Book picks similar to
Boy Who Dreamed of Rockets: How Robert Goddard Became the Father of the Space Age by Robert M. Quackenbush
biography
upstairs
picture-books
biography-children-s
The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
Denise Kiernan - 2013
history.
The Tennessee town of Oak Ridge was created from scratch in 1942. One of the Manhattan Project’s secret cities, it didn’t appear on any maps until 1949, and yet at the height of World War II it was using more electricity than New York City and was home to more than 75,000 people, many of them young women recruited from small towns across the South. Their jobs were shrouded in mystery, but they were buoyed by a sense of shared purpose, close friendships—and a surplus of handsome scientists and Army men!But against this vibrant wartime backdrop, a darker story was unfolding. The penalty for talking about their work—even the most innocuous details—was job loss and eviction. One woman was recruited to spy on her coworkers. They all knew something big was happening at Oak Ridge, but few could piece together the true nature of their work until the bomb "Little Boy" was dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, and the secret was out. The shocking revelation: the residents of Oak Ridge were enriching uranium for the atomic bomb.Though the young women originally believed they would leave Oak Ridge after the war, many met husbands there, made lifelong friends, and still call the seventy-year-old town home. The reverberations from their work there—work they didn’t fully understand at the time—are still being felt today. In The Girls of Atomic City, Denise Kiernan traces the astonishing story of these unsung WWII workers through interviews with dozens of surviving women and other Oak Ridge residents. Like The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, this is history and science made fresh and vibrant—a beautifully told, deeply researched story that unfolds in a suspenseful and exciting way.
Bob Dylan
Daniel Kramer - 1967
In this photographic tour of Dylan’s breakthrough years, 1964 to 1965, Daniel Kramer shows the human side of this legendary figure — playing chess, making coffee, and in one whimsical moment, sitting in a tree — and also in the studio and onstage. An essay by the photographer sheds further light on the man and his music.
Survive. Drive. Win.: The Inside Story of Brawn GP and Jenson Button's Incredible F1 Championship Win
Nick Fry - 2019
This is the full story of how the team was saved from disintegration when Honda suddenly pulled out of Formula One; the management buyout for £1.00; and its subsequent sale to Mercedes for £140 million. As CEO, Nick Fry was in the driving seat for one of the most incredible journeys in the history of motorsport. Here, he gives an up-close-and-personal account of how he and Ross Brawn turned disaster into championship glory, and offers a unique and thrilling perspective on an elite global sport.
Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
Erik Larson - 1999
Even Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau failed to grasp the true meaning of the strange deep-sea swells and peculiar winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston found itself submerged in a monster hurricane that completely destroyed the town and killed over six thousand people in what remains the greatest natural disaster in American history--and Isaac Cline found himself the victim of a devastating personal tragedy.Using Cline's own telegrams, letters, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the science of hurricanes, Erik Larson builds a chronicle of one man's heroic struggle and fatal miscalculation in the face of a storm of unimaginable magnitude. Riveting, powerful, and unbearably suspenseful, Isaac's Storm is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets the great uncontrollable force of nature.
The Printer and the Preacher: Ben Franklin, George Whitefield, and the Surprising Friendship that Invented America
Randy Petersen - 2015
But they were fast friends. No two people did more to shape America in the mid-1700s.Benjamin Franklin was the American prototype: hard-working, inventive, practical, funny, with humble manners and lofty dreams. George Whitefield was the most popular preacher in an era of great piety, whose outdoor preaching across the colonies was heard by thousands, all of whom were told, “You must be born again.” People became excited about God. They began reading the Bible and supporting charities. When Whitefield died in 1770, on a preaching tour in New Hampshire, he had built a spiritual foundation for a new nation—just as his surviving friend, Ben Franklin, had built its social foundation. Together these two men helped establish a new nation founded on liberty. This is the story of their amazing friendship.
Paco: The cat who meowed in space
Homer Hickam - 2012
But when Paco was struck down by a disease that left him unable to walk, Hickam was faced with a terrible decision, let his beloved cat live in misery or put him to sleep. Before that decision could be made, the space mission Hickam was working on needed to be rescued and there was only one sure way to save it: Paco's magic meow! This is a true story of the space age that is also a delightful tale of the love between an engineer and his cat.
I Just Made The Tea: A lifetime in the Formula 1 pitlane
Di Spires - 2012
In all that time she ran the team motorhome for a succession of different teams, including Lotus in the Senna era and Benetton in the Schumacher era. Her memoir looks at Formula 1 from an unusual viewpoint. As well as Formula 1 people, she has encountered personalities from every walk of life, from royalty to criminals on the run. Her stories range from the hilarious to the tragic and provide a unique insight. This is a fast-paced read packed with surprising snippets and observations, with plenty of intimate insight into what the drivers are really like.
Internal Combustion Engine Fundamentals.
John B. Heywood - 1988
An illustration program supports the concepts and theories discussed.
Heart of the Trail: The Stories of Eight Wagon Train Women
Mary Barmeyer O'Brien - 1997
First hand accounts from their letters and diaries, most written on the trail.
Heavenly Intrigue: Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and the Murder Behind One of History's Greatest Scientific Discoveries
Joshua Gilder - 2004
That collaboration would mark the dawn of modern science . . . and end in murder.Johannes Kepler changed forever our understanding of the universe with his three laws of planetary motion. He demolished the ancient model of planets moving in circular orbits and laid the foundation for the universal law of gravitation, setting physics on the course of revelation it follows to this day. Kepler was one of the greatest astronomers of all time. Yet if it hadn't been for the now lesser-known Tycho Brahe, the man for whom Kepler apprenticed, Kepler would be a mere footnote in today's science books. Brahe was the Imperial Mathematician at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor in Prague and the most famous astronomer of his era. He was one of the first great systematic empirical scientists and one of the earliest founders of the modern scientific method. His forty years of planetary observations—an unparalleled treasure of empirical data—contained the key to Kepler's historic breakthrough. But those observations would become available to Kepler only after Brahe's death. This groundbreaking history portrays the turbulent collaboration between these two astronomers at the turn of the seventeenth century and their shattering discoveries that would mark the transition from medieval to modern science. But that is only half the story. Based on recent forensic evidence (analyzed here for the first time) and original research into medieval and Renaissance alchemy—all buttressed by in-depth interviews with leading historians, scientists, and medical specialists—the authors have put together shocking and compelling evidence that Tycho Brahe did not die of natural causes, as has been believed for four hundred years. He was systematically poisoned—most likely by his assistant, Johannes Kepler. An epic tale of murder and scientific discovery, Heavenly Intrigue reveals the dark side of one of history’s most brilliant minds and tells the story of court politics, personal intrigue, and superstition that surrounded the protean invention of two great astronomers and their quest to find truth and beauty in the heavens above.
Monash
Grantlee Kieza - 2015
General Sir John Monash attends a glittering banquet to dine with the King of England and the likes of Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill and Rudyard Kipling. Just four months earlier, the commander of the Australian Corps had been knighted in a battlefield, a long way from the streets of Melbourne where this son of a long line of Polish rabbis had grown up. Field Marshal Montgomery would declare decades later that Monash was the best general to serve on the Western Front. How had this notorious ladies' man, who harboured private thoughts about the futility of war and had never fired a shot in anger, come to be feted by the British establishment as well as his countrymen back home? In this essential biography of a most unlikely folk hero, Grantlee Kieza paints a lively portrait of an outsider who shaped modern Australia through his energy, drive and ambition, his military brilliance and his vision.
The Vanderbilt Women: Dynasty of Wealth, Glamour, and Tragedy
Clarice Stasz - 1981
their vendettas, their armies of servitors, partisans and sycophants, their love affairs, scandals, and shortcomings, all were the stuff of an imperial routine."Stasz reveals new facts and insights into the fascinating lives of three generations of Vanderbilt women who dominated New York society from the middle of the eighteenth century through the twentieth. Of special interest are the discovery of unpublished letters and a pseudonymous lesbian novel that shed light on the complex character of the most currently famous Vanderbilt woman, Gloria Vanderbilt.
John Titor, A Time Traveler's Tale
John Titor - 2001
Is John Titor science fiction or science fact? After a world war in our future, John Titor claimed to have used a military time machine to travel from the year 2036. His story spans from 1975 where his mission was to obtain a computer system needed in his future. For mysterious reasons, instead of going home, he came forward to visit with his family and young self in 1998. From November of 2000 to March 2001, John spoke directly to numerous people on many Internet forums and chat rooms. In the posts, he discusses the future, the technology of time travel and his feelings about our society. Did he accurately predict the development of future physics, the reasons behind the Gulf War and the coming of mad cow disease to the U.S.? John Titor A Time Traveler's Tale, was compiled by John's mother in our time and bound in a 5.5 x 8.5 paperback protected by a laminated front and back cover. With 164 pages of text, the book also contains 9 pages of black and white photos John posted of his time machine and the operations manual that came with it!
Stargazing: Beginners Guide to Astronomy
Radmila Topalovic - 2016
It discusses how to plan your stargazing and what you can see with your eyes, as well as how to choose binoculars and telescopes and what you can see using them. The book also offers seasonal star charts and constellation charts and gives readers specific objects to look for in the sky. This guide from Royal Observatory Greenwich provides all you need to know to get started in stargazing and discover the universe.
The Wright Brothers
David McCullough - 2015
But it would take the world some time to believe what had happened: the age of flight had begun, with the first heavier-than-air, powered machine carrying a pilot.Who were these men and how was it that they achieved what they did?David McCullough, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, tells the surprising, profoundly American story of Wilbur and Orville Wright.Far more than a couple of unschooled Dayton bicycle mechanics who happened to hit on success, they were men of exceptional courage and determination, and of far-ranging intellectual interests and ceaseless curiosity, much of which they attributed to their upbringing. The house they lived in had no electricity or indoor plumbing, but there were books aplenty, supplied mainly by their preacher father, and they never stopped reading.When they worked together, no problem seemed to be insurmountable. Wilbur was unquestionably a genius. Orville had such mechanical ingenuity as few had ever seen. That they had no more than a public high school education, little money and no contacts in high places, never stopped them in their mission to take to the air. Nothing did, not even the self-evident reality that every time they took off in one of their contrivances, they risked being killed.In this thrilling book, master historian David McCullough draws on the immense riches of the Wright Papers, including private diaries, notebooks, scrapbooks, and more than a thousand letters from private family correspondence to tell the human side of the Wright Brothers' story, including the little-known contributions of their sister, Katharine, without whom things might well have gone differently for them.