Among the group of physics honors students huddled in 1957 on a Colorado mountain watching Sputnik bisect the heavens, one young scientist was destined, three short years later, to become a key player in America s own top-secret spy satellite program. One of our era s most prolific mathematicians, Karl Gustafson was given just two weeks to write the first US spy satellite s software. The project would fundamentally alter America s Cold War strategy, and this autobiographical account of a remarkable academic life spent in the top flight tells this fascinating inside story for the first time.

Gustafson takes you from his early pioneering work in computing, through fascinating encounters with Nobel laureates and Fields medalists, to his current observations on mathematics, science and life. He tells of brushes with death, being struck by lightning, and the beautiful women who have been a part of his journey."

Paul Weinberg spent 30 years in the Emergency Room (or ER) as a medical doctor and has seen everything, Described as "a strange career" by the author, entry into the field is unrestricted and open to all who are brave (or foolish) enough to start into the stream without the knowledge of the tsunami ahead. The strangeness of the practice is apparent from the very first visit to a busy urban ER. The swarm of commotion and great vividness of the scene can be dizzying. The relentlessness of the torrent and its strange day and night rhythms can enthral and repel like no other practice or job. In turns shocking, sad and funny, this book contains remarkable tales, inside stories and the experiences of a doctor's career in ER. Emergency medicine in America is a critical asset to its healthcare system. The ER doctor is located at the interface of the public and the first point of healthcare. If a doctor is needed outside of office hours, nights, or holidays, if the patient is uninsured or has inadequate insurance, or is of such a social state that they might be unpleasant to be around, no one is turned away at the ER. In short, the life of the ER doc is one where no situation is off limits.

The pioneering and creative brain surgeon recounts the course of his eventful life and career, detailing the drama and tensions of his endeavors, discoveries, and breakthroughs in neurology, neurophysiology, and neurosurgery

Tesla was not an ordinary scientist/inventor. His long life, beliefs and unusual psyche are the testimony to his uniqueness. Even today, there are fan clubs, Tesla societies all over the world. Recently an electric car company, the Tesla Motors were founded, bearing his name.I am intrigued and fascinated by Tesla because of mankind's current crisis dealing with energy and the United States energy politics leading the country to ever increasing adventures and wars all around the Globe. Oil is addictive substance to everyday life, especially if immensely rich oil companies dictate foreign policies and renewable energy research.

Ernest Baldini started out as a bullied kid in Detroit, and he could have easily slipped into a life of mediocrity. Instead, he chose a different path--making careful decisions and working hard to eventually become a rocket scientist. Along the way, he survived World War II and learned that money is not the key to fulfilling dreams; instead, it's only another tool to use in building dreams.

Over the course of eighty years and a series of carefully considered choices, he set the bar high in a bid to reach the heavens. Although he rubbed elbows and collaborated with some of the century's greatest scientists and engineers, his life parallels the lives of millions of other Americans whose years have been clouded by wars, disasters, booms, and busts.

Take a trip through history, enjoy modest adventures, and relish the tales of a man with a romantic heart whose love for life never wavered in A Twentieth-Century Argonaut.

Walter Gautschi has written extensively on topics ranging from special functions, quadrature and orthogonal polynomials to difference and differential equations, software implementations, and the history of mathematics. He is world renowned for his pioneering work in numerical analysis and constructive orthogonal polynomials, including a definitive textbook in the former, and a monograph in the latter area. This three-volume set, Walter Gautschi: Selected Works with Commentaries, is a compilation of Gautschi s most influential papers and includes commentaries by leading experts. The work begins with a detailed biographical section and ends with a section commemorating Walter s prematurely deceased twin brother. This title will appeal to graduate students and researchers in numerical analysis, as well as to historians of science. Selected Works with Commentaries, Vol. 1 Numerical Conditioning Special Functions Interpolation and Approximation Selected Works with Commentaries, Vol. 2 Orthogonal Polynomials on the Real Line Orthogonal Polynomials on the Semicircle Chebyshev Quadrature Kronrod and Other Quadratures Gauss-type Quadrature Selected Works with Commentaries, Vol. 3 Linear Difference Equations Ordinary Differential Equations Software History and Biography Miscellanea Works of Werner Gautschi Numerical Conditioning Special Functions Interpolation and Approximation Selected Works with Commentaries, Vol. 2 Orthogonal Polynomials on the Real Line Orthogonal Polynomials on the Semicircle Chebyshev Quadrature Kronrod and Other Quadratures Gauss-type Quadrature Selected Works with Commentaries, Vol. 3 Linear Difference Equations Ordinary Differential Equations Software History and Biography Miscellanea Works of Werner Gautschi

The book that finally gives a physician's inside story of the evacuation of Memorial Medical Center following Katrina - a gripping tale of abandonment and survival.

A toxic stew of floodwaters surrounded Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans after Katrina when the levees broke. Over two thousand people were trapped in the squalid conditions without security as the death toll steadily rose inside. Bodies stacked up in the chapel as the temperature soared in the overcrowded hospital and the situation became increasingly desperate. Doctors, nurses, and staff worked around the clock, caring for those inside and trying to evacuate the facility, also known as Baptist Hospital. Allegations of euthanasia would later make headlines across the country and be investigated by state and local officials.

"Code Blue: A Katrina Physician's Memoir" finally tells the inside story of the hellish nightmare those who struggled to survive the ordeal were cast into. Dr. Richard Deichmann, the hospital's chief of medicine and one of the leaders of the evacuation, gives his compelling account of the rapidly deteriorating state of affairs at the hospital. He takes us through the daily horrors and numbing disappointments. This gripping tale of survival, despite betrayal and abandonment by the authorities, may change forever the way you view the threat of a mass disaster.

What Others are Saying about "Code Blue: A Katrina Physician's Memoir"

As a physician who has been on hurricane duty for prior storms, I thought I could imagine what it would be like if we were hit by a severe storm. I was wrong. This book should serve as a warning about what can happen when basic modern conveniences such as power, running water, communications and safety are taken away. - Karen Blessey, MD

With a scalpel's precision, Dr. Deichmann takes us into the faltering heart of a huge New Orleans hospital - his hospital - as Hurricane Katrina chokes off its vital functions, one by one, and patients begin to die.
- Jed Horne, author of "Breach of Faith, Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City." (Random House 2006)

The diagnosis is one no one wants. It is a wretched, horrible illness and carries with it a stigma. No one wants that either. However, I have that disease, always have had mental illness, although my bipolar diagnosis was not handed to me until the age of forty. I hate it, loathe it, want to bury it or throw it into the depths of the sea, but I can't. You see, it is part of who I am.

It started in childhood and carried on throughout all my adult years. This is my story. It includes the teeter-totter ups and downs as well as the psychotic times and paranoia, hallucinations, and feelings of grandeur. My whole life is illuminated for you to read.

The "delightfully macabre" (The New York Times) true tale of a brilliant and eccentric surgeon...and his quest to transplant the human soul.In the early days of the Cold War, a spirit of desperate scientific rivalry birthed a different kind of space race: not the race to outer space that we all know, but a race to master the inner space of the human body. While surgeons on either side of the Iron Curtain competed to become the first to transplant organs like the kidney and heart, a young American neurosurgeon had an even more ambitious thought: Why not transplant the brain? Dr. Robert White was a friend to two popes and a founder of the Vatican's Commission on Bioethics. He developed lifesaving neurosurgical techniques still used in hospitals today and was nominated for the Nobel Prize. But like Dr. Jekyll before him, Dr. White had another identity. In his lab, he was waging a battle against the limits of science and against mortality itself--working to perfect a surgery that would allow the soul to live on after the human body had died. This "fascinating" (The Wall Street Journal), "provocative" (The Washington Post) tale follows his decades-long quest into tangled matters of science, Cold War politics, and faith, revealing the complex (and often murky) ethics of experimentation and remarkable innovations that today save patients from certain death. It's a "masterful" (Science) look at our greatest fears and our greatest hopes--and the long, strange journey from science fiction to science fact.

Uncle Tungsten radiates all the delight and wonder of a boy's adventures, and is an unforgettable portrait of an extraordinary young mind. Oliver Sacks evokes, with warmth and wit, his upbringing in wartime England. He tells of the large science-steeped family who fostered his early fascination with chemistry. There follow his years at boarding school where, though unhappy, he developed the intellectual curiosity that would shape his later life. And we hear of his return to London, an emotionally bereft ten-year-old who found solace in his passion for learning. 'If you did not think that gallium and iridium could move you, this superb book will change your mind' - The Times

This memoir recalls a physician's life in several cultures, East and West, and the challenges and blessings of marriages into two Indian communities. The author describes remarkable personalities that influenced his life, as well as the conflicts and successes of scientific and clinical projects in academia and the World Health Organization. He lived adventures, great and small, in travels, in angling around the world, and in sailing. An adventure of a different sort is the discovery of new paths of creative and spiritual fulfillment in later life.

From a childhood exposed to public health to his career as a doctor, the author follows a wandering path from internal medicine to infectious diseases, preventive medicine, outpatient clinics, and public health. Along the way he encounters patients with rare or unusual twists, earns scars from the War against Poverty, and has memorable experiences with medical students. In addition, he helped establish the Emory School of Public Health at Emory University, where he was the Chairman of Preventive Medicine until his retirement in 1990. Few, if any of these experiences were planned. He found that many were accidental, some were unwelcome, but all were rewarding in the end.

In "What's Up, Doc?," Dr. Sellers shares the ups and downs of his forty-four year career in medicine.

An unsung heroine of the Crimean War
The flickering light that emanated from Florence Nightingale's lamp penetrated more darkness than she or anyone else of her time will have imagined. It illuminated the appalling deficiencies in the care of wounded and sick British servicemen on campaign during the Victorian era and it propelled 'the lady with the lamp' to well deserved fame in her own time and ever afterwards. It is therefore unfortunate that this same light blinded the public consciousness to many other extraordinary people who also worked tirelessly to assist neglected British soldiers and sailors in the middle of the 19th century. Florence Nightingale, despite her many virtues, was a woman not entirely divorced from the 'moral standards' of her time and this bore significantly on the subject of this book, Mary Seacole, because Nightingale rejected her as a nurse on her own staff. Mary Seacole was born in Jamaica in 1805 and was of mixed race. Her mother had cared for sick servicemen and Mary continued that humanitarian tradition in Panama before borrowing money to make the 4,000 mile journey to the war against the Russians being fought in the Crimea. There she treated the wounded of both sides of the conflict, both on the field of battle and in her own 'hotel.' This book is 'Mother Seacole's' (as she was known to the British soldiers) own account of her extraordinary life. It tells of a remarkable woman, who possessed astonishing determination and great humanity-which is all the more incredible since she was hampered by the bigotry and prejudice that were common against coloured people and women in general. At the end of hostilities she returned to England all but destitute and had to be assisted by those who remembered her great kindness during the war. This is a remarkable story and is highly recommended.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.