When we think, microscopic \"channels\" open and close in our brain cell membranes; when we run, tiny \"motors\" spin in our muscle cell membranes; and when we see, light operates \"molecular switches\" in our eyes and nerves. A molecular-mechanical vision of life has become commonplace in both the halls of philosophy and the offices of drug companies, where researchers are developing “proton pump inhibitors” or medicines similar to Prozac.\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eMembranes to Molecular Machines\u003c\/i\u003e explores just how late twentieth-century science came to think of our cells and bodies this way. This story is told through the lens of membrane research, an unwritten history at the crossroads of molecular biology, biochemistry, physiology, and the neurosciences, that directly feeds into today's synthetic biology as well as nano- and biotechnology. Mathias Grote shows how these sciences not only have made us think differently about life, but they have also, by reworking what membranes and proteins represent in laboratories, allowed us to manipulate life as \"active matter\" in new ways.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCovering the science of biological membranes in the United States and Europe from the mid-1960s to the 1990s, this book connects that history to contemporary work with optogenetics, a method for stimulating individual neurons using light, and will enlighten and provoke anyone interested in the intersection of chemical research and the life sciences—from practitioner to historian to philosopher.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe research described in the book and its central actor, Dieter Oesterhelt, were honoured with the 2021 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for his contribution to the development of optogenetics.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46854671925484,"sku":"9780226625157","price":91.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/516247ef1a5c7f2eed0b4459c9ee975a.jpg?v=1759266580"},{"product_id":"the-experimental-fire-by-jennifer-m-rampling-9780226826547","title":"The Experimental Fire","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA 400-year history of the development of alchemy in England that brings to light the evolution of the practice.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn medieval and early modern Europe, the practice of alchemy promised extraordinary physical transformations. Who would not be amazed to see base metals turned into silver and gold, hard iron into soft water, and deadly poison into elixirs that could heal the human body? To defend such claims, alchemists turned to the past, scouring ancient books for evidence of a lost alchemical heritage and seeking to translate their secret language and obscure imagery into replicable, practical effects.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTracing the development of alchemy in England over four hundred years, from the beginning of the fourteenth century to the end of the seventeenth, Jennifer M. Rampling illuminates the role of alchemical reading and experimental practice in the broader context of national and scientific history. Using new manuscript sources, she shows how practitioners like George Ripley, John Dee, and Edward Kelley, as well as many previously unknown alchemists, devised new practical approaches to alchemy while seeking the support of English monarchs.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBy reconstructing their alchemical ideas, practices, and disputes, Rampling reveals how English alchemy was continually reinvented over the space of four centuries, resulting in changes to the science itself. In so doing, \u003ci\u003eThe Experimental Fire\u003c\/i\u003e bridges the intellectual history of chemistry and the wider worlds of early modern patronage, medicine, and science.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46854993641708,"sku":"9780226826547","price":52.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/07b7b5be9a8f9dc3730a1b29d189be3a.jpg?v=1759262925"},{"product_id":"crafting-medicine-by-tillmann-taape-9780226840604","title":"Crafting Medicine","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHow an early modern surgeon and his accessible writings changed medical expertise and the communication of medical knowledge.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBetween 1497 and 1512, Hieronymus Brunschwig (ca. 1450–ca. 1530), an obscure craftsman from Strasbourg, wrote books on surgery and pharmacy that transformed medical expertise, how it was codified in print, and how it was communicated to new audiences. Brunschwig was an unlikely author. He apprenticed as a surgeon in the local guild and dispensed medicines from his own shop. But he was remarkably well-read in surgery, alchemy, and medical theory, even if he lacked a university education. His unique authorial voice spoke to the healing practices of craftsmen and common people in a down-to-earth German dialect.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eCrafting Medicine\u003c\/em\u003e, by Tillmann Taape, is the first in-depth study of Brunschwig and his works. In it, Taape argues that Brunschwig's writings shaped a nascent tradition of vernacular medicine. Brunschwig's books represent a key moment in the history of medical print, for they conveyed medical expertise to a new readership of nonacademic practitioners, who became a key audience for a flood of vernacular medical publications during the sixteenth century. Using Brunschwig's books as a unique window into the past, \u003cem\u003eCrafting Medicine\u003c\/em\u003e beautifully reconstructs the world of science inhabited by Brunschwig, his fellow craftsmen, his translators, and his readers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46871389077740,"sku":"9780226840604","price":56.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/20634323482268.jpg?v=1759876084"},{"product_id":"a-rainbow-palate-by-carolyn-cobbold-9780226845531","title":"A Rainbow Palate","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShows how the widespread use of food dyes influenced understanding of food, science, and technology, as well as trust in science.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWe live in a world saturated by chemicals—our food, our clothes, and even our bodies play host to hundreds of synthetic chemicals that did not exist before the nineteenth century. By the 1900s, a wave of bright coal tar dyes had begun to transform the Western world. Originally intended for textiles, the new dyes soon permeated daily life in unexpected ways, and by the time the risks and uncertainties surrounding the synthesized chemicals began to surface, they were being used in everything from clothes and home furnishings to cookware and food.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eA Rainbow Palate\u003c\/em\u003e, Carolyn Cobbold explores how the widespread use of new chemical substances influenced perceptions and understanding of food, science, and technology, as well as trust in science and scientists. Because the new dyes were among the earliest contested chemical additives in food, the battles over their use offer striking insights and parallels into today's international struggles surrounding chemical, food, and trade regulation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47031778017516,"sku":"9780226845531","price":64.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/20683593482268.jpg?v=1764146719"},{"product_id":"gems-and-the-new-science-by-michael-bycroft-9780226644608","title":"Gems and the New Science","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe first book-length history of gems in early modern science offers a thought-provoking new take on the Scientific Revolution.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eGems and the New Science\u003c\/em\u003e, Michael Bycroft argues that gems were connected to major developments in the \"new science\" between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. As he explains, precious and semi-precious stones were at the centre of dramatic shifts in natural knowledge in early modern Europe. They were used to investigate luminescence, electricity, combustion, chemical composition, and more. They were collected by naturalists, measured by mathematicians, and rubbed, burned, and dissolved by experimental philosophers. This led to the demise of the traditional way of classifying gems—which grouped them by transparency, colour, and locality—and a turn to density, refraction, chemistry, and crystallography as more reliable guides for sorting these substances.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe science of gems shows that material evaluation was as important as material production in the history of science. It also shows the value of seeing science as the product of the interaction between different material worlds. The book begins by bringing these insights to bear on five themes of the Scientific Revolution. Each of the subsequent chapters deals with a major episode in early modern science, from the expansion of natural history in the sixteenth century to the emergence of applied science early in the nineteenth century. This important work is not only the first book-length history of the science of gems but also a fresh interpretation of the Scientific Revolution and an argument for a new form of materialism about science.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47306904994028,"sku":"9780226644608","price":85.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/18674363482268.jpg?v=1771067492"},{"product_id":"lady-ranelagh-by-michelle-dimeo-9780226731605","title":"Lady Ranelagh","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor centuries, historians have speculated about the life of Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh. Dominant depictions show her either as a maternal figure to her younger brother Robert Boyle, one of the most significant scientists of his day, or as a patroness of the European correspondence network now known as the Hartlib circle—but neither portrait captures the depth of her intellect nor the range of her knowledge and influence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePhilosophers, mathematicians, politicians, and religious authorities sought her opinion on everything from decimalizing the currency to producing Hebrew grammars. She practiced medicine alongside distinguished male physicians, treating some of the most elite patients in London. Her medical recipes, political commentaries, and testimony concerning the philosophers’ stone gained international circulation. She was an important influence on Boyle and a self-standing historical figure in her own right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDrawing from a wealth of new archival sources, Michelle DiMeo fills out \u003cem\u003eLady Ranelagh\u003c\/em\u003e’s legacy in the context of a historically sensitive and nuanced interpretation of gender, science, and religion. The book reveals how one elite seventeenth-century woman managed to gain the respect of diverse contemporaries, effect social change, and shape contemporary science.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47463409942764,"sku":"9780226731605","price":93.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9780226731605-lady-ranelagh.jpg?v=1775032636"},{"product_id":"crafting-medicine-by-tillmann-taape-9780226840581","title":"Crafting Medicine","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHow an early modern surgeon and his accessible writings changed medical expertise and the communication of medical knowledge.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBetween 1497 and 1512, Hieronymus Brunschwig (ca. 1450–ca. 1530), an obscure craftsman from Strasbourg, wrote books on surgery and pharmacy that transformed medical expertise, how it was codified in print, and how it was communicated to new audiences. 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