Just the thing for the budding entrepreneur, and a pleasure for general readers as well.
An intriguing tale of inventors, tycoons, and an engineering feat that changed the course of economic history.
One of those adept, impressively learned, sometimes impractical 19th-century woodshed thinkers and tinkers, Cyrus Field knew only a little of the hard science behind stringing a submarine telegraph cable that would link the financial markets of London and New York. And good thing, too, writes business historian Gordon (The Great Game, 1999, etc.): if he had, “he might well have dismissed the entire notion as impossibly fanciful.” Field was not the first to conceive such a venture, the author notes; as early as 1850, an English engineer and a Canadian bishop had independently proposed that a telegraph line be strung between Newfoundland and Ireland, the landmasses flanking the shortest crossing of the North Atlantic. But Field was the first to act on the idea, writing to Samuel Morse to enlist his support and finding another ally in the great but largely unsung naval surveyor and architect Matthew Fontaine Maury. In 1854, Field, philanthropist Peter Cooper, and other partners set about raising $1.5 million for the venture; that turned out to be nowhere near sufficient, even though it was a huge sum for the time (by way of comparison, Gordon notes that the entire annual federal budget in that year was $58 million). Drawing on scientific discoveries and technological innovations by the likes of Michael Faraday and Werner von Siemens, Field and company eventually managed to make the transatlantic cable a reality, and even if its early iterations turned out to be duds, their work did in fact revolutionize communications and international finance and “laid down the foundation of what would become, in little over a century, a global village,” as Gordon very capably shows.
Just the thing for the budding entrepreneur, and a pleasure for general readers as well.Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-8027-1364-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2002
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both...
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
The surprisingly complex and lively memoir of a successful and influential horse trainer who helped pioneer nonviolent methods of breaking horses in. Some of the book's vigor and pace may have to do with the fact that Lucy Grealy (Autobiography of a Face, 1994) is the coauthor. The narrative begins in 1948 when Roberts, then 13, spent time studying wild horses in the Nevada desert. He applied what he learned there to radically new ideas about how wild horses could be trained and came to be an important figure in horse racing circles. His portrait of the business of breeding and training horses is frank and fascinating, but the book's most memorable passages cover the rodeos and horse business in the west as it was in the author's youth, and include a haunting portrait of his violent, racist father and of some of the other remarkable figures Roberts knew (including a young James Dean). Over and above everything, though, is Roberts's surpassing love for horses, captured here in his evocations of the horses he has trained over a career spanning four decades. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 18, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-45658-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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