Oxford English Dictionary - OED (for Bluedict and Mdict)
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the accepted authority on the English language, providing an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of more than 280,000 entries – past and present – from across the English-speaking world.
The OED is a historical dictionary and very different from dictionaries of current English where the focus is on present-day meanings. It contains the history of each word, and of the language, traced through more than 3.5 million quotations, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books.
The Oxford Illustrated History of the World (2019)
The Oxford Illustrated History of the World encompasses the whole span of human history. It brings together some of the world's leading historians, under the expert guidance of Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, to tell the 200,000-year story of our world, from the emergence of homo sapiens through to the twenty-first century: the environmental convulsions; the interplay of ideas (good and bad); the cultural phases and exchanges; the collisions and collaborations in politics; the successions of states and empires; the unlocking of energy; the evolutions of economies; the contacts, conflicts, and contagions that have all contributed to making the world we now inhabit.
'Wow!' is like a museum, search engine and box of visual delights, all rolled into one. It is grouped into sections on nature, the human body, science and technology, space, earth, people and places, history, and art and culture.
The author asks and answers questions that get to the heart of Australia's history:
Why did Aborigines not take up farming? How did a penal colony change peacefully into a democratic society? Why was Australia so prosperous so early? Why did the colonies federate? What effect did convict origins have on national character? Why was the postwar migration programme such a success? Why is Australia not a republic?
100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens.
How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? What will our world be like in the millennia to come?
Dr Yuval Noah Harari gives us an insights from biology, anthropology, and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities.
