Edition: Reprint
Publication date: 2007-07-23
Dewey code: 809
RRP: £11.17
Price: £7.70
Review My Heart in Company: The Work of J. M. Barrie & the Birth of Peter Pan / Yale University Press:
Publication date: 2007-05-03
RRP: £7.99
Price: £2.52
Review Newton (Brief Lives) / Vintage:
Publication date: 2003-12
Dewey code: 629.13322092
RRP: £22.95
Price: £10.52
Review Magnificent Failure: Free Fall from the Edge of Space / Smithsonian Books:
Authors
- Jim Denney
- Grace Lee Whitney
Publication date: 1998-12
Dewey code: 791.45028092
RRP: £9.95
Price: £5.15
Review The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy / Quill Driver Books:
Authors
- Mary Gribbin
- John R. Gribbin
Publication date: 2005-04
Dewey code: 530.092
RRP: £14.50
Price: £3.01
Review Annus Mirabilis: 1905, Albert Einstein, and the Theory of Relativity with DVD / Chamberlain Brothers:
Publication date: 2000-07-01
Dewey code: 338.7688748
Price: £12.99
Review Revolutionaries at Sony: The Making of the Sony Playstation and the Visionaries Who Conquered the World of Video Games / McGraw-Hill Publishing Co.:PlayStation is the hottest computer-game platform going, and its 7 billion dollars in annual sales now account for 23 per cent of parent Sony Corp. 's profits. In Revolutionaries at Sony, Reiji Asakura describes how this came about despite long odds and nay-sayers from within and without. Asakura gives all credit to Ken Kutaragi, a visionary executive engineer who recognised the possibilities when he first viewed Sony's revolutionary "System G" 3-D technology in 1984, and who still believes it has achieved only a fraction of its potential for launching "an entire world of computerised home entertainment". Asakura attributes much of the ongoing success to Kutaragi's reliance on more than "an engineer's point of view", noting that whenever he "came across an interesting idea, his thoughts quickly turned to how (it) could be successfully commercialised. " Asakura, an economic and technology journalist based in Tokyo, is an unabashed cheerleader of the PlayStation and the people who created it, calling the product "a modern miracle" and Kutaragi "the hero of this book". But anyone curious about these incredibly popular games, which increasingly hook middle managers along with their children, should find the tale an interesting one. -Howard Rothman, Amazon. com.
Authors
- Richard Mearns
- Barbara Mearns
Dewey code: 598.0922
Price: £24.95
Review Biographies for Bird Watchers (Books About Birds) / Academic Press Inc.,U.S.:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2004-09-01
Dewey code: 509
RRP: £11.99
Price: £2.25
Review Rocket Man: Robert H. Goddard and the Birth of the Space Age / Hyperion:
Publication date: 2006-03
Dewey code: 629.222092
RRP: £25.50
Price: £21.33
Review In the Shadow of Detroit: Gordon M. McGregor, Ford of Canada, and Motoropolis (Great Lakes Books Series) / Wayne State University Press:
Publication date: 1996-10-23
Dewey code: 617.48
RRP: £16.95
Price: £44.88
Review When the Air Hits Your Brain: Parables of Neurosurgery / W W Norton & Co Ltd:
Edition: Reprint
Publication date: 2000-02
Dewey code: 629.1092273
Price: £7.82
Review Rocket Boys: A Memoir / Delta:Inspired by Werner von Braun and his Cape Canaveral team, 14-year-old Homer Hickam decided in 1957 to build his own rockets. They were his ticket out of Coalwood, West Virginia, USA, a mining town that everyone knew was dying-everyone except Sonny's father, the mine superintendent and a company man so dedicated that his family rarely saw him. Hickam's smart, iconoclastic mother wanted her son to become something more than a miner and, along with a female science teacher, encouraged the efforts of his grandiosely named Big Creek Missile Agency. He grew up to be a NASA engineer and his memoir of the bumpy ride toward a gold medal at the National Science Fair in 1960-an unprecedented honour for a miner's kid-is rich in humour as well as warm sentiment. Hickam vividly evokes a world of close communal ties in which a storekeeper who sold him saltpeter warned, "Listen, rocket boy. This stuff can blow you to kingdom come. " Hickam is candid about the deep disagreements and tensions in his parents' marriage, even as he movingly depicts their quiet loyalty to each other. The portrait of his ultimately successful campaign to win his aloof father's respect is equally affecting. -Wendy Smith.
Publication date: 2006-08-15
Dewey code: 796.72
RRP: £25.50
Price: £14.95
Review A Lap of the Globe: Behind the Wheel of a Vintage Mercedes in the World's Longest Auto Race / McFarland & Co Inc:
Edition: New title
Publication date: 2005-04-01
RRP: £17.99
Price: £5.99
Review Brunel in South Wales: In Trevithick's Tracks: v. 1: In Trevithick's Tracks: 1: In Trevithick's Tracks: 1 / The History Press Ltd:
Publication date: 2006-12-26
RRP: £3.35
Price: £0.32
Review Dinosaur Bone War: Cope and Marsh's Fossil Feud (Landmark Books) / Random House Books for Young Readers:
Publication date: 2000-05-25
Price: £14.99
Review A Monk And Two Peas: The Story of Gregor Mendel and the Discovery of Genetics / Weidenfeld & Nicolson:A Monk and Two Peas is a further addition to the raft of chunkily packaged little episodes from the history of scientific discovery bobbing hopefully in the wake of Dava Sobell's Longitude. It is the story of Gregor Mendel, the Silesian monk who in the mid-19th century single-handedly discovered the rules governing the modern science of genetics-which were then forgotten until years after his death. Little beyond its outline is known of Mendel's life, and nothing survives of his work except two published papers-no notes, no experimental records. Mendel evidently planted his peas, recorded the results and deduced from them the principles of heritability (how he actually proceeded is the subject of considerable debate). In the end, he appears to have been persuaded by a colleague, whose motives we cannot now recover, that his work was of little worth. That's the story and it's an absorbing lesson in how important discoveries can go unnoticed until, for whatever reason, their time comes round. But it also means that the first part of the book, which is an account of Mendel's life and work, would be pretty sparse had Henig not elected to pad it out with a great deal of speculative, semi-fictional scene-painting of the "Mendel must have thought, as he paced between the rows of peas. " variety. [+]One entire account of an uneventful journey London seems to have been included solely to provide a context for an imaginary conversation between Darwin and Mendel (Darwin shaking his head over his poor understanding of inheritance and wishing he had Mendel's help). Henig admits it is "very unlikely" this conversation took place. The second part of the book deals with the controversies that followed the rediscovery of Mendel's work at the beginning of the 20th century. Here too, although Henig has more material she cannot resist a flourish. The geneticist William Bateson, prime mover on behalf of Mendel, moves to Grantchester: cue a quote from Rupert Brooke and an account of his death. Readers must decide whether they find this kind of thing helpful. The rather windy belle-lettrism evaporates when Henig gets into the science: her writing firms up and there is genuine excitement in following Mendel's patient unravelling of the complex rules of inheritance through dominant and recessive genes. So too there is drama in the battles of Bateson and his followers and opponents as they struggle to establish a physical mechanism to support Mendel's findings. Throughout the book, Henig deftly sketches in the background of scientific discovery and controversy against which the story takes place. -Robin Davidson.
Edition: Centenary ed
Publication date: 2002-10-20
Dewey code: 509.22
RRP: £52.99
Price: £33.92
Review The Nobel Scientists: A Biographical Encyclopedia / Prometheus Books:
Publication date: 2005-12
Dewey code: 629.222092
RRP: £9.47
Price: £3.01
Review Man and Machine: The Best of Stephan Wilkinson / Lyons Press:
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:
Creator: Elaine Verstraete
Publication date: 2002-09-01
Dewey code: 621.385092
RRP: £4.99
Price: £2.40
Review Alexander Graham Bell (On My Own Biography) / Lerner Publishing Group:
Publication date: 2003-01
Dewey code: 570.92
Price: £18.99
Review Watson and DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution / Perseus Books:
| Browse Science, Mathematics & Technology:
Models & Brands:
My Heart in Company: The Work of J. M. Barrie & the Birth of Peter Pan, Newton (Brief Lives), Magnificent Failure: Free Fall from the Edge of Space, The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy, Annus Mirabilis: 1905, Albert Einstein, and the Theory of Relativity with DVD, Revolutionaries at Sony: The Making of the Sony Playstation and the Visionaries Who Conquered the World of Video Games, Biographies for Bird Watchers (Books About Birds), Rocket Man: Robert H. Goddard and the Birth of the Space Age, In the Shadow of Detroit: Gordon M. McGregor, Ford of Canada, and Motoropolis (Great Lakes Books Series), When the Air Hits Your Brain: Parables of Neurosurgery, Rocket Boys: A Memoir, A Lap of the Globe: Behind the Wheel of a Vintage Mercedes in the World's Longest Auto Race, Brunel in South Wales: In Trevithick's Tracks: v. 1: In Trevithick's Tracks: 1: In Trevithick's Tracks: 1, Dinosaur Bone War: Cope and Marsh's Fossil Feud (Landmark Books), A Monk And Two Peas: The Story of Gregor Mendel and the Discovery of Genetics, The Nobel Scientists: A Biographical Encyclopedia, Man and Machine: The Best of Stephan Wilkinson, Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human, Alexander Graham Bell (On My Own Biography), Watson and DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution |
