The years 1945 to 2020, from the testing of the first atomic bomb to the rise of artificial intelligence, constitute the “American century,” which coincides with the rise and fall of the United States as a global power. Arnold Thackray’s pioneering expertise in the history of science provides a unique perspective from which to tell this story.

Tracing the pathways through which sound traveled across a variety of conceptual and physical domains in the first half of the twentieth century, Sonic Circulations not only proposes a new account of the role of music, sound, and voice in modern knowledge production but also poses urgent questions about technology and empire.

Anatomical Forms excavates the shared material practices of women’s poetic work and anatomical study in early modern England. Whitney Sperrazza demonstrates how women writers such as Margaret Cavendish and Hester Pulter wielded poetics as a tool for scientific work in order to explore and challenge rapid developments in anatomy and physiology.

Why the Hindenburg Had a Smoking Lounge explores paradoxes of technology over two centuries to underscore why things so often turn out—for worse but also for better—so differently from futurists’ forecasts. By celebrating the complexity of reality, it counters the cycles of utopianism and doomsaying so often provoked by technological change.

The first comprehensive study of the life and times of colonial Philadelphia clockmaker Edward Duffield (1730–1803), this lavishly illustrated volume catalogues and describes seventy-one known clocks and instruments built by Duffield standing proudly in major American museums and collections.

The Other Presidency explores Thomas Jefferson’s influence as president of the American Philosophical Society (APS) and its impact on the early history of American science. The book includes a chronology of Thomas Jefferson’s contributions to the APS, with references to major events in his life.