New books for May!

Human Zoos: Science and Spectacle in the Age of Empire, eds. Pascal Blanchard, Nicolas Bancel, Gilles Boetsch, Eric Deroo, Sandrine Lemaire and Charles Forsdick (Liverpool University Press)
Based on the best-selling French volume Zoos Humains, Human Zoos considers the ‘spectacularization’ of the Other, when ‘exotic’ individuals were placed alongside wild beasts and presented behind bars in ‘anthropological’ exhibitions.



Paradise Found: Nature in America at the Time of Discovery, Steve Nicholls (University of Chicago Press)
A description of North America at the time of its discovery against the backdrop of the story of the continent’s colonisation, which also introduces the reader to some of the characters who have chronicled the changing landscape, from pre-Revolutionary era settlers to contemporary researchers.

Copernicus’ Secret: How the Scientific Revolution Began, Jack Repcheck (JR Books)
A biography of Copernicus, the radical scientist of the early Renaissance who proclaimed that the Earth and other planets revolve around the sun.



The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Francis Grose (Amberley)
This unabridged reproduction of Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, originally published in numerous editions from the 1790s to the 1820s, provides an insight the slang and vernacular language of the time.