"Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers" by various tells the tales of some of the most important explorers in history. Columbus' voyage to America, Lewis and Clark's exploration of the west, Zebulon Pike's explorations of the Mississippi, and journeys through Manila, Mount Tyndall, and The Grand Canyon are all described in thrilling detail. Though based in facts, these tales have the excitement one would expect from an adventure novel.
"Inventors at Work, with Chapters on Discovery" by George Iles is a study about the history of inventions. Excerpt: The equipment and the talents for invention and discovery are now touched upon. First, knowledge, especially as the fruit of disinterested inquiry; Observation, as exercised by trained intelligence calling to its aid the best modern instruments; Experiment, as an educated passion for building on original lines. Then, in the mechanical field, we bestow a few glances at self-acting machines, at the simplicity of design which makes for the economy not only in building but in operation and maintenance.
It was November 1806. The explorers had gone without food for one day, then two. Their leader, not yet thirty, drove on, determined to ascend the great mountain. Waist deep in snow, he reluctantly turned back. But Zebulon Pike had not been defeated. His name remained on the unclimbed peak-and new adventures lay ahead of him and his republic. In Citizen Explorer, historian Jared Orsi provides the first modern biography of this soldier and explorer, who rivaled contemporaries Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Born in 1779, Pike joined the army and served in frontier posts in the Ohio River valley before embarking on a series of astonishing expeditions. He sought the headwaters of the Mississippi and later the sources of the Arkansas and Red Rivers, which led him to Pike's Peak and capture by Spanish forces. Along the way, he met Aaron Burr and General James Wilkinson; Auguste and Pierre Couteau, patriarchs of St. Louis's most powerful fur-trading family, who sought to make themselves indispensible to Jefferson's administration; as well as British fur-traders, Native Americans, and officers of the Spanish empire, all of whom resisted the expansion of the United States. Through Pike's life, Orsi examines how American nationalism thinned as it stretched west, from the Jeffersonian idealism on the Atlantic to a practical, materialist sensibility on the frontier. Surveying and gathering data, Pike sought to incorporate these distant territories into the republic, to overlay the west with the American map grid; yet he became increasingly dependent for survival on people who had no attachment to the nation he served. He eventually died in that service, in a victorious battle in the War of 1812. Written from an environmental perspective, rich in cultural and political context, Citizen Explorer is a state-of-the-art biography of a remarkable man.
The book is dedicated to the greatest scientific inventions of the Victorian era and their role in the development of society. Among other important points, the author tells about the invention of the telephone by Bell, the introduction of locomotives, electricity, and the wireless telegraph.
The present volume offers from the classic pages of Chalres Darwin's works, including his summary of the argument of "The Origin of Species," his account of how that book came to be written, and his recapitulation of "The Descent of Man." All this affords a supreme lesson as to the value of observation with a purpose. When Darwin was confronted with an organ or trait which puzzled him, he was wont to ask, What use can it have had? And always the answer was that every new peculiarity of plant, or beast, is seized upon and held whenever it confers advantage in the unceasing conflict for place and food. No hue of scale or plume, no curve of beak or note of song, but has served a purpose in the plot of life, or advanced the action in a drama where the penalty for failure is extinction. Aside from Darwin, the book also features essays written by Alfred R. Wallace, Thomas H. Huxley, Leland O. Howard, and George Iles
