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Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > Science, technology & engineering
Just two months before the September 11 terrorist attacks, Dr. Judy Melinek began her training as a New York City forensic pathologist. While her husband and their toddler held down the home front, Judy threw herself into the fascinating world of death investigation-performing autopsies, investigating death scenes, counseling grieving relatives. Working Stiff chronicles Judy's two years of training, taking readers behind the police tape of some of the most harrowing deaths in the Big Apple, including a firsthand account of the events of September 11, the subsequent anthrax bio-terrorism attack, and the disastrous crash of American Airlines Flight 587. An unvarnished portrait of the daily life of medical examiners-complete with grisly anecdotes, chilling crime scenes, and a welcome dose of gallows humor-Working Stiffoffers a glimpse into the daily life of one of America's most arduous professions, and the unexpected challenges of shuttling between the domains of the living and the dead. The body never lies-and through the murders, accidents, and suicides that land on her table, Dr. Melinek lays bare the truth behind the glamorized depictions of autopsy work on television to reveal the secret story of the real morgue. "Haunting and illuminating...the stories from her average workdays...transfix the reader with their demonstration that medical science can diagnose and console long after the heartbeat stops" (The New York Times).
"Sir, your sons have been in a car accident. How quickly can you get here?" Join Pastor Jeremy Freeman as he shares how the harrowing phone call that no parent wants to receive would lead to a miraculous outcome that only God could deliver. When Jeremy and Emily Freeman's teenage son Caleb was in a devastating car accident, doctors gave him a 10 percent chance of survival. Fear of losing a child was all too fresh for the Freemans--their seven-year-old son, Trey, had died just four years earlier from a genetic immunodeficiency. But God had other plans. In #butGod, Jeremy shares the incredible story of Caleb's recovery, the darkness that nearly overtook their family in the waiting, and the #butGod movement that captured the prayers of Christians around the world. #butGod includes heartfelt excerpts from Emily's prayer journal and encouragement from Jeremy that goes beyond platitudes to a hard-won trust in God's goodness. The Freeman family's incredible story offers: Greater understanding of the beauty God can bring through suffering An honest glimpse of how one family grew closer together despite grief, tension, and doubt A powerful example of how God works through the prayers of His people Hope that only God can provide Whatever sorrow you're walking through, #butGod leads you to the sweetness found in trusting God with suffering--and the deeper faith that comes from seeing His purpose in the pain. Praise for #butGod: "Pastor Jeremy Freeman and his family have endured crushing disappointment and heartbreak, but they've also experienced the redemptive and healing power of God. If you are facing significant challenges, Pastor Jeremy's book #butGod will build your faith and equip you with the strength to overcome." --Craig Groeschel, founder and senior pastor of Life.Church and New York Times bestselling author "There are some books that when you start reading you cannot put them down. #butGod is one of those books. This is an amazing story that will captivate you. You will laugh and cry. You will weep for sorrow and weep for joy. And in it all, you will see the amazing grace of God and His sustaining power and love for His children." --Dr. Daniel L. Akin, President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, North Carolina
Now a major film starring Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy and Kyle Chandler, directed by Oscar-winner Damien Chazelle, First Man by James Hansen offers the only authorized glimpse into the life of America's most famous astronaut, Neil Armstrong - the man whose "one small step" changed history. In First Man, Hansen explores the life of Neil Armstrong. Based on over 50 hours of interviews with the intensely private Armstrong, who also gave Hansen exclusive access to private documents and family sources, this "magnificent panorama of the second half of the American twentieth century" (Publishers Weekly, Starred Review) is an unparalleled biography of an American icon. When Apollo 11 touched down on the moon's surface in 1969, the first man on the moon became a legend. Hansen vividly recreates Armstrong's career in flying, from his seventy-eight combat missions as a naval aviator flying over North Korea to his formative transatmospheric flights in the rocket-powered X-15 to his piloting Gemini VIII to the first-ever docking in space. For a pilot who cared more about flying to the Moon than he did about walking on it, Hansen asserts, Armstrong's storied vocation exacted a dear personal toll, paid in kind by his wife and children. In the years since the Moon landing, rumors swirled around Armstrong concerning his dreams of space travel, his religious beliefs, and his private life. This book reveals the man behind the myth. In a penetrating exploration of American hero worship, Hansen addresses the complex legacy of the First Man, as an astronaut and as an individual. In First Man, the personal, technological, epic, and iconic blend to form the portrait of a great but reluctant hero who will forever be known as history's most famous space traveler.
First published in 2003. Hewett Cottrell Watson was a pioneer in a new science not yet defined in Victorian times - ecology - and was practically the first naturalist to conduct research on plant evolution, beginning in 1834. The correspondence between Watson and Darwin, analysed for the first time in this book, reveals the extent to which Darwin profited from Watson's data. Darwin's subsequent fame, however, is one of the reasons why Watson became almost forgotten. This biography traces both the influences and characteristics that shaped Watson's outlook and personality, and indeed his science, and the institutional contexts within which he worked. At the same time, it makes evident the extent of his real contributions to the science of the plant ecology and evolution.
A fascinating, forgotten story of the six brilliant women who launched modern computing. As the Cold War began, America's race for tech supremacy was taking off. Experts rushed to complete the top-secret computing research started during World War II, among them six gifted mathematicians: a patriotic Quaker, a Jewish bookworm, a Yugoslav genius, a native Gaelic speaker, a sophomore from the Bronx, and a farmer's daughter from Missouri. Their mission? Programming the world's first and only supercomputer-before any code or programming languages existed. These pioneers triumphed against sexist attitudes and huge technical challenges to invent computer programming, yet their monumental contribution has never been recognised-until now. Over a decade, Kathy Kleiman met with four of the original six ENIAC Programmers and recorded their stories. Here, with a light touch and a serious mind, she exposes the deliberate erasure of their achievements and restores the women to their rightful place as revolutionaries, bringing to life their camaraderie, their determination, and their rapidly changing world. As big tech struggles with gender inequality and momentum builds in restoring women to history, the time has come for this engrossing story to be uncovered and celebrated.
What's Wrong with My Child? reveals a mother's quest for answers about her son's psych symptoms that leads to shocking discoveries that could impact struggling families in the United States and possibly globally. Elizabeth Harris' son Cody was eleven when, out of the blue, he started exhibiting signs of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). The OCD turned into something far more sinister when Cody started having episodes where he seemed to lose total control over his actions, leading to Cody being committed to a county youth detention center. There, he was placed in solitary confinement for weeks. For five years, Elizabeth fought a hard battle to find out what was going on with her son and their family while simultaneously battling an unsympathetic judicial system. Driven to find a cure, Elizabeth visited countless doctors across the USA. She quickly became frustrated by the fact that there was no agreement in the medical community regarding PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Strep), the disease behind Cody's transformation. In her quest for answers, this science-minded spa owner found proof of weaponized bacteria not only impacting their extended family, but that could be making families around the USA and possibly globally sick as well.
'Kate Winkler Dawson is an unbelievable crime historian and such a talented storyteller.' Karen Kilgariff, cohost of the My Favorite Murder podcast 'Heinrich changed criminal investigations forever, and anyone fascinated by the myriad detective series and TV shows about forensics will want to read [this].' The Washington Post 'An entertaining, absorbing combination of biography and true crime.' Kirkus 'Kate Winkler Dawson has researched both her subject and his cases so meticulously that her reconstructions and descriptions made me feel part of the action rather than just a reader and bystander. She has brought to life Edward Oscar Heinrich's character, determination, and skill so vividly that one is left bemused that this man is so little known to most of us.' Patricia Wiltshire, author of Traces and The Nature of Life and Death Berkeley, California, 1933. In a lab filled with curiosities - beakers, microscopes, Bunsen burners and hundreds of books - sat an investigator who would go on to crack at least 2,000 cases in his 40-year career. Known as the 'American Sherlock Holmes', Edward Oscar Heinrich was one of the greatest - and first - forensic scientists, with an uncanny knack for finding clues, establishing evidence and deducing answers with a skill that seemed almost supernatural. Based on years of research and thousands of never-before-published primary source materials, American Sherlock is a true-crime account capturing the life of the man who spearheaded the invention of a myriad of new forensic tools, including blood-spatter analysis, ballistics, lie-detector tests and the use of fingerprints as courtroom evidence.
An autobiography of a ground-breaking medical doctor. Dr. David A. Hamburg started as a medical student with interest in stress disorders, paying special attention to the propensity toward violence, including the evolution of human aggression. This lead him on a path to becoming one of the most highly celebrated doctors in America - he was a member of President Clinton's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest civilian award of the United States). Most recently, he chaired committees at the United Nations and European Union on the prevention of genocide. This book will be inspirational for emerging scientists today.
An autobiography of a ground-breaking medical doctor. Dr. David A. Hamburg started as a medical student with interest in stress disorders, paying special attention to the propensity toward violence, including the evolution of human aggression. This lead him on a path to becoming one of the most highly celebrated doctors in America - he was a member of President Clinton's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest civilian award of the United States). Most recently, he chaired committees at the United Nations and European Union on the prevention of genocide. This book will be inspirational for emerging scientists today.
Charles Darwin is well-known throughout the world for his revolutionary work from 1859; The Origin of Species, the foundational study of evolution which greatly challenged the near-universal belief in the Christian world, at that time, of creationism. Originally published in 1928, Dorsey attempts to provide a detailed account of the scientist's life and personality informed by letters, published works and an autobiography written by Darwin. Darwin's life was full of challenges both in his personal life as well as his career and The Evolution of Charles Darwin explores all aspects of his life from birth to death emphasising the great impact his work had in the scientific community and humanity as a whole.
This book resurrects the Franz Alexanderian legacy, reminding his behemoth contributions and offers the reader with a deeply tender and touching portrait. It also considers his personal and professional life, the role of family in his decisions, and how those decisions affected other family members.
"Much more than a coming-of-age story, "Badluck Way" is an
important meditation on what it means to share space and breathe
the same air as truly wild animals, and the necessary damage that
can occur when boundaries are crossed" (Tom Groneberg, author of
"The Secret Life of Cowboys").
Alan Turing is a patron saint of Manchester, remembered as the Mancunian who won the war, invented the computer, and was all but put to death for being gay. Each myth is related to a historical story. This is not a book about the first of those stories, of Turing at Bletchley Park. But it is about the second two, which each unfolded here in Manchester, of Turing's involvement in the world's first computer and of his refusal to be cowed about his sexuality. Manchester can be proud of Turing, but can we be proud of the city he encountered?
A New York Times Notable Book A biography of venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel, the enigmatic, controversial, and hugely influential power broker who sits at the dynamic intersection of tech, business, and politics "Max Chafkin's The Contrarian is much more than a consistently shocking biography of Peter Thiel, the most important investor in tech and a key supporter of the Donald Trump presidency. It's also a disturbing history of Silicon Valley that will make you reconsider the ideological foundations of America's relentless engine of creative destruction."-Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store and Amazon Unbound Since the days of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, no industry has made a greater impact on the world than Silicon Valley. And few individuals have done more to shape Silicon Valley than Peter Thiel. The billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur has been a behind-the-scenes operator influencing countless aspects of our contemporary way of life, from the technologies we use every day to the delicate power balance between Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Washington. But despite his power and the ubiquity of his projects, no public figure is quite so mysterious. In the first major biography of Thiel, Max Chafkin traces the trajectory of the innovator's singular life and worldview, from his upbringing as the child of immigrant parents and years at Stanford as a burgeoning conservative thought leader to his founding of PayPal and Palantir, early investment in Facebook and SpaceX, and relationships with fellow tech titans Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Eric Schmidt. The Contrarian illuminates the extent to which Thiel has sought to export his values to the corridors of power beyond Silicon Valley, including funding the lawsuit that destroyed the blog Gawker and strenuously backing far-right political candidates, notably Donald Trump for president in 2016. Eye-opening and deeply reported, The Contrarian is a revelatory biography of a one-of-a-kind leader and an incisive portrait of a tech industry whose explosive growth and power is both thrilling and fraught with controversy.
This book is about the life and work of a Turkish-American social scientist, Muzafer Sherif (1905-1988). He was known for his seminal work on norm and group formations, social judgment, and intergroup conflicts and cooperation. Although Sherif is identified as one of the founders of social psychology, his contribution to the science of psychology goes beyond the limits of social psychology as it is generally defined today. This volume aims to rediscover the theory and research of its subject in the socio-historical context of his time, as well as his relevance for contemporary psychology. Chapters cover a range of topics: an in-depth portrayal of Sherif's life and intellectual struggle in Turkey and in the United States; his metatheoretical considerations on the science of psychology; his theory and research on group and intergroup relationships, social norms and social change; formation and change of frames of reference, ego- involvements and identity; and psychology of slogans. Sherif had profound life experiences in different cultural contexts from the Ottoman Empire and World War I to American universities, which enabled him to see the essentiality of the historico-cultural context in the formation of human phenomena. Sherif's psychology is an elegant exemplar of an integrative science of psychology that is worth rediscovering.
We think of bees as being among the busiest workers in the garden, admiring them for their productivity. But amid their buzzing, they are also great communicators and unusual dancers. As Karl von Frisch (1886-1982) discovered during World War II, bees communicate the location of food sources to each other through complex circle and waggle dances. For centuries, beekeepers had observed these curious movements in hives, and others had speculated about the possibility of a bee language used to manage the work of the hive. But it took von Frisch to determine that the bees' dances communicated precise information about the distance and direction of food sources. As Tania Munz shows in this exploration of von Frisch's life and research, this important discovery came amid the tense circumstances of the Third Reich.The Dancing Bees draws on previously unexplored archival sources in order to reveal von Frisch's full story, including how the Nazi government in 1940 determined that he was one-quarter Jewish, revoked his teaching privileges, and sought to prevent him from working altogether until circumstances intervened. In the 1940s, bee populations throughout Europe were facing the devastating effects of a plague (just as they are today), and because the bees were essential to the pollination of crops, von Frisch's research was deemed critical to maintaining the food supply of a nation at war. The bees, as von Frisch put it years later, saved his life. Munz not only explores von Frisch's complicated career in the Third Reich, she looks closely at the legacy of his work and the later debates about the significance of the bee language and the science of animal communication. This first in-depth biography of von Frisch paints a complex and nuanced portrait of a scientist at work under Nazi rule. The Dancing Bees will be welcomed by anyone seeking to better understand not only this chapter of the history of science but also the peculiar waggles of our garden visitors.
Everyone has heard of famous scientists like Einstein, Curie, Galileo, and Darwin. But some scientists have been overlooked by history. Virginia Apgar, Caroline Herschel, Percy Julian, and Rosalind Franklin are scientists who had to overcome adversity in order to succeed in their fields. Readers will be captivated by the inspirational stories of these unsung heroes of science! Packed with fun facts and fascinating sidebars, this full-color informational text explores and celebrates diversity through high-interest content. Featuring TIME content and images, this nonfiction book has text features such as a glossary, an index, and a table of contents to engage students in reading as they build their comprehension, vocabulary, and reading skills. The Reader's Guide and extended Try It! activity increase understanding of the material, and develop higher-order thinking. Check It Out! offers print and online resources for additional reading. Keep students reading from cover to cover with this captivating text!
By the time most of us meet our doctors, they've been in practice
for a number of years. Often they seem aloof, uncaring, and
hurried. Of course, they're not all like that, and most didn't
start out that way.
She was everything everyone else wanted her to be. Until she followed her own path. Helena Rho was six years old when her family left Seoul, Korea, for America and its opportunities. Years later, her Korean-ness behind her, Helena had everything a model minority was supposed to want: she was married to a white American doctor and had a beautiful home, two children, and a career as an assistant professor of pediatrics. For decades she fulfilled the expectations of others. All the while Helena kept silent about the traumas-both professional and personal-that left her anxious yet determined to escape. It would take a catastrophic event for Helena to abandon her career at the age of forty, recover her Korean identity, and set in motion a journey of self-discovery. In her powerful and moving memoir, Helena Rho reveals the courage it took to break away from the path that was laid out for her, to assert her presence, and to discover the freedom and joy of finally being herself.
'More than just a memoir. A manifesto for a whole way of thinking' Daily Mail 'An idiosyncratic and gripping memoir about his life and the indomitable career of the Cube' Observer 'The rise and enduring power of the world's most popular puzzle toy . . . Cubed is less a memoir than a chronicle of Rubik's evolving relationship with his creation' Financial Times *** As a child, Erno Rubik became obsessed with puzzles of all kinds. To him, they weren't just games - they were challenges that captured his imagination, creativity and perseverance. Rubik's own puzzle went on to be solved by millions worldwide, becoming one of the bestselling toys of all time. In Cubed, he tells us the story of the unexpected and unprecedented rise of the Cube for the very first time - and makes a case for why rediscovering our playfulness and inner curiosity holds the key to creative thinking.
'I was born in Washington, DC, June 13, 1931, of parents who immigrated from Russia shortly after the first world war. Home was the inner city of Washington - a small apartment atop my parents' grocery store on First and Seaton Street. During my childhood, Washington was a segregated city, and I lived in the midst of a poor, black neighborhood. Life on the streets was often perilous. Indoor reading was my refuge and, twice a week, I made the hazardous bicycle trek to the central library at Seventh and K streets to stock up on supplies'. Irvin Yalom is a gifted and lyrical writer whose memoir traces his life, from the apartment above his parents' grocery store to a world stage via the intimacy of his consulting room. The memoir includes his self-analysis and is interwoven with vignettes from patients whose stories have played such a central role in his life. For his legion of fans, and anyone interested in the human psyche, this book is not to be missed.
A prismatic look at the meeting of Marie Curie and Albert Einstein and the impact these two pillars of science had on the world of physics, which was in turmoil. In 1911, some of the greatest minds in science convened at the First Solvay Conference in Physics. Almost half of the attendees had won or would go on to win the Nobel Prize. Over the course of those few days, these minds began to realise that classical physics was about to give way to quantum theory, a seismic shift in our history and how we understand not just our world, but the universe. At the centre of this meeting were Marie Curie and a young Albert Einstein. In the years preceding, Curie had faced the death of her husband. She was on the cusp of being awarded her second Nobel Prize, but scandal erupted all around her when the French press revealed that she was having an affair with a fellow scientist, Paul Langevin. The subject of vicious misogynist and xenophobic attacks in the French press, Curie found herself in a storm that threatened her scientific legacy. Albert Einstein proved a supporter in her travails. He was young and already showing flourishes of his enormous genius. Curie had been responsible for one of the greatest discoveries in modern science. Utilising never before seen correspondence and notes, Jeffrey Orens reveals the human side of these brilliant scientists, one who pushed boundaries and demanded equality in a man’s world, no matter the cost, and the other, who was destined to become synonymous with genius. |
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