The 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.

From Al Gore to Jane Goodall, Jane Fonda to Ingrid Newkirk, Eco Legends Alphabet presents an inspirational A to Z of those who have stood proudly and defiantly beside Mother Earth. Lovingly illustrated and informatively written, Eco Legends Alphabet is the perfect title for any lover of nature, or anyone joining the movement that will define our era.

On December 17, 2008, 46-year-old Scott Bolzan hit his head on the bathroom floor and awoke in a hospital with no memory of who he was or how he got there. He didn't know that the petite blond at his side was Joan, his wife of twenty-four years--or even what a wife was. He couldn't remember the births of his two young-adult children, the daughter he'd lost, his time as an offensive lineman for the NFL's Cleveland Browns, or his flourishing aviation career.

With heart-rending honesty and no shortage of humor, the Bolzans share their remarkable journey as Scott finds his way in a now-unfamiliar world and reinvents himself as a man, husband, and father. The challenges are initially overwhelming, but My Life, Deleted is above all else a celebration of extraordinary perseverance. Throughout it all, what emerges--against all odds--is an enviable love story, as Scott and Joan fall in love all over again.

Simone Weil: philosopher, political activist, mystic - and sister to André, one of the most influential mathematicians of the twentieth century. These two extraordinary siblings formed an obsession for Karen Olsson, who studied mathematics at Harvard, only to turn to writing as a vocation.

When Olsson got hold of the 1940 letters between the siblings, she found they shared a curiosity about the inception of creative thought - that flash of insight - that Olsson experienced as both a maths student, and later, novelist.

Following this thread of connections, The Weil Conjectures explores the lives of Simone and André, the lore and allure of mathematics, and its significance in Olsson's own life.

Dame Cicely Saunders was the founder of the Hospice Movement, in which Britain leads the world. Her work transformed our approach to the care of the dying, and also the debate about euthanasia. She died in 2005 and her memorial service was held in Westminster Abbey in March 2006. Over 1600 people attended. This biography, by Shirley du Boulay, includes a 4-page plate section and new chapters by Marianne Rankin covering the years after 1984.

The extraordinary true story of the first Girl Scout troop designated for homeless girls - from the homeless families it brought together in Queens, New York, to the amazing citywide and countrywide responses it sparked. Giselle Burgess, a young mother of five, and her children, along with others in the shelter, become the catalyst for Troop 6000. Having worked for the Girl Scouts earlier on, Giselle knew that these girls, including her own daughters, needed something they could be a part of, where they didn't need to feel the shame or stigma of being homeless, but could instead develop skills and build a community that they could be proud of. New York Times journalist Nikita Stewart embedded with Troop 6000 for more than a year, at the peak of New York City's homelessness crisis in 2017, spending time with the girls and their families and witnessing both their triumphs and challenges. Stewart takes the reader with her as she paints intimate portraits of Giselle's family and the others whom she met along the way. Readers will feel an instant connection and express joy when a family finally moves out of the shelter and into a permanent home, as well as the pain of the day-to-day life of homelessness. And they will cheer when the girls sell their very first cookies. Ultimately, Troop 6000 puts a different face on homelessness. Stewart shows how shared experiences of poverty and hardship sparked the political will needed to create the troop that would expand from one shelter to fifteen in New York City and ultimately to other cities around the country. Also woven throughout the book is a history of the Girl Scouts, and how the organization has changed and adapted to fit the times, meeting the needs of girls from all walks of life. Troop 6000 is the ultimate story of how when we come together, we can improve our circumstances, find support and commonality, and experience joy, no matter how challenging life may be.

This full-length biography of Edward Emerson Barnard, tells the remarkable tale of endurance and achievement of one of the leading astronomers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a 'man who was never known to sleep', Barnard scoured the heavens endlessly, leaving an astonishing legacy of observations - of planets, satellites, comets, double stars, bright and dark nebulae and globular clusters - that make him one of the greatest observers of all time. This book traces Barnard's life from poverty to international recognition. We are told how he grew up fatherless and in hardship during the American Civil War; that he later acquired a small telescope and discovered so many comets that, despite his lack of formal education, he won a position at the Lick Observatory, California. His success as a professional astronomer then unfolds, and we are told, in particular, how he discovered the fifth satellite of Jupiter and pioneered wide-angle photography of comets and the Milky Way.

The true history of physics can only be read in the life stories of those who made its progress possible. Matvei Bronstein was one of those for whom the vast territory of theoretical physics was as familiar as his own home: he worked in cosmology, nuclear physics, gravitation, semiconductors, atmospheric physics, quantum electrodynamics, astro physics and the relativistic quantum theory. Everyone who knew him was struck by his wide knowledge, far beyond the limits of his trade. This partly explains why his life was closely intertwined with the social, historical and scientific context of his time. One might doubt that during his short life Bronstein could have made truly weighty contributions to science and have become, in a sense, a symbol of his time. Unlike mathematicians and poets, physicists reach the peak of their careers after the age of thirty. His thirty years of life, however, proved enough to secure him a place in the Greater Soviet Encyclopedia. In 1967, in describing the first generation of physicists educated after the 1917 revolution, Igor Tamm referred to Bronstein as "an exceptionally brilliant and promising" theoretician 268]."

With his "deeply informed and compassionate book...Dr. Epstein tells us that it is a 'moral imperative' [for doctors] to do right by their patients" (New York Journal of Books). The first book for the general public about the importance of mindfulness in medical practice, Attending is a groundbreaking, intimate exploration of how doctors approach their work with patients. From his early days as a Harvard Medical School student, Epstein saw what made good doctors great-more accurate diagnoses, fewer errors, and stronger connections with their patients. This made a lasting impression on him and set the stage for his life's work-identifying the qualities and habits that distinguish master clinicians from those who are merely competent. The secret, he learned, was mindfulness. Dr. Epstein "shows how taking time to pay attention to patients can lead to better outcomes on both sides of the stethoscope" (Publishers Weekly). Drawing on his clinical experiences and current research, Dr. Epstein explores four foundations of mindfulness-Attention, Curiosity, Beginner's Mind, and Presence-and shows how clinicians can grow their capacity to provide high-quality care. The commodification of health care has shifted doctors' focus away from the healing of patients to the bottom line. Clinician burnout is at an all-time high. Attending is the antidote. With compassion and intelligence, Epstein offers "a concise guide to his view of what mindfulness is, its value, and how it is a skill that anyone can work to acquire" (Library Journal).

In the 1940s and 50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American satellites, and made the exploration of the solar system possible. Rise of the Rocket Girls tells the stories of these women--known as "human computers"--who broke the boundaries of both gender and science. Based on extensive research and interviews, Nathalia Holt offers a unique perspective on the role of women in science: both where we've been, and the far reaches of space to which we're heading.

"[T]his is a scholarly, commendable biography and intellectual history. Lay readers will be challenged; psychologists and historians will be grateful."-Library Journal, starred review First published in 1946, Viktor Frankl's memoir Man's Search for Meaning remains one of the most influential books of the last century, selling over ten million copies worldwide and having been embraced by successive generations of readers captivated by its author's philosophical journey in the wake of the Holocaust. This long-overdue reappraisal examines Frankl's life and intellectual evolution anew, from his early immersion in Freudian and Adlerian theory to his development of the "third Viennese school" amid the National Socialist domination of professional psychotherapy. It teases out the fascinating contradictions and ambiguities surrounding his years in Nazi Europe, including the experimental medical procedures he oversaw in occupied Austria and a stopover at the Auschwitz concentration camp far briefer than has commonly been assumed. Throughout, author Timothy Pytell gives a penetrating but fair-minded account of a man whose paradoxical embodiment of asceticism, celebrity, tradition, and self-reinvention drew together the complex strands of twentieth-century intellectual life. From the introduction: At the same time, Frankl's testimony, second only to the Diary of Anne Frankin popularity, has raised the ire of experts on the Holocaust. For example, in the 1990s the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington purportedly refused to sell Man's Search for Meaningin the gift shop.... During the late 1960s and early 1970s Frankl became very popular in America. Frankl's survival of the Holocaust, his reassurance that life is meaningful, and his personal conviction that God exists served to make him a forerunner of the self-help genre.

In Bound by Muscle, Andrew Brown details the lives and achievements of two physiologists, Archibald Vivian Hill (1886-1977) and Otto Fritz Meyerhof (1884-1951). Hill and Meyerhof shared the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries related to metabolic changes underlying muscle activity. Bound by Muscle describes how Hill and Meyerhof's lives and careers intersected and diverged and how their work changed the course of biological science. Bound by Muscle is organized chronologically. The first four chapters consider Hill and Meyerhof's childhoods and early careers; subsequent chapters address the Nobel Prize nomination and award and how their lives were affected by the World Wars. Bound by Muscle details Hill and Meyerhof's scientific breakthroughs and professional accomplishments. The book also examines the historical context that shaped their work and how the two men differed. Hill embodied the pragmatic style of British science. He became an outspoken critic of fascism as well as an effective humanitarian. As a senior scientist, he played major roles in preparing Great Britain for World War II. In contrast, Meyerhof was shy and philosophical. A non-observant Jew, he was reluctant to leave his superb laboratory in Heidelberg as the Nazi threat became apparent. His dramatic eventual escape is described in detail for the first time. Throughout, Bound by Muscle reflects on how individual differences and historical events have shaped the trajectory of science.

Konrad Zuse is one of the great pioneers of the computer age. He created thefirst fully automated, program controlled, freely programmable computer using binary floating-point calculation. It was operational in 1941. He built his first machines in Berlin during the Second World War, with bombs falling all around, and after the war he built up a company that was taken over by Siemens in 1967. Zuse was an inventor in the traditional style, full of phantastic ideas, but also gifted with a powerful analytical mind. Single-handedly, he developed one of the first programming languages, the Plan Calculus, including features copied only decades later in other languages. He wrote numerousbooks and articles and won many honors and awards. This is his autobiography, written in an engagingly lively and pleasant style, full of anecdotes, reminiscences, and philosophical asides. It traces his life from his childhood in East Prussia, through tense wartime experiences and hard times building up his business after the war, to a ripe old age andwell-earned celebrity.

On 20 July 1969, the world stood still to watch 38-year-old astronaut Neil Armstrong become the first person ever to walk on the Moon. Perhaps no words in recent human history became better known than those few he uttered at that historic moment. Upon his return to Earth, Armstrong was honored and celebrated for his achievement. But he was also misunderstood. As authorized biographer James Hansen reveals in this fascinating and important book, it was the act of flying that had driven Armstrong rather than the pull of the destination, from his distinguished career as a fighter pilot in the Korean War right through to his most famous mission. Drawing on flight logs, family and NASA archives and over 125 original interviews with key participants, First Man vividly re-creates Armstrong's life and career in flying, from the heights of honor earned as a naval aviator, test pilot and astronaut, to the dear personal price paid by Armstrong and, even more so, by his wife and children, for his dedication to his vocation. It is a unique portrait of a great but reluctant hero.

Arranged in chronological order from the early Greek mathematicians, Euclid and Archimedes through to present-day Nobel Prize winners, 100 Science Discoveries That Changed the World charts the great breakthroughs in scientific understanding. Each entry describes the story of the research, the significance of the science and its impact on the scientific world. There is also a resume of each scientist's career along with their other achievements, sometimes - in the case of Isaac Newton - in a completely unrelated field (laws of motion and the component parts of light). The book covers all branches of science: geometry, number theory, cosmology, the laws of motion, particle physics, electricity, magnetism, the laws of gasses, optical theory, cell biology, conservation of energy, natural selection, radiation, quantum theory, special relativity, superconductivity, thermodynamics, genomes, plate tectonics, and the uncertainty principal. Scientists include: Albert Einstein, Alessandro Volta, Alexander Fleming, Amedeo Avogrado, Andre Geim, Antoine Lavoisier, Antony van Leeuwenhoek, Archimedes, Benoit Mandelbrot, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Charles Darwin, Christian Doppler, Copernicus, Crick and Watson, Dmitri Mendeleev, Edwin Hubble, Enrico Fermi, Ernest Rutherford, Erwin Schrodinger, Euclid, Fermat, Frederick Sanger, Galileo Galilei, Georg Ohm, Georges Lemaitre, Heike Kamerlingh, Isaac Newton, Jacques Charles, James Clerk Maxwell, James Prescott Joule, Jean Buridan, Johanes Kepler, John Ambrose Fleming, John Dalton, John O'Keefe, Joseph Black, Josiah Gibbs, Lord Kelvin, Lord Rayleigh, Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie, Martinus Beijerinck, Michael Faraday, Murray Gell-Mann & George Zweig, Neils Bohr, Nicholas Steno, Peter Higgs, Pierre Curie, Ptolemy, Robert Boyle, Robert Brown, Robert Hooke, Roger Bacon, Rudolf Clausius, Seleucus, Shen Kuo, Stanley Miller, Tyco Brahe, Werner Heisenberg, William Gilbert, William Harvey, William Herschel, William Rontgen, Wolfgang Pauli.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Nobel Laureate in Physics, was a towering figure in 20th century physics, but remained a highly private man. The many letters and correspondence in this book reveal in Chandrasekhar's own words the depth of his pursuit of science as well as his personal struggles. This book is an important addition to the three previous volumes by Kameshwar C. Wali, including Chandra, A Biography of S. Chandrasekhar, S. Chandrasekhar: The Man Behind the Legend, and A Quest for Perspectives: Selected Works of S. Chandrasekhar (With Commentary), Volumes 1 & 2.Included in the correspondence are Chandra's thoughts and feelings about his student days in India and Cambridge, his trials and tribulations in the competitive world of British academia, his travels to Russia and Germany, and his unexpected and historic encounter with Sir Arthur Eddington. The book also includes rare correspondence and conversations with Lalitha, Chandrasekhar's wife of over sixty years. The letters and conversations with her reflect her own views of their life. She, a student of physics herself, eventually gave up her own work in science to become an integral part of Chandra's life. As Chandra wrote, 'The full measure of [of my indebtedness] cannot really be recorded; it is too deep and too all persuasive. Let me then record simply that Lalitha was the motivating source and strength of my life.'This new book adds a significant personal dimension to an extraordinary scientist and will give the public a deeper understanding of the man behind the legend.

From the Sunday Times bestselling author Dr Amanda Brown. Insights into the world of a Prison Doctor, this time taking us deeper into the walls of Bronzefield, the UK's biggest women's prison. From the drug addicts who call Amanda 'the mother I never had' to the women who've pushed back at domestic abuse, to women close to release in their 70s, who just want to stay in the place that they've always known, these are stories that are heartbreaking, harrowing and heart-warming. Amanda listens, prescribes, and does what she can. After all, she's their doctor.

Niels Bohr, who pioneered the quantum theory of the atom, had a broad conception of his obligations as a physicist. They included not only a responsibility for the consequences of his work for the wider society, but also a compulsion to apply the philosophy he deduced from his physics to improving ordinary people's understanding of the moral universe they inhabit. In some of these concerns Bohr resembled Einstein, although Einstein could not accept what he called the "tranquilizing philosophy" with which Bohr tried to resolve such ancient conundrums as the nature (or possibility) of free will. In this Very Short Introduction John Heilbron draws on sources never before presented in English to cover the life and work of one of the most creative physicists of the 20th century. In addition to his role as a scientist, Heilbron considers Bohr as a statesman and Danish cultural icon, who built scientific institutions and pushed for the extension of international cooperation in science to all nation states. As a humanist he was concerned with the cultivation of all sides of the individual, and with the complementary contributions of all peoples to the sum of human culture. Throughout, Heilbron considers how all of these aspects of Bohr's personality influenced his work, as well as the science that made him, in the words of Sir Henry Dale, President of the Royal Society of London, probably the "first among all the men of all countries who are now active in any department of science." ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-American, invented the radio, the induction motor, the neon lamp and the remote control. His breakthrough came in alternating current, which pitted him against Thomas Edison's direct current empire and bitter patent battles ensued. But Tesla's technology was superior and he prevailed. He had no business sense, could not capitalise on this success and his most advanced ideas were unrecognised for decades. Tesla's personal life was magnificently bizarre. Strikingly handsome, he was germophobic and never shook hands. He required nine napkins when he sat down to dinner. In later years he ate only white food and conversed with the pigeons in Bryant Park. This authoritative and highly readable biography takes account of all phases of this remarkable life.

Everyone knows the story of the codebreaker and computer science pioneer Alan Turing. Except ... When Dermot Turing is asked about his famous uncle, people want to know more than the bullet points of his life. They want to know everything - was Alan Turing actually a codebreaker? What did he make of artificial intelligence? What is the significance of Alan Turing's trial, his suicide, the Royal Pardon, the GBP50 note and the film The Imitation Game? In Reflections of Alan Turing, Dermot strips off the layers to uncover the real story. It's time to discover a fresh legacy of Alan Turing for the twenty-first century.

Such Silver Currents is the first biography of a mathematical genius and his literary wife, their wide circle of well-known intellectual and artistic friends, and through them of the age in which they lived. William Clifford is now recognised not only for his innovative and lasting mathematics, but also for his philosophy, which embraced the fundamentals of scientific thought, the nature of the physical universe, Darwinian theory, the nature of consciousness, personal morality and law, and the whole mystery of being. Clifford algebra is seen as the basis for Dirac's theory of the electron, fundamental to modern physics, and Clifford also anticipated Einstein's idea that space is curved. The book includes a personal reflection on William Clifford's mathematics by the Nobel Prize winner Sir Roger Penrose O.M. The year after his election to the Royal Society, Clifford married Lucy Lane, the journalist and novelist. During their four years of marriage they held Sunday salons attended by many well-known scientific, literary and artistic personalities. Following William's early death, Lucy became a close friend and confidante of Henry James. Her wide circle of friends included Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, Leslie Stephen, Thomas Huxley, Sir Frederick Macmillan and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Leonardo da Vinci's scientific explorations were virtually unknown during his lifetime, despite their extraordinarily wide range. He studied the flight patterns of birds to create some of the first human flying machines; designed military weapons and defenses; studied optics, hydraulics, and the workings of the human circulatory system; and created designs for rebuilding Milan, employing principles still used by city planners today. Perhaps most importantly, Leonardo pioneered an empirical, systematic approach to the observation of nature-what is known today as the scientific method.
Drawing on over 6,000 pages of Leonardo's surviving notebooks, acclaimed scientist and bestselling author Fritjof Capra reveals Leonardo's artistic approach to scientific knowledge and his organic and ecological worldview. In this fascinating portrait of a thinker centuries ahead of his time, Leonardo singularly emerges as the unacknowledged "father of modern science."

Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960), prominent astronomer and world-renowned socialist theorist, stood at the nexus of the revolutions in politics, science and the arts of the early twentieth century. His astronomy was uniquely visual and highly innovative, while his politics were radical. Anton Pannekoek: Ways of Viewing Science and Society collects essays on Pannekoek and his contemporaries at the crossroads of political history, the history of science and art history.