Subjects

A biographical and intellectual journey through the life of Galileo Galilei, with attention to his troubled personal experiences, his conflict with the Church, and the development of his philosophical and scientific ideas.

The narrative aims to highlight the extraordinary historical significance of Galileo’s contributions: the importance of his thought lies not only in his astronomical or physical discoveries, but above all in his having addressed crucial aspects of modern culture, starting with the recognition of freedom of thought.

Galileo marked a radical break with the cultural orientation of tradition and, with admirable insight, theorized a decisive rejection of anthropocentrism and finalism, developing the idea of complete and effective transparency in the protocols and outcomes of scientific discoveries.

These innovative visions helped to build an ethos–a research culture that has become increasingly widespread and influential, eventually becoming an essential part of the values and sensibilities not only of the scientific world but also of the broader community of modern civil societies.

This atlas is all about the world’s most breath-taking mountains, from Olympus to Ararat. Get ready to plot your perfect tours and travels – even just in your mind.

Mountains have always aroused enormous and sometimes conflicting sensations: astonishment, wonder, power, fear, ambition, holiness and closeness to God, respect or conquest, and even the unknown – but hardly ever indifference. Some mountains are imbued with an aura even higher than their own staggering heights.

They are sacred, mythical, or idealised. No region in the world is without mountains; all peoples have their own. Each mountain has its own story and narration: Olympus, the home of the Gods; Calamita, a place of arcane power; Kailas, a destination for pilgrims; Ararat, the final refuge; or Sinai, the revelation. These mountains are arcane in Leopardi’s sense of the word: the secrecy and mystery surrounding them inspires fascination or attraction.

Written with the same easy-going style of Atlante inutile del mondo, the book features custom cartographic tables and watercolours as well as an appendix which, as in the former publication, functions as an in-depth examination and guide for each destination.

This is an atlas of geographically sorted geo-political anomalies of past and present. The charts are just ambiguous enough to make you second-guess them – it is up to you to figure out what’s right and what’s wrong. You can even just go with the flow – after all, we know that when it comes to outdoing fiction, nothing beats fact.

The atlas consists of one hundred double-page charts. The left-hand page features the chart’s title, its geographical coordinates, its location on the map and its story; the right-hand page features the chart’s cartographic details created by the author himself by borrowing from a variety of sources. Rounding out the book is a guide on how to get to the places described in the book itself, a bibliography and an index of geographical names.

This atlas was created out of a sincere desire for revenge against all the architects, surveyors, astronauts, programmers, despots and tyrants who insist on favouring the concept of space – or, even worse, cyberspace – over that of place. The author’s incurable illness is, in fact, recognised by science under the name “topophilia”, i.e. love of place.

The book lays out the techniques, secrets and curiosities of forensic science, explaining them in a reader-friendly manner; it investigates famous cases so that we can better understand what we read in newspapers and see in films and TV series.

Have you ever wondered how a murder case can be solved thanks to a single drop of blood? And how, on the other hand, a whole investigation can get screwed up in spite of seemingly seamless evidence such as DNA testing? The book shows how a fleck of skin, a hair or a leaf can lead to a name and surname. The most fascinating aspects include the main techniques used in forensic science, i.e. all the notions that come into play when evidence is found at a crime scene and needs to be analysed to solve the case.

The book takes a rigorously scientific dive into numerous cases that have laid the foundations of current forensic techniques; even if you have no scientific experience, you will be able to follow along as the book explains the procedures and analyses, linking them to famous news cases and little-known historical curiosities.

An essay that explores Russian culture and society, delving into its many diverse facets and looking at literature, music, art, cinema, popular culture and folklore.

A symbolically enigmatic figure, the sphinx is used in the book to represent Russia, a country that has always been mysterious and incomprehensible to the eyes of every Westerner.

Building on this mythology, the author intends to remove the haze that envelops the land thanks to a series of keywords that do not always quite translate but do contain extraordinarily vast ranges of meaning that are crucial to penetrate the deepest soul of Russian reality.

The journey begins with geography and reaches politics, passing through religion, everyday life, interpersonal relationships and the collective and personal history of a country erroneously linked to stereotypical images made of matryoshka dolls, vodka and icons.