Biography & Autobiography : Science & Technology

The luminous true story of a friendship that shed the boundaries of the doctor-patient relationship and became less a confrontation with death than a celebration of the joys of life. When young gynecologic oncology fellow Lois Ramondetta was first summoned to the room of a new patient, neither she nor the forty-nine-year-old professor of religion she encountered named Deborah Sills thought they had much in common. They certainly had no idea that they were about to embark on a transcendent odyssey that would become a soul-deep friendship. Now their heartfelt story, The Light Within , follows these two women through a decade of friendship and "big lives"—husbands, children, friends, and careers—ultimately crossing the country and traveling to foreign lands, where they spoke and wrote together about the intersection of doctors, patients, and spirituality. Both women searched together and openly for answers with honesty and intimacy until Deborah passed away in the spring of 2006. more...

Price: $19.95

Tells the story of five little-known Hungarian physicists who transformed 20th century science. They emigrated to the United States from Hungary in the 1930's, and were important contributors to such important experiments as the Manhattan Project. more...

Price: $34.50

A Pulitzer Prize winner explores the role of the first machine gun in transforming America into a superpower. Although it was little used during the American Civil War—the time in which it was invented—the Gatling gun soon changed the nature of warfare and the course of world history. Discharging two hundred shots per minute with alarming accuracy, the world’s first machine gun became vitally important to protecting and expanding America’s overseas interests. Its inventor, Richard Gatling, was famous in his own time for creating and improving many industrial designs, from bicycles and steamship propellers to flush toilets. A man of great business and scientific acumen, Gatling actually proposed his gun as a way of saving lives, thinking it would decrease the size of armies and, therefore, make it easier to supply soldiers and reduce malnutrition deaths. The scientists who unleashed America’s atomic arsenal less than a century later would see it much the same way. In Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel, Julia Keller offers a riveting account of the Gatling gun’s invention, its misunderstood creator, and its tremendous impact on American and world events. She also shows how the gun, in its combination of ingenuity, idealism, and destructive power, perfectly exemplified the paradox of America’s rise as a world superpower. more...

Price: $25.95

My Schools and Schoolmasters is Hugh Miller's account of his extraordinary life - from the hardships of is early life in Cromarty, in North Eastern Scotland, where he originally worked as a stonemason, to his later years as a scientist, journalist, lecturer and defender of Christianity against the Evolutionists. By the time of his tragic suicide in 1856, Miller's pioneering work in the field of Geology had secured his place as one of the foremost thinkers of his time, while his writing - on subjects as diverse as poetry, folklore, education, history and religion - had made him one of the best known of Victorian literary figures, admired by the likes of Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens and John Rusdkin. Written with wit, humour and humanity, Miller's autobiography is both a remarkable personal narrative and a fascinating picture of nineteenth century Scottish life. more...

Price: $8.99

The Nobel Prize, as founded in Alfred Nobel's will, was the first truly international prize. There is no other award with the same global scope and mission. The Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, Peace, and the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences (from 1969) have not only captured the most significant contributions to the progress of mankind, they also constitute distinct markers of the major trends in their respective areas. The main reason for the prestige of the Prize today is, however, the lasting importance of the names on the list of Laureates and their contributions to human development. more...

Price: $70.20