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You Will Feel The Heat From This Gripping Tale From Ground Zero At Katrina. --Mehmet C. Oz, M.D. On the… night of August 27, 2005, Dr. Demaree Inglese was one of many New Orleans residents convinced that approaching Hurricane Katrina would pass with minimal impact. The next few days' events would prove how mistaken they all were, and Dr. Inglese, medical director of the New Orleans city jail, would lead his staff through a crisis of deadly proportions. . .. "A Page-Turning True Story. . .Inglese Tells It Brilliantly." --Dennis M. Powers, author of Sentinel of the Seas Massive flooding transformed the sprawling jail complex into an island in the crippled city. Without power or running water, and with food supplies dwindling, the medical team cared for thousands of inmates, staff, and neighborhood residents, while deputies struggled to maintain order. Rioting prisoners, burning buildings, SWAT team rescues, and medical emergencies all conspired to create a storm within a storm. "Brings The Human Scale Of The Tragedy To Life." --Publishers Weekly Vividly re-creating seven days that felt like an eternity to those who survived them, No Ordinary Heroes is a stark, revealing testament to the power of the human spirit in the most harrowing circumstances. "There's No Putting This One Down." --John Gilstrap, author of Six Minutes to Freedom With 16 Pages of Dramatic Photos Updated with a New Epilogue
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), credited as the inspiration for radio, robots, and even radar, has been called the patron saint of… modern electricity. Based on original material and previously unavailable documents, this acclaimed book is the definitive biography of the man considered by many to be the founding father of modern electrical technology. Among Tesla’s creations were the channeling of alternating current, fluorescent and neon lighting, wireless telegraphy, and the giant turbines that harnessed the power of Niagara Falls. This essential biography is illustrated with sixteen pages of photographs, including the July 20, 1931, Time magazine cover for an issue celebrating the inventor’s career.
"Informative, witty. . . Kollmann delivers terse commentary and gory detail while puncturing common misconceptions about forensics. " --Booklist Step… past the flashing lights into the true scene of the crime with this frank, unflinching, and unforgettable account of life as a crime scene investigator. Whether explaining rigor mortis or the art of fingerprinting a stiff corpse on the side of the road, Dana Kollmann details her true, unvarnished experiences as a CSI for the Baltimore County Police Department. "Riveting. " --M. William Phelps, author of Murder in the Heartland Unlike the popular crime dramas proliferating on today's television networks, these forensic tales forgo glitz for grit to show what really goes on. Kollmann recounts stories that the cops and the CSI's usually leave in the field, bringing the sights, smells, and sounds of a crime scene alive as never before. "Raw and real. " --Connie Fletcher, author of Every Contact Leaves a Trace Unveiling the process and science of crime scene investigation in all its can't-tear-your-eyes-away fascination, Never Suck a Dead Man's Hand takes you into the strange world behind the yellow tape, offering a truly eye-opening perspective on the day-to-day life of a CSI. "Gritty, witty, and heartfelt . . . a must-read. " --Aphrodite Jones, New York Times bestselling author of A Perfect Husband
“The Antarctic Factor: if anything can go wrong, it will. It's basically Murphy's Law on steroids…” —Chris Turney On Christmas… Eve 2013, off the coast of East Antarctica, an abrupt weather change trapped the Shokalskiy— the ship carrying earth scientist Chris Turney and seventy-one others involved in the Australasian Antarctic Expedition—in a densely packed armada of sea ice, 1400 miles from civilization. With the ship's hull breached and steerage lost, the wind threatened to drive the vessel into the frozen continent, smashing it to pieces. If nearby floating icebergs picked up speed, they could cause a devastating collision, leaving little time to abandon ship and potentially creating an environmental disaster. The forecast offered no relief—a blizzard was headed their way. As Turney chronicles his modern-day ordeal, he revisits famed polar explorer Ernest Shackleton's harrowing Antarctic expedition almost a century prior. His ship, Endurance, was trapped and ultimately lost to the ice, forcing Shackleton and his men to fight for survival on a vast and treacherous icescape for two years. Turney also draws inspiration from Douglas Mawson, whose Antarctic explorations were equally legendary. But for Turney the stakes were even higher— for unlike Shackleton or Mawson, he had his wife and children with him. Yet there was another key difference: Shackleton and Mawson were completely cut off; Turney’s expedition was connected to the outside world through Twitter, YouTube, and Skype. Within hours, the team became the focus of a media storm, and an international rescue effort was launched to reach the stranded ship. But could help arrive in time to avert a tragedy? A taut 21st-century survival story, Iced In is also an homage to Shackleton, Mawson, and other scientific explorers who embody the human spirit of adventure, joy in discovery, and will to live.
Styron's stirring account of his plunge into a crippling depression, and his inspiring road to recovery <P><P> In the summer… of 1985, William Styron became numbed by disaffection, apathy, and despair, unable to speak or walk while caught in the grip of advanced depression. His struggle with the disease culminated in a wave of obsession that nearly drove him to suicide, leading him to seek hospitalization before the dark tide engulfed him.<P> Darkness Visible tells the story of Styron's recovery, laying bare the harrowing realities of clinical depression and chronicling his triumph over the disease that had claimed so many great writers before him. His final words are a call for hope to all who suffer from mental illness that it is possible to emerge from even the deepest abyss of despair and "once again behold the stars." <P> This ebook features a new illustrated biography of William Styron, including original letters, rare photos, and never-before-seen documents from the Styron family and the Duke University Archives.
A New York Times Notable Book: "A melodious mix of memoir, nature journal, and beekeeping manual" (Kirkus Reviews). Weaving a… vivid portrait of her own life and her bees' lives, author Sue Hubbell lovingly describes the ins and outs of beekeeping on her small Missouri farm, where the end of one honey season is the start of the next. With three hundred hives, Hubbell stays busy year-round tending to the bees and harvesting their honey, a process that is as personally demanding as it is rewarding. Exploring the progression of both the author and the hive through the seasons, this is "a book about bees to be sure, but it is also about other things: the important difference between loneliness and solitude; the seasonal rhythms inherent in rural living; the achievement of independence; the accommodating of oneself to nature" (ThePhiladelphia Inquirer). Beautifully written and full of exquisitely rendered details, it is a tribute to Hubbell's wild hilltop in the Ozarks and of the joys of living a complex life in a simple place.
<P>Pearl S. Buck's groundbreaking memoir, hailed by James Michener as "spiritually moving," about raising a child with a rare developmental… disorder The Child Who Never Grew is Buck's candid memoir of her relationship with her oldest daughter, who was born with a rare type of mental retardation. <P>A forerunner of its kind, the memoir was published in 1950 and helped demolish the cruel taboos surrounding learning disabilities. Buck describes life with her daughter, Carol, whose special needs led Buck to send her to one of the best schools for disabled children in the United States--which she paid for in part by writing The Good Earth, her multimillion-selling classic novel. <P>Brave and touching, The Child Who Never Grew is a heartrending memoir of parenting. As Buck writes, "I learned respect and reverence for every human mind. It was my child who taught me to understand so clearly that all people are equal in their humanity and that all have the same human rights." <P> This ebook features an illustrated biography of Pearl S. Buck including rare images from the author's estate.
In December 2016, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved their iconic “Doomsday Clock” thirty seconds forward to two and a… half minutes to midnight, the latest it has been set since 1952, the year of the first United States hydrogen bomb test. But a group of scientists—geologists, engineers, and physicists—has been fighting to turn back the clock. Since the dawn of the Cold War, they have advocated a halt to nuclear testing, their work culminating in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which still awaits ratification from China, Iran, North Korea—and the United States. The backbone of the treaty is every nation’s ability to independently monitor the nuclear activity of the others. The noted seismologist Lynn R. Sykes, one of the central figures in the development of the science and technology used in monitoring, has dedicated his career to halting nuclear testing. In Silencing the Bomb, he tells the inside story behind scientists’ quest for disarmament.Called upon time and again to testify before Congress and to inform the public, Sykes and his colleagues were, for much of the Cold War, among the only people on earth able to say with certainty when and where a bomb was tested and how large it was. Methods of measuring earthquakes, researchers realized, could also detect underground nuclear explosions. When politicians on both sides of the Iron Curtain attempted to sidestep disarmament or test ban treaties, Sykes was able to deploy the nascent science of plate tectonics to reveal the truth. Seismologists’ discoveries helped bring about treaties limiting nuclear testing, but it was their activism that played a key role in the effort for peace. Full of intrigue, international politics, and hard science used for the global good, Silencing the Bomb is a timely and necessary chronicle of one scientist’s efforts to keep the clock from striking midnight.
Don't be afraid to try! Make connections! Be persistent! Ask questions and never take no for an answer! Learn the… secrets and amazing stories of successful inventors! How to Become an Accidental Genius is full of inspiring tales of famous and lesser-known inventors who have changed the world, from George Washington Carver, Mary Anderson (inventor of the windshield wiper) and inventor and actress Hedy Lamarr to Frank Epperson (of Popsicle fame) and Mary Sherman Morgan (The Woman Who Saved the U.S. Space Race). Readers will be amazed at the inventiveness of these geniuses. The book focuses on inventors from North America but includes stories from around the world. Organized into eleven chapters that highlight the qualities inventors have in common, the book also features profiles of inventive kids and teenagers.
Thomas Berry (1914–2009) was one of the twentieth century’s most prescient and profound thinkers. As a cultural historian, he sought… a broader perspective on humanity’s relationship to the earth in order to respond to the ecological and social challenges of our times. This first biography of Berry illuminates his remarkable vision and its continuing relevance for achieving transformative social change and environmental renewal.Berry began his studies in Western history and religions and then expanded to include Asian and indigenous religions, which he taught at Fordham University, Barnard College, and Columbia University. Drawing on his explorations of history, he came to see the evolutionary process as a story that could help restore the continuity of humans with the natural world. Berry urged humans to recognize their place on a planet with complex ecosystems in a vast, evolving universe. He sought to replace the modern alienation from nature with a sense of intimacy and responsibility. Berry called for new forms of ecological education, law, and spirituality, as well as the creation of resilient agricultural systems, bioregions, and ecocities. At a time of growing environmental crisis, this biography shows the ongoing significance of Berry’s conception of human interdependence with the earth as part of the unfolding journey of the universe.
An illuminating guide to the scientific and technological achievements of the Middle Ages through the life of a crusading astronomer-monk.… Soaring Gothic cathedrals, violent crusades, the Black Death: these are the dramatic forces that shaped the medieval era. But the so-called Dark Ages also gave us the first universities, eyeglasses, and mechanical clocks. As medieval thinkers sought to understand the world around them, from the passing of the seasons to the stars in the sky, they came to develop a vibrant scientific culture. In The Light Ages, Cambridge science historian Seb Falk takes us on a tour of medieval science through the eyes of one fourteenth-century monk, John of Westwyk. Born in a rural manor, educated in England’s grandest monastery, and then exiled to a clifftop priory, Westwyk was an intrepid crusader, inventor, and astrologer. From multiplying Roman numerals to navigating by the stars, curing disease, and telling time with an ancient astrolabe, we learn emerging science alongside Westwyk and travel with him through the length and breadth of England and beyond its shores. On our way, we encounter a remarkable cast of characters: the clock-building English abbot with leprosy, the French craftsman-turned-spy, and the Persian polymath who founded the world’s most advanced observatory. The Light Ages offers a gripping story of the struggles and successes of an ordinary man in a precarious world and conjures a vivid picture of medieval life as we have never seen it before. An enlightening history that argues that these times weren’t so dark after all, The Light Ages shows how medieval ideas continue to color how we see the world today.
See below for English description.Durant son enfance au début des années 1900, Elsie MacGill s'attendait à accomplir ses rêves. Et… c'est exactement ce qu'elle a fait! En 1927, elle devient la première femme diplômée du programme de génie électrique de l'Université de Toronto. Deux ans plus tard, Elsie obtient sa maîtrise en génie aéronautique - un programme qu'elle a complété à partir de son lit d'hôpital après avoir contracté la polio.Absolument rien au monde n'aurait pu détourner Elsie de sa passion pour l'ingénierie! En 1929, en pleine grande crise, elle devient officiellement ingénieure en aéronautique. À l'époque, elle travaille sur des avions de dernier cri, mais pendant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, Elsie est responsable de la production à l'échelle canadienne du Hawker Hurricane, un avion-chasseur utilisé par les Forces alliées.Les succès d'Elsie MacGill dépassent largement les frontières de l'ingénierie! Poursuivant le travail déjà entamé par sa mère et sa grand-mère, Elsie se consacre à la lutte pour l'égalité des femmes. Elle deviendra ainsi une experte des droits des femmes et participera à la Commission royale d'enquête sur la situation de la femme au Canada. In this amazing addition to the Biographie en images series, young Canadians will learn about the trailblazing Elsie MacGill, whose work on the Canadian-made Hawker Hurricane fighter helped the Allied forces to victory in World War II.Elsie was born in 1905 to a mother who was a feminist pioneer in her own right. Elsie grew up fully expecting to follow her dreams. And she did. Elsie was the first woman to graduate from the University of Toronto's electrical engineering program. Elsie went on to earn a master's in aeronautical engineering - but contracted polio the day before her convocation. She battled back, and a storied engineering career followed, including being in charge of the tooling and manufacture of the famous Hawker Hurricane. Later in life she was a champion of women's rights and her work shaped many of the protections we now enjoy.Written by award-winning author Elizabeth MacLeod, this portrait of Elsie MacGill is the first ever written for younger readers.Original title: Scholastic Canada Biography: Elsie MacGill
A fresh interpretation of the life of Galileo Galilei, one of history&’s greatest and most fascinating scientists, that sheds new… light on his discoveries and how he was challenged by science deniers. &“We really need this story now, because we&’re living through the next chapter of science denial&” (Bill McKibben).Galileo&’s story may be more relevant today than ever before. At present, we face enormous crises—such as the minimization of the dangers of climate change—because the science behind these threats is erroneously questioned or ignored. Galileo encountered this problem 400 years ago. His discoveries, based on careful observations and ingenious experiments, contradicted conventional wisdom and the teachings of the church at the time. Consequently, in a blatant assault on freedom of thought, his books were forbidden by church authorities. Astrophysicist and bestselling author Mario Livio draws on his own scientific expertise to provide captivating insights into how Galileo reached his bold new conclusions about the cosmos and the laws of nature. A freethinker who followed the evidence wherever it led him, Galileo was one of the most significant figures behind the scientific revolution. He believed that every educated person should know science as well as literature, and insisted on reaching the widest audience possible, publishing his books in Italian rather than Latin. Galileo was put on trial with his life in the balance for refusing to renounce his scientific convictions. He remains a hero and inspiration to scientists and all of those who respect science—which, as Livio reminds us in this gripping book, remains threatened even today.
They were the most prominent American family of the twentieth century. The daughter they secreted away made all the difference.<P><P>… Joe and Rose Kennedy's strikingly beautiful daughter Rosemary attended exclusive schools, was presented as a debutante to the Queen of England, and traveled the world with her high-spirited sisters. And yet, Rosemary was intellectually disabled -- a secret fiercely guarded by her powerful and glamorous family. Major new sources -- Rose Kennedy's diaries and correspondence, school and doctors' letters, and exclusive family interviews -- bring Rosemary alive as a girl adored but left far behind by her competitive siblings. Kate Larson reveals both the sensitive care Rose and Joe gave to Rosemary and then -- as the family's standing reached an apex -- the often desperate and duplicitous arrangements the Kennedys made to keep her away from home as she became increasingly intractable in her early twenties. Finally, Larson illuminates Joe's decision to have Rosemary lobotomized at age twenty-three, and the family's complicity in keeping the secret. Rosemary delivers a profoundly moving coda: JFK visited Rosemary for the first time while campaigning in the Midwest; she had been living isolated in a Wisconsin institution for nearly twenty years. Only then did the siblings understand what had happened to Rosemary and bring her home for loving family visits. It was a reckoning that inspired them to direct attention to the plight of the disabled, transforming the lives of millions.
The untold story of Dr. Oliver Sacks, his own most singular patientThe author Lawrence Weschler began spending time with Oliver… Sacks in the early 1980s, when he set out to profile the neurologist for his own new employer, The New Yorker. Almost a decade earlier, Dr. Sacks had published his masterpiece Awakenings—the account of his long-dormant patients’ miraculous but troubling return to life in a Bronx hospital ward. But the book had hardly been an immediate success, and the rumpled clinician was still largely unknown. Over the ensuing four years, the two men worked closely together until, for wracking personal reasons, Sacks asked Weschler to abandon the profile, a request to which Weschler acceded. The two remained close friends, however, across the next thirty years and then, just as Sacks was dying, he urged Weschler to take up the project once again. This book is the result of that entreaty.Weschler sets Sacks’s brilliant table talk and extravagant personality in vivid relief, casting himself as a beanpole Sancho to Sacks’s capacious Quixote. We see Sacks rowing and ranting and caring deeply; composing the essays that would form The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat; recalling his turbulent drug-fueled younger days; helping his patients and exhausting his friends; and waging intellectual war against a medical and scientific establishment that failed to address his greatest concern: the spontaneous specificity of the individual human soul. And all the while he is pouring out a stream of glorious, ribald, hilarious, and often profound conversation that establishes him as one of the great talkers of the age. Here is the definitive portrait of Sacks as our preeminent romantic scientist, a self-described “clinical ontologist” whose entire practice revolved around the single fundamental question he effectively asked each of his patients: How are you? Which is to say, How do you be? A question which Weschler, with this book, turns back on the good doctor himself.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), commonly regarded as one of the founders of the Scientific Revolution, exerted a powerful influence on the… intellectual development of the modern world. He also led a remarkably varied and dramatic life as a philosopher, writer, lawyer, courtier, and statesman. Although there has been much recent scholarship on individual aspects of Bacon's career, Perez Zagorin's is the first work in many years to present a comprehensive account of the entire sweep of his thought and its enduring influence. Combining keen scholarly and psychological insights, Zagorin reveals Bacon as a man of genius, deep paradoxes, and pronounced flaws. The book begins by sketching Bacon's complex personality and troubled public career. Zagorin shows that, despite his idealistic philosophy and rare intellectual gifts, Bacon's political life was marked by continual careerism in his efforts to achieve advancement. He follows Bacon's rise at court and describes his removal from his office as England's highest judge for taking bribes. Zagorin then examines Bacon's philosophy and theory of science in connection with his project for the promotion of scientific progress, which he called "The Great Instauration." He shows how Bacon's critical empiricism and attempt to develop a new method of discovery made a seminal contribution to the growth of science. He demonstrates Bacon's historic importance as a prophetic thinker, who, at the edge of the modern era, predicted that science would be used to prolong life, cure diseases, invent new materials, and create new weapons of destruction. Finally, the book examines Bacon's writings on such subjects as morals, politics, language, rhetoric, law, and history. Zagorin shows that Bacon was one of the great legal theorists of his day, an influential philosopher of language, and a penetrating historian. Clearly and beautifully written, the book brings out the richness, scope, and greatness of Bacon's work and draws together the many, colorful threads of an extraordinarily brilliant and many-sided mind.
Meave Leakey&’s thrilling, high-stakes memoir—written with her daughter Samira—encapsulates her distinguished life and career on the front lines of the… hunt for our human origins, a quest made all the more notable by her stature as a woman in a highly competitive, male-dominated field. In The Sediments of Time, preeminent paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey brings us along on her remarkable journey to reveal the diversity of our early pre-human ancestors and how past climate change drove their evolution. She offers a fresh account of our past, as recent breakthroughs have allowed new analysis of her team&’s fossil findings and vastly expanded our understanding of our ancestors. Meave&’s own personal story is replete with drama, from thrilling discoveries on the shores of Lake Turkana to run-ins with armed herders and every manner of wildlife, to raising her children and supporting her renowned paleoanthropologist husband Richard Leakey&’s ambitions amidst social and political strife in Kenya. When Richard needs a kidney, Meave provides him with hers, and when he asks her to assume the reins of their field expeditions after he loses both legs in a plane crash, the result of likely sabotage, Meave steps in. The Sediments of Time is the summation of a lifetime of Meave Leakey&’s efforts; it is a compelling picture of our human origins and climate change, as well as a high-stakes story of ambition, struggle, and hope."A fascinating glimpse into our origins. Meave Leakey is a great storyteller, and she presents new information about the far off time when we emerged from our ape-like ancestors to start the long journey that has led to our becoming the dominant species on Earth. That story, woven into her own journey of research and discovery, gives us a book that is informative and captivating, one that you will not forget."—Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute
On February 20, 1962, John Glenn became a national star. That morning at Cape Canaveral, a small-town boy from Ohio… took his place atop a rocket and soared into orbit to score a victory in the heavily contested Cold War. The television images were blurry black-and-white phantoms. The cameras shook as the rocket moved, but by the end of the day, one thing was clear: a new hero rode that rocket and became the center of the world's attention for the four hours and fifty-five minutes of his flight. He became celebrated in all corners of the world as not just the first American to orbit the Earth, but as the first space traveler to take the human race with him. From that day forward, Glenn restively wore the hero label. Wherever he went, people knew his name and what he had done. Refusing to let that dramatic day define his life, he went on to become a four-term US senator—and returned to space at the age of seventy-seven. The Last American Hero examines the many layers that formed the man and unravels the reasons for his singular role. He was a creation of the media, in some ways, but he was also a product of the Cold War. Not even Glenn himself seemed to fully understand his celebrity. He was a war hero, a two-time astronaut, a veteran senator, a devoted husband, a father, and much more. At a time when increasingly cynical Americans need heroes, his aura burns brightly in American memory.
Accessible exploration of the noteworthy scientific career of James Smithson, who left his fortune to establish the Smithsonian Institution. James… Smithson is best known as the founder of the Smithsonian Institution, but few people know his full and fascinating story. He was a widely respected chemist and mineralogist and a member of the Royal Society, but in 1865, his letters, collection of 10,000 minerals, and more than 200 unpublished papers were lost to a fire in the Smithsonian Castle. His scientific legacy was further written off as insignificant in an 1879 essay published through the Smithsonian fifty years after his death--a claim that author Steven Turner demonstrates is far from the truth.By providing scientific and intellectual context to his work, The Science of James Smithson is a comprehensive tribute to Smithson's contributions to his fields, including chemistry, mineralogy, and more. This detailed narrative illuminates Smithson and his quest for knowledge at a time when chemists still debated thing as basic as the nature of fire, and struggled to maintain their networks amid the ever-changing conditions of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.