Please check out these selected titles... - 2004 College Bound

The Sand Reckoner is a moving, human account of Archimedes, one of the most innocent and intriguing thinkers of the ancient world: a young, brilliant man who was blessed by all the Muses, whose incredible mind could never quite understand the mundane world-and whose incredible mind the mundane world could never quite accept.
The yound Archimedes has had the best three years of his life at Ptolemy's Museum at Alexandria. To be able to talk and think all day, every day, sharing ideas and information with the world's greatest minds, is heaven to Archimedes. But heaven must be forsaken when he learns that his father is ailing and his home city of Syracuse is at war with the Romans.

Reluctant by resigned, Archimedes takes himself home to find a job building catapults as a royal engineer. Though Syracuse is no alexandria, Archimedes also finds that life at home isn't as boring or confining as he originally thought. He finds fame and loss, love and war, wealth and betrayal-none of which affe cts him nearly as much as the divine beauty of mathematics.

Lively accounts of thirty-five American inventors who helped shape the modern world.

Bryson, Bill A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003) One of the world's most beloved and bestselling writers takes his ultimate journey -- into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer.

Annoyed with his math teacher who assigns word problems and won't let him use a calculator, twelve-year-old Robert finds help from the number devil in his dreams.

Fagan, Bryan The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850 (2002)

With its basis in cutting-edge science, The Little Ice Age offers a new perspective on familiar events. Renowned archaeologist Brian Fagan shows how the increasing cold affected Norse exploration; how changing sea temperatures caused English and Basque fishermen to follow vast shoals of cod all the way to the New World; how a generations-long subsistence crisis in France contributed to social disintegration and ultimately revolution; and how English efforts to improve farm productivity in the face of a deteriorating climate helped pave the way for the Industrial Revolution and hence for global warming. This is a fascinating, original book for anyone interested in history, climate, or the new subject of how they interact.

Book Cover Feynman, Richard What Do You Care What People Think? (2001)

This companion volume to "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" includes a remarkable behind the scenes account of the space shuttle Challenger investigation.

A memoir in mathematics, it is all about how a girl next door, nurtured by her family, moved from the simple math puzzles that were the staple of dinnertime conversation to prime numbers, the Sieve of Eratosthenes, Fermat's Little Theorem, Googols- and finally into her breathtaking algorithm.

Hawking, Steven The Universe in a Nutshell (2001)Stephen Hawking's phenomenal, multimillion-copy bestseller, A Brief History of Time, introduced the ideas of this brilliant theoretical physicist to readers all over the world. Now, in a major publishing event, Hawking returns with a lavishly illustrated sequel that unravels the mysteries of the major breakthroughs that have occurred in the years since the release of his acclaimed first book.

Horvitz, Leslie A. Eureka! Scientific Breakthroughs That Changed the World (2002)The common language of genius: Eureka!
While the roads that lead to breakthrough scientific discovery can be as varied and complex as the human mind, the moment of insight for all scientists is remarkably similar. The word "eureka!", attributed to the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes, has come to express that universal moment of joy, wonder-and even shock-at discovering something entirely new. In this collection of twelve scientific stories, Leslie Alan Horvitz describes the drama of sudden insight as experienced by a dozen distinct personalities, detailing discoveries both well known and obscure. From Darwin, Einstein, and the team of Watson and Crick to such lesser known luminaries as fractal creator Mandelbrot and periodic table mastermind Dmitri Medellev, Eureka! perfectly illustrates Louis Pasteur's quip that chance favors the prepared mind.

Hoyt, Erich and Ted Schultz, editors Insect Lives (1999)A weird and wonderful journey into the insect world through literature, science, art, and popular culture.

Judson, Olivia Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to all Creation (2002)At once entertaining and wise, Dr. Tatiana (a.k.a. Olivia Judson) fuses natural history with advice to the lovelorn, blends wit and rigor, and reassures her anxious correspondents that although the acts they describe might sound appalling and unnatural, they are all perfectly normal--so long as you are not a human. In the process, she explains the science behind it all, from Darwin's theory of sexual selection to why sexual reproduction exists at all. By applying human standards to the natural world, in the end she reveals the wonders of both.

Krauss, Lawrence Atom: an Odyssey from the Big Bang to Life on the Earth and Beyond (2001)The story of matter and the history of the cosmos from the perspective of a single oxygen atom told with the patented insight and wit of one of the most dynamic physicists and graceful writers working today.

Dinner at the New Gene Cafe lays out the battle lines of the impending collision between a powerful but unproved technology and a gathering resistance from people worried about the safety of genetic change and the power of those who own the technology. Amid the furor, this precocious science is cutting applications of dangerous insecticides, and the next wave of modified crops could deliver more nutritious food -- even food that wards off disease. But before people can weigh the potential costs and benefits, this Mendelian magic is thrusting itself on the world in Orwellian fashion.

Livio, Mario The Golden Ratio (2002)Livio (head, Science Division, Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute) tells the tale of the number phi (1.6180339887) and the golden ratio. He explains its uses in art and architecture and its abundant examples in nature, and tells the human story of numerous phi-fixated individuals, from Pythagoras and Kepler to classical composers.

Nash, Madeline El Nino: Unlocking the Secrets of the Master Weather Maker (2002)

Nolen, Stephanie Promised the Moon: the Untold Story of the 1st Women in the Space Race (2002)

Stephanie Nolen tracked down all eleven of the surviving "Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees." From the FLATs, Nolen gets the firsthand story of those exciting early days of the space race. But the thrill was short-lived. The thirteen women who were thought to be prime astronaut material were grounded in 1961 when the woman-in-space program was abruptly and mysteriously cancelled. Until now, the FLATs never knew why. During a time when a woman in space was regarded as "ninety pounds of recreational equipment," in the words of a well-known physicist, it's not surprising to learn that opposition started at the top. Two of the women, Jerrie Cobb and Janey Hart, put up a fight. They were granted a hearing before Congress, but testimony from John Glenn and Scott Carpenter, two of the Mercury 7, and from one of aviation's best-known and beloved women, Jackie Cochran, thwarted their dreams -- and there would be no American women in space for nearly another quarter century.

This fascinating story reveals radically different perceptions of madness and approaches to its treatment, from antiquity to the present day. Roy Porter explores what we really mean by 'madness', covering an enormous range of topics from electric shock therapy to sexual deviancy, witches to creative geniuses, and psychoanalysis to Prozac. The origins of current debates about how we define and deal with insanity are examined through eyewitness accounts of writers, artists, those treating patients, and the mad themselves.

Rigden, John S. Hydrogen: the Essential Element (2002)

In this biography of hydrogen, John Rigden shows how this singular atom, the most abundant in the universe, has helped unify our understanding of the material world from the smallest scale, the elementary particles, to the largest, the universe itself. It is a tale of startling discoveries and dazzling practical benefits spanning more than one hundred years -- from the first attempt to identify the basic building block of atoms in the mid-nineteenth century to the discovery of the Bose-Einstein condensate only a few years ago.

Roach, Mary Stiff: the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003)From medicinal mummies to cadaver models for crash-test dummies, a San Francisco writer presents a well-researched, lively dissection of offbeat ways that the dead have served the living and treats medical and ethical issues.

Sobel, Dava Longitude: the True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (1995)

In 1714, England's Parliament offered a reward to anyone whose method or device for measuring longitude proved successful. John Harrison imagined a clock that would withstand pitch and roll, temperature and humidity, and keep precise time at sea--something no clock had been able to do on land. This is the story of Harrison's 40-year effort to build his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer.

Stark, Peter Last Breath: Cautionary Tales from the Limits of Human Endurance (2001)

Sudden, extreme deaths have always fascinated us-- and now more than ever as athletes and travelers rise to the challenges of high-risk sports and journeys on the edge.

Strauch, Barbara Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries about the Teenage Brain Help Us About Our Kids (2003)A mother paces the living room waiting for her sixteen-year-old son to come home hours past his curfew. When he finally saunters in, he answers every question with a blank stare, dashes to his room, and slams the door. The mother, stunned and angry, thinks “It’s just hormones, right?”
Wrong. While raging hormones and an inclination toward rebellion are major players in the teenage drama, an area north of the gonads is directing the show: the brain. In The Primal Teen, Barbara Strauch examines the cutting-edge scientific discoveries that are providing vital new information about what makes teens tick.

Sykes, Bryan The Seven Daughters of Eve (2001)Much more than a metaphor, the seven daughters of Eve represent the seven women that Sykes, (genetics, Oxford U.) has identified as the maternal ancestors of 95% of all modern Europeans. He recounts his work with a particular mitochondrial gene, which passes down the maternal line undiluted, in reconstructing the genetic paths that ethnic groups have travelled from these seven original "clan mothers." The first half of his account discusses both the science and his investigations into genetics, explaining in a popular style how he traced the mitochondrial DNA back in time. The latter half consists of his fictional reconstructions of the lives of the seven women.

Tobin, James Great Projects: the Epic Story of the Building of America from the Taming of the Mississippi to the Invention of the Internet (2001)Since the earliest days of the republic, great engineering projects have shaped American landscapes and expressed American dreams. The ambition to build lies as close to the nation's heart as the belief in liberty. We live in a built civilization, connected one to another in an enormous web of technology. Yet we have all too often overlooked the role of engineers and builders in American history. With glorious photographs and epic narrative sweep, Great Projects at last gives their story the prominence it deserves. Each of the eight projects featured in this masterful narrative was a milestone in its own right: the flood-control works of the lower Mississippi, Hoover Dam, Edison's lighting system, the spread of electricity across the nation, the great Croton Aqueduct, the bridges of New York City, Boston's revamped street system, known as the Big Dig, and the ever-evolving communications network called the Internet. Each project arose from a heroic vision. Each encountered obstacles. Each reveals a tale of genius and perseverance.