A significant but less-than-riveting first-person account by a pioneer in energy technology.
Preble et al. collect several journals of celebrated engineer William C. Brown in this first volume in a series.
Brown is remembered primarily for being the first person to propose and then demonstrate Microwave Power Transmission, in which electrical energy is transferred using electromagnetic waves. The discovery has great potential application for solar energy, making it possible—as Preble notes in his introduction—to “efficiently, safely, and cost-effectively bring the continuously available sunshine at geosynchronous orbit back to power Earth’s growing electric power grids.” Brown used ingenuity and experimentation to develop the key piece of technology—he called it the “rectenna”—to make MPT possible in 1964, which is also the year that this volume begins. The four journals track Brown’s progress through 1975, including accounts of his first demonstration of MPT on national television, when he powered a small helicopter using a microwave beam for CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Later, Apollo 11 carried another of Brown’s inventions, the Amplitron, on its mission to the moon, using it to broadcast back to Earth the video and audio of Neil Armstrong’s famous first lunar step. Over the course of the decade covered here, Brown documents how technology slowly advanced: truly one day at a time. Brown’s voice is workmanlike but warm, and there are moments when his satisfaction at his hard work shine through his usual professional exterior, as this entry from four days after the moon landing show: “In my own small way, I felt that I had really contributed through the communications system, which brought back the TV and the voice and the telemetering from the Moon. The 20-watt Amplitron did its job well.” However, for every historic moment, there are a hundred pages of fairly unremarkable entries covering the development of Brown’s work and his daily interactions with family and colleagues. Posterity should be grateful that the scientist wrote so much down and that it is now being published, but it’s difficult to see many outside of Brown’s field reading the entirety of this over 500-page volume, much less the full series of intended volumes.
A significant but less-than-riveting first-person account by a pioneer in energy technology.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-63183-438-7
Page Count: 530
Publisher: The Space Solar Power Institute
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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