The story of Adam and Eve, ubiquitous in the art and literature of the period, played a central role in the religious controversies of sixteenth-century Europe. This is the first book to explore stories about Adam and Eve in German Lutheran areas and to analyze their place in Lutheran culture and identity. Kathleen Crowther examines Lutheran versions of the story of Adam and Eve in bibles, commentaries, devotional tracts, sermons, plays, poems, medical and natural history texts, and woodcut images. Her research identifies how Lutheran storytellers differentiated their unique versions of the story from those of their medieval predecessors and their Catholic and Calvinist contemporaries. She also explores the appeal of the story of Adam and Eve to Lutherans as a means to define, defend and disseminate their distinctive views on human nature, original sin, salvation, marriage, family, gender relations and social order.

(Excerpted from the Cambridge University Press announcement)

This just-released volume is available in Bizzell Memorial Library (BS 580 .A4 C76), on order for the History of Science Collections, and available from booksellers such as Amazon.

There is probably no woman scientist more famous than Marie Curie (1867-1934). She made one of the most important theoretical breakthroughs of the twentieth century when she postulated that radiation was an atomic rather than a chemical property, an important milestone in understanding the structure of matter. Not only did she coin the term radioactivity, but her painstaking research culminated in the isolation of two new elements, polonium and radium. For her achievements she won two Nobel Prizes, one in physics (in 1903) and the other in chemistry (in 1911). This informative, accessible, and concise biography looks at Marie Curie not just as a dedicated scientist but also as a complex woman with a sometimes-tumultuous personal life….

(Excerpted from the Prometheus Books announcement)

The biography is available now in the History of Science Collections and from booksellers such as Amazon.