Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2007-03-09
RRP: £12.99
Price: £8.56
Review Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human / Souvenir Press Ltd:
Publication date: 1996-10-23
Dewey code: 617.48
RRP: £16.95
Price: £44.46
Review When the Air Hits Your Brain: Parables of Neurosurgery / W W Norton & Co Ltd:
Edition: Reprint
Publication date: 2002-11
Dewey code: 509
RRP: £8.03
Price: £19.54
Review The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer / Penguin Books:Technology historian and Assistant Director of London's Science Museum, Doron Swade, investigates the troubles that plagued 19th-century knowledge engineers in The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer. The author is in a unique position to appreciate the technical difficulties of the time as he led a team building a working model of a Difference Engine in time for Babbage's 1991 bicentenary using contemporary materials. The meat of the book is comprised of the story of the first computing machine design as gathered from the technical notes and drawings curated by Swade. Though Babbage certainly had problems translating his ideas into brass, the reader also comes to understand his fruitless, drawn-out arguments with his funders. Swade had it comparatively easy, though his depictions of the frustrating search for money and then working out how best to build the enormous machine in the late 1980s are delightful. It is difficult-maybe impossible-to draw a clear, unbroken line of influence from Babbage to any modern computer researchers, but his importance both as the first pioneer and as a symbol of the joys and sorrows of computing is unquestioned. Swade clearly respects his subject deeply, all the more so for having tried to bring the great old man's ideas to life. The Difference Engine is lovingly comprehensive and will thrill readers looking for a more technical examination of Babbage's career. -Rob Lightner.
Publication date: 2000-06-14
Dewey code: 957.5
RRP: £9.95
Price: £3.53
Review Tuva or Bust!: Richard Feynman's Last Journey / W. W. Norton & Co.:Richard Feynman, brilliant physicist and inspirational teacher, wasn't much for coats and ties. He lived a life that the adjective "bohemian" doesn't begin to cover, scripting percussion scores for avant-garde ballet troupes, musing over life's imponderables, and delighting and annoying his many friends with odd-duck questions-all the while teaching generations of students at CalTech. Always adventurous, Feynman was also a careful planner, recounts his friend and fellow drummer Ralph Leighton in this affectionate memoir. When a chance remark happened to dislodge a long-dormant memory of a faraway Siberian land called Tannu-Tuva, Feynman and Leighton set about scheming to get there-a programme that included learning the little-described Tuvan language, picking up the rudiments of throat singing, and reading the scattered, hard-to-find literature concerning a place that, in Feynman's fond view, was as close to paradise as the earth contained. It also involved corresponding with scholars in what was still the Soviet Union, wrangling with bureaucrats to secure the necessary papers-and all for the sake of seeing a country that had to be interesting, Feynman insisted, just because its capital, Kyzyl, had such an odd spelling. These picaresque armchair adventures make up the bulk of Tuva or Bust, an unconventional mix of travelogue and scientific biography that's a pleasure to read at every turn. The book yields a memorable picture of Richard Feynman-who did not live to see Tuva, but whose memory is honoured there today, thanks to Leighton's refusal to abandon their shared dream. -Gregory McNamee.
Publication date: 2006-02-01
Dewey code: 621.3092
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.55
Review Thomas Edison for Kids: His Life and Ideas: 21 Activities: His Life and Ideas: 21 Activities / Chicago Review Press:
Creator: Richard E. Bohlander
Publication date: 1998-04
Dewey code: 910.922
RRP: £15.99
Price: £28.12
Review World Explorers and Discoverers / Da Capo Press Inc:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2005-06-30
RRP: £14.99
Price: £9.89
Review James Brindley: Canal Pioneer / Waterways World Ltd:
Edition: MIT Press Ed
Publication date: 1996-11-29
Dewey code: 330.092
Price: £18.95
Review Models of My Life / MIT Press:
Publication date: 2003-05-06
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £9.99
Price: £9.95
Review Some time with Feynman / Allen Lane:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 1996-08-01
Price: £6.99
Review With My Soul Amongst Lions: Moving Story of the Struggle to Protect the Last Adamson Lions / Coronet Books:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 1999-06
RRP: £5.95
Price: £13.27
Review My Inventions / Barnes & Noble:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2006-05-09
Dewey code: 508.092
RRP: £14.95
Price: £9.14
Review The Heretic in Darwin's Court: The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace / Columbia University Press:
Publication date: 2003-06-12
Dewey code: 551.092
RRP: £16.99
Price: £2.99
Review Revolutions in the Earth: James Hutton and the True Age of the World / Weidenfeld & Nicolson:
Publication date: 2007-05-25
RRP: £17.99
Price: £9.92
Review The Last Man Who Knew Everything: Thomas Young, the Anonymous Polymath Who Proved Newton Wrong, Explained How We See, Cured the Sick and Deciphered the Rosetta Stone / Oneworld Publications:
Publication date: 2008-06-26
Dewey code: 621
RRP: £25.00
Price: £13.96
Review Engines and Enterprise: The Life and Work of Sir Harry Ricardo / J H Haynes & Co Ltd:
Publication date: 1996-09-26
Price: £16.99
Review The Man Who Listens to Horses / Hutchinson:
Publication date: 2004-05-28
Dewey code: 663.52092
RRP: £16.99
Price: £5.84
Review Blood and Whiskey: The Life and Times of Jack Daniel / John Wiley & Sons:
Edition: Numbered First Edition
Publication date: 1999-09-02
Dewey code: 133
RRP: £18.99
Price: £9.91
Review Clock This: My Life as an Inventor / Headline Book Publishing, London:In Clock This, Trevor Baylis takes the reader on a jaunt through the mind of an inventor who, inspired by a television documentary about HIV and AIDS in Africa, immediately took to his workshop and set to work on a radio that would work without electricity or batteries. His now world-famous invention sells at a rate of 120,000 a month. No mean feat for a man who described his early educational abilities as "best suited to some form of early retirement. "However, after a childhood set against the backdrop of war-torn London-a veritable playground for Baylis and his buddies-and a life as an affluent teenager with 4 pounds per week, an apprenticeship with a soil engineering firm and one day a week day-release to study for a certificate in engineering, Baylis quickly found his feet in the real world. But there is much more to him than an engineering prodigy who struck lucky. Indeed, his life has to date been well and truly less ordinary. A world-class swimmer who narrowly missed qualifying for the Olympics, and who then, incredibly, found his fins by demonstrating swimming pools and later by flirting with the circus, Baylis' sense of showmanship has certainly stood him in good stead for the later developments in his life that have brought him much publicity, an OBE, visiting professorships at numerous universities and a trip down memory lane as the victim of This is Your Life. Clock This is the autobiography of a man whose infectious enthusiasm, dedication and humour have shone through every aspect of his life, and it certainly makes for an entertaining read. But through the effervescence of his writing Baylis also inspires, and indeed almost dares, the reader to sit down, think and create for themselves. He reckons that: "As long as you've got slightly more perception than the average wrapped loaf, you could invent something. [+]" So, what's stopping you? -Susan Harrison.
Publication date: 2006-06
Dewey code: 508.8
RRP: £14.95
Price: £5.00
Review The Voyage of the Beagle / White Star:
Publication date: 2002-06
Dewey code: 509
Price: £4.41
Review The Map That Changed the World / Avon Books (Mm):Simon Winchester has a very simple formula, of which The Map That Changed the World is a perfect example-namely that the history we have forgotten is infinitely more interesting than the history with which we are all familiar. After the success of The Surgeon of Crowthorne, which documented the life of WC Minor, the American surgeon and major contributor to the first Oxford English Dictionary, Winchester now turns his attention to William Smith, the 19th-century Briton who can justly lay claim to being the founding father of geology. The book has all the usual attributes of a pacy historical read: a self-educated, unrecognised scientist spends years roaming the British countryside, compiling a map of the geological layers beneath the surface, only to have his ideas ripped off and to wind up homeless and penniless in Yorkshire with a wife who is going bonkers. And it gets better: in a bizarre Dickensian twist, Smith finally gets his just accolades when he is recognised by a kindly liberal nobleman and is reintroduced to London society as the geologist par excellence. Of itself, the story would be more than enough recommendation but there is a subtext running though the book that is in many ways just as compelling-namely, how some parts of history get written in stone and others in dust. Most secondary-school students get to learn of Charles Darwin and The Voyage of the Beagle. Yet how many people could stick their hands up and say they had heard of Smith? But is evolution any more important a field as geology? Is history ultimately an exercise in who has the best PR? Winchester may not have the answer, but he'll certainly make you think. -John Crace.
| Browse Science, Mathematics & Technology:
Models & Brands:
Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human, When the Air Hits Your Brain: Parables of Neurosurgery, The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer, Tuva or Bust!: Richard Feynman's Last Journey, Thomas Edison for Kids: His Life and Ideas: 21 Activities: His Life and Ideas: 21 Activities, World Explorers and Discoverers, James Brindley: Canal Pioneer, Models of My Life, Some time with Feynman, With My Soul Amongst Lions: Moving Story of the Struggle to Protect the Last Adamson Lions, My Inventions, The Heretic in Darwin's Court: The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace, Revolutions in the Earth: James Hutton and the True Age of the World, The Last Man Who Knew Everything: Thomas Young, the Anonymous Polymath Who Proved Newton Wrong, Explained How We See, Cured the Sick and Deciphered the Rosetta Stone, Engines and Enterprise: The Life and Work of Sir Harry Ricardo, The Man Who Listens to Horses, Blood and Whiskey: The Life and Times of Jack Daniel, Clock This: My Life as an Inventor, The Voyage of the Beagle, The Map That Changed the World |
