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Showing 1321 - 1340 of 2671 items
By Subhankar Banerjee. 2022
This one-of-a-kind, lavishly illustrated anthology celebrates Audubon’s connection to the sea through both his words and art. The American…
naturalist John James Audubon (1785–1851) is widely remembered for his iconic paintings of American birdlife. But as this anthology makes clear, Audubon was also a brilliant writer—and his keen gaze took in far more than creatures of the sky. Culled from his published and unpublished writings, Audubon at Sea explores Audubon’s diverse observations of the ocean, the coast, and their human and animal inhabitants. With Audubon expert Christoph Irmscher and scholar of the sea Richard J. King as our guides, we set sail from the humid expanses of the American South to the shores of England and the chilly landscapes of the Canadian North. We learn not only about the diversity of sea life Audubon documented—birds, sharks, fish, and whales—but also about life aboard ship, travel in early America, Audubon’s work habits, and the origins of beloved paintings. As we face an unfathomable loss of seabirds today, Audubon’s warnings about the fragility of birdlife in his time are prescient and newly relevant. Charting the course of Audubon’s life and work, from his birth in Haiti to his death in New York City, Irmscher and King’s sweeping introduction and carefully drawn commentary confront the challenges Audubon’s legacy poses for us today, including his participation in American slavery and the thousands of birds he killed for his art. Rounded out by hundreds of historical and ornithological notes and beautiful illustrations, and with a foreword by distinguished photographer and conservationist Subhankar Banerjee, Audubon at Sea is the most comprehensively annotated collection of Audubon’s work ever published.By Andrea Wulf. 2022
'Elegantly written, deeply researched and totally gripping' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIOREIn the 1790s an extraordinary group of friends changed the world.…
Disappointed by the French Revolution's rapid collapse into tyranny, what they wanted was nothing less than a revolution of the mind. The rulers of Europe had ordered their peoples how to think and act for too long. Based in the small German town of Jena, through poetry, drama, philosophy and science, they transformed the way we think about ourselves and the world around us. They were the first Romantics.Their way of understanding the world still frames our lives and being.We're still empowered by their daring leap into the self. We still think with their minds, see with their imagination and feel with their emotions. We also still walk the same tightrope between meaningful self-fulfilment and destructive narcissism, between the rights of the individual and our role as a member of our community and our responsibilities towards future generations who will inhabit this planet. This extraordinary group of friends changed our world. It is impossible to imagine our lives, thoughts and understanding without the foundation of their ground-breaking ideas.By Dr Lachlan McIver. 2022
***'Just brilliant. The book of the decade.' - Professor Tim Flannery, Former Australian of the Year 'An honest, powerful and…
riveting book that demonstrates Lachlan's courage in the face of the hardest of circumstances.' - Levison Wood, Award-winning author, explorer and photographer'Wow. A hugely important and enjoyable book that will restore your faith in humanity and what is possible... Deeply moving and at times tragic but never losing a sense of optimism or hope.' - Sir Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome TrustLachlan was sixteen when he found his father dead on the side of a dirt road in North Queensland, Australia. He had suffered a sudden heart attack and died alone. It was this tragedy that motivated Lachlan to train as a doctor specialising in providing medical care for people living in remote, resource-deprived locations. Lachlan's work with the World Health Organization and Médecins Sans Frontières has taken him to some of the world's most extreme environments, from the sinking islands of the Pacific to epidemics and war zones in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. In this no-holds-barred memoir, Lachlan recounts his experiences treating patients ravaged by tropical diseases, managing war wounds with drug-resistant infections, delivering babies by the light of a head torch, dealing with the devastating effects of climate change and narrowly avoiding being kidnapped by militia in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Tackling such impossible problems day in and day out inevitably takes a personal toll. Lachlan is ultimately forced to face his own battles with depression, alcohol abuse and bankruptcy.Life and Death Decisions is a deeply human look at the personal cost of our broken global health system and a vital call to action.By Hayley Arceneaux. 2022
The youngest American to ever orbit the earth—cancer survivor Hayley Arceneaux—shows us all that when we face our fears with…
hope and faith, extraordinary things can happen.&“A potent reminder to all of us that nothing on earth—or in the heavens, for that matter—can keep us from becoming commanders of our own destiny.&”—Marlo Thomas, actor, author, and national outreach director for St. Jude Children&’s Research HospitalIn this boldly optimistic debut memoir, Hayley Arceneaux details how she overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to grab hold of a life greater than she&’d ever imagined. With her signature upbeat messaging, Arceneaux recounts her odyssey, from her cancer diagnosis at age ten and the yearlong treatment that inspired her goal of working with pediatric cancer patients, to living through her father&’s terminal cancer diagnosis, to getting her lifelong dream job at St. Jude Children&’s Research Hospital as a physician assistant. She was sure she&’d finally attained the life she wanted, and then the amazing and unimaginable happened: She was invited to go to space as a St. Jude ambassador.Throughout the book, Arceneaux encourages readers to fight for the life they want, saying, You have to hold on, because you don&’t know what great thing can come and change your life. Take the chance and you will feel, and learn, and grow, and become even more you. Following your dreams can take you to dreams you didn&’t know you had.Arceneaux&’s uplifting story is the inspiration we all need today. She offers wisdom and lessons in courage to anyone fighting against the odds. And through it all, she reveals how resilience and faith can help us grab hold of the life we&’ve always wanted and live it to the fullest.By Margarita Michelini. 2022
Las once científicas uruguayas retratadas en este libro cuentan sus sueños, su día a día, sus logros y sus peajes.…
No es casualidad que en el nivel más alto del Sistema Nacional de Investigadores haya una mujer por cada 3,4 varones. Tampoco que en los grados iniciales la participación femenina se equipare a la de ellos. Habla de una lógica de obstáculos y prejuicios, más o menos conscientes y vastamente estudiados, que lentamente va cambiando. Las once científicas uruguayas retratadas en este libro cuentan sus sueños, su día a día, sus logros y sus peajes. Estas páginas guardan la esperanza de contagiar a quienes se plantean seguir sus pasos y a los lectores todos, para que puedan darle a su labor el lugar que merece. Sin ellas, la ciencia tendría otro tinte. Trabajan con pasión, la mayoría en silencio, en temas que parecen lejanos y sin embargo repercuten en la vida de todos. Productos naturales que contrarres-ten el uso de plaguicidas, sistemas de información para cuidar el ambiente, el amor por partículas tan imperceptibles como poderosas, el tesón de una loca idea, la estadística aplicada para modelar el comportamiento del SARS-CoV-2 y la carrera para fabricar en Uruguay un kit para detectarlo se cruzan con una científica emprendedora, una doctora del clima especialista en enfrentar temporales, una experta en mecatrónica que hace hablar a las máquinas o una jugadora de elite en las matemáticas. Cuando la creatividad y las neuronas se conjugan con entrega, el resultado no tiene límites.Pre-order UNDOCTORED: The Story of a Medic Who Ran Out of PatientsThis is Going to Hurt was the publishing phenomenon…
of the century, read by many millions, loved by at least fifty of them, and adapted into a major TV series. But it was only part of the story. By turns hilarious, heartbreaking and humbling, Undoctored is about what happens when a doctor hangs up his scrubs, but medicine refuses to let go of him.It's about an extraordinary medical school education. It's about opening old wounds and examining the present-day scars.It's about hospital admissions and personal ones. It's about blowing up your life and stitching it back together.It's about being a doctor and being a patient.It's about 300 pages long. Undoctored is Adam Kay's funniest and most moving book yet - an astonishing portrait of a life in and out of medicine, from one of Britain's finest storytellers.By P. J. Hoover. 2022
When engineers are faced with an impossible problem, they don't quit. They look for solutions. These 15 women are coders…
and engineers who have faced impossible problems and found solutions. They are each doing amazing work in technical fields while facing unique challenges that are not equally faced by men. Some have faced work/life balance offsets and long-distance relationship challenges. Others have faced teen pregnancy, homelessness, and domestic abuse. Many may have not had the same technical encouragement growing up that their male colleagues had. Science has typically been considered a man's field of study. There are all sorts of reasons why this is the case, though none of them is valid in today's society. Women can and should be anything they want to be. Problem solving with science and math is everyone's field, and it's time for the world to see powerful women succeeding in it.By Jean Marmoreo, Johanna Schneller. 2022
An urgently important exploration of the human stories behind Canada's evolving acceptance of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), from one…
of its first and most thoughtful practitioners.Dr. Jean Marmoreo spent her career keeping people alive. But when the Supreme Court of Canada gave the green light to Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in 2016, she became one of a small group of doctors who chose to immediately train themselves in this new field. Over the course of a single year, Marmoreo learns about end-of-life practices in bustling Toronto hospitals, in hospices, and in the facilities of smaller communities. She found that the needed services were often minimal--or non-existent. The Last Doctor recounts Marmoreo's crash course in MAiD and introduces a range of very different and memorable patients, some aged, some suffering from degenerative conditions or with a terminal disease, some surrounded by supportive love, some quite alone, who ask her help to end their suffering with dignity and on their own terms. Dr. Marmoreo also shares her own emotional transformation as she climbs a steep learning curve and learns the intimate truths of the vast range of end-of-life situations. What she experiences with MAiD shakes her to her core, makes her think deeply about pain, loneliness, and joy, and brings her closer to life&’s most profound questions. At a time when end-of-life care and its quality are more in the public eye than ever before, The Last Doctor provides an accessibly personal, deeply humane, and authoritative guide through this difficult subject.By Douglas Parbery. 2015
This book is a biography of a scientist who pioneered the development of plant pathology in Australia in the 19th…
and early 20th century and was internationally acclaimed After 20 years as a plant pathologist he was asked to find the cause and cure of a serious physiological disorder of apples While the cause eluded him and everyone else for another 60 years he again won international gratitude for the improvements he brought to the apple industry However because he did not find the cause he was deemed to have failed by his political masters who were malignantly influenced by a jealous rival The discovery in 2012-2013 of government files covering the period of the bitter pit investigation from 1911 to 1916 reveal the extent of the unjust criticism of McAlpine while history has vindicated the management recommendations made to reduce bitter-pit losses The focus on bitter-pit management late in McAlpine s Career also meant that those who value his memory have been less aware of the remarkable achievements of McAlpine in the time before he left Great Britain - the brilliance of his teaching and drawing skills -featured in the early teaching texts for botany and zoology the latter with his brother which are now accessible on-line The objective of this book is to demonstrate that i the view that McAlpine had failed in his quest was wrong and seriously unjust ii McAlpine achievements extend beyond plant pathology and include significant contributions to the 19th century teaching of botany and zoology contributions which reinforce the adage - a picture is worth a 1 000 wordsBy Michelle Malkin. 2015
Firebrand conservative columnist, commentator, Internet entrepreneur, and #1 New York Times bestselling author Michelle Malkin tells the fascinating, little-known stories…
of the inventors who have contributed to American exceptionalism and technological progress. In July 2012, President Obama infamously proclaimed: "If you've got a business--you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen". Malkin wholeheartedly disagrees. Who Built That is a rousing tribute to the hidden American capitalists who pioneered everyday inventions. They're the little big things we take for granted: bottle caps and glassware, tissue paper, flashlights, railroad signals, bridge cables, revolutionary plastics, and more. Malkin takes readers on an eclectic journey of American capitalism, from the colonial period to the Industrial Age to the present, spotlighting awe-inspiring and little-known "tinkerpreneurs" who achieved their dreams of doing well by doing good. You'll learn how famous patent holders Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain championed the nation's unique system of intellectual property rights; how glass manufacturing mavericks Edward Libbey and Mike Owens defied naysayers to revolutionize food, beverage, and pharmaceutical packaging; how penniless Croatian immigrant Anthony Maglica started his $400 million Maglite flashlight business in a rented garage; and many more riveting stories that explain our country's fertile climate for scientific advancement and entrepreneurship. To understand who we are as people, we need to first understand what motivates America's ordinary and extraordinary makers and risk-takers. Driven by her own experience as a second-generation beneficiary of the American Dream, Malkin skillfully and passionately rebuts collectivist orthodoxy to celebrate the engineers, mechanics, designers, artisans, and relentless tinkerers of all backgrounds who embody our nation's spirit of self-made entrepreneurialism.By Peter Watson. 2016
A brilliant history of science over the past 150 years that offers a powerful new argument—that the many disparate scientific…
branches are converging on the same truths.Convergence is a history of modern science with an original and significant twist. Various scientific disciplines, despite their very different beginnings, have been coming together over the past 150 years, converging and coalescing. Intimate connections have been discovered between physics and chemistry, psychology and biology, genetics and linguistics. In this groundbreaking book, Peter Watson identifies one extraordinary master narrative, capturing how the sciences are slowly resolving into one overwhelming, interlocking story about the universe. Watson begins his narrative in the 1850s, the decade when, he argues, the convergence of the sciences began. The idea of the conservation of energy was introduced in this decade, as was Darwin’s theory of evolution—both of which rocketed the sciences forward and revealed unimagined interconnections and overlaps between disciplines. The story then proceeds from each major breakthrough and major scientist to the next, leaping between fields and linking them together. Decade after decade, the story captures every major scientific advance en route to the present, proceeding like a cosmic detective story, or the world’s most massive code-breaking effort. Watson’s is a thrilling new approach to the history of science, revealing how each piece falls into place, and how each uncovers an “emerging order.” Convergence is, as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg has put it, “The deepest thing about the universe.” And Watson’s comprehensive and eye-opening book argues that all our scientific efforts are indeed approaching unity. Told through the eyes of the scientists themselves, charting each discovery and breakthrough, it is a gripping way to learn what we now know about the universe and where our inquiries are heading.By Satya Nadella. 2017
Oprime refrescar es un conjunto de reflexiones, meditaciones y recomendaciones presentadas como algoritmos de parte de un líder con principios…
que busca el progreso para sí mismo, para una empresa con amplia trayectoria y para la sociedad.El CEO de Microsoft narra la historia de transformación constante desde dentro de la empresa, trazando su viaje personal desde su infancia en la India hasta dirigir algunos de los cambios tecnológicos más importantes de la era digital, y ofrece su visión para la era de tecnologías inteligentes que se avecina.Oprime refrescar habla del cambio individual, de la transformación que se está produciendo dentro de Microsoft y de la llegada de la ola de tecnología más emocionante y perturbadora que la humanidad ha experimentado hasta hoy, que incluye aspectos como la inteligencia artificial, la realidad mixta y la computación cuántica. Analiza cómo las personas, las organizaciones y las sociedades pueden y deben actualizarse en su búsqueda constante de nuevas energías, nuevas ideas, relevancia continua y reinvención. En esencia, el libro trata sobre los seres humanos y sobre cómo una de nuestras cualidades básicas, la empatía, será cada vez más valiosa en un mundo cuyo statu quo se verá trastornado como nunca antes por el avance tecnológico.Además de sus reflexiones sobre estos impresionantes avances científicos, Satya Nadella habla de su infancia antes de emigrar a Estados Unidos y de cómo aprendió a liderar durante el proceso. También comparte sus meditaciones al ocupar el cargo de CEO, siendo casi un desconocido que sucedía al inteligente Bill Gates y al dinámico Steve Ballmer. Explica cómo la compañía redescubrió su alma y lo transformó todo, desde su cultura y sus alianzas empresariales hasta el paisaje tremendamente competitivo de la industria.Nadella concluye estableciendo una ecuación para restaurar la confianza digital: principios éticos al diseñar la tecnología y crecimiento económico para todos.By Homer Hickam. 1998
Así comienza la maravillosamente entretenida y extraordinaria autobiografía de la vida de «Sonny» Homer Hickam, Jr. en Coalwood, Virginia Occidental,…
un pueblo miserable donde lo único que importaba era la minería de carbón y el fútbol americano. El segundo hijo introspectivo del superintendente de la mina y de una madre decidida a alcanzar una vida mejor para su hijo, Sonny se unió a un grupo de inadaptados para quienes el futuro parecía incierto. Pero en 1957, luego de haber visto el satélite soviético Sputnik cruzar el cielo de los Apalaches, Sonny y sus amigos adolescentes tomaron el futuro en sus manos, cambiando sus vidas y su ciudad para siempre.Recordando una carrera distinguida en la NASA que hizo realidad los sueños de su niñez, Hickam relata la historia de su juventud, llevando a los lectores a la vida de aquel pueblo minero y las de los muchachos que encarnaron sus tensiones y sus sueños. Con la ayuda —y en ocasiones los obstáculos— de los habitantes de Coalwood, los jóvenes aprendieron no solo a convertir escombros de minería en cohetes que surcaban los cielos, sino que encontraron esperanza en una ciudad en la que el progreso pasaba desapercibido.Una autobiografía única, Cielo de octubre es a la vez una crónica inspiradora de triunfo y una historia luminosa del amor de una madre, los temores de un padre y la vida de un joven.Con la sencilla gracia de un narrador por naturaleza, Homer Hickam capta a la perfección un momento en el cual un pueblo agonizante, una familia dividida y una banda de adolescents soñadores se atrevieron a mirar más allá de sus diferencias y a fijar sus objetivos en las estrellas... y vieron un futuro que la nación estaba apenas empezando a imaginar.By Jennet Conant. 2017
The remarkable life of one of the most influential men of the greatest generation, James B. Conant—a savvy architect of…
the nuclear age and the Cold War—told by his granddaughter, New York Times bestselling author Jennet Conant.James Bryant Conant was a towering figure. He was at the center of the mammoth threats and challenges of the twentieth century. As a young eminent chemist, he supervised the production of poison gas in WWI. As a controversial president of Harvard University, he was a champion of meritocracy and open admissions. As an advisor to FDR, he led the interventionist cause for US entrance in WWII. During that war, Conant was the administrative director of the Manhattan Project, oversaw the development of the atomic bomb and argued that it be used against the industrial city of Hiroshima in Japan. Later, he urged the Atomic Energy Commission to reject the hydrogen bomb, and devoted the rest of his life to campaigning for international control of atomic weapons. As Eisenhower’s high commissioner to Germany, he helped to plan German recovery and was an architect of the United States’ Cold War policy. Now New York Times bestselling author Jennet Conant recreates the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century as her grandfather James experienced them. She describes the guilt, fears, and sometimes regret of those who invented and deployed the bombs and the personal toll it took. From the White House to Los Alamos to Harvard University, Man of the Hour is based on hundreds of documents and diaries, interviews with Manhattan Projects scientists, Harvard colleagues, and Conant’s friends and family, including her father, James B. Conant’s son. This is a very intimate, up-close look at some of the most argued cases of modern times—among them the use of chemical weapons, the decision to drop the bomb, Oppenheimer’s fate, the politics of post-war Germany and the Cold War—the repercussions of which are still affecting our world today.Kari Byron—former host of the wildly popular, iconic cult classic MythBusters—shows how to crash test your way through life, no…
lab coat required. Kari Byron’s story hasn’t been a straight line. She started out as a broke artist living in San Francisco, writing poems on a crowded bus on the way to one of her three jobs. Many curve balls, unexpected twists, and yes, literal and figurative explosions later, and she’s one of the world’s most respected women in science entertainment, blowing stuff up on national television and getting paid for it! In Crash Test Girl, Kari reveals her fascinating life story on the set of MythBusters and beyond. With her signature gusto and roll-up-your-sleeves enthusiasm, she invites readers behind the duct tape and the dynamite, to the unlikely friendships and low-budget sets that turned a crazy idea into a famously inventive show with a rabid fanbase. The truth is, Mythbusters was never meant to be a science show. But attaching a rocket to a car, riding a motorcycle on water, or lighting 500 pounds of coffee creamer on fire requires a decent understanding of chemistry, physics, and engineering. Thus, the cast and crew brought in the scientific method to work through each problem: Question. Hypothesize. Experiment. Analyze. Conclude. And as Kari came to learn in her own life, not only is the scientific method the best approach for busting myths, it’s also the perfect tool for solving everyday issues, including:Career · Love · Creativity · Setbacks · Money · Sexuality · Depression · BraveryCrash Test Girl reminds us that science is for everyone, as long as you’re willing to strap in, put on your safety goggles, hit a few walls, and learn from the results. Using a combination of methodical experimentation and unconventional creativity, you’ll come to the most important conclusion of all: In life, sometimes you crash and burn, but you can always crash and learn.By Grant Merritt. 2018
A memoir of family mining pioneers and unscrupulous magnates and the fight for Minnesota s natural…
resources In 1855 the Merritt family arrived in Minnesota where a descendant Alfred would one day become one of the Seven Iron Men builders of the first mines to tap the state s great mineral wealth in the Mesabi Range Another Merritt more than half a century later would lead the efforts to protect Lake Superior from damage caused by mining Iron and Water is Grant J Merritt s memoir of his life s work on behalf of Minnesota s people and environment and also the story of a significant family in state history Merritt s family played a key role in the struggle over natural resources in Minnesota for the enrichment of mining pioneers the prosperity of the state and its people and the prospect of a secure and healthy future This complex tale begins with the adventure of discovering iron ore and building the mines railroads and docks to move it then devolves into the intrigues of business partnerships gone bad and attempts by John D Rockefeller to defraud the Merritts What follows is an engrossing account of Grant Merritt s years in the halls of state politics and the trenches of environmental activism in defense of Minnesota s North Shore and Lake Superior s waters The author s tenure as head of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency under Governor Wendell Anderson and his service on the first board of the Minnesota Environmental Quality Council take us behind the scenes of landmark legal cases and crucial moments in Minnesota history particularly the notable Reserve Mining case in which the company was found liable for serious environmental and health threats on the shores of Lake Superior and ordered to be shut down In these pages we encounter the people who were critical to this history from robber baron Rockefeller to judges activists and politicians including Walter Mondale and Jim Oberstar In chronicling both the discovery of vast iron deposits on the Mesabi Range and the fight to save Lake Superior and Minnesota s natural riches Iron and Water reveals how whether alone or together individuals wield the power to change the worldBy Kathleen Krull. 2010
All his life, Charles Darwin hated controversy. Yet he takes his place among the Giants of Science for what remains…
an immensely controversial subject: the theory of evolution. Darwin began piecing together his explanation for how all living things change or adapt during his five-year voyage on HMS Beagle. But it took him twenty years to go public, for fear of the backlash his theory would cause. Once again, Kathleen Krull delivers a witty and astute picture of one of history's greatest scientists. .By Kathleen Krull, Kathryn Hewitt. 2013
Scientists have a reputation for being focused on their work--and maybe even dull. But take another look. Did you know…
that it's believed Galileo was scolded by the Roman Inquisition for sassing his mom? That Isaac Newton loved to examine soap bubbles? That Albert Einstein loved to collect joke books, and that geneticist Barbara McClintock wore a Groucho Marx disguise in public? With juicy tidbits about everything from favorite foods to first loves, the subjects of Kathleen Krull and Kathryn Hewitt's Lives of the Scientists: Experiments, Explosions (and What the Neighbors Thought) are revealed as creative, bold, sometimes eccentric--and anything but dull.By Tracy Kidder. 2016
"A perfectly executed, exquisitely reported parable of the Internet age and the wild, mad adventure that is start-up culture."--Charles Duhigg…
Fortune, mania, genius, philanthropy--the bestselling author of Mountains Beyond Mountains gives us the inspiring story of Paul English, the founder of Kayak.com and Lola. Tracy Kidder, the "master of the nonfiction narrative" (The Baltimore Sun) and author of the bestselling classic The Soul of a New Machine, now tells the story of Paul English, a kinetic and unconventional inventor and entrepreneur, who as a boy rebelled against authority. Growing up in working-class Boston, English discovers a medium for his talents the first time he sees a computer. As a young man, despite suffering from what would eventually be diagnosed as bipolar disorder, he begins his pilgrim's journey through the ups and downs in the brave new world of computers. Relating to the Internet as if it's an extension of his own mind, he discovers that he has a talent for conceiving innovative enterprises and building teams that can develop them, becoming "a Pied Piper" of geeks. His innovative management style, success, and innate sense of fair play inspire intense loyalty. Early on, one colleague observes: "Someday this boy's going to get hit by a truck full of money, and I'm going to be standing beside him." Yet when English does indeed make a fortune, when the travel website Kayak is sold for almost two billion dollars--the first thing he thinks about is how to give the money away: "What else would you do with it?" The second thing he thinks is, What's next? With the power of a consummate storyteller, Tracy Kidder casts a fresh, critical, and often humorous eye on the way new ideas and new money are reshaping our culture and the world. A Truck Full of Money is a mesmerizing portrait of an irresistibly endearing man who is indefatigable, original, and as unpredictable as America itself. Advance praise for A Truck Full of Money"A perfectly executed, exquisitely reported parable of the Internet age, and the wild, mad adventure that is start-up culture."--Charles Duhigg "A Truck Full of Money brings us into unknown spaces of the complex workings of the mind--of a brilliant software engineer, of this new decade, of the brutal/fast business of technology, of stunning privilege, and of one man's efforts to put his fortune to humane use."--Adrian Nicole LeBlanc"The story of [an] entrepreneur's remarkable life [and] the new American economy and the technological world that built it. More engrossing work from a gifted practitioner of narrative nonfiction."--Kirkus ReviewsFrom the Hardcover edition.By Oren Harman, Michael R. Dietrich. 2018
What are the conditions that foster true novelty and allow visionaries to set their eyes on unknown horizons? What have…
been the challenges that have spawned new innovations, and how have they shaped modern biology? In Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences, editors Oren Harman and Michael R. Dietrich explore these questions through the lives of eighteen exemplary biologists who had grand and often radical ideas that went far beyond the run-of-the-mill science of their peers. From the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who coined the word “biology” in the early nineteenth century, to the American James Lovelock, for whom the Earth is a living, breathing organism, these dreamers innovated in ways that forced their contemporaries to reexamine comfortable truths. With this collection readers will follow Jane Goodall into the hidden world of apes in African jungles and Francis Crick as he attacks the problem of consciousness. Join Mary Lasker on her campaign to conquer cancer and follow geneticist George Church as he dreams of bringing back woolly mammoths and Neanderthals. In these lives and the many others featured in these pages, we discover visions that were sometimes fantastical, quixotic, and even threatening and destabilizing, but always a challenge to the status quo.