Engineers of Victory: The Making of the War Machine That Defeated the Nazis


Paul Kennedy - 2012
    The Turn of the Tide is a fascinating nuts-and-bolts account of the strategic factors that led to Allied victory. Kennedy reveals how the leaders’ grand strategy was carried out by the ordinary soldiers, scientists, engineers, and businessmen responsible for realizing their commanders’ visions of success.In January 1943, FDR and Churchill convened in Casablanca and established the Allied objectives for the war: to defeat the Nazi blitzkrieg; to control the Atlantic sea lanes and the air over western and central Europe; to take the fight to the European mainland; and to end Japan’s imperialism. Astonishingly, a little over a year later, these ambitious goals had nearly all been accomplished. With riveting, tactical detail, The Turn of the Tide reveals how.Kennedy recounts the inside stories of the invention of the cavity magnetron, a miniature radar “as small as a soup plate,” and the Hedgehog, a multi-headed grenade launcher that allowed the Allies to overcome the threat to their convoys crossing the Atlantic; the critical decision by engineers to install a super-charged Rolls-Royce engine in the P-51 Mustang, creating a fighter plane more powerful than the Luftwaffe’s; and the innovative use of pontoon bridges (made from rafts strung together) to help Russian troops cross rivers and elude the Nazi blitzkrieg. He takes readers behind the scenes, unveiling exactly how thousands of individual Allied planes and fighting ships were choreographed to collectively pull off the invasion of Normandy, and illuminating how crew chiefs perfected the high-flying and inaccessible B-29 Superfortress that would drop the atomic bombs on Japan.The story of World War II is often told as a grand narrative, as if it were fought by supermen or decided by fate. Here Kennedy uncovers the real heroes of the war, highlighting for the first time the creative strategies, tactics, and organizational decisions that made the lofty Allied objectives into a successful reality. In an even more significant way, The Turn of the Tide has another claim to our attention, for it restores “the middle level of war” to its rightful place in history.From the Hardcover edition.

CCNA Portable Command Guide


Scott D. Empson - 2005
    The 'CCNA Portable Command Guide' is a supplementary guide to assist network administrators in the proper use of the Cisco IOS and of the commands needed to pass the CCNA vendor exam.

The Control of Nature


John McPhee - 1989
    Bilateral, symmetrical, it could with equal speed travel in opposite directions. For some years, he had been planning a book about places in the world where people have been engaged in all-out battles with nature, about (in the words of the book itself) "any struggle against natural forces--heroic or venal, rash or well advised--when human beings conscript themselves to fight against the earth, to take what is not given, to rout the destroying enemy, to surround the base of Mt. Olympus demanding and expecting the surrender of the gods." His interest had first been sparked when he went into the Atchafalaya--the largest river swamp in North America--and had learned that virtually all of its waters were metered and rationed by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' project called Old River Control.In the natural cycles of the Mississippi's deltaic plain, the time had come for the Mississippi to change course, to shift its mouth more than a hundred miles and go down the Atchafalaya, one of its distributary branches. The United States could not afford that--for New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and all the industries that lie between would be cut off from river commerce with the rest of the nation. At a place called Old River, the Corps therefore had built a great fortress--part dam, part valve--to restrain the flow of the Atchafalaya and compel the Mississippi to stay where it is.In Iceland, in 1973, an island split open without warning and huge volumes of lava began moving in the direction of a harbor scarcely half a mile away. It was not only Iceland's premier fishing port (accounting for a large percentage of Iceland's export economy) but it was also the only harbor along the nation's southern coast. As the lava threatened to fill the harbor and wipe it out, a physicist named Thorbjorn Sigurgeirsson suggested a way to fight against the flowing red rock--initiating an all-out endeavor unique in human history. On the big island of Hawaii, one of the world's two must eruptive hot spots, people are not unmindful of the Icelandic example. McPhee went to Hawaii to talk with them and to walk beside the edges of a molten lake and incandescent rivers.Some of the more expensive real estate in Los Angeles is up against mountains that are rising and disintegrating as rapidly as any in the world. After a complex coincidence of natural events, boulders will flow out of these mountains like fish eggs, mixed with mud, sand, and smaller rocks in a cascading mass known as debris flow. Plucking up trees and cars, bursting through doors and windows, filling up houses to their eaves, debris flows threaten the lives of people living in and near Los Angeles' famous canyons. At extraordinary expense the city has built a hundred and fifty stadium-like basins in a daring effort to catch the debris.Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking in his vivid depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those who would attempt to wrest control from her--stubborn, often ingenious, and always arresting characters.

Inevitable: Mass Customized Learning: Learning in the Age of Empowerment


Charles Schwahn - 2010
    

Introductory Linear Algebra: An Applied First Course


Bernard Kolman - 1988
    Calculus is not a prerequisite, although examples and exercises using very basic calculus are included (labeled Calculus Required.) The most technology-friendly text on the market, Introductory Linear Algebra is also the most flexible. By omitting certain sections, instructors can cover the essentials of linear algebra (including eigenvalues and eigenvectors), to show how the computer is used, and to introduce applications of linear algebra in a one-semester course.

Ethics in Information Technology


George W. Reynolds - 2002
    This book offers an excellent foundation in ethical decision-making for current and future business managers and IT professionals.

The Design of Everyday Things


Donald A. Norman - 1988
    It could forever change how you experience and interact with your physical surroundings, open your eyes to the perversity of bad design and the desirability of good design, and raise your expectations about how things should be designed.B & W photographs and illustrations throughout.

Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America


John M. Barry - 1997
    Close to a million people—in a nation of 120 million—were forced out of their homes. Some estimates place the death toll in the thousands. The Red Cross fed nearly 700,000 refugees for months. Rising Tide is the story of this forgotten event, the greatest natural disaster this country has ever known. But it is not simply a tale of disaster. The flood transformed part of the nation and had a major cultural and political impact on the rest. Rising Tide is an American epic about science, race, honor, politics, and society. Rising Tide begins in the nineteenth century, when the first serious attempts to control the river began. The story focuses on engineers James Eads and Andrew Humphreys, who hated each other. Out of the collision of their personalities and their theories came a compromise river policy that would lead to the disaster of the 1927 flood yet would also allow the cultivation of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta and create wealth and aristocracy, as well as a whole culture. In the end, the flood had indeed changed the face of America, leading to the most comprehensive legislation the government had ever enacted, touching the entire Mississippi valley from Pennsylvania to Montana. In its aftermath was laid the foundation for the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Database Processing: Fundamentals, Design, and Implementation


David M. Kroenke - 1983
    This tenth edition reflects the needs of students and assures the development of practical and marketable skills. It helps them learn: how to query data and obtain results, by presenting the SQL Select. It provides a framework to help students learn this material.

Effective Business Communications


Herta A. Murphy - 1980
    These "seven Cs" guide student-readers to choose the content and style that best fits the purpose and recipient of any given message. Pedagogically rich, most chapters in this paperback text include checklists, mini-cases and problems, "Communication Probe" boxes which summarize related research, and sidenotes that isolate significant points that should not be missed. Two new chapters are devoted to ethics and technology respectively.

Fluid Mechanics: Fundamentals and Applications [with Student Resources DVD]


Yunus A. Cengel - 2004
    The text covers the basic principles and equations of fluid mechanics in the context of numerous and diverse real-world engineering examples. The text helps students develop an intuitive understanding of fluid mechanics by emphasizing the physics, and by supplying attractive figures, numerous photographs and visual aids to reinforce the physics.

Asteroid Mining 101: Wealth for the New Space Economy


John S. Lewis - 2014
    It is within the realm of possibility that their work may usher in a change in global economics as profound as the Industrial Revolution. As may be expected, press reports dealing with asteroid mining have been numerous, ranging in scope from short and breezy to broad and serious, and in quality from accurate to impressionistic to simply uninformed. There is good reason to be curious about what may be the biggest game-changer in human economic history. And there is good reason to look closely at the underlying science and engineering that form the foundation of this work.

Practical Electronics for Inventors


Paul Scherz - 1998
    Instead, it tells you-and shows you-what basic and advanced electronics parts and components do, and how they work. Chock-full of illustrations, Practical Electronics for Inventors offers over 750 hand-drawn images that provide clear, detailed instructions that can help turn theoretical ideas into real-life inventions and gadgets.

Tesla, Master of Lightning


Margaret Cheney - 1999
    Years in the making, this thoroughly researched volume presents important new materials: archival documents and photographs; excerpts from Tesla's writings, lectures, and diaries; selections from his correspondence (some previously unpublished). By placing Tesla's patents and inventions in historical context, the book documents how aspects of television, X-rays, satellite transmission, and advance defense systems such as the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) were foreshadowed in Tesla's work. The 250 black-and-white and duo tone images create an invaluable record of the man and his times vividly showcasing his inventions and working methods. Tesla: Master of Lightning illuminates the life and grand achievements of this eccentric wizard.

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)


Project Management Institute - 1995
    This internationally recognized standard provides the essential tools to practice project management and deliver organizational results.