by Jill Jonnes ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 2003
Thoughtful and well paced, with the exception of a digressionary review of scientific developments in electricity from the...
After documenting America’s “romance” with illegal drugs in Hep-Cats, Narcs and Pipe Dreams (1996), Jonnes now addresses the era of urban electrification and its three giants of invention and industry.
The author (History/Johns Hopkins) correctly senses and attacks the major flaw in public perception of such vast, life-changing processes—that it all somehow happens with the wave of a hand. On the contrary, Jonnes demonstrates errors and setbacks were all too common. For example, when J. Pierpont Morgan decided to have his New York City mansion wired for lights by the Edison Electric Company, this marvelous opportunity to attract investors was nearly ruined by an imperfect contact that set fire to Morgan’s expensively furnished library. Even more revealing is Jonnes’s picture of Lower Manhattan in the 1880s when Edison began his major urban project. Poles of varying height above the streets already bore webs of dangling wires, the frayed remains of failed attempts to make “arc” lighting a commercial success. Electrification, Jonnes stresses, had to meld new technology with vast capital resources to gain a commercial footing. All three of the giants—dogged Thomas A. Edison, optimistic proto-magnate George Westinghouse, and brilliant Nikola Tesla, the Serbian immigrant Westinghouse backed and exploited—learned the same lesson: good p.r. is everything. As Edison became the champion of direct current, rival Westinghouse used Tesla’s alternating current technology to win a growing list of clients. Edison’s unethical attempts to label AC as a “deadly” alternative were instrumental in the first use of electrocution to execute a condemned man in 1890, but the tide had already turned. Westinghouse was later kicked out of his own company by its board, and the tragic Tesla, who literally wired Niagara Falls as a generator, died penniless.
Thoughtful and well paced, with the exception of a digressionary review of scientific developments in electricity from the Greeks to Faraday that temporarily slows the narrative to a crawl.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50739-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2003
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by Lulu Miller illustrated by Kate Samworth ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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by Carlo Rovelli ; translated by Simon Carnell & Erica Segre ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2016
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both...
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Italian theoretical physicist Rovelli (General Relativity: The Most Beautiful of Theories, 2015, etc.) shares his thoughts on the broader scientific and philosophical implications of the great revolution that has taken place over the past century.
These seven lessons, which first appeared as articles in the Sunday supplement of the Italian newspaper Sole 24 Ore, are addressed to readers with little knowledge of physics. In less than 100 pages, the author, who teaches physics in both France and the United States, cogently covers the great accomplishments of the past and the open questions still baffling physicists today. In the first lesson, he focuses on Einstein's theory of general relativity. He describes Einstein's recognition that gravity "is not diffused through space [but] is that space itself" as "a stroke of pure genius." In the second lesson, Rovelli deals with the puzzling features of quantum physics that challenge our picture of reality. In the remaining sections, the author introduces the constant fluctuations of atoms, the granular nature of space, and more. "It is hardly surprising that there are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than have been dreamed of in our philosophy—or in our physics,” he writes. Rovelli also discusses the issues raised in loop quantum gravity, a theory that he co-developed. These issues lead to his extraordinary claim that the passage of time is not fundamental but rather derived from the granular nature of space. The author suggests that there have been two separate pathways throughout human history: mythology and the accumulation of knowledge through observation. He believes that scientists today share the same curiosity about nature exhibited by early man.
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both scientists and general readers.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-18441-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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