With over 2,000 miles of navigable waterway in the UK, Britain's Canals are an asset to be treasured by everyone. Nick Corble has written an accessible guide which will help you get the best out of a visit or a boating holiday on the canal network. Whether your interest lies in the history, the flora and fauna to be found along the towpath, or even the types of boats and their decoration, there is enough in Britain's Canals: A Handbook to inform and entertain.

Geographies of Mars: Seeing and Knowing the Red Planet

One of the first maps of Mars, published by an Italian astronomer in 1877, with its pattern of canals, fueled belief in intelligent life forms on the distant red planet—a hope that continued into the 1960s. Although the Martian canals have long since been dismissed as a famous error in the history of science, K. Maria D. Lane argues that there was nothing accidental about these early interpretations. Indeed, she argues, the construction of Mars as an incomprehensibly complex and engineered world both reflected and challenged dominant geopolitical themes during a time of major cultural, intellectual, political, and economic transition in the Western world.