Provides information on the different forms of matter--solids, liquids, and gases--and their components, as well as facts about the periodic table and the elements it represents.

It is the big ideas that change the world and how humans interact with it. Big Ideas in Brief explores 200 of the most important big ideas in pithy, one-page descriptions. The book uses easily understood language and simple illustrations to explain the concepts, making it ideal for those with little or no experience in a subject. Readers can gain a preliminary understanding and may be motivated to seek more information. Generous cross-referencing and a glossary of terms add clarity and context. The book assembles big ideas in: Philosophy Religion Science Politics Big Ideas in Brief is an excellent resource for students recently introduced to these concepts and as a quick-look reference for interested readers.

Each title in this series provides readers with a deeper understanding of the world's biological communities, with each title focusing on a particular biome, biome type, group of biomes or system.

A browsable 'heritage tour' of more than 7000 places and place-names in Britain and Ireland.

Relates the story behind more than 1500 famous titles, including titles of well- and lesser-known novels, poems, plays, paintings, and musical compositions.

Product Description: Focusing on the English of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this volume contains more than 7,500 entries reflecting the richness of modern linguistic culture. This highly browsable encyclopedia covers such diverse topics as catch phrases, buzzwords, slogans, idioms, modern cultural references, and characters from film, TV, and literature...read more

Completely updated for the twenty-first century, this top-selling reference presents imaginitive definitions and origins of thousands of words, idioms, catchphrases, slogans, nicknames, and events from TV, literature, music, comic strips, and computer games.

Product Description: Ever wondered where noodles came from? How Worcester Sauce was invented? Or even who the "Cucumber King of Burma" was? Beginning with the hippo soup eaten in Africa in 6000 BC, through to the dangerous blowfish enjoyed in contemporary Japan, A Curious History of Food and Drink reveals the bizarre origins of the food and drink consumed throughout history...read more

Product Description: Each book in this series provides readers with a deeper understanding of the world's biological communities, with each title focusing on a particular biome, biome type, groups of biomes or system. The books contain an introduction to the Earth's principal biomes with enough depth for project work...read more

A comprehensive look at the desert and semidesert biomes, examining their climate, plants, animals, people, and future, plus detailed views of some famous or important desert locations.

Gathers quotations about individual artists, art movements, architecture, critical terms, and art history

Gathers quotations about composers, musical instruments, film music, the musical, conductors, opera, and musical concepts

Product Description: This authoritative, entertaining, and eminently browsable reference book, arranged in an easily accessible A-to-Z format, is an absorbing and imaginative feast of Scottish lore, language, history, and culture, from the mythical origins of the Scots in Scythia to the contemporary Scotland of the Holyrood parliament and Trainspotting...read more

Product Description: From Amelia Earhart to Jimmy Hoffa throughout history people have mysteriously disappeared without a trace. Beyond the wild speculation surrounding each of these disappearances Ian Crofton clearly presents facts allowing the reader the opportunity to come to his own theories.

Product Description: A strikingly different take on world history, from the former editor-in-chief of The Guinness Encyclopedia Conventional chronologies of world history concentrate on the reigns of kings and queens, the dates of battles and treaties, the publication dates of great books, the completion of famous buildings, the deaths of iconic figures, and the years of major discoveries...read more

Product Description: From the reign of Alfred the Great - the first king of Wessex to call himself 'king of England' - in the ninth century, to the shock of Norman invasion in the 11th, and from the brutal vicissitudes of late medieval kingship to the comfortable ceremonial of modern-day constitutional monarchy, the story of England's kings and queens is to a large degree that of England herself...read more

Product Description: Thoroughly researched and grippingly told, these tales of treachery embrace cowardice and cupidity, high tension and terrible tragedy. A wonderful array of stories on a wide range of historical figures, from the well-known to the obscure.