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Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > Science, technology & engineering
The day in 2006 when the tastefully customized 1990
Harley-Davidson motorcycle arrived in the driveway was one of
Carole Stieler's happiest moments. For Carole and her husband,
author David Charles Stieler, experiencing life from the seat of a
motorcycle offered a perspective that no other form of
transportation could provide. This couple from rural Michigan had
no way of knowing that the motorcycle's arrival would mark the
beginning of the final journey of life as they knew it.
In The Ride, the Rose, and the Resurrection, David narrates
their story of how a horrific hit-and-run motorcycle crash tore
life out from under this middle-class American family. He tells of
both his and Carole's psychological, spiritual, and physical
battles to survive their near-death experience, and he communicates
the harsh realities of the financial and insurance issues related
to such an accident.
This memoir not only offers a true account of the battle between
life and death but also shares stories of compassion and suspicion,
companionship and abandonment, and religion and faith, in which
forgiveness becomes the key to resurrection.
This book is for anyone, young or old, who has ever had a desire or
ambition to achieve the American Dream. It is a story of a man
chasing the American Dream told from an African perspective. It is
a story which illustrates the power of setting goals and working
hard to achieve them. The key is to stay focused. Life is a journey
sometimes fraught with many obstacles, highs and lows. In this book
the reader will find reason to stay focused on their goal,
inspiration to take them over the lows and around the obstacles.
Come with me to the Top of The Mountain. Our journey will take us
from the sun -drenched, arid African reservations(rural areas to
which Africans were relegated) of Southern Rhodesia ( present day
Zimbabwe ) to the academic halls of Albert Einstein College of
medicine in the Bronx, New York. Enjoy the ride.
In 1857 Henry David Thoreau moved to a small cabin in the woods
near Walden Pond where he lived as a recluse from society for just
over two years. In his time of self-prescribed isolation, Thoreau
recorded his daily routine and reflections in an effort to get away
from the noise brought about by a mainstream society. His work
became one of the most influential American literary works of all
time. Thoreau's daily journal entries became the foundation for one
of the most well-known works of Transcendental philosophy to this
day. Published as one title, Walden is a quasi-memoir and
naturalist manifesto that has withstood the test of time. The work
continues to inspire generations to switch it up, unplug, and
revert to the higher calling of nature.
Life and death in a modern hospital, from Seamus O'Mahony, the
award-winning author of The Way We Die Now and Can Medicine Be
Cured? Seamus O'Mahony charts the realities of work in the
'ministry of bodies', that huge complex where people come to be
cured and to die. From unexpected deaths to moral quandaries and
bureaucratic disasters, O'Mahony documents life in the halls and
wards that all of us will visit at some point in our lives with his
characteristic wit and dry and unsentimental intelligence. Absurd
general emails, vain and self-promoting specialists, the relentless
parade of self-destructive drinkers and drug users, the comical
expectations of baffled patients: this is not a conventional
medical memoir, but the collective biography of one of our great
modern institutions - the general hospital - through the eyes of a
brilliant writer, who happens to be a doctor.
Charles Babbage was thirty years old in 1821, as was his close
friend, John Herschel, and in English intellectual circles they
were both regarded as brilliant mathematicians. One day as Babbage
worked in preparing logarithmic tables, a tedious and boring task,
he commented to Herschel that he thought he could invent a machine
to do these calculations with far more speed and accuracy than a
human calculator could. And so was born an idea that would
fascinate, tantalize, and absorb him for the remainder of his life.
Over the years he drew plans, expanded them, modified them, and
finally invented two machines, the Difference Engine and the
Analytical Engine. The first was capable only of generating tables,
but the Analytical Engine could do much more. It could convert into
numbers and print the results of any formula that might be
required. It could also develop any analytical formula the laws of
whose formation were given. Using punched cards it could store
early results in a calculation and then use them to make further
calculations when they were required. He had invented the first
mechanical computer.
This book provides a rounded biography of Franz (later Sir Francis)
Simon, his early life in Germany, his move to Oxford in 1933, and
his experimental contributions to low temperature physics
approximating absolute zero. After 1939 he switched his research to
nuclear physics, and is credited with solving the problem of
uranium isotope separation by gaseous diffusion for the British
nuclear programme Tube Alloys. The volume is distinctive for its
inclusion of source materials not available to previous
researchers, such as Simon's diary and his correspondence with his
wife, and for a fresh, well-informed insider voice on the
five-power nuclear rivalry of the war years. The work also draws on
a relatively mature nuclear literature to attempt a comparison and
evaluation of the five nuclear rivals in wider political and
military context, and to identify the factors, or groups of
factors, that can explain the results.
When Walt Larimore, MD, moved his young family to Kissimmee,
Florida, to start a small-town medical practice in 1985, he had no
idea he was embarking on an enterprise that would change his life
in ways both large and small. Dr. Larimore shared some of these
heartwarming and heartbreaking tales in The Best Medicine. Now he
offers up more charming stories of his time as a family physician
in a rural, small-yet-growing town in The Best Gift. Ideal for
anyone wrestling with the inevitable and difficult storms of life,
as well as fans of Dr. Larimore's popular Bryson City series, The
Best Gift is a tender and insightful collection of stories
chronicling one young doctor's spiritual growth as a physician,
husband, father, and community member. Filled with characters
colorful and crusty, warmhearted and hotheaded, witty and winsome,
these captivating stories glow with drama, heartbreak, warmth,
love, and humor. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll learn some of
life's greatest lessons. And you'll wish Dr. Larimore was your
doctor.
Niels Bohr and the Quantum Atom is the first book that focuses in
detail on the birth and development of Bohr's atomic theory and
gives a comprehensive picture of it. At the same time it offers new
insight into Bohr's peculiar way of thinking, what Einstein once
called his 'unique instinct and tact'. Contrary to most other
accounts of the Bohr atom, the book presents it in a broader
perspective which includes the reception among other scientists and
the criticism launched against it by scientists of a more
conservative inclination. Moreover, it discusses the theory as Bohr
originally conceived it, namely, as an ambitious theory covering
the structure of atoms as well as molecules. By discussing the
theory in its entirety it becomes possible to understand why it
developed as it did and thereby to use it as an example of the
dynamics of scientific theories.
As Samsung Africa’s former President and CEO, Sung Yoon was a first-hand witness to the company’s journey to becoming a global brand. Despite challenges, he turned Samsung’s Africa business into a success over four years.
In a career spanning more decades, he contributed in numerous capacities, heading up sales not only in Africa but in three different overseas assignments.
Yoon offers insights that shed light on the challenges of making business decisions and taking calculated risks.
Brown-Sequard: An Improbable Genius Who Transformed Medicine traces
the strange career of an eccentric, restless, widely admired,
nineteenth-century physician-scientist who eventually came to be
scorned by antivivisectionists for his work on animals, by
churchgoers who believed that he encouraged licentious behavior,
and by other scientists for his unorthodox views and for claims
that, in fact, he never made. An improbable genius whose colorful
life was characterized by dramatic reversals of fortune, he was a
founder-physician of England's premier neurological hospital and
held important professorships in America and France.
Brown-Sequard identified the sensory pathways in the spinal cord
and emphasized functional processes in the integrative actions of
the nervous system, thereby anticipating modern concepts of how the
brain operates. He also discovered the function of the nerves that
supply the blood vessels and thereby control their caliber, and the
associated reflexes that adjust the circulation to bodily needs. He
was the first to show that the adrenal glands are essential to life
and suggested that other organs have internal secretions. He
injected himself with ground-up animal testicles, claiming an
invigorating effect, and this approach led to the development of
modern hormone replacement therapy.
Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard was reportedly "one of the greatest
discover of facts that the world has ever seen." It has also been
suggested that "if his reasoning power had equaled his power of
observation he might have done for physiology what Newton did for
physics." In fact, scientific advances in the years since his death
have provided increasing support for many of his once-ridiculed
beliefs."
Discovering the passions of Chris Woodhead Collected writings from
a man who stimulated controversy and roused passions Best known as
the Chief Inspector of Schools who demanded higher standards across
the board, Woodhead was admired and condemned in equal measure for
his determination to confront taboos and bring them into the
national education debate. His final and greatest challenge was
with Motor Neurone Disease, a condition he faced with strength and
empathy until his death in 2015. While his education journalism
stands at the core of this book, What Matters Most explores
Woodhead's lesser known passions, literature and climbing, which he
writes about with the precision and clarity that became his
journalistic hallmark. In the final pages of the book Woodhead
shares his personal views on assisted dying, advocating for
individuals to be permitted to die with dignity at a time of their
choosing. What Matters Most: A Collection of Pieces is a
fascinating and poignant book which tracks the life and beliefs of
a truly inspirational contemporary thinker.
Peter Byrne tells the story of Hugh Everett III (1930-1982), whose
"many worlds" theory of multiple universes has had a profound
impact on physics and philosophy. Using Everett's unpublished
papers (recently discovered in his son's basement) and dozens of
interviews with his friends, colleagues, and surviving family
members, Byrne paints, for the general reader, a detailed portrait
of the genius who invented an astonishing way of describing our
complex universe from the inside. Everett's mathematical model
(called the "universal wave function") treats all possible events
as "equally real," and concludes that countless copies of every
person and thing exist in all possible configurations spread over
an infinity of universes: many worlds.
Afflicted by depression and addictions, Everett strove to bring
rational order to the professional realms in which he played
historically significant roles. In addition to his famous
interpretation of quantum mechanics, Everett wrote a classic paper
in game theory; created computer algorithms that revolutionized
military operations research; and performed pioneering work in
artificial intelligence for top secret government projects. He
wrote the original software for targeting cities in a nuclear hot
war; and he was one of the first scientists to recognize the danger
of nuclear winter. As a Cold Warrior, he designed logical systems
that modeled "rational" human and machine behaviors, and yet he was
largely oblivious to the emotional damage his irrational personal
behavior inflicted upon his family, lovers, and business partners.
He died young, but left behind a fascinating record of his life,
including correspondence with such philosophically inclined
physicists as Niels Bohr, Norbert Wiener, and John Wheeler. These
remarkable letters illuminate the long and often bitter struggle to
explain the paradox of measurement at the heart of quantum physics.
In recent years, Everett's solution to this mysterious problem-the
existence of a universe of universes-has gained considerable
traction in scientific circles, not as science fiction, but as an
explanation of physical reality.
As a practising mortician, Caitlin Doughty has long been fascinated
by our pervasive terror of dead bodies. In From Here to Eternity
she sets out in search of cultures unburdened by such fears. With
curiosity and morbid humour, Doughty introduces us to inspiring
death-care innovators, participates in powerful death practices
almost entirely unknown in the West and explores new spaces for
mourning - including a futuristic glowing-Buddha columbarium in
Japan, a candlelit Mexican cemetery, and America's only open-air
pyre. In doing so she expands our sense of what it means to treat
the dead with 'dignity' and reveals unexpected possibilities for
our own death rituals.
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