Chiswick Women's Aid was Europe's first ever refuge for what were then called 'battered women', and Jenny Smith was one of the first females who bravely made their way to this much-needed safe house. Desperate, and in fear for her life and the welfare of her two small children, Jenny had fled her dangerously schizophrenic partner, carrying only a few possessions. In the Chiswick shelter, founded by famous women's rights campaigner Erin Pizzey, Jenny found other women in the same position, all with harrowing, extraordinary stories to tell. Amenities were basic, but the respect, kindness and humanity of the community would help to give Jenny a new lease of life and strength. When the safe house came under threat of closure, she lobbied parliament and drove across Europe in a convoy of women in camper vans to raise awareness of their plight. Jenny's story is a slice of social history that begins in a Derbyshire mining village in the 1950s and takes the reader to inner city of Hackney in the 1960s, and Jenny's heart-breaking journey to the refuge. The house was the subject of a famous documentary, Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear, which, when first broadcast in 1974, sent shockwaves through the UK. Jenny was one of the first women to break a taboo by speaking publicly about domestic abuse. With the new start afforded her by the refuge, Jenny went on to find love, have another child and work as a foster carer.

    He worked with - and relaxed with - scientific giants of that time such as Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi, Stan Ulam, John von Neumann, and John Wheeler, and here offers illuminating insights into the personalities, the strengths, and the quirks of these men. Well known for his ability to explain physics to nonspecialists, Ford also brings to life the physics of fission and fusion and provides a brief history of nuclear science from the discovery of radioactivity in 1896 to the ten-megaton explosion of “Mike” that obliterated a Pacific Island in 1952. Ford worked at both Los Alamos and Princeton's Project Matterhorn, and brings out Matterhorn's major, but previously unheralded contribution to the development of the H bomb. Outside the lab, he drove a battered Chevrolet around New Mexico, a bantam motorcycle across the country, and a British roadster around New Jersey. Part of the charm of Ford's book is the way in which he leavens his well-researched descriptions of the scientific work with brief tales of his life away from weapons.Contents: The Big Idea The Protagonists The Choice The Scientists, the Officials, and the President Nuclear Energy Some Physics Going West A New World The Classical Super Calculating and Testing Constructing Matterhorn Academia Cowers New Mexico, New York, and New Jersey The Garwin Design Climbing Matterhorn It's More Than a Boy Readership: A memoir for general readership in the history of science.Key Features: It contains real physics, clearly presented for non-specialists Combining historical scholarship and his own recollections, the author offers important insights into the people and the work that led to the first H bomb Personal anecdotes enliven the book

    . . [a] powerful book." -- New York Times One of the last secrets of World War II is why the Germans failed to build an atomic bomb. Germany was the birthplace of modern physics; it possessed the raw materials and the industrial base; and it commanded key intellectual resources. What happened? In Heisenberg's War, Thomas Powers tells of the interplay between science and espionage, morality and military necessity, and paranoia and cool logic that marked the German bomb program and the Allied response to it. On the basis of dozens of interviews and years of intensive research, Powers concludes that Werner Heisenberg, who was the leading figure in the German atomic effort, consciously obstructed the development of the bomb and in a famous 1941 meeting in Copenhagen with his former mentor Neils Bohr in effect sought to dissuade the Allies from their pursuit of the bomb. Heisenberg's War is a "superbly researched and well-written book" (Time) whose extraordinary story engrosses-and haunts.

    Braving the sexism of the scientific world, she joined the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry and became a prominent member of the international physics community. Of Jewish origin, Meitner fled Nazi Germany for Stockholm in 1938 and later moved to Cambridge, England. Her career was shattered when she fled Germany, and her scientific reputation was damaged when Hahn took full credit—and the 1944 Nobel Prize—for the work they had done together on nuclear fission. Ruth Sime's absorbing book is the definitive biography of Lise Meitner, the story of a brilliant woman whose extraordinary life illustrates not only the dramatic scientific progress but also the injustice and destruction that have marked the twentieth century.

    By tracking a pendulum's path as it swung repeatedly across the interior of the large ceremonial hall, Foucault offered the first definitive proof -- before an audience that comprised the cream of Parisian society, including the future emperor, Napoleon III -- that the earth revolves on its axis.Through careful, primary research, world-renowned author Amir Aczel has revealed the life of a gifted physicist who had almost no formal education in science, and yet managed to succeed despite the adversity he suffered at the hands of his peers. The range and breadth of Foucault's discoveries is astonishing: He gave us the modern electric compass, devised an electric microscope, invented photographic technology, and made remarkable deductions about color theory, heat waves, and the speed of light. Yet until now so little has been known about his life.Richly detailed and evocative, Pendulum tells of the illustrious period in France during the Second Empire; of Foucault's relationship with Napoleon III, a colorful character in his own right; and -- most notably -- of the crucial triumph of science over religion.Dr. Aczel has crafted a fascinating narrative based on the life of this most astonishing and largely unrecognized scientist, whose findings answered many age-old scientific questions and posed new ones that are still relevant today.

    Before the Fallout is the epic story of the intervening half century, during which an exhilarating quest to unravel the secrets of the material world revealed how to destroy it, and an open, international, scientific adventure transmuted overnight into a wartime sprint for the bomb.Weaving together history, science, and biography, Diana Preston chronicles a human chain reaction of scientists and leaders whose discoveries and decisions forever changed our lives. The early decades of the 20th century brought Einstein's relativity theory, Rutherford's discovery of the atomic nucleus, and Heisenberg's quantum mechanics, and scientists of many nations worked together to tease out the secrets of the atom. Only 12 years before Hiroshima, one leading physicist dismissed the idea of harnessing energy from atoms as "moonshine." Then, on the eve of World War II, the power of atomic fission was revealed, alliances were broken, friendships sundered, and science co-opted by world events.Preston interviewed the surviving scientists, and she offers new insight into the fateful wartime meeting between Heisenberg and Bohr, along with a fascinating conclusion examining what might have happened had any number of events occurred differently. She also provides a rare portrait of Hiroshima before the blast.As Hiroshima's 60th anniversary approaches, Before the Fallout compels us to consider the threats and moral dilemmas we face in our still dangerous world.

    Longtime sports columnist Bryan Burwell has written the first comprehensive biography of this living legend, whose incredible football knowledge, down-home sensibilities, and tireless work ethic made him arguably the most popular sports analyst in any sport. As a coach, he has the highest winning percentage in history, and he led the Oakland Raiders to a 1979 Super Bowl Championship. He followed that up by becoming the most beloved and popular football announcer in the country, and in the third stage of his public life, the Hall of Fame coach became known to new generations of fans through his eponymous line of groundbreaking video games, which are among the bestselling titles of all time."

    Based on original material and previously unavailable documents, this acclaimed book is the definitive biography of the man considered by many to be the founding father of modern electrical technology. Among Tesla's creations were the channeling of alternating current, fluorescent and neon lighting, wireless telegraphy, and the giant turbines that harnessed the power of Niagara Falls.

    When he died in London in 1727 he was so renowned he was given a state funeral—an unheard-of honor for a subject whose achievements were in the realm of the intellect. During the years he was an irascible presence at Trinity College, Cambridge, Newton imagined properties of nature and gave them names—mass, gravity, velocity—things our science now takes for granted. Inspired by Aristotle, spurred on by Galileo’s discoveries and the philosophy of Descartes, Newton grasped the intangible and dared to take its measure, a leap of the mind unparalleled in his generation.James Gleick, the author of Chaos and Genius, and one of the most acclaimed science writers of his generation, brings the reader into Newton’s reclusive life and provides startlingly clear explanations of the concepts that changed forever our perception of bodies, rest, and motion. Ideas so basic to the twenty-first century we literally take them for granted.

    In this narrative, Walter Isaacson explains how his mind worked and the mysteries of the universe that he discovered.

    He was one of the leading pioneers of the greatest revolution in twentieth-century science: quantum mechanics. The youngest theoretician ever to win the Nobel Prize for Physics, he was also pathologically reticent, strangely literal-minded and legendarily unable to communicate or empathize. Through his greatest period of productivity, his postcards home contained only remarks about the weather.Based on a previously undiscovered archive of family papers, Graham Farmelo celebrates Dirac's massive scientific achievement while drawing a compassionate portrait of his life and work. Farmelo shows a man who, while hopelessly socially inept, could manage to love and sustain close friendship.The Strangest Man is an extraordinary and moving human story, as well as a study of one of the most exciting times in scientific history.'A wonderful book . . . Moving, sometimes comic, sometimes infinitely sad, and goes to the roots of what we mean by truth in science.' Lord Waldegrave, Daily Telegraph

    Because of his studies of the Eskimos, his discoveries of land, the application of new ideas and new methods of exploration, Stefansson was considered the foremost polar explorer of his day, and one of the few great explorers of all time. During a period of three or four years Mr. Stefansson has produced a creditable list of books about the Arctic. In some respects his service in publishing the results of his Northern studies has differed from that of earlier explorers. He has challenged our preconceptions about the Arctic. “Hunters of the Great North” gives details of Northern life such as have doubtless come within the experience of all Arctic explorers, but which are new to the average American reader. In short, it is an elementary text-book of the Arctic. Stefansson lived among the Eskimos of the Mackenzie River, studying their language and adopting their mode of life, and spending ten winters and thirteen summers in the polar regions. Among Stefannson's most famous discovery was that of a race of blond Eskimo on Coronation Gulf. Stefansson writes: "In the present book I have tried by means of diaries and memory to go back to the vivid impressions of my first year among the Eskimos for the story of what I saw and heard." In describing his confrontation with a polar bear, Stefansson writes: “I heard behind me a noise like the spitting of a cat or the hiss of a goose. I looked back and saw, about twenty feet away and almost above me, a polar bear. I had overestimated the bear's distance from shore, and had passed the spot where he lay. From his eye and attitude, as well as the story his trail told afterward there was no doubting his intentions: the hiss was merely his way of saying, "Watch me do it!" Or at least that is how I interpreted it; possibly the motive was chivalry, and the hiss was his way of saying Garde!” Contents I. PREPARATIONS FOR A LIFEWORK OF EXPLORATION II. DOWN THE MACKENZIE RIVER THROUGH 2000 MILES OF INDIAN COUNTRY III. FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE ESKIMOS IV. CAPTAIN KLINKENBERG—SEA WOLF AND DISCOVERER V. THE WHALING FLEET SAILS AWAY VI. LEARNING TO LIVE AS AN ESKIMO—ON A DIET OF FISH WITHOUT SALT VII. HOW AN ESKIMO SAILED THROUGH THE STORM VIII. AN AUTUMN JOURNEY THROUGH ARCTIC MOUNTAINS IX. THE SUN GOES AWAY FOR THE WINTER X. LOST IN THE MACKENZIE DELTA XI. AN ARCTIC CHRISTMAS WITH AN ENGLISH COUNTRY GENTLEMAN XII. THE LIFE AT TUKTUYAKTOK XIII. LEARNING TO BUILD A SNOWHOUSE AND TO BE COMFORTABLE IN ONE XIV. TRAVELS AFTER THE SUN CAME BACK XV. WE GO IN SEARCH OF OUR OWN EXPEDITION XVI. A SPRING JOURNEY IN AN ESKIMO SKIN BOAT XVII. A RACE OVER THE ARCTIC MOUNTAINS IN SUMMER XVIII. ON A RAFT DOWN THE PORCUPINE RIVER SHORT STORIES OF ADVENTURE I. HOW I LEARNED TO HUNT CARIBOU II. HOW I LEARNED TO HUNT SEALS III. HOW WE HUNT POLAR BEARS

    In this new major work Abraham Pais, himself an eminent physicist who worked alongside Einstein in the post-war years, traces the development of Einstein's entire oeuvre. This is the first book which deal comprehensively and in depth with Einstein's science, both the successes and the failures.Running through the book is a completely non-scientific biography (identified in the table of contents by italic type) including many letters which appear in English for the first time, as well as other information not published before.Throughout the preparation of this book, Pais has had complete access to the Einstein Archives (now in the possession of the Hebrew University) and the invaluable guidance of the late Helen Dukas--formerly Einstein's private secretary.

    Sympathetic yet balanced, Michael White's Isaac Newton offers a revelatory picture of Newton as a genius who stood at the point in history where magic ended and science began.

    Through his writings and spoken commentary, he worked to popularize interests in astronomy, the universe, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. From the beginning of his public career, when he co-wrote Intelligent Life in the Universe to the very end as he worked on the 1997 film adaptation of his novel Contact, these subjects absorbed him. This interest in space was rooted in his understanding of the smallness and vulnerability of humanity measured against the immense size and power of the universe. This profound philosophical humility, mixed with personal exuberance, comes through in Conversations with Carl Sagan. In interviews and profiles, Sagan discusses with verve a wide variety of topics—the environment, nuclear disarmament, religion, politics, extraterrestrial life, astronomy, physics, robotics. Whether he is discussing his science fiction or his well-researched nonfiction works, his voice embraces reason and skepticism. This volume shows how Sagan, a lifelong skeptic, refined his views and expressed amazement that Earth, for all his belief in extraterrestrial life, encompasses everything about which he cared. Tom Head of Jackson, Mississippi, is a writer and poet whose work includes Women and Families (Voices from the Civil War), Possessions and Exorcisms (Fact or Fiction?), and 1966 (The Turbulent 60s).