Throughout history, man has been searching for better ways to gather information about his universe. But although they may have longed for it, not even the most brilliant minds could conceive of a device as infinitely powerful or as immeasurably precise as the Macroscope, until the twenty-first century. This is a story of mans desperate search for a compromise between his mind and his heart, between knowledge and humanity.

Every day, more and more kinds of historical data become available, opening exciting new avenues of inquiry but also new challenges. This updated and expanded book describes and demonstrates the ways these data can be explored to construct cultural heritage knowledge, for research and in teaching and learning. It helps humanities scholars to grasp Big Data in order to do their work, whether that means understanding the underlying algorithms at work in search engines or designing and using their own tools to process large amounts of information.Demonstrating what digital tools have to offer and also what 'digital' does to how we understand the past, the authors introduce the many different tools and developing approaches in Big Data for historical and humanistic scholarship, show how to use them, what to be wary of, and discuss the kinds of questions and new perspectives this new macroscopic perspective opens up. Originally authored 'live' online with ongoing feedback from the wider digital history community, Exploring Big Historical Data breaks new ground and sets the direction for the conversation into the future.Exploring Big Historical Data should be the go-to resource for undergraduate and graduate students confronted by a vast corpus of data, and researchers encountering these methods for the first time. It will also offer a helping hand to the interested individual seeking to make sense of genealogical data or digitized newspapers, and even the local historical society who are trying to see the value in digitizing their holdings.

Michael R. Collings examines the life and work of American science fiction author Piers Anthony. Starmont Reader's Guide 20.

Population Health Informatics addresses the growing opportunity to utilize technology to put into practice evidence-based solutions to improve population health outcomes across diverse settings. The book focuses on how to operationalize population informatics solutions to address important public health challenges impacting individuals, families, communities, and the environment in which they live. The book uniquely uses a practical, step-by-step approach to implement evidence-based, data- driven population informatics solutions.