Racconto edificante, credenza popolare, favola simbolica o fantasia burlesca... La metamorfosi è un fenomeno presente da millenni nella mitologia, nelle fiabe e nella zoologia. L'essere umano che si trasforma in cigno, in orso o in mucca, il bruco che vive una seconda nascita come farfalla, la rana che diventa principe: tutti cambiano la propria natura, a volte in modo irreversibile. Che sia istantanea, graduale, magica o scientifica, la metamorfosi suscita paura e fascinazione, come nel caso del lupo mannaro o di Gregor, l'eroe di Kafka che si sveglia una mattina trasformato in un insetto mostruoso. Sotto la penna del naturalista Jean-Baptiste de Panafieu, le trasformazioni - reali o presunte - rivelano tutte le loro sfaccettature e ci consentono di esplorare ancora più profondamente la nostra natura. E, quando questa scoperta è accompagnata dalle illustrazioni dell'artista Camille Renversade, le metamorfosi prendono davvero vita davanti ai nostri occhi...

Jean Piaget is one of the greatest names in psychology. A knowledge of his ideas is essential for all in psychology and education. Sociological Studies is one of his major works to remain untranslated. Now an international team of Piaget experts has got together to ensure that this important work is available in English.
This classic text, exploring the role of social experience in the development of understanding, shows the general perception of Piaget as someone who took insufficient account of social factors in psychology to be false.

Un naufragio spettacolare, al largo di capo Horn, mentre era nel gruppo di testa del Vendée Globe, il giro del mondo in solitaria, obbliga Jean Le Cam a passare diciotto ore nello scafo della sua barca VM Matériaux rovesciata, progressivamente invasa da un'acqua gelida, prima di essere soccorso da Vincent Riou. 'Il Re Jean' racconta qui, per la prima volta, quell'avventura e i suoi quarant'anni di vita dedicata alla navigazione d'altura, negli oceani di tutto il mondo.

“The best magic is that which involves absolutely no sleight-of-hand, only the unexpected yet natural workings of nature. Physics, Fun, and Beyond is chock full of just this kind of magic–simple yet fascinating experiments, easy to follow and colorful drawings, and fun facts. Simply wonderful!”

–Roald Hoffmann, 1981 Nobel Prize Laureate in Chemistry

Pure Fun, Pure Excitement: You';ve Never Learned Physics Like This Before!

Physics is pure excitement: nothing';s more fun than discovering how the world works and exploring its many possibilities! With Physics, Fun, and Beyond, you';ll grab the universe in your own two hands as you build more than 110 projects that uncover the physics beneath everyday life!

Most of these projects are amazingly easy to build: all you';ll need are your everyday household tools and cheap (sometimes even free) materials. From wind tunnels to flying saucers, you';ll learn exactly how to safely build these experiments, why they work, and what they mean. Learn about all this, and more:

• Step on eggs without breaking them...and understand the principles of material strength

• Build the “Magic Can” that teaches you about the different kinds of energy

• Discover why the Earth isn';t exactly round

• Learn more about gravity, with the “Astronaut in the Elevator” experiment

• Use pendulums to visualize radio/TV frequencies and broadcasting

• Feel pressure by sitting on a bed of nails

• Build hydraulic robots to discover how you can transmit and amplify forces

• Construct wings and wind tunnels that show why airplanes fly

• Learn about optics by making bottles invisible

• Recreate the sun and sky to realize why the sky is blue

• Demonstrate the “greenhouse effect” with a homemade solar heater

• Get water to climb walls–as you understand cohesion and adhesion

• Build “wireless phones” that capture sound and make acoustics fun

• Create simple motors that display the basics of electromagnetism

Physics, Fun, and Beyond is for kids, teenagers, teachers, parents, homeschoolers...everyone from 10 to 100 with curiosity and a passion for discovery and new challenges!

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved

The New York Public Library amazing space

Travel to distant galaxies and explore awesome constellations. Discover mysterious planets and catch a comet by the tail. Find the answers to your questions about the wonders of space . . .

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY's best-selling reference books include The New York Public Library Desk Reference, The New York Public Library Book of Answers, and The New York Public Library Student's Desk Reference. ANN-JEANETTE CAMPBELL is the coauthor of The New York Public Library Incredible Earth.

Also in this series . . . The New York Public Library Incredible Earth

The past two decades have seen an outpouring of new scholarship around the world on American writer Jack London (1876-1916), author of such eternal classics as The Call of the Wild (1903), now translated into over 80 languages; The Sea Wolf (1904); and White Fang (1905). Earle Labor and Jeanne Campbell Reesman significantly advance the rising tide of critical interest with this illuminating, beautifully written, and appropriately adventurous new update of Labor's 1974 study. Reading many overlooked yet masterful stories and revealing the deep ties among London's times and his life, beliefs, and writings, the authors apply new critical approaches to his narrative structure and style and move beyond the misconceptions that have limited appreciation of the great short story writer, novelist, journalist, adventurer, socialist, and undeterrable individualist.
While he produced a thousand words a day for 17 years, selling virtually everything he wrote, commanding top dollar from such magazines as Atlantic and Harper's, and producing over 50 books - on topics ranging from Klondike gold-hunting to Socialism, from prize-fighting to agrarianism - London's greatness lay in far more than his ability to produce for the marketplace. Instead, as Labor and Reesman convincingly illustrate, London's work departs sharply from the best-seller formulas of his age. He pioneered the apocalyptic novel and dystopian fiction; his People of the Abyss (1903) compares favorably with William Blake's treatises on England's poor; his indictment of the white man's South Seas excursions is as incisive as Herman Melville's; and his use of themes from Freud and Jung anticipated the new literature of the 1920s. Exploring such extraordinary works as Martin Eden (1909), London's autobiographical masterpiece; The Cruise of the Snark (1911), the compelling account of his sailing voyage halfway around the world; and The Star Rover (1915), his fantastic dramatization of astral projection, Labor and Reesman neatly lay to rest a second misconception: that London's creative energies declined during the last decade of his life.
The rich rewards of reading Jack London become newly accessible in the pages of this pioneering study. Labor and Reesman probe the mystery of London's remarkable creative genius, applying Jung's concept of 'primordial vision' to his experience of his world and its expression in such works as The Call of the Wild. They meaningfully consider London's writing in the context of America in its pre-World War I adolescence, describing the author's lifelong struggle with the American Dream and his exquisitely vivid rendering of the frontier and the gold rush in his powerful Yukon stories. They address his philosophical struggle with Individualism and Socialism and examine the commingling of Naturalism and Romanticism in his art. Finally, they also reveal how ideas such as feminism helped shape the innovative narrative forms - dialogic and polyphonic - of London's late fiction.
This welcome revision greatly enhances any reading of London, expands his canon beyond boundaries held by critics to date, and firmly places him on the ballot for recognition as a major American writer.