Technology Biography

Daniel P. Todes provides concise introduction to the life and science of the great Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov. Beyond a basic biography, Todes devotes particular attention to Pavlov's Nobel Prize-winning research on digestion and his iconic studies of conditional reflexes and higher nervous activity, as well as his experiments with dogs. Todes shows that Pavlov was not a behaviorist, did not use a bell, and was uninterested in training dogs. The Russian scientist sought to explain not merely external behaviors, but the emotional and intellectual life of animals and humans.

Ernest Everett Just was not like other scientists of his time. He saw the whole, where others saw only parts. He noticed details others failed to see. He persisted in his research despite the discrimination and limitations imposed on him as an African American. His keen observations of sea creatures revealed new insights about egg cells and the origins of life.

How big is the universe? In the early twentieth century, scientists took sides. One held that the entire universe was contained in the Milky Way galaxy. Their champion was the strong-willed astronomer Harlow Shapley. Another camp believed that the universe was so vast that the Milky Way was just one galaxy among billions—the view that would prevail, proven by the equally headstrong Edwin Hubble.

In October 1968 Donn Eisele flew with fellow astronauts Walt Cunningham and Wally Schirra into Earth orbit in Apollo 7. The first manned mission in the Apollo program and the first manned flight after a fire during a launch pad test killed three astronauts in early 1967, Apollo 7 helped restart NASA's manned-spaceflight program.

"La nostra lingua manca di parole per esprimere questa offesa, la demolizione di un uomo". Con ostinazione e pacatezza, Primo Levi non ha mai smesso di cercare le parole per raccontare l'atrocità della deportazione e del campo di sterminio di Auschwitz, in cui venne internato dal febbraio 1944 al 27 gennaio 1945. Parole di testimonianza sconvolgente e di grande potenza narrativa che vengono qui accolte e restituite ad alta voce da Roberto Saviano.

Rachel Carson wasn’t always the Rachel Carson, renowned environmental activist. From her earliest years, Rachel had a passion for nature—to her, it was a fairyland, and she loved to write about her adventures and the creatures she saw. Encouraged by teachers, Rachel wanted nothing more than to study the ocean and its inhabitants. Though unable to finish her PhD due to financial constraints, Rachel found work in science and success as a nature writer.

In this disquieting cyber thriller, Joseph Menn takes readers into the murky hacker underground, traveling the globe from San Francisco to Costa Rica and London to Russia. His guides are California surfer and computer whiz Barrett Lyon and a fearless British high-tech agent. Through these heroes, Menn shows the evolution of cyber-crime from small-time thieving to sophisticated, organized gangs, who began by attacking corporate websites but increasingly steal financial data from consumers.

This is the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of John Muir, the rugged individualist and passionate protector of the wild who saw that the encroachment of civilization into nature would threaten civilization itself.

Bill Gates is one of the world’s richest men and an undeniable legend in both software and business. Now, this biography is here to peer into the life and career of this incredible entrepreneur. In this detailed account of Bill Gates’ life, you’ll discover everything from how his childhood and years at Harvard shaped how he attained success to the founding of the now-famous Microsoft and the Windows software that changed the world and paved his way to becoming a billionaire.

James Clerk Maxwell was a brilliant mathematician and scientist, but his impact on this world goes even deeper than that. Maxwell singlehandedly overturned what was believed to be fact with a whole new outlook on fundamental aspects of the universe. Maxwell is often credited as one of the first pioneers of quantum physics and rightly so....

Revealed for the first time in Racing for the Bomb, Groves played a crucial and decisive role in the planning, timing, and targeting of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions. Norris offers new insights into the complex and controversial questions surrounding the decision to drop the bomb in Japan and Groves' actions during World War II, which had a lasting imprint on the nuclear age and the Cold War that followed.

How did thousands of premature infants come to be exhibited at America's most popular amusement park? In Miracle at Coney Island: How a Sideshow Doctor Saved Thousands of Babies and Transformed American Medicine, Claire Prentice uncovers the incredible true story of Martin Couney, the "incubator doctor."

Ranked as one of the richest men in the world, Jeff Bezos is undoubtedly an expert in business and an extraordinary entrepreneur. Now, this biography is here to unveil how Bezos’ life and philosophy helped him build one of the web’s largest stores. From the early days of Amazon to its journey to becoming a massive business empire, Jeff Bezos: Biography of a Billionaire Business Titan delves into Jeff Bezos’ life, achievements, and legacy.

In 1954, a group of boys attended a remote summer camp in Oklahoma. There they were split into two groups and encouraged to bully, harass and demonise each other. The results would make history as one of social psychology’s classic studies: the Robbers Cave experiment. Conducted at the height of the Cold War, the experiment officially had a happy ending: the boys reconciled, and psychologist Muzafer Sherif demonstrated that while hatred and violence are powerful forces, so, too, are cooperation and harmony.

This extraordinary travel book tells the true story of how in 1997 writer Michael Paterniti agreed to take a road trip from New Jersey to California, reuniting the preserved brain of the great scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) with his granddaughter Evelyn. Paterniti's improbable travelling companion is 84-year-old Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who not only removed Einstein's brain from his head during the autopsy but purloined it from Princeton Hospital also!

Someone in the U.S. is an identity-theft victim every four seconds. It is extremely easy for anyone from anywhere in the world to assume your identity and, in a matter of hours, devastate your life in ways that can take years to recover from. Stealing Your Life is the reference everyone needs, by an unsurpassed authority on the latest identity-theft schemes.

In Simply Freud, Professor Stephen Frosh offers an engaging and accessible introduction to Freud and his major ideas, including the unconscious, sexual repression, free association, and the interpretation of dreams. At the same time, he reminds us that Freud was also a person - ambitious, conflicted, amorous, irritable, blind about some things, prophetically insightful about others.

Meet Mary Mallon, a hardworking Irish cook hired by several of New York’s well-to-do families, who ultimately came to be known as "Typhoid Mary". Hear how Mary unwittingly spread deadly bacteria, the ways an epidemiologist discovered her trail of infection, and how the health department ultimately decided her fate. This engrossing story reveals the facts behind Mary, and young listeners will be on the edges of their seats wondering what happened to her and the innocent typhoid victims.

Most people know that Gregor Mendel, the Moravian monk who patiently grew his peas in a monastery garden, shaped our understanding of inheritance. But people might not know that Mendel's work was ignored in his own lifetime, even though it contained answers to the most pressing questions raised by Charles Darwin's revolutionary book, On Origrin of the Species, published only a few years earlier. Mendel's single chance of recognition failed utterly, and he died a lonely and disappointed man.

A través de sus propias palabras, Nikola Tesla nos lleva en un viaje desde su infancia en el Imperio Austrohúngaro, pasando por sus años de formación y sus primeras invenciones, hasta sus logros más notables en los Estados Unidos colaborando con Thomas Alva Edison y George Westinghouse.