The Social Life of Coffee


Book Description

What induced the British to adopt foreign coffee-drinking customs in the seventeenth century? Why did an entirely new social institution, the coffeehouse, emerge as the primary place for consumption of this new drink? In this lively book, Brian Cowan locates the answers to these questions in the particularly British combination of curiosity, commerce, and civil society. Cowan provides the definitive account of the origins of coffee drinking and coffeehouse society, and in so doing he reshapes our understanding of the commercial and consumer revolutions in Britain during the long Stuart century. Britain’s virtuosi, gentlemanly patrons of the arts and sciences, were profoundly interested in things strange and exotic. Cowan explores how such virtuosi spurred initial consumer interest in coffee and invented the social template for the first coffeehouses. As the coffeehouse evolved, rising to take a central role in British commercial and civil society, the virtuosi were also transformed by their own invention.




Select Documents of English Constitutional History


Book Description

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. We have represented this book in the same form as it was first published. Hence any marks seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.




Book Auction Records


Book Description

A priced and annotated annual record of international book auctions.




Survey of London


Book Description







The Dissertation


Book Description

The Dissertation is one of the most demanding yet potentially most stimulating components of an architectural course. Properly done, it can be a valuable contribution not only to the students own learning development but also to the field of architecture as a whole. This book provides a complete guide to what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and the major pitfalls involved. This is a comprehensive guide to all that an architecture student might need to know about undertaking the dissertation, including new material on CD-ROM and online sources, web based research techniques, digital images, alternative imaging strategies, key architecture links, referencing and new dissertation extracts. It clearly navigates the student through the whole process of writing, preparing and submitting a dissertation, as well as suggesting what to do after the dissertation has been completed. Subjects covered include how to write a proposal, which research methodologies and techniques to adopt, which libraries and archives to utilize (including special architectural resources on the net), as well as how to structure, reference and illustrate the final submission. The authors also take architecture students into new terrain, suggesting alternative methods of undertaking dissertations, whether as video, prose writing, multimedia or other forms of expression. Furthermore, this guide includes new examples of exemplary dissertations of all kinds, as completed by students in Europe and North America so that the reader can clearly see the kinds of work which they themselves might choose to pursue. Also in the Seriously Useful Guides Series: * The Crit * The The Portfolio * Practical Experience




Google's PageRank and Beyond


Book Description

Why doesn't your home page appear on the first page of search results, even when you query your own name? How do other web pages always appear at the top? What creates these powerful rankings? And how? The first book ever about the science of web page rankings, Google's PageRank and Beyond supplies the answers to these and other questions and more. The book serves two very different audiences: the curious science reader and the technical computational reader. The chapters build in mathematical sophistication, so that the first five are accessible to the general academic reader. While other chapters are much more mathematical in nature, each one contains something for both audiences. For example, the authors include entertaining asides such as how search engines make money and how the Great Firewall of China influences research. The book includes an extensive background chapter designed to help readers learn more about the mathematics of search engines, and it contains several MATLAB codes and links to sample web data sets. The philosophy throughout is to encourage readers to experiment with the ideas and algorithms in the text. Any business seriously interested in improving its rankings in the major search engines can benefit from the clear examples, sample code, and list of resources provided. Many illustrative examples and entertaining asides MATLAB code Accessible and informal style Complete and self-contained section for mathematics review