True story: in 1899, Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla decided to end war forever. With Twain's connections and Tesla's inventions, they went into business selling world peace. So, what happened? Only now can the tale be toldin which Twain and Tesla collided with Edison and Morgan, an evil science cabal merging the Black Arts and the Industrial Age. Turn-of-the-century New York City sets the stage for a titanic battle over the very fate of mankind. Now back in print, this new edition of the steampunk classic features new cover art.
“[A] fascinating book...about the way four geniuses at Cambridge University revolutionized modern science.“ —Newsweek The Philosophical Breakfast Club recounts the life and work of four men who met as students at Cambridge University: Charles Babbage, John Herschel, William Whewell, and Richard Jones. Recognizing that they shared a love of science (as well as good food and drink) they began to meet on Sunday mornings to talk about the state of science in Britain and the world at large. Inspired by the great 17th century scientific reformer and political figure Francis Bacon—another former student of Cambridge—the Philosophical Breakfast Club plotted to bring about a new scientific revolution. And to a remarkable extent, they succeeded, even in ways they never intended. Historian of science and philosopher Laura J. Snyder exposes the political passions, religious impulses, friendships, rivalries, and love of knowledge—and power—that drove these extraordinary men. Whewell (who not only invented the word “scientist,” but also founded the fields of crystallography, mathematical economics, and the science of tides), Babbage (a mathematical genius who invented the modern computer), Herschel (who mapped the skies of the Southern Hemisphere and contributed to the invention of photography), and Jones (a curate who shaped the science of economics) were at the vanguard of the modernization of science. This absorbing narrative of people, science and ideas chronicles the intellectual revolution inaugurated by these men, one that continues to mold our understanding of the world around us and of our place within it. Drawing upon the voluminous correspondence between the four men over the fifty years of their work, Laura J. Snyder shows how friendship worked to spur the men on to greater accomplishments, and how it enabled them to transform science and help create the modern world. "The lives and works of these men come across as fit for Masterpiece Theatre.” —Wall Street Journal "Snyder succeeds famously in evoking the excitement, variety and wide-open sense of possibility of the scientific life in 19th-century Britain...splendidly evoked in this engaging book.” —American Scientist "This fine book is as wide-ranging and anecdotal, as excited and exciting, as those long-ago Sunday morning conversations at Cambridge. The Philosophical Breakfast Club forms a natural successor to Jenny Uglow’s The Lunar Men...and Richard Holmes’s The Age of Wonder.” —Washington Post
Fugitives Chasidah "Chaz" Bergren and her lover, ex-monk, mercenary, and telepath Gabriel Ross Sullivan, are forced out of hiding when Chaz's brother is arrested for treason.
Conjectures and Refutations is one of Karl Popper's most wide-ranging and popular works, notable not only for its acute insight into the way scientific knowledge grows, but also for applying those insights to politics and to history. It provides one of the clearest and most accessible statements of the fundamental idea that guided his work: not only our knowledge, but our aims and our standards, grow through an unending process of trial and error.
One of science's great unsung heroes, Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was a prophet of the electronic age. His research laid much of the groundwork for modern electrical and communication systems, and his impressive accomplishments include development of the alternating-current electrical system, radio, the Tesla coil transformer, wireless transmission, and fluorescent lighting. Yet his name and work are only dimly recognized today: Tesla's research was so groundbreaking that many of his contemporaries failed to understand it, and other scientists are unjustly credited for his innovations. The visionary scientist speaks for himself in this volume, originally published in 1919 as a six-part series in Electrical Experimenter magazine. Tesla recounts his boyhood in Croatia, his schooling and work in Europe, his collaboration with Thomas Edison, and his subsequent research. This edition includes the essay "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy: With Special Reference to the Harnessing of the Sun's Energy," which anticipates latter-day advances in environmental technology. Written with wit and �lan, this memoir offers fascinating insights into one of the great minds of modern science.
THE VERY BEST PERSON TO CATCH YOUR KILLER...IS YOU. Matt Forbeck arrives as the new king of high-concept - with a blockbuster action movie in a book. In the near future, scientists solve the problem of mortality by learning how to backup and restore a persons memories into a vat-bred clone. When Secret Service agent Ronan "Methusaleh" Dooley is brutally murdered, he's brought back from the dead one more time to hunt his killer, but this time those who wanted him dead are much closer to home. FILE UNDER: Science Fiction [Future Thriller / Cheat Death / Rogue Agents / Who Killed Who?]
Dr. Radium is the last scientist in the "perfect" world of tomorrow. Ignored by society and feared by his assistant, Dr. Radium pursues Science with happy disregard for knowledge, progress, or safety. Or he would, that is, if he wasn't constantly being interrupted by the Elvi (hateful big-hair aliens), bureaucrats with shark teeth, and the Rocket Scientists, a group of time-travelers from the 50s looking for commies. After extensive laboratory testing and thorough peer review only one conclusion is possible: It's Science with Dr. Radium expertly gathers all seven issues of Scott Saavedra's original cult-fave comic book series, It's Science with Dr. Radium (Catchy title, eh?), into one handy and molecularly stable collection.
A gripping science fiction thriller where five women task themselves with ensuring the survival of the human race—if you mixed ". . .The Martian and The Handmaid's Tale, this sci-fi novel would be the incredible result" (Book Riot). “Best of 2020” –Library Journal “Best of 2020” –Kirkus “Best of 2020 – runner up” –Polygon “Our favorite books of 2020” –GeekDad Despite increasing restrictions on the freedoms of women on Earth, Valerie Black is spearheading the first all-female mission to a planet in the Goldilocks Zone, where conditions are just right for human habitation. It's humanity's last hope for survival, and Naomi, Valerie's surrogate daughter and the ship's botanist, has been waiting her whole life for an opportunity like this - to step out of Valerie's shadow and really make a difference. But when things start going wrong on the ship, Naomi begins to suspect that someone on board is concealing a terrible secret - and realizes time for life on Earth may be running out faster than they feared . . . "Goldilocks is a thrilling, character-driven space opera", perfect for readers of The Martian, The Power, and Station Eleven (Shelf Awareness).
In 2013, a Dutch scientist unveiled the world’s first laboratory-created hamburger. Since then, the idea of producing meat, not from live animals but from carefully cultured tissues, has spread like wildfire through the media. Meanwhile, cultured meat researchers race against population growth and climate change in an effort to make sustainable protein. Meat Planet explores the quest to generate meat in the lab—a substance sometimes called “cultured meat”—and asks what it means to imagine that this is the future of food. Neither an advocate nor a critic of cultured meat, Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft spent five years researching the phenomenon. In Meat Planet, he reveals how debates about lab-grown meat reach beyond debates about food, examining the links between appetite, growth, and capitalism. Could satiating the growing appetite for meat actually lead to our undoing? Are we simply using one technology to undo the damage caused by another? Like all problems in our food system, the meat problem is not merely a problem of production. It is intrinsically social and political, and it demands that we examine questions of justice and desirable modes of living in a shared and finite world. Benjamin Wurgaft tells a story that could utterly transform the way we think of animals, the way we relate to farmland, the way we use water, and the way we think about population and our fragile ecosystem’s capacity to sustain life. He argues that even if cultured meat does not “succeed,” it functions—much like science fiction—as a crucial mirror that we can hold up to our contemporary fleshy dysfunctions.
