Showing titles in Science & Technology

Plague and pestilence have both fascinated and terrified humanity from the very beginning. Societies and individuals have struggled to make sense of them, and more importantly, they’ve often struggled to avoid them. Before the scientific age, people had no knowledge of the microbiological agents - unseen bacteria and viruses - which afflicted them, and thus, the maladies were often ascribed to wrathful supernatural forces.

When Chitra Ramaswamy discovered she was pregnant for the first time, she longed to listen to something that went above and beyond a biology book or prescriptive manual; something that, instead, got to the heart of the overwhelming, thrilling, and often misrepresented experience she was embarking on. She couldn’t find one. So, she wrote Expecting. Expecting is a creative memoir. Through nine chapters exploring the nine months of gestation and birth, Ramaswamy takes the listener on a physical, intellectual, emotional, literary, and philosophical journey through the landscape of pregnancy.

February 1, 2003. A light flashed over a Texas sky and twisted metal rained across the countryside. As images of the wreckage from the Space Shuttle Columbia streamed across the nation's television screens, they became forever burned into our memories. But behind those images were stories that remained untold...until now.

Kelly Johnson designed the Blackbird, a plane that flew non-stop from London to Los Angeles in less than four hours, outracing the sun and landing four hours before it had taken off, a remarkable feat - and this was more than 35 years ago. Johnson was the innovative genius behind Lockheed's "Skunk Works", and played a leading role in the development of more than forty aircraft, including some of America's most sophisticated planes such as the Constellation, Shooting Star, F-104, U-2, and the SR-71 Blackbird.

Eine spannende Reise in 100 Biografien: Menschen, die die Welt verändert haben. So lebendig kann Geschichte klingen: Manfred Mai erzählt von Entdeckern, Erfindern, religiösen und politischen Anführern, von Philosophen und Künstlern, die mit ihrer Fantasie und ihrem Mut, mit ihren Ideen und Taten die Welt veränderten. Wie haben sie damals gelebt? Was hat sie bewegt? Welche Bedeutung haben sie für uns heute noch?

Several prominent brother teams pioneered the American automobile industry: Horace and John Dodge, Charles and Frank Duryea, Francis and Freelan Stanley, five Studebaker brothers and James and William Packard. However, the seven burly Fisher brothers were not only the most numerous of all the families, each one extensively involved in developing the famous "Body by Fisher" brand and subsequently General Motors, they were also among the most successful of the automobile titans.

In 1862, ambitious scientist James Glaisher set out to do the impossible: ascend higher into the skies than ever before to establish his groundbreaking research. Glaisher’s death-defying journey forms the story of the major motion picture The Aeronauts, starring Eddie Redmayne as Glaisher and Felicity Jones as his balloon companion, Amelia Wren. Written in his own words, The Aeronauts chronicles Glaisher’s incredible flights and discoveries first hand, as well as his observations on the pioneers who came before and inspired him.

We are in a Golden Age of Technology, and to take advantage of its opportunities, we must focus on the consumer market, says Joe Costello, CEO of Cadence Design Systems. In a series of illuminating case studies, Costello explains how long-standing business models will not stand up to the new challenges involved in bringing electronic innovations to today's market. Costello draws upon years of experience in physics and theory to paint a clear picture of the partnerships, priorities, and strategies businesses will need to create to stay competitive.

In The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, John Muir takes listeners on a journey through his early years, from his childhood in Scotland to his formative days in the United States. This memoir reflects on the wonders of nature that sparked Muir’s deep love for the outdoors. With vivid descriptions, he shares the experiences and adventures that shaped his passion for wild landscapes and his future as a naturalist.

La historia de los comienzos de uno de los líderes empresariales y filántropos más transformadores e influyentes del mundo moderno. Los éxitos empresariales de Bill Gates son de sobra conocidos: el estudiante de veinte años que dejó sus estudios en Harvard para fundar una compañía de software que creció hasta ser un gigante de la industria y cambió para siempre la forma de trabajar y de vivir; el multimillonario que se convirtió en filántropo para abordar el cambio climático, la salud mundial y la educación en Estados Unidos.

You know the name. You’ve heard the legends. But who was Nikola Tesla, really? This book cuts through the noise to reveal the human mind behind the myth. From wireless energy to earthquake machines, from communing with pigeons to decoding the structure of reality itself—Tesla wasn’t a man of his time. He was tuned to something else. Inside, you’ll find: The true story of Tesla’s war with Edison, the dreams behind Wardenclyffe and the death ray, lost inventions, buried patents, and classified seizures. A deep look into the myth-making, conspiracies, and rediscovery of Tesla in the 21st century.

An informed biography on a leading intellectual and educational pioneer of the early 20th century. An icon of philosophy and psychology during the first half of the 20th century, Dewey is known as the father of functional psychology and a pivotal figure of the pragmatist movement, as well as the progressive movement in education. This concise and critical look at Dewey's work examines his unique take on art and religion, his naturalistic approach to science and psychology, and his contribution to political thought.

In this authoritative and engrossing full-scale biography, Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of Einstein and Steve Jobs, shows how the most fascinating of America's founders helped define our national character. Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us, the one who seems made...

Only two people were in a position to experience all the events leading up to the first flight of a viable airplane, and here in three short essays they report how it came about.The idea of powered flight was so new that there were not even accepted methods of measuring the forces at play on a machine in-flight.

My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla is a book compiled and edited by Ben Johnston detailing the work of Nikola Tesla. The content was largely drawn from a series of articles that Nikola Tesla had written for Electrical Experimenter magazine in 1919 when he was 63 years old. This particular audiobook has been masterfully crafted to provide the best possible listening experience, from the narration down to the details of audio editing.

In the summer of 1921, Philo T. Farnsworth was not all that different from any other farmer's son in rural Idaho, until he came up with an idea that would change the world–and thrust him into a titanic struggle with one of the most monolithic monopolies in the world. Farnsworth's story of divine inspiration facing off against corporate avarice is a compelling–though seldom told–saga from the 20th century that is still relevant in the 21st.

Ya desde muy pequeño, Bertrand Russell se caracterizó por su espíritu disquisitivo; no había tema o axioma sobre los que no tuviera una pregunta. Admirador de Euclides desde los once años, las matemáticas se convirtieron en una pasión de por vida. Lector voraz, estudioso y autodidacta, profundizó en la poesía, la filosofía, la historia, la política, la ética, la metafísica, la filosofía matemática, la epistemología y la filosofía de la ciencia, interesándose en las polémicas y los temas que definieron su época: el imperialismo, el libre comercio o el sufragio femenino.

How did the world’s greatest systems thinkers handled crises, invented revolutionary ideas, and solved complex problems? How did the field of systems thinking develop? Who were the pioneers in the field? Learn about the answers in Lessons from Systems Thinkers, from Norbert Wiener’s pioneering contribution on positive and negative feedback to Warren McCulloch’s research on feedback mechanisms in neurology, from Gregory Bateson’s double bind and how it affects family relationships to Margaret Mead’s systems approach to cultural anthropology.

What's it like to travel at more than 850 MPH, riding in a supersonic T-38 twin turbojet engine airplane? What happens when the space station toilet breaks? How do astronauts "take out the trash" on a spacewalk, tightly encapsulated in a space suit with just a few layers of fabric and Kevlar between them and the unforgiving vacuum of outer space?

In the Shadow of Fame, by the daughter of world-renowned psychoanalyst and theorist Erik Erikson, is the intimate story of her struggle to come to terms with her father's fame and to develop a sense of self in a family, and world, in which being famous is the very definition of being a worthwhile human being. And, while her story is unique in its personal details, it is also a description of the struggle faced by all of us in a modern world.