The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti
The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti

Author: Meryle Secrest

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0451493656

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The human, business, design, engineering, cold war, and tech story of how the Olivetti company's first desktop computer, the P101, came to be. Within eighteen months it had caught up with, and surpassed, IBM, the American giant that had become an arm of the American government. Secrest tells how Olivetti made inroads into the US market in 1959 by taking control of Underwood of Hartford CT as an assembly plant for Olivetti's own typewriters and future miniaturized personal computers. Within a week of the purchase, the US government filed an antitrust suit to try to stop it. In 1960 Adriano Olivetti died suddenly of a heart attack; eighteen months later the young engineer who had assembled Olivetti's team of electronic engineers was killed in a suspicious car crash. The Olivetti company and the P101 came to an insidious and shocking end. -- adapted from jacket

The Secret Papers of Madame Olivetti
The Secret Papers of Madame Olivetti

Author: Annie Vanderbilt

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2008-10-07

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1101078952

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The coast of Southern France sparkles in this sexy, mature, and engaging debut novel. Lily has come to southern France in search of a new perspective, hoping that the sun?s soft rays and the fragrant sea breezes will provide a relaxing respite from the demands of her lively daughter and her family?s Idaho cattle ranch. Two years after her husband?s sudden death, in the house that?s been in his family for generations, she finally finds some stolen weeks to make sense of the past. To Madame Olivetti?her cranky old manual typewriter?Lily entrusts all her secrets, pounding out the story of the men she loved, the betrayals she endured, the losses she still regrets. And with the companionship of Yves, the seductive handyman who comes by to make repairs, Lily comes closer to understanding her exhilarating past?and to discovering she has a new story to tell?one about the delights of starting over.

Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator
Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator

Author: Keith Houston

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2023-08-22

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 0393882152

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The hidden history of the pocket calculator—a device that ushered in modern mathematics, helped build the atomic bomb, and went with us to the moon—and the mathematicians, designers, and inventors who brought it to life. Starting with hands, abacus, and slide rule, humans have always reached for tools to simplify math. Pocket-sized calculators ushered in modern mathematics, helped build the atomic bomb, took us to the bottom of the ocean, and accompanied us to the moon. The pocket calculator changed our world, until it was supplanted by more modern devices that, in a cruel twist of irony, it helped to create. The calculator is dead; long live the calculator. In this witty mathematic and social history, Keith Houston transports readers from the nascent economies of the ancient world to World War II, where a Jewish engineer calculated for his life at Buchenwald, and into the technological arms race that led to the first affordable electronic pocket calculators. At every turn, Houston is a scholarly, affable guide to this global history of invention. Empire of the Sum will appeal to math lovers, history buffs, and anyone seeking to understand our trajectory to the computer age.

They Will Drown in Their Mothers' Tears
They Will Drown in Their Mothers' Tears

Author: Johannes Anyuru

Publisher:

Published: 2020-11-17

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9781949641080

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This daring speculative novel tackles terrorism and anti-immigrant hysteria, combining lyric intensity with the tools of science fiction.

Inherent Vice
Inherent Vice

Author: Thomas Pynchon

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2012-06-13

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1101594675

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"The funniest book Pynchon has written." — Rolling Stone "Entertainment of a high order." - Time Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon—private eye Doc Sportello surfaces, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era. In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre that is at once exciting and accessible, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there. It's been a while since Doc Sportello has seen his ex- girlfriend. Suddenly she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. It's the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that "love" is another of those words going around at the moment, like "trip" or "groovy," except that this one usually leads to trouble. Undeniably one of the most influential writers at work today, Pynchon has penned another unforgettable book.

Gut Feelings
Gut Feelings

Author: Gerd Gigerenzer

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2008-06-24

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0143113763

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Why is split second decision-making superior to deliberation? Gut Feelings delivers the science behind Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. Reflection and reason are overrated, according to renowned psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer. Much better qualified to help us make decisions is the cognitive, emotional, and social repertoire we call intuition, a suite of gut feelings that have evolved over the millennia specifically for making decisions. Gladwell drew heavily on Gigerenzer's research. But Gigerenzer goes a step further by explaining just why our gut instincts are so often right. Intuition, it seems, is not some sort of mystical chemical reaction but a neurologically based behavior that evolved to ensure that we humans respond quickly when faced with a dilemma (BusinessWeek).

Keepers
Keepers

Author: Richard Schickel

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0375424598

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A critic and historian who has been watching cinema for seventy years and has seen almost nineteen thousand films presents a tour of his favorite movies, highlighting forgotten treasures and explaining what makes a film a hit or a flop.

Next Life Might be Kinder
Next Life Might be Kinder

Author: Howard A. Norman

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 054771212X

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From National Book Award finalist Howard Norman, a novel of extraordinary emotional power--the story of a writer whose short and erotically charged marriage has ended in his wife's unsolved murder, and who, in the confusing aftermath, sells the story to an ambitious filmmaker

My Documents
My Documents

Author: Alejandro Zambra

Publisher: McSweeney's

Published: 2015-01-19

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1940450578

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Archived in a folder on award-winning author Alejandro Zambra's desktop are 11 stories of liars and ghosts, armed bandits and young lovers. Intimate, mysterious, and uncanny, these stories reveal a mind that is as undeniably singular as it is universal. Together, they constitute the debut short-story collection from Zambra, whose first novel was heralded as a “bloodletting in Chilean literature.” Whether chronicling the return of a mercurial godson or the disappearance of a trusted cousin, the worlds of these stories are so powerful and deep that the works might better be described as brief novels. My Documents is by turns hilarious and heart-stopping, tragic and tender, but most of all, it is unflinchingly human and essential evidence of a sublimely talented writer working at the height of his powers.

Global Business Regulation
Global Business Regulation

Author: John Braithwaite

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2000-02-13

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 9780521780339

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How has the regulation of business shifted from national to global institutions? What are the mechanisms of globalization? Who are the key actors? What of democratic sovereignty? In which cases has globalization been successfully resisted? These questions are confronted across an amazing sweep of the critical areas of business regulation--from contract, intellectual property and corporations law, to trade, telecommunications, labor standards, drugs, food, transport and environment. This book examines the role played by global institutions such as the World Trade Organization, World Health Organization, the OECD, IMF, Moodys and the World Bank, as well as various NGOs and significant individuals. Incorporating both history and analysis, Global Business Regulation will become the standard reference for readers in business, law, politics, and international relations.