Technology Biography

The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. This incredible discovery was sulfa, the first antibiotic medication. In The Demon Under the Microscope, Thomas Hager chronicles the dramatic history of the drug that shaped modern medicine.

In a penetrating exploration of American hero worship, Hansen addresses the complex legacy of the First Man, as an astronaut and as an individual. In First Man, the personal, technological, epic, and iconic blend to form the portrait of a great but reluctant hero who will forever be known as history's most famous space traveler.

Survival of the fittest or survival of the nicest? Since the dawn of time man has contemplated the mystery of altruism, but it was Darwin who posed the question most starkly. From the selfless ant to the stinging bee to the man laying down his life for a stranger, evolution has yielded a goodness that in theory should never be. Set against the sweeping tale of 150 years of scientific attempts to explain kindness, The Price of Altruism tells for the first time the moving story of the eccentric American genius George Price (1922-1975), as he strives to answer evolution's greatest riddle.

"La nostra lingua manca di parole per esprimere questa offesa, la demolizione di un uomo". Con ostinazione e pacatezza, Primo Levi non ha mai smesso di cercare le parole per raccontare l'atrocità della deportazione e del campo di sterminio di Auschwitz, in cui venne internato dal febbraio 1944 al 27 gennaio 1945. Parole di testimonianza sconvolgente e di grande potenza narrativa che vengono qui accolte e restituite ad alta voce da Roberto Saviano.

When Isaac Newton died in 1727 without a will, he left behind a wealth of papers that, when examined, gave his followers and his family a deep sense of unease. Some of what they contained was wildly heretical and alchemically obsessed, hinting at a Newton altogether stranger and less palatable than the one enshrined in Westminster Abbey as the paragon of English rationality. These manuscripts had the potential to undermine not merely Newton's reputation, but that of the scientific method he embodied.

Embark on an enlightening journey with "My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla". In this intimate memoir, the famed inventor and visionary pulls back the curtain on his remarkable life, offering an unprecedented look at his prolific mind and innumerable accomplishments. Ideal for science and history enthusiasts, engineers, and anyone intrigued by the boundless possibilities of human ingenuity, "My Inventions" offers a profound exploration of a life dedicated to innovation.

El 16 de julio de 1945, en el desierto de Nuevo México, se detonaba en secreto la primera bomba atómica. Impactado por el poder destructivo de su creación, J. Robert Oppenheimer, director del Proyecto Manhattan, se comprometería desde entonces a luchar contra el desarrollo de la bomba de hidrógeno y contra la guerra nuclear.

Rana el Kaliouby is a rarity in both the tech world and her native Middle East: a Muslim woman in charge in a field that is still overwhelmingly white and male. Growing up in Egypt and Kuwait, el Kaliouby was raised by a strict father who valued tradition - yet also had high expectations for his daughters - and a mother who was one of the first female computer programmers in the Middle East. Even before el Kaliouby broke ground as a scientist, she broke the rules of what it meant to be an obedient daughter and, later, an obedient wife to pursue her own daring dream.

Stewart Brand has long been famous if you know who he is, but for many people outside the counterculture, early computing, or the environmental movement, he is perhaps best known for his famous mantra “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” Steve Jobs’s endorsement of these words as his code to live by is fitting; Brand has played many roles, but one of the most important is as a model for how to live.

When Orville Wright (1871-1948) and his brother Wilbur set out to solve the problem of flight, they recognized that success would come with careful observation, perseverance, and ingenuity. From experiments in their Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop to test flights over the beaches of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the amateur aviation enthusiasts risked their lives and worked tirelessly to solve the problems that had stumped the world's best scientists.

This riveting biography from the American Bar Association visits the spectacular life of Edwin Land, breakthrough inventor. At the time of his death, he stood third on the list of our most prolific inventors, behind only Thomas Edison and one of Edison's colleagues. Land's most famous achievement was the creation of a revolutionary film-and-camera system that could produce a photographic print moments after the picture was taken.

As a child growing up in Detroit, Ben Carson (1951-) has a dream of becoming a physician, a dream that rose out of struggles with poverty, racism, and poor grades. As Ben persevered and strove for academic excellence, his life became one of compassion and service. Today, Benjamin Carson, MD, is known as the American neurosurgeon with gifted hands.

The Apollo lunar missions of the 1960s and 1970s have been called the last optimistic acts of the 20th century. Twelve astronauts made this greatest of all journeys and were indelibly marked by it, for better or for worse. Journalist Andrew Smith tracks down the nine surviving members of this elite group to find their answers to the question "Where do you go after you've been to the Moon?"

Fusion GPS was founded in 2010 by Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, two former reporters at The Wall Street Journal who decided to abandon the struggling news business and use their reporting skills to conduct open-source investigations for businesses and law firms - and opposition research for political candidates. In the fall of 2015, they were hired to look into the finances of Donald Trump.

Benjamin Franklin is perhaps the most remarkable figure in American history: the greatest statesman of his age, he played a pivotal role in the formation of the American republic. He was also a pioneering scientist, a best-selling author, the country's first postmaster general, a printer, a bon vivant, a diplomat, a ladies' man, and a moralist - and the most prominent celebrity of the 18th century. Franklin was, however, a man of vast contradictions.

Few organizations solve as many impossible problems as NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and nobody knows more about leading rocket scientists to unlikely breakthroughs than Adam Steltzner. As the phase lead and development manager for EDL (entry, descent, and landing) of the Curiosity rover to Mars, Steltzner spearheaded the creation of one of engineering's wackiest kluges - the sky crane, which allowed the heaviest rover in the history of space exploration to land on Mars unscathed.

Women are not ancillary to the history of technology; they turn up at the very beginning of every important wave. But they've often been hidden in plain sight, their inventions and contributions touching our lives in ways we don't even realize. Vice reporter and YACHT lead singer Claire L. Evans finally gives these unsung female heroes their due with her insightful social history of the Broad Band, the women who made the Internet what it is today. Evans shows us how these women built and colored the technologies we can't imagine life without.

As Marc Raboy shows us in this enthralling and comprehensive biography, Marconi was the first truly global figure in modern communications. Born to an Italian father and an Irish mother, he was in many ways stateless, working his cosmopolitanism to advantage. Through a combination of skill, tenacity, luck, vision, and timing, Marconi popularized - and, more critically, patented - the use of radio waves.

The Gamesmaster is a narrative memoir chronicling the life and career of Flint Dille. And while he isn't exactly a household name, you almost certainly know his work - which includes credits from some of the most important and successful entertainment franchises throughout the world across the cartoon, film, video game, and comic book industries and beyond.

In this fascinating and illuminating work, Leonard Mlodinow guides us through the critical eras and events in the development of science, all of which, he demonstrates, were propelled forward by humankind's collective struggle to know. From the birth of reasoning and culture to the formation of the studies of physics, chemistry, biology, and modern-day quantum physics, we come to see that much of our progress can be attributed to simple questions - why? how? - bravely asked.