Stories by Philip Morrison

Beer made naturally, the strange story of the poison dioxin and other matters

The scientific exhibitions of 19th-century London, and myelin, the insulator of nerve

The history of salt, the rise of the "chip" and how the Indians lost faith in their game

The archaeology of China, and an artis's keen eye for the mammals of East Africa

An analysis of U.S. military forces finds that they so far exceed actual military needs as to be unsafe for the nation and the world. A program for prudently decreasing these forces is here described

Sulfur, the Maya underworld, the texture of cities, the sensitive octopus, old mills

The art of interpreting artifacts; the state of food and agriculture

Limestone landscapes, herbals, malaria and the fuel economy of gasoline engines

The early evolution of the telescope; the fishing Indians of the Northwest

Physicists in Hitler's Germany, the Viking exploration of Mars and Newcomen's engine

Muscle power, the unique painted pottery of the Mimbres culture and other matters

William Beebe and his successor aquanauts, and a people that lives on sweet palm juice

The variable sun, the cuisine of China, primates of the night and other matters

Equality, historical supernovas, the acoustic environment and guides to the stars and wine

Perpetual motion, shaman ritual and art and the responsiveness of blind infants

Computer crime, music of the ancient Near East, marine mammals and other matters

Scripts, tongues, the opening three minutes of the universe, Roman roads and chimaeras

Two marvelous views of the earth, Plato's universe and an Appalachian flood disaster

Linear perspective, M. C. Escher, the great Dutch famine of 1944-45 and other matters

Stanislaw Ulam, unusual abodes, the earth from above and the history of U.S. farming

The disarmament game, slow viruses, whistled languages, carnivorous plants and Dr. Nlatrix

Galaxies, left and right, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari

A flotilla of picture books, map symbolism, muscular exercise and the Pantheon of Rome

Mechanical imagination in the 16th century and the baked-clay clues to Mycenaean life