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.

Read more less

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

Read more less

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.

Read more less

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

Read more less

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

Read more less

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

Read more less

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

Read more less