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L'esprit, cet inconnu ((Que sais-je? ; 698))
By Jean Emile Charon. 1977
Des atomes et des hommes ((Idées nrf ; 195))
By Louis Leprince-Ringuet. 1966
The making of home: the 500-year story of how our houses became our homes
By Judith Flanders. 2014
Flanders traces the evolution of the house from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century across northern Europe and America,…
showing how the homes we know today bear only a faint resemblance to homes though history. What turned a house into a home? Why did northwestern Europe, a politically unimportant, sociologically underdeveloped region of the world, suddenly became the powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution, the capitalist crucible that created modernity? While investigating these important questions, Flanders uncovers the fascinating development of ordinary household items--from cutlery, chairs and curtains, to fitted kitchens, plumbing and windows--while also dismantling many domestic myths.JAY-Z: Made in America
By Michael Eric Dyson. 2019
"If you want the definitive treatment of a man who took it from Marcy Projects to the White House with…
wit, wisdom, and talent, and changed hip hop along the way, look no further than this insightful, brilliant and moving book." -Common JAY-Z is America at its scrappy, brash, irreverent, soulful, ingenious best: as transcendent a cultural icon as Frank Sinatra, as adventurous a self-made billionaire as Mark Zuckerberg, as gifted a poet as Walt Whitman. As he reaches the half-century mark, logs thirty years as a recording artist, becomes the genre's first billionaire, reigns as an elder statesman in a field teeming with artists half his age, and continues to make relevant rap records that chart-and that chart an artistic and political response to revived racism and renewed hostility to blackness-it is an auspicious time to examine JAY-Z's ideas, gifts and impact, to take measure of his stride as a cultural colossus. And there is no one better suited to the task than Michael Eric Dyson, who has investigated and championed hip hop, and the work of JAY-Z, as a critical American art form, for decades.How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems
By Randall Munroe. 2019
The world's most entertaining and useless self-help guide, from the brilliant mind behind the wildly popular webcomic xkcd and the…
#1 New York Times bestsellers What If? and Thing Explainer For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally bad that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole. Bestselling author and cartoonist Randall Munroe explains how to predict the weather by analyzing the pixels of your Facebook photos. He teaches you how to tell if you're a baby boomer or a 90's kid by measuring the radioactivity of your teeth. He offers tips for taking a selfie with a telescope, crossing a river by boiling it, and getting to your appointments on time by destroying the Moon. And if you want to get rid of the book once you're done with it, he walks you through your options for proper disposal, including dissolving it in the ocean, converting it to a vapor, using tectonic plates to subduct it into the Earth's mantle, or launching it into the Sun. By exploring the most complicated ways to do simple tasks, Munroe doesn't just make things difficult for himself and his readers. As he did so brilliantly in What If?, Munroe invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible. Full of clever infographics and amusing illustrations, How To is a delightfully mind-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day.Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime
By Sean Carroll. 2019
Caltech physicist and New York Times bestselling author Sean Carroll shows that there are multiple copies of you. And everyone…
else. Really. Something Deeply Hidden begins with the news that physics is in a crisis. Quantum mechanics underlies all of modern physics but major gaps in the theory have been ignored since 1927. Science popularizers keep telling us how weird it is, how contradictory, how impossible it is to understand. Academics discourage students from working on the "dead end" of quantum foundations. Putting his professional reputation on the line, Carroll says that crisis can now come to an end. We just have to accept that there is more than one of us in the universe. There are many, many Sean Carrolls. Many of every one of us. The Many Worlds Theory of quantum behavior says that every time there is a quantum event, a world splits off with everything in it the same, except in that other world the quantum event didn't happen. Since the beginning of the universe about fourteen billion years ago, this has happened about ten to the tenth to the one-hundredth power times. Step-by-step in Carroll's uniquely lucid way, he sets out the major objections to this utterly mind-blowing notion until his case is inescapably established. The holy grail of modern physics is reconciling quantum mechanics with Einstein's general relativity- his theory of curved spacetime. Carroll argues that our refusal to face up to the mysteries of quantum mechanics has blinded us, and that spacetime and gravity naturally emerge from a deeper reality called the wave function. No book for a popular audience has attempted to make this radical argument. We're on the threshold of a new way of understanding the cosmos.Love Thy Neighbor
By Ayaz Virji. 2019
A powerful true story about a Muslim doctor's service to small-town America and the hope of overcoming our country's climate…
of hostility and fear. In 2013, Ayaz Virji left a comfortable job at an East Coast hospital and moved to a town of 1,400 in Minnesota, feeling called to address the shortage of doctors in rural America. But in 2016, this decision was tested when the reliably blue, working-class county swung for Donald Trump. Virji watched in horror as his children faced anti-Muslim remarks at school and some of his most loyal patients began questioning whether he belonged in the community. Virji wanted out. But in 2017, just as he was lining up a job in Dubai, a local pastor invited him to speak at her church and address misconceptions about what Muslims practice and believe. That invitation has grown into a well-attended lecture series that has changed hearts and minds across the state, while giving Virji a new vocation that he never would have expected. In Love Thy Neighbor, Virji relates this story in a gripping, unforgettable narrative that shows the human consequences of our toxic politics, the power of faith and personal conviction, and the potential for a renewal of understanding in America's heartland.Monsieur Mediocre: One Man's Journey to Becoming Real French
By John Von Sothen. 2019
A hilarious, candid account of what life in France is actually like, from a writer for Vanity Fair and GQ…
Americans love to love Paris. We buy books about how the French parent, why French women don't get fat, and how to be Parisian wherever you are. While our work hours increase every year, we think longingly of the six weeks of vacation the French enjoy, imagining them at the seaside in stripes with plates of fruits de mer. John von Sothen fell in love with Paris through the stories his mother told of her year spent there as a student. And then, after falling for and marrying a French waitress he met in New York, von Sothen moved to Paris. But fifteen years in, he's finally ready to admit his mother's Paris is mostly a fantasy. In this hilarious and delightful collection of essays, von Sothen walks us through real life in Paris-not only myth-busting our Parisian daydreams but also revealing the inimitable and too often invisible pleasures of family life abroad. Relentlessly funny and full of incisive observations, Monsieur Mediocre is ultimately a love letter to France-to its absurdities, its history, its ideals-but it's a very French love letter: frank, smoky, unsentimental. It is a clear-eyed ode to a beautiful, complex, contradictory country from someone who both eagerly and grudgingly calls it home.Problem with Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars
By Meghan Daum. 2019
From "one of the most emotionally exacting, mercilessly candid, deeply funny, and intellectually rigorous writers of our time" (Cheryl Strayed,…
author of Wild) comes a seminal new book that reaches surprising truths about feminism, the Trump era, and the Resistance movement. You won't be able to stop thinking about it and talking about it. In the fall of 2016, acclaimed author Meghan Daum began working on a book about the excesses of contemporary feminism. With Hillary Clinton soon to be elected, she figured even the most fiercely liberal of her friends and readers could take the criticisms in stride. But after the election, she knew she needed to do more, and her nearly completed manuscript went in the trash. What came out in its place is the most sharply-observed, all-encompassing, and unputdownable book of her career. In this gripping new work, Meghan examines our country's most intractable problems with clear-eyed honesty instead of exaggerated outrage. With passion, humor, and most importantly nuance, she tries to make sense of the current landscape-from Donald Trump's presidency to the #MeToo movement and beyond. In the process, she wades into the waters of identity politics and intersectionality, thinks deeply about the gender wage gap, and tests a theory about the divide between Gen Xers and millennials. This signature work may well be the first book to capture the essence of this era in all its nuances and contradictions. No matter where you stand on its issues, this book will strike a chord.The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini
By Joe Posnanski. 2019
Award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Joe Posnanski enters the world of Harry Houdini and his legions of…
devoted fans in an immersive, entertaining, and magical work on the illusionist's impact on American culture-and why his legacy endures to this day. Harry Houdini. Say his name and a number of things come to mind. Escapes. Illusions. Magic. Chains. Safes. Live burials. Close to a century after his death, nearly every person in America knows his name from a young age, capturing their imaginations with his death-defying stunts and daring acts. He inspired countless people, from all walks of life, to find something magical within themselves. This is a book about a man and his extraordinary life, but it is also about the people who he has inspired in death. As Joe Posnanski delves into the deepest corners of Houdini-land, visiting museums (one owned by David Copperfield), attractions, and private archives, he encounters a cast of unforgettable and fascinating characters: a woman who runs away from home to chase her dream of becoming a magician; an Italian who revives Houdini's most famous illusion every night; a performer at the Magic Castle in Los Angeles who calls himself Houdini's Ghost; a young boy in Australia who, one day, sees an old poster and feels his life change; and a man in Los Angeles whose sole mission is life has been to keep the legend's name alive. Both a personal obsession and an odyssey of discovery, Posnanski draws inspiration from his lifelong passion for and obsession with magic, blending biography, memoir, and first-person reporting to examine Harry Houdini's life and legacy. This is the ultimate journey to uncover why this magic man endures, and what he still has to teach the world about wonder.Wolfpack
By Abby Wambach. 2019
"Abby is a relatable revolutionary-with WOLFPACK, she inspires the confidence, leadership and sisterhood we all so desperately need right now."-Amy…
Schumer This program is read by the author. Based on her inspiring, viral 2018 commencement speech to Barnard College's graduates in New York City, New York Times bestselling author, two-time Olympic gold medalist and FIFA World Cup champion Abby Wambach delivers her empowering rally cry for women to unleash their individual power, unite with their pack, and emerge victorious together. Abby Wambach became a champion because of her incredible talent as a soccer player. She became an icon because of her remarkable wisdom as a leader. As the co-captain of the 2015 Women's World Cup Champion Team, she created a culture not just of excellence, but of honor, commitment, resilience, and sisterhood. She helped transform a group of individual women into one of the most successful, powerful and united Wolfpacks of all time. In her retirement, Abby's ready to do the same for her new team: All Women Everywhere. In WOLFPACK, Abby's message to women is: We have never been Little Red Riding Hood. We Are the Wolves. We must wander off the path and blaze a new one: together. She insists that women must let go of old rules of leadership that neither include or serve them. She's created a new set of Wolfpack rules to help women unleash their individual power, unite with their Wolfpack, and change the landscape of their lives and world: from the family room to the board room to the White House. - Make failure your fuel: Transform failure to wisdom and power. - Lead from the bench: Lead from wherever you are. - Champion each other: Claim each woman's victory as your own. - Demand the effing ball: Don't ask permission: take what you've earned. In Abby's vision, we are not Little Red Riding Hoods, staying on the path because we're told to. We are the wolves, fighting for a better tomorrow for ourselves, our pack, and all the future wolves who will come after us. More praise for WOLFPACK: "WOLFPACK is a must-read for all of us determined to teach our kids there are no limits. It's a manifesto for everyone trying to lead-whether it's a team, a company, a family, or a meaningful life."-Serena Williams "I would follow Abby Wambach into any battlefield. I would follow her not because she is a bold leader (although she is one), but because she leads from BESIDE women, not from AHEAD of us...Abby Wambach is what the next level of women's revolution will look like, and I'm DOWN."-Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author of Eat, Pray, LoveWhite Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue ... and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation
By Lauren Michele Jackson. 2019
Explores how trends started in black communities are co-opted then turned into white profit and how this appropriation continues to…
uphold economic, political, and social inequality. In White Negroes, cultural commentator, essayist, and scholar Lauren Michele Jackson explores trends started in Black communities that have caught on and become cool, hugely popular and lucrative, but that exclude Black communities once mainstream audiences and mainstream dollars latch on. The consequences of this phenomenon can be easy to miss, as it is so ingrained in our consumer habits. Yet over and over, Black intellectual property is converted into white profit - one hashtag, hair style, music genre, and dance move at a time. This, Jackson argues, plays a role in keeping Black people from achieving economic, political, and social equity. Weaving together media scholarship and cultural critique, Jackson re-situates cultural appropriation as more than just a new buzzword. It is, she contends, simply another chapter in the long history of whiteness thriving at the expense, stolen labor and ingenuity of Black people. Further, her interrogation and exposure of the interracial antagonism resting on the other side of appropriation unravels behavior that feels normal only because it is common. Piercing, audacious, and bursting with pop-culture touchstones, White Negroes introduces a bold new voice in Jackson. Her debut is both a love letter to the creativity of Black folks and an urgent call for more thoughtful consumption by those who consider themselves "allies."An astonishing exploration of planet formation and the origins of life by one of the world's most innovative planetary geologists.In…
1959, the Soviet probe Luna 3 took the first photos of the far side of the moon. Even in their poor resolution, the images stunned scientists: the far side is an enormous mountainous expanse, not the vast lava-plains seen from Earth. Subsequent missions have confirmed this in much greater detail. How could this be, and what might it tell us about our own place in the universe? As it turns out, quite a lot. Fourteen billion years ago, the universe exploded into being, creating galaxies and stars. Planets formed out of the leftover dust and gas that coalesced into larger and larger bodies orbiting around each star. In a sort of heavenly survival of the fittest, planetary bodies smashed into each other until solar systems emerged. Curiously, instead of being relatively similar in terms of composition, the planets in our solar system, and the comets, asteroids, satellites and rings, are bewitchingly distinct. So, too, the halves of our moon. In When the Earth Had Two Moons, esteemed planetary geologist Erik Asphaug takes us on an exhilarating tour through the farthest reaches of time and our galaxy to find out why. Beautifully written and provocatively argued, When the Earth Had Two Moons is not only a mind-blowing astronomical tour but a profound inquiry into the nature of life here-and billions of miles from home.Christmas: from solstice to Santa / (Orca origins)
By Nikki Tate. 2018
Christmas is a popular holiday celebrated by people all over the world. Learn about the games played, foods eaten, music…
played and favourite ways of decorating in different parts of the world. With lots of fun facts (about everything from frumenty to the jolly old man in red himself) and recipes, there's plenty in this volume to satisfy anyone with an interest in the festive season. Grades 4-7. 2018.I'll always have Paris: a memoir
By Art Buchwald. 1996
Continuing his autobiography begun in Leaving Home (DB 37938), Buchwald writes of his years in France in the 1940s and…
1950s. He arrived in Paris with plans to attend school, but instead spent time at sidewalk cafes, became the food critic for the Paris Herald Tribune, and married Ann, with whom he adopted three children. Some strong languageTocqueville in America
By George Wilson Pierson. 1996
Using diaries, letters, and newspaper accounts, the author reconstructs the nine-month journey throughout America made by Alexis de Tocqueville and…
his companion Gustave de Beaumont on behalf of the French government in 1831 and 1832. Tocqueville's observations formed the basis of his classic political treatise, Democracy in America (DB 61828), written in 1835The 50-year dash: the feelings, foibles, and fears of being half-a-century old
By Bob Greene. 1997
A journalist's humorous and nostalgic ruminations on his life at the half-century mark. He reflects wistfully on the youthful joys…
of junk food and junk music, the thrill of anticipation of his first kiss, and the lost innocence of the America he knew as a childKiller Style: How Fashion Has Injured, Maimed, and Murdered Through History
By Alison Matthews-David, Serah-Marie McMahon. 2019
The clothes we wear every day keep us comfortable, protect us from the elements, and express our unique style—but could…
fashion also be fatal? As it turns out, history is full of fashions that have harmed or even killed people. From silhouette-cinching corsets and combustible combs to lethal hair dyes and flammable flannel, this nonfiction book looks back at the times people have suffered pain, injury, and worse, all in the name of style. Historical examples like the tragic “Radium Girl” watchmakers and mercury-poisoned “Mad Hatters,” along with more recent factory accidents, raise discussion of unsafe workplaces—where those who make the clothes are often fashion’s first victims. Co-authored by a scholar in the history of textiles and dress with the founder of WORN Fashion Journal, this book is equal parts fab and frightening: a stylishly illustrated mash-up of STEAM content, historical anecdotes, and chilling stories. Nonfiction features including sidebars, sources, an index, and a list of further reading will support critical literacy skills and digging deeper with research on this topic. Winner of the 2020 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-Fiction.Le pays qu'habitait Albert Einstein: essai
By Étienne Klein. 2018
" Albert Einstein, c'est l'audace intellectuelle alliée à une fraîcheur déconcertante, c'est l'imagination ardente soutenue par une obstination imperturbable. Mais…
comment approcher une façon de penser et de créer à nulle autre pareille ? Étienne Klein est parti sur ses traces, il s'est attaché aux époques et aux villes où le destin d'Einstein a basculé : Aarau où, à seize ans, Einstein se demande ce qu'il se passerait s'il chevauchait un rayon de lumière ; Zurich, où il devient ingénieur en 1901 et se passionne pour la physique expérimentale ; Berne où, entre mars et septembre 1905, il publie cinq articles, dont celui sur la relativité restreinte qui révolutionnera les relations de l'espace et du temps, tout en travaillant à l'Office fédéral de la propriété intellectuelle ; Prague où, en 1912, il a l'idée que la lumière est déviée par la gravitation, esquissant ainsi la future théorie de la relativité générale. Puis Bruxelles, Anvers et, enfin, Le Coq-sur-Mer où, en 1933, Einstein se réfugie quelques mois avant de quitter l'Europe pour les États-Unis. Définitivement. "Le violon d'Einstein: variations sur le temps, les quanta, l'infini
By Yann Verdo. 2018
Quand il ne se lançait pas dans ses fructueuses réflexions sur la nature de l'espace et du temps, Einstein jouait…
du violon ou fumait la pipe, et ces deux objets ne sont certes pas pour rien dans l'élaboration de ses théories. Et même si chacun de nous n'atteint pas des sphères de la pensée aussi vertigineuses que lui, l'art de penser à côté est accessible à tous. Yann Verdo le montre ici, en pratiquant la physique en amateur averti, et en nous invitant à plonger avec lui dans la physique quantique, la relativité générale et la logique. De ses rencontres imaginaires avec Einstein, Cantor et Gödel résultent une familiarité nouvelle avec ces individus hors du commun, et une compréhension profonde des grands thèmes - le temps, l'infini, la matière - qu'ils ont révolutionnés