Publication date: 2001-10-31
RRP: £18.99
Price: £15.50
Review Genes, Girls and Gamow / Oxford University Press:
Publication date: 2001-05-08
Dewey code: 338
RRP: £4.99
Price: £0.01
Review Inventor of the Disposable Culture: King Camp Gillette 1855-1932 / Faber and Faber:Utopians have often proved the greatest inventors. One thinks of Jeremy Bentham and his Panopticon prison, Robert Owen and his factory villages. In "Inventor of the Disposable Culture: King Camp Gillette" Tim Dowling adds another to the list: Gillette, the American inventor of the disposable razor blade, who turns out to have been a socialist visionary. For those who know the story already there is not a lot new here, for those who don't it is a well-written and pacey introduction. -Miles Taylor.
Publication date: 2001-05-15
RRP: £17.99
Price: £13.20
Review Just For Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary / Texere Publishing,US:Linus Torvalds wrote the Linux kernel but Just For Fun could refer to writing the book. It isn't about Linux, it's about Linus. Here he tells us about his childhood, his time at Helsinki University, his marriage to six times karate champion Tove, about his children and about his attitude to life. He comes across as a nice guy who, until Linux made him a celebrity, interacted with the world only tangentially. This could be in part a response to his frankly weird early home life in Finland. David Diamond (of Red Herring magazine) acts as editor while Linus tells it like it is. But while Linus appears open, the story he tells is polished. As Liberace used to say when asked why people liked his take on the classics, "I leave out the boring bits". His four years in a darkened room with a computer as a boy may not have made gripping reading for everyone. Linus is probably brilliant, but it's obsessive hard work, alone behind closed curtains, which enabled him to create Linux. [+]One of the most interesting aspects of his story is how success-in his marriage and the wider world-has changed him. If we're to believe his own words his wife and children together with a Californian lifestyle are now his chief source of fun. Linus Torvalds will one day rate an academic biography. In the meantime, the message here is that one route to personal fulfilment is doing what you want to do, as well as you can, for your own reasons-even just for fun. -Steve Patient.
Publication date: 2000-09-07
Dewey code: 133.092
Price: £20.00
Review Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley / Saint Martin's Press Inc.:The legendary Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) is a tantalising and bizarre subject. As an occult leader, heroin addict, sexual adventurer, misogynist, and visionary, he is the inspiration for many vile Gothic protagonists. Author W. Somerset Maugham even devoted a novel, The Magician to this chilling figure of indulgence and religious mockery. Like any good biographer, Lawrence Sutin set out to discover the man behind the myth. After considerable research, Sutin admits that Crowley was "a shameless scoffer at Christian virtue" and "a spoiled scion of a wealthy Victorian family" but he also sees him as a 20th century figure as "protean, brilliant, courageous, and flabbergasting as ever you could imagine". Consider these facts about the man who named himself "The Great Beast": he was one of the first Westerners to seriously study Buddhism and Yoga. He radically redesigned the traditional Tarot deck (thus the "Crowley deck"). Contrary to common belief, he was never known to participate in satanic ritual-to do so would acknowledge the Christian church, which he was loathe to do (although he nicknamed his son "The Christ Child"). These are but a few of the surprising morsels one can glean from this excellent biography. [+]Don't expect to find Crowley a likeable figure. Do, however, expect to meet a flamboyant man who challenged all forms of religious, sexual, and social oppression and hence became a revered visionary and a reviled demon. -Tara West.
Authors
- Jeffrey Zaslow
- Randy Pausch
Publication date: 2008-05-16
Dewey code: 004.092
RRP: £18.41
Price: £19.84
Review The Last Lecture (Thorndike Nonfiction) / Thorndike Press:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 1988-01-28
Price: £6.99
Review Memoir of a Thinking Radish: An Autobiography (Oxford Letters & Memoirs) / Oxford Paperbacks:
Publication date: 2007-10-30
Dewey code: 509.2
RRP: £14.52
Price: £9.31
Review The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance / Doubleday Books:
Publication date: 2006-08-01
Dewey code: 614.1
Price: £14.00
Review The Father of Forensics: The Groundbreaking Cases of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, and the Beginnings of Modern CSI / Berkley Publishing Group:
Publication date: 2001-01-04
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £9.99
Price: £0.09
Review Leonardo da Vinci : The First Scientist / Abacus:Though the Mona Lisa may be Leonardo da Vinci's most famous piece of work, some of his other projects have had a far greater impact on the way we live today. It's the scientific inventions that Michael White, who has also written biographies of Darwin, Einstein and Newton, wants to make sure that we don't forget. Leonardo, after all, invented the telescope, flying machine, tank and diving suit among other things. The word scientist wasn't coined until the 19th century but White makes the assertion that Leonardo was not just a gatherer of random conjectures but the world's first scientist. He asserts that the methods used by Leonardo were as important as the discoveries. In describing an experiment for observing the refraction of light, he concluded: "And form your rule from that. " This mirrors the scientific method: "Have your idea, do your experiment, create a hypothesis, develop a rule, repeat the experiment to verify; if not confirmed, then adjust experiment and hypothesis. " Leonardo's scientific ideas take priority in this fascinating book but his life as an artist is also discussed. As White points out, even his art was infused with his understanding of science. "His last and greatest paintings were paeans to his paired skills as an artist and a scientist, celebrations of his twinned talents. [+]" -Alex Gray.
Publication date: 2006-03-09
Dewey code: 510
RRP: £24.99
Price: £16.49
Review Mathematical Apocrypha Redux: More Stories and Anecdotes of Mathematicians and the Mathematical (Spectrum): More Stories and Anecdotes of Mathematicians and the Mathematical (Spectrum) / The Mathematical Association of America:
Creator: Paul A. Schilpp
Edition: Centennial
Publication date: 1991-12
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £9.95
Price: £6.61
Review Autobiographical Notes / Open Court Publishing Co ,U.S.:
Authors
- Amy Bianco
- McAllister Hull
Publication date: 2005-11-01
Dewey code: 530.092
RRP: £20.50
Price: £6.34
Review Rider of the Pale Horse: A Memoir of Los Alamos and Beyond / University of New Mexico Press:
Publication date: 2007-07-12
RRP: £20.00
Price: £3.22
Review Faust In Copenhagen: Struggle for the Soul of Physics and the Birth of the Nuclear Age / Jonathan Cape:
Publication date: 2008-07-15
Dewey code: 576.82092
RRP: £32.50
Price: £28.08
Review Darwin's Illness / University Press of Florida:
Creator: Frank A.J.L. James
Publication date: 2008-03
Dewey code: 530.092
RRP: £70.00
Price: £70.00
Review The Correspondence of Michael Faraday: 1855 - 1860 v. 5 / Institution of Engineering and Technology:
Edition: Dover Ed
Publication date: 2007-05-25
Dewey code: 530.09
RRP: £14.99
Price: £5.02
Review From Falling Bodies to Radio Waves / Dover Publications Inc.:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2006-05-04
RRP: £7.99
Price: £2.29
Review Underwater to Get out of the Rain: A Love Affair with the Sea / Arrow Books Ltd:
Publication date: 2000-09-28
Dewey code: 333.72092
RRP: £6.99
Price: £1.40
Review JOHN MUIR : MY LIFE WITH NATURE: My Life with Nature (Sharing Nature With Children Book) / DAWN PUBLICATIONS:
Publication date: 1999-01-01
Dewey code: 580.92
RRP: £29.50
Price: £24.60
Review George Forrest: Plant Hunter / Antique Collectors' Club Ltd:
Creator: Tony Morris
Publication date: 1997-04-24
RRP: £4.99
Price: £1.59
Review Henry Ford: The People's Car-maker (What's Their Story?) / OUP Oxford:
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Models & Brands:
Genes, Girls and Gamow, Inventor of the Disposable Culture: King Camp Gillette 1855-1932, Just For Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary, Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley, The Last Lecture (Thorndike Nonfiction), Memoir of a Thinking Radish: An Autobiography (Oxford Letters & Memoirs), The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance, The Father of Forensics: The Groundbreaking Cases of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, and the Beginnings of Modern CSI, Leonardo da Vinci : The First Scientist, Mathematical Apocrypha Redux: More Stories and Anecdotes of Mathematicians and the Mathematical (Spectrum): More Stories and Anecdotes of Mathematicians and the Mathematical (Spectrum), Autobiographical Notes, Rider of the Pale Horse: A Memoir of Los Alamos and Beyond, Faust In Copenhagen: Struggle for the Soul of Physics and the Birth of the Nuclear Age, Darwin's Illness, The Correspondence of Michael Faraday: 1855 - 1860 v. 5, From Falling Bodies to Radio Waves, Underwater to Get out of the Rain: A Love Affair with the Sea, JOHN MUIR : MY LIFE WITH NATURE: My Life with Nature (Sharing Nature With Children Book), George Forrest: Plant Hunter, Henry Ford: The People's Car-maker (What's Their Story?) |
