Hatshepsut is now famous for being the first female pharaoh of Egypt, but for thousands of years her rule was shrouded in secrecy, even by Hatshepsut herself. Under her rule Egypt grew and prospered, and many great monuments were built, yet she died suddenly in mysterious circumstances. Suitable for readers aged 8+, each book in History Starting Points explores the life and times of a key historical figure, from Alfred the Great to Hatshepsut. It tells the story of the subject's life, using vital primary source material, such as what contemporary people wrote about the figure. Alongside this, each book builds up a vivid picture of the historical era in which the person lived, from Anglo-Saxon Britain to the civilisations of ancient Greece and Egypt. Included throughout are cross-curricular links to other key subject areas such as literacy, science or geography, and the text is supported by cartoon, myths and legends and fun craft projects to make.

Six Months in Ascension, first published in 1878, contains an account by Isobel Sarah B. Gill of the 1877 scientific expedition to the island of Ascension, in the South Atlantic, undertaken to measure the distance of the sun from the earth by observing the opposition of the planet Mars. The expedition, funded by the Royal Astronomical Society, was led by Isobel's husband, the astronomer David Gill, with a heliometer and other scientific instruments provided by Lord Lindsay. Isobel accompanied the expedition as her husband's companion. Her account offers personal details and stories omitted from the scientific reports on the expedition written by her husband and colleagues and it contains beautiful descriptions of the island of Ascension. The book offers a rare view of the personal, practical and behind-the-scenes side of a nineteenth-century scientific expedition and provides a fascinating insight into the gender roles of learned Victorian society.

Alfred was the only English king to ever be given the title 'Great'. Why? He successfully defended Britain from wave after wave of Viking invaders, formed the first English army and navy, encouraged English people to talk in their mother tongue and set up the beginnings of a renowned, progressive legal system.

Suitable for readers aged 8+, each book in History Starting Points explores the life and times of a key historical figure, from Alfred the Great to Hatshepsut. It tells the story of the subject's life, using vital primary source material, such as what contemporary people wrote about the figure. Alongside this, each book builds up a vivid picture of the historical era in which the person lived, from Anglo-Saxon Britain to the civilisations of ancient Greece and Egypt. Included throughout are cross-curricular links to other key subject areas such as literacy, science or geography, and the text is supported by cartoon, myths and legends and fun craft projects to make.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

Philip K. Dick didn t predict the future he summoned the desperate bleakness of our present directly from his fevered paranoia. Dick didn t predict the Internet or iPhones or email or 3D printers, but rather he so thoroughly understood human nature that he could already see, even at the advent of the transistor, the way technology would alienate us from each other and from ourselves. He could see us isolated and drifting in our own private realities even before we had plugged in our ear buds. He could see, even in the earliest days of space exploration, how much of our own existence remained unexplored, and how the great black spaces between people were growing even as our universe was shrinking.

Philip K. Dick spent his first three years as a science fiction author writing shorter fiction, and in his lifetime he composed almost 150 short stories, many of which have gone on to be adapted into (slightly watered down) Hollywood blockbusters. Collected here are thirteen of his most Dickian tales, funhouse realities with trap doors and hidden compartments, the literary equivalent of optical illusions, tricks of perspective.