Showing results by publisher "HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books" in Professionals & Academics

In 1919, British scientists led extraordinary expeditions to Brazil and Africa to test Albert Einstein's revolutionary new theory of general relativity in what became the century's most celebrated scientific experiment. The result ushered in a new era and made Einstein a global celebrity by confirming his dramatic prediction that the path of light rays would be bent by gravity. Today, Einstein's theory is scientific fact. Yet the effort to "weigh light" by measuring the gravitational deflection of starlight during the May 29, 1919, solar eclipse has been clouded by myth and skepticism.

When Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin signed up for Teach for America right after college and found themselves utter failures in the classroom, they vowed to remake themselves into superior educators. They did that and more. In their early twenties, by sheer force of talent and determination never to take no for an answer, they created a wildly successful fifth-grade experience that would grow into the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), which today includes 66 schools in 19 states and the District of Columbia.

A biography of J. B. S. Haldane, the brilliant and eccentric British scientist whose innovative predictions inspired Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Humans from the earliest civilizations were spellbound by the night sky - craning their necks each night, they used the stars to orient themselves in the large, strange world around them. Stargazing is a pursuit that continues to fascinate us: from Copernicus to Carl Sagan, astronomers throughout history have spent their lives trying to answer the biggest questions in the universe. Now, award-winning astronomer Emily Levesque shares the stories of modern-day stargazers.

Steven Mandis charts the evolution of Goldman Sachs from an ethical standard to a legal one and uncovers the forces behind what he calls Goldman's "organizational drift". Drawing from his firsthand experience; sociological research; analysis of SEC, congressional, and other filings; and a wide array of interviews with former clients, detractors, and current and former partners, Mandis exposes the pressures that forced Goldman to slowly drift away from the very principles on which its reputation was built.

Three titans of finance predicted the current economic crisis several years ago, but their warnings went unheeded. A New York Times best-selling author distills the wisdom of all three.

Throughout the violent financial disruptions of the past several years, three men have stood out as beacons of judgment and wisdom: Warren Buffett, George Soros, and Paul Volcker.

Against a global backdrop of wartime suffering and postwar hope, Borrowing Life gathers the personal histories of the men and women behind the team that enabled and performed the modern medical miracle of the world's first successful organ transplant.

God of Sperm tells the remarkable story of Dr. Cappy Miles Rothman, the son of notorious gangster Norman "Roughhouse" Rothman, who went on to become a trailblazer in the field of reproductive medicine.

On January 12, 2010, a major earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of people died, and the greater part of the capital was demolished. Dr. Paul Farmer, U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti, who had worked in the country for nearly thirty years treating infectious diseases like tuberculosis and AIDS, and former President Bill Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, had just begun to work on an extensive development plan to improve living conditions in Haiti.

As a teenager, Molly Case underwent an operation that saved her life. Nearly a decade later, she finds herself in the operating room again - this time as a trainee nurse. She learns to care for her patients, sharing not only their pain, but also life-affirming moments of hope. In doing so, she offers a compelling account of the processes that keep them alive, from respiratory examinations to surgical prep, and of the extraordinary moments of human connection that sustain both nurse and patient.

Over a half century, Malibu went from an untamed ranch in the middle of nowhere to a paradise seeded with movie stars. Behind its transformation is the love story of Frederick and May Rindge. He was a Harvard-trained confidant of presidents; she grew up on a hardscrabble Midwestern farm; yet their unlikely bond would shape history.

Eighteen years ago, Stanford MBA Michele Raffin pulled off the road to help an injured dove, a momentary impulse that ignited in her a fervent commitment to saving vulnerable bird species. Today, her suburban home plays host to Pandemonium Aviaries, one of the largest avian rescue sanctuaries and endangered breeding facilities in the country, with a maze of 54 individual aviaries that house over 40 species, 14 of which are listed as threatened with extinction.

George Bird Grinnell, the son of a New York merchant, saw a different future for a nation in the thrall of the Industrial Age. With railroads scarring virgin lands and the formerly vast buffalo herds decimated, the country faced a crossroads: Could it pursue Manifest Destiny without destroying its natural bounty and beauty? The alarm that Grinnell sounded would spark America's conservation movement. Yet today his name has been forgotten - an omission that John Taliaferro's commanding biography now sets right with historical care and narrative flair.

Bird Brother is a story about pursuing dreams against all odds and the importance of second chances. Rodney's life was nearly upended when he was arrested on drug charges in 2002. The jail sentence sharpened his resolve to get out of the hustling life. With the fierceness of the raptors he had admired for so long, he began to train to become a master falconer and to develop his own raptor education program and sanctuary.

Central to America's idea of itself is the character of Benjamin Franklin. We all know him, or think we do: In recent works and in our inherited conventional wisdom, he remains fixed in place as a genial polymath and self-improver who was so very American that he is known by us all as the first American.

Cohen shows how smart guys like Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, and Mark Zuckerberg fell in love with a radically individualistic ideal and then mainstreamed it. With these very rich men leading the way, unions, libraries, public schools, common courtesy, and even government itself have been pushed aside to make way for supposedly efficient market-based encounters via the Internet. Donald Trump's election victory was an inadvertent triumph of the "disruption" that Silicon Valley has been pushing. A society that belittles civility, empathy, and collaboration can easily be led astray.

Facing the prospect of a career-ending disability as she adjusts to life with multiple sclerosis, Dr. Lisa Doggett is forced to deal with a new level of uncertainty and vulnerability, and the everyday fear that something new will go wrong. Taking off her white coat—becoming a patient herself—she confronts unimaginable fears, copes with her limitations, and sidesteps her skepticism of alternative medicine to seek help from unlikely sources. MS pushes Doggett—a perfectionist at heart—to embrace self-compassion.

In 1989, Brad Schaeffer was working as an artist when his trader brother invited him to visit the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Schaeffer promptly quit his job and became a clerk in that most iconic arena of raw capitalism. During the next six years, Schaeffer rose from clerk to trader, making markets on Eurodollar options in Chicago and heating oil options in New York. In that time, jammed literally shoulder-to-shoulder, he screamed, flailed his arms, hurled expletives, and pushed and shoved his way through his day.

An in-depth look at the life of Oakland, California native, Barclay Simpson, Strong Ties focuses on the set of convictions and leadership qualities that allowed Simpson to build a successful business from nothing and to become one of the major philanthropists in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In How Are You?, therapist Therese Rosenblatt shares her privileged front-row seat into the hearts and minds of her patients, to report on what is actually going on inside real peoples' heads from the dark, early days of the pandemic through its long, drawn-out progression. Dr. Rosenblatt then trains her own attuned eyes and ears onto herself, sharing some of her own experiences, challenges, and unexpected pleasures as she navigates this new world together with her patients.