Biography & Autobiography : Science & Technology

Jacques Cousteau opened up the undersea world as no one has done before or since. But not generally know is the fascinating and compelling individual behind the acclaimed television personality. With the cooperation of many of Jacques Cousteau’s collaborators, friends, and family, Brad Matsen gives us the first full picture of this remarkable life. more...

Price: $27.95

The thrilling story of the brilliant and audacious pioneers who revolutionized cardiovascular medicine. The history of heart surgery is a fascinating saga. In the dark ages of medicine, physicians commonly prescribed blood letting as a treatment for ridding the vascular system of diabolical elements and bizarre medicaments like brain extracts, and until quite recently, the basic treatment for a heart attack was to lie down and bear it. Within the last century, physicians have evolved from fearing to even touch a living human heart to rebuilding and even transplanting hearts with beguiling, if sometimes dangerous wizardry. Not long ago, cardiac surgery was celebrated as akin to miracle working, yet a new therapeutic age has since taken hold. Today heart attacks can often be stopped in their midst, and astonishing non-invasive surgical techniques regularly eliminate any need for a knife, while clearing vital arteries in just minutes. Journey Into the Heart traces this epic quest involving a cast of thousands who struggled to solve medical complexities that long boggled the most brilliant minds on earth. David Monagan tells their story as never before, for the first time paying tribute to the daring tactics and outsized personalities of scarcely appreciated pioneers from Oregon to East Germany. The risks some took were hard to fathom: when a promising therapy seemed far too dangerous to perform on a patient, charismatic doctors experimented on themselves. Meanwhile, a multi-billion dollar business involving angioplasty and countless related knifeless procedures charged into life, often overshadowing the noble quest for innovation with a race for profit. The great figures behind these advances have been little chronicled, but their lives encompassed all the triumph and anguish of the last century. Andreas Gruentzig, an East German “child of the rubble,” took center stage in revolutionizing cardiovascular care, developing the first tiny balloon-tipped probes in his Zuric more...

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The scintillating life of the most brilliant woman of the French Enlightenment, the lover of Voltaire and translator of Newton. Gabrielle Emilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil was born to the highest circles of the French aristocracy, married a marquis at the age of eighteen, and indulged in all the pleasures of her class. Then at twenty-seven, defying convention, she became the mistress of poet and playwright Voltaire, embarking on an extraordinary and transformative intellectual journey as his patroness, his lover, and his companion. In this sparkling life, Judith P. Zinsser vividly explores how the Marquise Du Châtelet transformed herself from courtier, wife, and mother into one of the leading intellects of the French Enlightenment. Freed by her wealth and status to pursue a life of the mind, Du Châtelet developed swiftly into an accomplished mathematician, physicist, translator, and author of original works of philosophy and science. At the end of her life, pregnant by a young new lover, she raced to complete her translation and commentary on Newton’s Principia. The only woman of the Enlightenment to be recognized for her genius, Du Châtelet was centuries ahead of her time. By bringing this singular woman to life with style and wit, Zinsser at last gives this revolutionary her due. more...

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In a story that is both of its time and timeless, Evan I. Schwartz tells a tale of genius and greed, innocence and deceit, and corporate arrogance versus independent brilliance. In other words, the very qualities that have made this country - for better or for worse - what it is. Many men have laid claim to the title 'The Father of Television' but Philo T. Farnsworth is the true genius behind what may be the most influential invention of our time. Farnsworth may have ended up a footnote in history, yet he was the first to demonstrate an electronic process for scanning, transmitting and receiving moving images, a discovery that changed the way we live. Free excerpt available for this ebook - click more. more...

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The triumphant true story of the man who achieved one of the greatest feats of our era—the mapping of the human genome Growing up in California, Craig Venter didn’t appear to have much of a future. An unremarkable student, he nearly flunked out of high school. After being drafted into the army, he enlisted in the navy and went to Vietnam, where the life and death struggles he encountered as a medic piqued his interest in science and medicine. After pursuing his advanced degrees, Venter quickly established himself as a brilliant and outspoken scientist. In 1984 he joined the National Institutes of Health, where he introduced novel techniques for rapid gene discovery, and left in 1991 to form his own nonprofit genomics research center, where he sequenced the first genome in history in 1995. In 1998 he announced that he would successfully sequence the human genome years earlier, and for far less money, than the government-sponsored Human Genome Project would— a prediction he kept in 2001. A Life Decoded is the triumphant story of one of the most fascinating and controversial figures in science today. In his riveting and inspiring account Venter tells of the unparalleled drama of the quest for the human genome, a tale that involves as much politics (personal and political) as science. He also reveals how he went on to be the first to read and interpret his own genome and what it will mean for all of us to do the same. He describes his recent sailing expedition to sequence microbial life in the ocean, as well as his groundbreaking attempt to create synthetic life. Here is one of the key scientific chronicles of our lifetime, as told by the man who beat the odds to make it happen. more...

Price: $16.00