Book picks similar to
Abandoned in Place: Preserving America's Space History by Roland Miller
space
non-fiction
photography
history
Stanley Donwood: There Will Be No Quiet
Stanley Donwood - 2019
His influential work spans many practices over a 23-year period, from music packaging to installation work to printmaking. Here, he reveals his personal notebooks, photographs, sketches, and abandoned routes to iconic Radiohead artworks. Arranged chronologically, each chapter is dedicated to a major work—whether an album cover, promotional piece, or a personal project—and is presented as a step-by-step working case study. Featuring commentary by Thom Yorke and never-before-seen archival material, this is the first deep dive into Donwood’s creative practice and the artistic freedom afforded to him by working for a major music act. It is a must-have for fans of the band and anyone interested in graphic design and popular culture.
Soviet Space Dogs
Olesya Turkina - 2014
These homeless dogs, plucked from the streets of Moscow, were selected because they fitted the program's criteria: weighing no more than 15 pounds, measuring no more than 14 inches in length, robust, photogenic and with a calm temperament. These characteristics enabled the dogs to withstand the extensive training that was needed to prepare them for suborbital, then for orbital, space fights. On 3 November 1957, the dog Laika was the first Earth-born creature to enter space, making her instantly famous around the world. She did not return. Her death, a few hours after launching, transformed her into a legendary symbol of sacrifice. Two further strays, Belka and Strelka, were the first beings to make it back from space, and were swiftly immortalized in children's books and cartoons. Images of the Space Dogs proliferated, reproduced on everyday goods across the Soviet Union: cigarette packets, tins of sweets, badges, stamps and postcards all bore their likenesses. "Soviet Space Dogs" uses these unique items to illustrate the story (in fact and fiction) of how they became fairytale idols. The first book to document these items, it contains more than 350 images, almost all of which are previously unpublished, and many of which have never been seen before outside Russia. The rich and varied ephemera (from cigarette packets to sweet wrappers and children's toys) of Soviet graphics will have immense appeal to the art and design market, as well as appealing to dog-lovers everywhere.
The Russian Century: A History of the Last Hundred Years
Brian Moynahan - 1994
Simultaneously a political, social and oral history, this book will quickly become the preeminent short history of Russia's recent past. Photos.
American Eclipse: A Nation's Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World
David Baron - 2017
One sought to discover a new planet. Another—an adventuresome female astronomer—fought to prove that science was not anathema to femininity. And a young, megalomaniacal inventor, with the tabloid press fast on his heels, sought to test his scientific bona fides and light the world through his revelations. David Baron brings to three-dimensional life these three competitors—James Craig Watson, Maria Mitchell, and Thomas Edison—and thrillingly re-creates the fierce jockeying of nineteenth-century American astronomy. With spellbinding accounts of train robberies and Indian skirmishes, the mythologized age of the last days of the Wild West comes alive as never before. A magnificent portrayal of America’s dawn as a scientific superpower, American Eclipse depicts a young nation that looked to the skies to reveal its towering ambition and expose its latent genius.
Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles
Roger E. Bilstein - 1997
. . . Roger Bilstein gracefully wends his way through a maze of technical documentation to reveal the important themes of this story. Rarely has such a nuts-and-bolts tale been so gracefully told."—Air University Review"Easily the best book of the NASA History Series. . . . Starting with the earliest rockets, Bilstein traces the development of the family of massive Saturn launch vehicles that carried the Apollo astronauts to the moon and boosted Skylab into orbit."—Technology and CultureA classic study of the development of the Saturn launch vehicle that took Americans to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s, Stages to Saturn is one of the finest official histories ever produced. The Saturn rocket was developed as a means of accomplishing President John F. Kennedy's goal for the United States to reach the moon before the end of the decade. Without the Saturn V rocket, with its capability of sending as payload the Apollo Command and Lunar Modules--along with support equipment and three astronauts--more than a quarter of a million miles from earth, Kennedy's goal would have been unrealizable. Stages to Saturn not only tells the important story of the research and development of the Saturn rockets and the people who designed them but also recounts the stirring exploits of their operations, from orbital missions around earth testing Apollo equipment to their journeys to the moon and back. Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the development of space flight in America and the course of modern technology, this reprint edition includes a new preface by the author providing a 21st-century perspective on the historic importance of the Saturn project.Roger E. Bilstein is professor emeritus of history at the University of Houston, Clear Lake. Regarded as one of the nation’s premier aerospace historians, he is the author of six books, including Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts and Testing Aircraft, Exploring Space: An Illustrated History of NACA and NASA.
Bernini: The Sculptor of the Roman Baroque
Rudolf Wittkower - 1997
Inventive and skilled, he virtually created the Baroque style. In his religious sculptures he excelled at capturing movement and extreme emotion, uniting figures with their setting to create a single conception of overwhelming intensity that expressed the fervour of Counter-Reformation Rome. Intensity and drama also characterize his portraits and world-famous Roman fountains.
We Seven: By the Astronauts Themselves
Scott Carpenter - 1962
Chosen from hundreds of crackerjack pilots for their fitness, intelligence & courage, the original Mercury Seven astronauts risked their lives to cross the space frontier. In We Seven they take readers behind the scenes to show them their training, technology & teamwork, & to share personal stories, including the lighter moments of their mission. They bring readers inside the Mercury program, even into the space capsules themselves. We Seven straps you in with the astronauts & rockets you along for the ride. Share Alan Shepard's exhilaration as he breaks thru the earth's atmosphere. Endure moments of panic with Gus Grissom when his hatch blows, stranding him in the open sea. Race with John Glenn as he makes split-second life-or-death maneuvers during reentry, & feel his relief when he emerges safe but drenched with sweat. Despite such heroism, Project Mercury was more than the story of individual missions. It defined the manned space flight program to come, from Gemini thru Apollo. In We Seven America's original astronauts tell us 1sthand about the space program they pioneered, & share with us the hopes of the USA at the dawn of a new era.
The Contact Paradox: Challenging Our Assumptions in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Keith Cooper - 2020
What will happen if humanity makes contact with another civilization on a different planet? In The Contact Paradox, space journalist Keith Cooper tackles some of the myths and assumptions that underlie SETI--the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.In 1974 a message was beamed towards the stars by the giant Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, a brief blast of radio waves designed to alert extraterrestrial civilizations to our existence. Of course, we don't know if such civilizations really exist. But for the past six decades a small cadre of researchers have been on a quest to find out, as part of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.The silence from the stars is prompting some researchers, inspired by the Arecibo transmission, to transmit more messages into space, in an effort to provoke a response from any civilizations out there that might otherwise be staying quiet. However, the act of transmitting raises troubling questions about the process of contact. We look for qualities such as altruism and intelligence in extraterrestrial life, but what do these mean to humankind? Can we learn something about our own history when we explore what happens when two civilizations come into contact? Finally, do the answers tell us that it is safe to transmit, even though we know nothing about extraterrestrial life, or as Stephen Hawking argued, are we placing humanity in jeopardy by doing so?In The Contact Paradox, author Keith Cooper looks at how far SETI has come since its modest beginnings, and where it is going, by speaking to the leading names in the field and beyond. SETI forces us to confront our nature in a way that we seldom have before--where did we come from, where are we going, and who are we in the cosmic context of things? This book considers the assumptions that we make in our search for extraterrestrial life, and explores how those assumptions can teach us about ourselves.
The 4% Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality
Richard Panek - 2010
In the past few years, a handful of scientists have been in a race to explain a disturbing aspect of our universe: only 4 percent of it consists of the matter that makes up you, me, our books, and every planet, star, and galaxy. The rest—96 percent of the universe—is completely unknown. Richard Panek tells the dramatic story of how scientists reached this conclusion, and what they’re doing to find this "dark" matter and an even more bizarre substance called dark energy. Based on in-depth, on-site reporting and hundreds of interviews—with everyone from Berkeley’s feisty Saul Perlmutter and Johns Hopkins’s meticulous Adam Riess to the quietly revolutionary Vera Rubin—the book offers an intimate portrait of the bitter rivalries and fruitful collaborations, the eureka moments and blind alleys, that have fueled their search, redefined science, and reinvented the universe.
The Democratic Forest
William Eggleston - 1989
Containing 150 recent photographs by the American photographer William Eggleston, this volume provides a sequence of images which form an almost autobiographic narrative, beginning with pictures of Eggleston's home territory in the Mississippi Delta and radiating out across the USA.
The Short Story of Photography: A Pocket Guide to Key Genres, Works, Themes Techniques
Ian Haydn Smith - 2018
Simply constructed, the book explores 50 key photographs from the first experiments in the early 19th century to digital photography. The design of the book allows the student or photography enthusiast to easily navigate their way around key genres, artists, themes, and techniques. Accessible and concise, the book explains how, why, and when certain photographs really have changed the world.
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
Brian Greene - 2003
Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past? Greene has set himself a daunting task: to explain non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and Inflationary Cosmology with analogies drawn from common experience. From Newton’s unchanging realm in which space and time are absolute, to Einstein’s fluid conception of spacetime, to quantum mechanics’ entangled arena where vastly distant objects can instantaneously coordinate their behavior, Greene takes us all, regardless of our scientific backgrounds, on an irresistible and revelatory journey to the new layers of reality that modern physics has discovered lying just beneath the surface of our everyday world.
The Space Race
Colin Brake - 2019
Today’s efforts to revitalize and expand space travel is being driven not just by government agencies such as NASA, but also by visionaries such as Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic), Elon Musk (SpaceX), and Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin).To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 moon landing, this major documentary-drama series brings to life the past, present, and future of man’s exploration of space. Between 1969 and 1972, twelve Americans walked on the moon. You’ll get to experience the thrill of that era and much, much more.Narrated by Kate Mulgrew (Emmy Award and Golden Globe nominee for Orange Is the New Black; Obie Award winner for Iphigenia 2.0); TV: Star Trek: Voyager, film: Star Trek: Nemesis), The Space Race uses actual audio, original interviews, dramatic reconstructions, and first-hand accounts to tell the story of mankind’s first amazing steps off our world and onto the lunar surface.With unprecedented access, The Space Race takes listeners to Virgin Galactic’s space program in the Mojave Desert, features conversations with Buzz Aldrin, Gene Cernan, Sergei Krikalev, Tim Peake, and numerous key players at mission control. This Audible Original and takes you behind the scenes to see how these exciting adventures in outer space came to be.©2019 Audible, Ltd (P)2019 Audible, Ltd
Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric: The Lost Manuscript
Bob Dylan - 2008
These twenty-three prose poems are thoughtprovoking, witty, and thoroughly unexpected observations of a bygone era, and through the lens of Feinstein's camera they speak volumes about the faces and places that have graced the City of Angels. Images like those of Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, and Steve McQueen resonate with our collective memory, while photographs of hopeful starlets, movie studio backlots, and sunny, palm tree'd boulevards evoke the timeless allure of all things Hollywood."Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric" marks a unique collaboration: With his unerring eye, Barry Feinstein captured unforgettable moments in stunning black-and-white, such as Marilyn Monroe's swimming pool on the day she died, and Frank Sinatra celebrating at John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Ball. In the provocative accompanying text, Bob Dylan's quixotic, expressive lyricism redefines silver screen nostalgia.
Los Angeles. Portrait of a City
Jim Heimann - 2009
It traces the city's development from the 1880s' real estate boom, through the early days of Hollywood and the urban sprawl of the late 20th century, right up to the present day. With over 500 images, L.A. is shown emerging from a desert wasteland to become a vast palm-studded urban metropolis. Events that made world news–including two Olympics, Bobby Kennedy's assassination, and the Rodney King riots–reveal a city of many dimensions. The entertainment capital of the world, Hollywood, and its celebrities are showcased along with many other notable residents, personalities, architects, artists, and musicians. The city's pop cultural movements, its music, surfing, health food fads, gangs, and hot rods are included, as are its notorious crimes and criminals. This book depicts Los Angeles in all its glory and grit, via hundreds of freshly discovered images including those of Julius Shulman, Garry Winogrand, William Claxton and many other superb photographers, culled from major historical archives, museums, private collectors, and universities. These are given context and resonance through essays by renowned California historian Kevin Starr and Los Angeles literature expert David Ulin.