Plains pioneer Elam Bartholomew grew up in Illinois and at the age of 21, in 1874, traveled to the hostile and barren frontier of western Kansas. Every day, from 1871 to 1934, he wrote in his diary over 22,000 entries on some 5,600 pages. Elam Bartholomew is...the ideal settler interested in re-creating cultural and community organizations that existed in the East but also an extraordinary Kansan because of his activities as a naturalist. Patricia A. Michaelis, Kansas State Historical Society Bartholomew became a farmer and horticulturist, active in Kansas politics, local government, and church, "a scientist in the making" as he set his roots in western Kansas. He became a successful farmer because he had a keen sense of Nature's limitations...and he knew how to adapt to them. Elam developed a passion for things botanical and took on the challenge of collecting and identifying specimens of fungus growth, in his dedication to finding controls of organisms that cause disease. His many thousands of specimens, collected and identified from 70 to 110 years ago, from 48 states, are in the herbaria of numerous institutions in the U.S. and abroad, and are still useful in research. But it is Elam's "common man" approach to his observations of life in the late 1800s that piques our interest the way things were in the last 30 years of the 19th century and the first 34 years of the 20th.
Price : $8.00
$8.00
Show Detail »
SOFTBOUND - GLUED BINDING
Price : $13.95
$13.95
Show Detail »
Pub. Date: December 1986 Publisher: Johnson Screens
Price : N/A
N/A
Show Detail »
Amazon Best Books of the Month, July 2010: In Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light, Jane Brox illuminates the fascinating and forgotten history of man-made light, tracing its development through centuries of sputtering, smoking candles, to the gradual refinement of gas and, finally, electric light. Brox captures the sense of wonder that permeated the Chicago World's Fair as electric light lit up the "White City," and shows how quickly we became reliant on electric light, recounting the trepidation and anxiety that accompanied the mandatory blackouts of World War II and the power outages that have plagued New York City's power grid since the 1960s. Brox also addresses the unexpected consequences of light pollution, detailing the struggles of astronomers who are no longer able to see stars, and migrating birds that confusedly circle lit buildings at night until they die from exhaustion. Brilliant is an eloquent account of how a luxury so quickly became a necessity, and permanently changed human history. --Lynette Mong Amazon Exclusive: A Letter from Jane Brox, Author of Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light Dear Amazon Readers, So much of life as we know it--our long evening hours, our flexible working days, our feelings of safety at night--depends upon cheap, abundant light made possible by the incandescent bulb. Now that new government energy efficiency standards will make filament light bulbs illegal by 2014--and for the first time our new means of illumination may not be as satisfactory as the old--it's the perfect moment to look at the extraordinary story of how we came to inhabit our world built of light. Just five hundred years ago almost everyone lived at the mercy of the dark. In a time before street lighting, travel at night was always perilous, and forbidden to all but a few. Most people were confined to their homes after sunset--authorities in some towns even locked citizens inside their houses for the night. Within their close quarters, many had no hope of more than a few hours of light in evening--meager, troublesome light cast by one or two stinking tallow candles or oil lamps. Since then, each century of painstaking progress in illumination has had its own drama. The 18th century's need for more and more light spurred a world-wide hunt for whale oil, which proved to be so exhaustive it put the very survival of some whale species in peril, while the 19th century race to build a viable electric light involved the work of many scientists throughout Europe and America. In truth, Edison's bulb was not the isolated triumph it often seems to us now. His achievement was only possible after centuries of evolving understanding of electricity, and decades of experiments by dozens of scientists racing to fashion a workable incandescent light. Edison's light assured cheap, abundant illumination for many, but not all. The democratic distribution of light in the United States depended upon the decades-long struggle by rural Americans to have the same access to electricity as those in the cities and suburbs. And controversies continue: as the demands for energy efficiency compete with our desires to have the light we want, we find ourselves in the midst of a new race for the perfect energy efficient light of the future. And as the grave consequences of light pollution become more and more evident we are faced with the question: How much light is too much? When you read Brilliant you'll not only gain insight into the history of artificial light, you'll find that the surprising, complex story of our illumination is also the story of our evolving modern selves. -Jane Brox (Photo © Luc Demers)
Price : $16.58
$16.58
Show Detail »
Exploring the evolution in how people use and work with technology, the second edition of The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook captures the most important scientific and technical know-how in the field of HCI. It provides an updated, comprehensive overview of important research in the field, including insights directly applicable throughout the process of developing effective interactive information technologies. It features cutting-edge advances to the scientific knowledge base and visionary perspectives and developments that will fundamentally transform the way in which researchers and practitioners view the discipline. As the seminal volume of HCI research and practice, the second editionfeatures contributions from a selection of eminent professionals in the field worldwide. It stands alone as the most essential resource available on the market. This edition of the volume thoroughly covers issues of accessibility and diversity, such as aging, literacy, hearing, vision, physical disabilities, and children. Additional topics addressed are sensor based interactions; tangible interfaces; augmented cognition; cognition under stress; ubiquitous and wearable computing; privacy and security. With contributions from over 130 researchers and professionals, over 5,500 references, 400 figures, and 100 tables, the book provides a wealth of data and a fresh perspective on the field. New topics and authors ensure the revision contains new information and insights, the latest in research and practice, while retaining its reputation for presenting authoritative information in an accessible manner.
Price : $130.00
$130.00
Show Detail »
In graphic novel format, tells the story of Johann Gutenberg and the invention of the printing press.
Price : $6.95
$6.95
Show Detail »
On July 20, 1969, near the end of a great decade of near-space exploration, a small craft called Eagle landed on the moon's surface. As anyone who watched the televised broadcast of the landing might recall, the astronauts aboard Eagle were guided to their objective by a capable ground crew headed by Chris Kraft, whom his colleagues had long called "Flight." Kraft was unflappable on the surface, but, as he writes in this memoir, the Eagle's landing had moments of drama that gave him pause, and that few outside NASA knew about--including baleful alarms from the ship's on-board computer that warned of imminent disaster. For Kraft, frightening moments were part of his job as director of Mission Control. He encountered many of them in the early years of the space program, when failures were commonplace and all too often caused not by mechanics but by politics. We learn of many in Kraft's pages. One such failure was the Soviet Union's Sputnik launch, about which Kraft thunders, "We should have beaten them.... We were stopped by anonymous doctors in the civilian world who didn't know what they were talking about, by a bureaucrat in the White House who'd been stung when JFK shot down his position on manned space flight, and by our friend the German rocket scientist, who got cold feet when he should have been bold." Plenty of other contemporaries, including John Glenn and Richard Nixon, come in for a scolding in Kraft's fiery account, which offers a rare insider's portrait of the challenging work of astronautics--work that, Kraft writes hopefully, is only beginning. --Gregory McNamee
Price : $47.74
$47.74
Show Detail »
This is the true story of how Yankee tinkerer, David Bushnell, built the world's first submarine in an attempt to sink the flagship of the British fleet--the HMS Eagle!This is both the story of how the world's first submarine was built and how it was employed in the Continental Army's desperate attempt to hold on to New York in 1776. We also read about the nearly forgotten genius, David Bushnell, whose submarine was as amazing a feat for the 18th century as space travel was for the 20th. The innovation of this one individual, along with the encouragement of such luminaries as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin, epitomized the ingenuity and potential of the new nation.
Price : $49.90
$49.90
Show Detail »
Top Search
Last Search
