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Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > Science, technology & engineering
MOSHOOD ADEMOLA FAYEMIWO was a newspaper publisher/editor in
Nigeria where he grew up but now lives in Chicago. An alumnus of
University of Lagos, Nigeria, University of South Florida, and
State University of New York, he is author of Who's Who of Africans
in America and four published books.. His next book is; Jonathan;
The Squandering of Good Luck. MARGIE MARIE NEAL is former
university professor, education consultant, and reading coach in
Chicago. An alumna of State University of New York, Chicago State
University, American College of Education, and University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is co-author, People Power in
Africa: A Week That Changed Nigeria Forever," and author of; "The
Roles of Professional Organizations in the Effective Teaching of
Reading in Chicago Public School-CPS: The IRA and IRC as Case
Studies," (forthcoming). Praise For ALIKO MOHAMMAD ADNGOTE THE
BIOGRAPHY OF THE RICHEST BLACK PERSON IN THE WORLD "A highly
recommended book to anyone who enjoys learning about how different
people of all walks of life become rich and successful, and what it
takes to get to the top"---Readers Favorite Book (Starred Review),
USA. "A compelling book about a unique personality in
Africa"---Goodreads, USA. "Flawlessly written, Dangote stands out
as a hallmark of excellent artisanship and knowledgeable
chronicling"--- Bookplex Review of Books, Mumbai, India. "Nigerian
Aliko Dangote, the richest black person in the world, is a witness
to the fact that success as a passionate entrepreneur is not
limited by race, ethnicity or national origin"---Congressman Jesse
L. Jackson, Jr.-(D - IL), 2nd Congressional District, U.S. House of
Representatives, Washington, DC, USA. In a land lacking a culture
of independent biography, this is a starting point, and Dangote is
a promising introduction to the fascinating and still largely
unmapped universe of one of the world's richest men."---The
Huffington Post, USA. "Dangote has trumped long held assumptions,
cultural archetypes and stereotypes, to become known as a respected
business man, power broker and philanthropist"---Hon Gloria Hyatt,
Member of the British Empire (MBE), motivational speaker,
education, coach and managing director, Teach Consultancy Limited,
UK. "This is a timely book on Aliko Dangote and the positive
changes that are taking place in Africa,"---Prof. Vijay Mahajan,
The John Harbin Centennial Chair of Business, McCombs School of
Business, University of Texas, Austin USA. Publisher's website:
http: //sbpra.com/MoshoodAdemolaFayemiwoandMargieMarieNeal
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.
Discover one of the Scottish Enlightenment's brightest stars. Among
the giants of the Scottish Enlightenment, the name of James Hutton
is overlooked. Yet his Theory of the Earth revolutionised the way
we think about how our planet was formed and laid the foundation
for the science of geology. He was in his time a doctor, a farmer,
a businessman, a chemist yet he described himself as a philosopher
- a seeker after truth. A friend of James Watt and of Adam Smith,
he was a polymath, publishing papers on subjects as diverse as why
it rains and a theory of language. He shunned status and official
position, refused to give up his strong Scots accent and vulgar
speech, loved jokes and could start a party in an empty room. Yet
much of his story remains a mystery. His papers, library and
mineral collection all vanished after his death and only a handful
of letters survive. He seemed to be a lifelong bachelor, yet had a
secret son whom he supported throughout his life. This book uses
new sources and original documents to bring Hutton the man to life
and places him firmly among the geniuses of his time.
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.
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.
Dr. Chuck Radis was drawn to a career in medicine after meeting an
osteopathic family practice bush pilot in Baja, Mexico. Following
an internal medicine residency, the young doctor moved his family
to Peaks Island off the coast of Maine and traveled by boat to the
four year-round islands in Casco Bay, logging more than 100 house
calls each year. Come along with Dr. Radis as he makes his rounds
with a new batch of stories filled with equal parts hilarity,
heartache, and wisdom.
'Our childhood came to an end when our parents parted and from then
on Jennifer was placed in the impossible position of having to be a
parent to me, her sister. I shall always be grateful for her
protection . . .' Millions have fallen in love with Jennifer Worth
and her experiences in the East End as chronicled in Call the
Midwife, but little is known about her life outside this period.
Now, in this moving and evocative memoir, Jennifer's sister
Christine takes us from their early idyllic years to the cruelty
and neglect they suffered after their parents divorced, from
Jennifer being forced to leave home at fourteen to their training
as nurses. After leaving nursing Jennifer took up a career in
music, her first love, and Christine became a sculptor, but through
marriages and children, joy and heartbreak, their lives remained
intertwined. Absorbing and emotional, The Midwife's Sister by
Christine Lee is testimony to an enduring bond between two
extraordinary women.
"American Prometheus is the first full-scale biography of J. Robert
Oppenheimer, "father of the atomic bomb," the brilliant,
charismatic physicist who led the effort to capture the awesome
fire of the sun for his country in time of war. Immediately after
Hiroshima, he became the most famous scientist of his
generation-one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, the
embodiment of modern man confronting the consequences of scientific
progress.
He was the author of a radical proposal to place international
controls over atomic materials-an idea that is still relevant
today. He opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb and
criticized the Air Force's plans to fight an infinitely dangerous
nuclear war. In the now almost-forgotten hysteria of the early
1950s, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive
nuclear buildup, and, in response, Atomic Energy Commission
chairman Lewis Strauss, Superbomb advocate Edward Teller and FBI
director J. Edgar Hoover worked behind the scenes to have a hearing
board find that Oppenheimer could not be trusted with America's
nuclear secrets.
"American Prometheus sets forth Oppenheimer's life and times in
revealing and unprecedented detail. Exhaustively researched, it is
based on thousands of records and letters gathered from archives in
America and abroad, on massive FBI files and on close to a hundred
interviews with Oppenheimer's friends, relatives and colleagues.
We follow him from his earliest education at the turn of the
twentieth century at New York City's Ethical Culture School,
through personal crises at Harvard and Cambridge universities. Then
to Germany, where he studied quantum physics with the world's
mostaccomplished theorists; and to Berkeley, California, where he
established, during the 1930s, the leading American school of
theoretical physics, and where he became deeply involved with
social justice causes and their advocates, many of whom were
communists. Then to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he transformed a
bleak mesa into the world's most potent nuclear weapons
laboratory-and where he himself was transformed. And finally, to
the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, which he directed
from 1947 to 1966.
"American Prometheus is a rich evocation of America at midcentury,
a new and compelling portrait of a brilliant, ambitious, complex
and flawed man profoundly connected to its major events-the
Depression, World War II and the Cold War. It is at once biography
and history, and essential to our understanding of our recent
past-and of our choices for the future.
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.
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.
When Oliver Sacks was twelve years old, a perceptive schoolmaster
wrote in his report: 'Sacks will go far, if he does not go too
far'. It is now abundantly clear that Sacks has never stopped going
. . . From its opening pages on his youthful obsession with
motorcycles and speed, On the Move is infused with his restless
energy. As he recounts his experiences as a young neurologist in
the early 1960s, first in California and then in New York, where he
discovered a long-forgotten illness in the back wards of a chronic
hospital, as well as with a group of patients who would define his
life, it becomes clear that Sacks's earnest desire for engagement
has occasioned unexpected encounters and travels - sending him
through bars and alleys, over oceans, and across continents. With
unbridled honesty and humour, Sacks shows us that the same energy
that drives his physical passions -bodybuilding, weightlifting, and
swimming - also drives his cerebral passions. He writes about his
love affairs, both romantic and intellectual, his guilt over
leaving his family to come to America, his bond with his
schizophrenic brother, and the writers and scientists - Thom Gunn,
A. R. Luria, W. H. Auden, Gerald M. Edelman, Francis Crick - who
influenced him. On the Move is the story of a brilliantly
unconventional physician and writer - and of the man who has
illuminated the many ways that the brain makes us human.
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.
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