Biography: science, technology and medicine Books

Book SynopsisAn enthralling account of a modern voyage of discovery as we meet the clever, social birds of prey called caracaras, which puzzled Darwin, fascinate modern-day falconers, and carry secrets of our planet''s deep past in their family history.“Deftly intertwine[s] natural history and human history, with insights and lessons that go far beyond the subject birds.”—David Sibley, author of What It''s Like to Be a Bird“Utterly captivating and beautifully written, this book is a hugely entertaining and enlightening exploration of a bird so wickedly smart, curious, and social, it boggles the mind.”—Jennifer Ackerman, author of The Bird WayIn 1833, Charles Darwin was astonished by an animal he met in the Falkland Islands: handsome, social, and oddly crow-like falcons that were tame and inquisitive . . . quarrelsome and passionate, and so insatiably curious that they stole hats, compasses, and other valuables from the crew of the Beagle. Darwin wondered why these birds were confined to remote islands at the tip of South America, sensing a larger story, but he set this mystery aside and never returned to it. Almost two hundred years later, Jonathan Meiburg takes up this chase. He takes us through South America, from the fog-bound coasts of Tierra del Fuego to the tropical forests of Guyana, in search of these birds: striated caracaras, which still exist, though they''re very rare. He reveals the wild, fascinating story of their history, origins, and possible futures. And along the way, he draws us into the life and work of William Henry Hudson, the Victorian writer and naturalist who championed caracaras as an unsung wonder of the natural world, and to falconry parks in the English countryside, where captive caracaras perform incredible feats of memory and problem-solving. A Most Remarkable Creature is a hybrid of science writing, travelogue, and biography, as generous and accessible as it is sophisticated, and absolutely riveting.

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Book SynopsisThe second edition of Drawing the Line: How Mason and Dixon Surveyed the Most Famous Border in America updates Edwin Danson's definitive history of the creation of the Mason - Dixon Line to reflect new research and archival documents that have come to light in recent years. Features numerous updates and revisions reflecting new information that has come to light on surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon Reveals the true origin of the survey's starting point and the actual location of the surveyors' observatory in Embreeville Offers expanded information on Mason and Dixon's transit of Venus adventures, which would be an important influence on their future work, and on Mason's final years pursuing a share of the fabulous Longitude prize, and his death in Philadelphia Includes a new, more comprehensive appendix describing the surveying methods utilized to establish the Mason-Dixon Line Table of ContentsList of Figures ix Acknowledgments for the Revised Edition xii Introduction to the Revised Edition xiii 1 In the Reign of George the Third 1 2 The Fortieth Degree 6 3 Kings and Queens 14 4 Entirely at a Stand 20 5 Curious Knowing People 34 6 The Transit of Venus 51 7 Mr. Bird’s Contrivances 65 8 Persons Intirely Accomplished 71 9 The Southernmost Point of the City 80 10 15 Statute Miles, Horizontal 98 11 The Tail of Ursae Minoris 109 12 Fine Sport for the Boys 116 13 From the Post mark’d West 123 14 The Pencil of Time 131 15 King of the Tuscarawa 140 16 From Hence; to the Summit 150 17 At a Council of the Royal Society 160 18 Vibration of the Pendulum 167 19 Not One Step Further 176 20 A Degree of Latitude 189 21 The Last Transit 196 22 A Very Helpless Condition 202 23 Finishing the Job 216 Appendix 225 Astronomy 225 Longitude, Latitude, and the Shape of Earth 228 Surveying Methods 230 Degrees of Latitude: A Short History 239 The Mystery of the Mason–Dixon Mile 242 Bibliography 245 Index 251

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Book SynopsisNeil Armstrong biography. This book is full of never-before-seen photos and personal details written down for the first time, including what Neil really felt when he took that first step on the moon, what life in NASA was like, and what he felt the future of space exploration should be.

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Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE 2020 PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTIONThe Undying is a startling, urgent intervention in our discourses about sickness and health, art and science, language and literature, and mortality and death. In dissecting what she terms ''the ideological regime of cancer,'' Anne Boyer has produced a profound and unforgettable document on the experience of life itself. Sally Rooney, author of Normal PeopleAnne Boyer's radically unsentimental account of cancer and the ''carcinogenosphere'' obliterates cliche. By demonstrating how her utterly specific experience is also irreducibly social, she opens up new spaces for thinking and feeling together. The Undying is an outraged, beautiful, and brilliant work of embodied critique. Ben Lerner, author of The Topeka SchoolA week after her forty-first birthday, the acclaimed poet Anne Boyer was diagnosed with highly aggressive triple-negative breast cancer. For a si

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Book Synopsis**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**In a world that seems so troubled, how do we hold on to hope?Looking at the headlinesthe worsening climate crisis, a global pandemic, loss of biodiversity, political upheavalit can be hard to feel optimistic. And yet hope has never been more desperately needed.In this urgent book, Jane Goodall, the world''s most famous living naturalist, and Douglas Abrams, the internationally bestselling co-author of The Book of Joy, explore through intimate and thought-provoking dialogue one of the most sought after and least understood elements of human nature: hope. In The Book of Hope, Jane focuses on her Four Reasons for Hope: The Amazing Human Intellect, The Resilience of Nature, The Power of Young People, and The Indomitable Human Spirit.Drawing on decades of work that has helped expand our understanding of what it means to be human and what we all need to do to help build a better wor

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Book SynopsisThe first major biography of the Nobel Prizewinning scientist who discovered neurons and transformed our understanding of the human mindillustrated with his extraordinary anatomical drawingsAs the pioneer of modern neuroscience, Santiago Ramón y Cajal may be the most influential figure in the history of biology you've never heard of. Along with Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur, Cajal ranks among the most brilliant and original scientists of the nineteenth century, and his discoveries have done for our understanding of the human brain what the work of Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton did for our conception of the physical universe. Cajal was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1906 for his lifelong investigation of the structure of neuronsthe mysterious butterflies of the soul, he called them, whose beating of wings may one day reveal to us the secrets of the mind. And he produced a dazzling oeuvre of anatomical drawings, whose otherworldly beauty conjured a vivid image of our ment

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Book SynopsisNew York Times bestsellerOne of the top ten books of the year at The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, Vulture/New York magazineA best book of the year at Los Angeles Times, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bookforum, The New Yorker, Vogue, KirkusThe acclaimed, award-winning New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv offers a groundbreaking exploration of mental illness and the mind, and illuminates the startling connections between diagnosis and identity.Strangers to Ourselves poses fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Rachel Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. She follows an Indian woman celebra

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Book SynopsisThomas Edison’s greatest invention? His own fame.At the height of his fame Thomas Alva Edison was hailed as “the Napoleon of invention” and blazed in the public imagination as a virtual demigod. Starting with the first public demonstrations of the phonograph in 1878 and extending through the development of incandescent light and the first motion picture cameras, Edison’s name became emblematic of all the wonder and promise of the emerging age of technological marvels.But as Randall Stross makes clear in this critical biography of the man who is arguably the most globally famous of all Americans, Thomas Edison’s greatest invention may have been his own celebrity. Edison was certainly a technical genius, but Stross excavates the man from layers of myth-making and separates his true achievements from his almost equally colossal failures. How much credit should Edison receive for the various inventions that have popularly been attribute

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Book SynopsisFlorence Nightingale is one of the most famous figures in modern history. Based on her writing, this book reports what she said and did. Published to commemorate the centenary of Nightingale's death, it offers a scholarly view of Florence Nightingale's extraordinary life and career that gets to the heart of her range of interests and achievements.Trade Review"'The best short guide to Nightingale ever published' - Mark Bostridge, author of Florence Nightingale: The Woman and the Legend (Viking, 2008) 'Lynn McDonald's study is the best short guide to Nightingale ever published. A useful resource for students of history and nursing, it is also perfect for the general reader looking for a brief summary of Nightingale's importance.' - Mark Bostridge author of Florence Nightingale The Woman and the Legend (Viking/Penguin 2008)"Table of Contents1. Family Relations; 2. Social Reform; 3. War; 4. Health, Care and Midwifery; 5. Nursing and Hospitals; 6. India and Empire; 7. The Lasting Legacy.

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Book SynopsisA new cultural icon strode the world stage at the turn of the twenty-first century: the celebrity scientist, as comfortable in Vanity Fair and Vogue as Smithsonian. Declan Fahy profiles eight of these eloquent, controversial, and compelling sellers of science to investigate how they achieved celebrity in the United States and internationallyand explores how their ideas influence our understanding of the world. Fahy traces the career trajectories of Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Stephen Jay Gould, Susan Greenfield, and James Lovelock. He demonstrates how each scientist embraced the power of promotion and popularization to stimulate thinking, impact policy, influence research, drive controversies, and mobilize social movements. He also considers critical claims that they speak beyond their expertise and for personal gain. The result is a fascinating look into how celebrity scientists help determine what it means to be human, the naturTrade ReviewA former reporter, Fahy understands how electronic media shape public perception of all aspects of society. This includes science, for which media have created a new breed of scientist, ‘celebrity scientists’ who are in the public eye by dint of popular books, television, and/or newsprint. These individuals are the scientific world’s version of movie stars and star athletes. Fahy considers eight well-known contemporary scientists: Stephen Hawking, who inherited Einstein’s mantle; evolutionist Richard Dawkins, who carries the banner of militant atheism; James Lovelock, the maverick outsider who proposed the Gaia hypothesis; and Neil deGrasse Tyson, who has replaced Carl Sagan as television’s go-to science expert. Others include cosmologist Brian Greene; the Baroness Susan Greenfield, who studies Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease; the late evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould, and psychologist Stephen Pinker. This interesting book covers the work and life of each in some depth, and extensive chapter notes direct those who wish to delve more deeply into their lives. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. * CHOICE *When thinking of celebrity culture, science may not be the first thing that comes to mind. But science and fame go hand in hand in School of Communication professor Declan Fahy’s new book The New Celebrity Scientists: Out of the Lab and into the Limelight. . . .The New Celebrity Scientists works to debunk the myth that science is simply meant to stay in laboratories or for the elite. . . .Fahy delves into the world of science through both a formal and personal lens, bringing the contemporary figures that are driving scientific discussion into the limelight. * The Eagle *The result of The New Celebrity Scientists is a in-depth look into how celebrity scientists help determine what it means to be human, the nature of reality, and how to prepare for society's uncertain future. * Physics.org *Very timely and well written…. I recommend this book to anyone interested not only in science and its protagonists or communication studies but also in a field that has been little considered but can provide us with many insights into today’s culture: the sociology of science. * Polymath: An Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Journal *[The New Celebrity Scientists: Out of the Lab and into the Limelight] is a source of authority that influences public policy, public opinion and even the scientific life. (Translated from the original French) * Communication *Relax in your favorite chair and lose yourself in this absorbing, critical examination of the best-selling scientists that we love, admire, and sometimes hate. Fahy's genius book will challenge your strongest assumptions and change the way you think about science, celebrity, and society. -- Matthew Nisbet, Northeastern UniversityDeclan Fahy tells an engaging, informed story about how leading scientists evolved, scrabbled, and maneuvered–under the fierce glare of post-1960’s mass media–to become something new to science: big-time celebrities. -- Joshua Brown, University of VermontIn The New Celebrity Scientists, Declan Fahy delves into the complex, captivating world of science by profiling the people who have helped popularize it. His vivid account follows the rise of several key scientific figures of the 20th and 21st centuries—and the consequences of their fame within the scientific community and society at large. Clear, organized, and rich in narrative detail, this book is well-suited for audiences both inside and outside the classroom. -- Michael A. Cacciatore, University of GeorgiaAt a time when science struggles to grow its share-of-voice in American culture and politics, Fahy provides an evocative look at some of our most visible scientific emissaries. His thoughtful analysis takes us on a journey that demystifies these individuals, laying bare their motivations, foibles, and contributions to science in public culture. -- Anthony Dudo, The University of Texas at AustinScientific research is often marginalized in modern culture, but a handful of scientists have found a path around that tendency. Fahy shows how, why, and to what effect certain recent scientists have consciously used the tools of today’s celebrity culture to make themselves—and thus science—active participants in public discussion. They make science central to modern culture…and sometimes make culture central to science. -- Bruce V. Lewenstein, Cornell UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgments 1—A Brief History of Scientific Celebrity 2—The Paradoxical Fame of Stephen Hawking 3—Richard Dawkins’s Image Problem 4—Steven Pinker’s Academic Stardom 5—The Political Celebrity of Stephen Jay Gould 6—Fame and the Female Scientist—Susan Greenfield 7—The Reluctant Fame of James Lovelock 8—The Charming Stardom of Brian Greene 9—Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Star Quality 10—A New Scientific Elite Notes Index About the Author

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Trade Review“Men are even more susceptible to suggestion than horses, and each period is dominated by a mood, with the result that most men fail to see the tyrant who rules over them.” —Albert Einstein, Princeton, April 10, 1938

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