What was the golden secret known to Leonardo da Vinci, Kepler, Plato and the ancient magicians? Can there really be a key to nature and life itself? In this small but compact volume, internationally renowned divine proportion supersleuth Dr. Olsen unravels perhaps the greatest mystery of all time, a code that seems to underly life, the universe and everything, a pattern we instinctively recognise as beautiful, and which nature herself uses at every scale. Designed for artists and scientists alike, this is the smallest, densest and most beautiful book on the golden section ever produced. WOODEN BOOKS are small but packed with information. "Fascinating" FINANCIAL TIMES. "Beautiful" LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS. "Rich and Artful" THE LANCET. "Genuinely mind-expanding" FORTEAN TIMES. "Excellent" NEW SCIENTIST. "Stunning" NEW YORK TIMES. Small books, big ideas.

From the lowest highway in North America to the highest, W. Scott Olsen takes readers on a journey that is more about going than about getting there. These are stories of travel as it is lived, essays about motion and the desire to keep moving. In a companionable style that puts readers in the passenger seat, Olsen describes his travels through the United States, observing the world close-up as it rushes toward and then away from his old Jeep.

The Upper Peninsula in March, a one-day drive from Death Valley to Mount Evans, a harrowing trip from Fargo to Spokane in the dead of winter: these journeys and others offer opportunities for Olsen's unconventional narrative to take flight in exploring the intricacies of America, its small towns, its people, its roads, its histories, and its landscapes in vistas long and short that might otherwise be overlooked. In Olsen's hands, travels along the most American routes of the heartland become an addictive tale that will appeal to anyone who has ever wondered what lies over the next hill.

"Hard Air" is a book about extraordinary flying--flying under conditions that keep fighters on the carrier deck and rockets on the launch pad--a book about rescue missions and long, lonely flights to gather urgently needed information, about flights to places where no one should be flying: into hurricanes, firestorms, and deep, engine-killing cold. As a pilot himself, W. Scott Olsen brings to these tales a sense of wonder and adventure as well as a genuine, firsthand understanding of the dangers and rigors of such flying. In prose that deftly conveys the grit and grace of his subjects, Olsen transports us into the air with hurricane hunters who fly into the planet's fiercest storms, with helicopter pilots racing emergency patients to clinics, with Canadian pilots who fly supplies to the Arctic, and with heavy air tanker pilots who drop water and slurry on remote wildfires. Their stories afford a rare look into the working lives of pilots whose methods are extreme and missions are simple: get there, do the job, and get out alive.

A concise and useful handbook on the Golden Section--also known as the Golden Ratio and Golden Mean. The Golden Section is a line segment divided into two parts, such that the ratio of the short portion to the longer portion is equal to the ratio of the longer portion to the whole. It is one of the most elegant and beautiful ratios of the mathematical universe because of its combination of elegance and simplicity--hence the divine nature of its name. Drawing on art, architecture, philosophy, nature, mathematics, geometry, and music--and beautifully illustrated in the Wooden Books fashion with all manner of images--"The Golden Section" will tell the story of this remarkable construct and its wide ranging impact on civilization and the natural world.