Technology Biography

A lively exploration into the life of Charles Darwin, One Beetle Too Many recounts both Darwin’s childhood and his time on the Beagle as a naturalist. This adventurous tale explores Darwin’s discoveries in geology, paleontology, and animal anatomy that led to his famous theory of evolution.

You know the Super Soaker. It's one of the top 20 toys of all time. And it was an accidental discovery that brought it into being. Trying to create a new cooling system for refrigerators and air conditioners, inventor Lonnie Johnson instead created the mechanics for the iconic toy. A love of rockets, robots, and inventions and a mind for creativity were present in Lonnie Johnson's early life.

Gates' Business @ the Speed of Thought is one of audible.com's most popular programs. This is one investment that will pay consistent dividends. Download it for your commute.

Perhaps the greatest physicist of the second half of the 20th century, Richard Feynman changed the way we think about quantum mechanics, the most perplexing of all physical theories. Here Lawrence M. Krauss, himself a theoretical physicist and best-selling author, offers a unique scientific biography: a rollicking narrative coupled with clear and novel expositions of science at the limits.

Barely 50 years ago a computer was a gargantuan, vastly expensive thing that only a handful of scientists had ever seen. The world's brightest engineers were stymied in their quest to make these machines small and affordable until the solution finally came from two ingenious young Americans. Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce hit upon the stunning discovery that would make possible the silicon microchip, a work that would ultimately earn Kilby the Nobel Prize for physics in 2000.

Steve Jobs, adopted in infancy by a family in San Francisco, packed a lot of life into 56 short years. In this Who Was...? biography, children will learn how his obsession with computers and technology at an early age led him to cofound and run Apple in addition to turning Pixar into a groundbreaking animation studio. A college dropout, Jobs took unconventional steps in his path to success and inspired the best and the brightest to come with him and "change the world".

Bruce Sterling delves into the world of high-tech crime and punishment in one of the first books to explore the cyberspace breaches that threaten national security. From the crash of AT&T’s long-distance switching system to corporate cyberattacks, he investigates government and law enforcement efforts to break the back of America’s electronic underground in the 1990s.

Enjoy this collection that includes Nikola Tesla's autobiography and his writings on how cosmic forces shape our destines and on electricity.

Apfel mit Biss und andere Visionen – Steve Jobs plaudert aus dem Nähkästchen. In "Steve Jobs: Die autorisierte Biografie des Apple-Gründers" von Walter Isaacson tauchen wir tief ein in das Leben und Wirken von Steve Jobs. Die enge Zusammenarbeit des Autors mit Jobs, dessen Familie, Freunden und Bekannten ermöglicht es dem Biografen, den Lebensweg des Apple-Gründers facettenreich und informativ nachzuzeichnen.

In 1831, the HMS Beagle took sail. Onboard was a young Charles Darwin. He would set out on an adventure that would lead him to question everything about man's place in the world. The Voyage of the Beagle is the journal Darwin kept of his observations of the extraordinary and natural wonders he encountered, from volcanoes to the coral reefs of Australia. It would be these natural wonders that would lead to him questioning how the different species of the world came to be and eventually to his radical theories.

When Temple Grandin was born, her parents knew that she was different. It wasn’t until years later that she was diagnosed with autism, a brain disorder that makes communication difficult. Today, Dr. Temple Grandin is a scientist and professor of animal science at Colorado State University. Her career has revolutionized the livestock industry - each year, half the cattle in the United States are handled in cruelty-free facilities she designed. She is also a passionate advocate for autism, using her experience to prove that people with this disorder can have “normal” lives.

From a skeleton, a skull, or a mere fragment of burnt thighbone, prominent forensic anthropologist Dr. William Maples can deduce the age, gender, and ethnicity of a murder victim, the manner in which the person was dispatched, and, ultimately, the identity of the killer. In Dead Men Do Tell Tales, Dr. Maples revisits his strangest, most interesting, and most horrific investigations, from the baffling cases of conquistador Francisco Pizarro and Vietnam MIAs to the mysterious deaths of President Zachary Taylor and the family of Czar Nicholas II.

Part odyssey, part pilgrimage, this epic personal narrative follows the author’s exploration of coasts, islands, reefs, and the sea’s abyssal depths. Scientist and fisherman Carl Safina takes readers on a global journey of discovery, probing for truth about the world’s changing seas, deftly weaving adventure, science, and political analysis.

Temple Grandin is the most famous person with autism in the world. Whether you know her from the HBO movie Temple Grandin, her decades of work in the meat and cattle industry, or her unmatched contribution to the autism world, surely you know a thing or two about Temple. Well, prepare to meet a whole new side of her! Temple's close friend and author, Anita Lesko, conducts personal and unique interviews.

Before becoming America's first-ever female network chief meteorologist or appearing on Dancing with the Stars, ABC News's Ginger Zee checked herself into a mental health hospital.

Natural Disaster: I Cover Them. I Am One. is Ginger's heartbreaking, hilarious, and harshly honest life story - from Dickhead's (you won't soon forget that name) deck on Lake Michigan to her storm-chasing dream at ABC News.

We all know that the best way to study a foreign language is to go to a country where it's spoken, but can the same immersion method be applied to history? How do interactions with antique objects influence perceptions of the modern world?

G. Wayne Miller has dramatically and meticulously reconstructed an amazing true story: how a group of renegade Minnesota surgeons, led by Dr. Walt Lillehei, made medical history by becoming the first doctors to operate deep inside the human heart.

When she arrived at MIT in the 1990s, Alien wanted to study aerospace engineering, but she was soon drawn to the school’s venerable tradition of high-risk physical trespassing: the original “hacking”. Within a year, one of her hallmates was dead, two others were on trial, and two had been institutionalized. Alien’s adventures were only just beginning.

The Vagabonds is “a portrait of America’s burgeoning love affair with the automobile” (NPR) but it also sheds light on the important relationship between the older Edison and the younger Ford, who once worked for the famous inventor. The road trips made the automobile ubiquitous and magnified Ford’s reputation, even as Edison’s diminished. The automobile would transform the American landscape, the American economy, and the American way of life and Guinn brings this seminal moment in history to vivid life.

Strange Frequencies takes listeners on an extraordinary narrative and historical journey to discover how people have used technology in an effort to search for our own immortality. Bebergal builds his own ghostly gadgets to reach the other side and follows the path of famous inventors, engineers, seekers, and seers who attempted to answer life's ultimate mysteries. He finds that not only are technological innovations potent metaphors keeping our spiritual explorations alive, but literal tools through which to experiment the boundaries of the physical world and our own psyches.