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Burke, James ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
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THE KNOWLEDGE WEB
Burke, James
1999 55202 From the Publisher In The Knowledge Web, James Burke, the bestselling author and host of television's Connections series, takes us on a fascinating tour through the interlocking threads of knowledge running through Western history. Displaying mesmerizing flights of fancy, he shows how seemingly unrelated ideas and innovations bounce off one another, spinning a vast, interactive web on which everything is connected to everything else: Carmen leads to the theory of relativity, champagne bottling links to wallpaper design, Joan of Arc connects through vaudeville to Buffalo Bill. Illustrating his open, connective theme in the form of a journey across a web, Burke breaks down complex concepts, offering information in a manner accessible to anybody -- high school graduates and Ph.D. holders alike. The journey touches almost two hundred interlinked points in the history of knowledge, ultimately ending where it begins. At once amusing and instructing, The Knowledge Web heightens our awareness of our interdependence -- with one another and with the past. Only by understanding the interrelated nature of the modern world can we hope to identify complex patterns of change and direct the process of innovation to the common good. Publishers Weekly Continuing in the vein of The Pinball Effect, his unconventional history of technological change, Burke offers 20 new historical "story lines" that attempt to demonstrate the interactive, often serendipitous connections among ideas, events, people and innovations. His style matches his subject as he skips from one topic to another, moving at the speed of hypertext. The chapter on feedback systems hops from neural networks--computers that simulate the human brain's workings--to studies of the physiology of animal emotion, Cyrus Field's pioneering transatlantic telephone cable in 1857 and thence to Napoleon, James Watt, Arts and Crafts movement leader William Morris and Theosophist Annie Besant. Burke always risks being charged with carrying on an intellectual parlor game that trivializes the history of science and invention, of stretching the maxim "everything is interconnected" to the point of meaninglessness. But because his material is intrinsically interesting and because Burke is a superb raconteur, his maverick guide to the byways of Western civilization is entertaining when consumed in small segments. This manic, associative tour of the cultural underpinnings of technological advancement fast, sexy and packed with information; but it's ultimately shapeless and provides little in the way of deeper understanding. (June) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information. Library Journal Flights of fancy from a sci-tech expert, e.g., what do Buffalo Bill Cody and the Spanish Inquisition have in common? Kirkus Reviews Back playing his theme music-"the process by which new ideas emerge is serendipitous and interactive"-is the hugely entertaining Burke (The Pinball Effect, 1996, etc.). He's off on another of his joyrides, following the often bizarre pathways that lead from one idea to another, following like a bloodhound the threads that link events and notions and personalities. And he doesn't just list the things passing strange before his purview, he stops to examine them and deliver a smart little explication. He's not just amused to learn that the Magnetico-Electrico Celestial Bed, wherein the administrations of shocks to the participants was said to "ensure immediate conception," can be found on the road to the cornflake, he wants readers to know why. And it's pure pleasure to read as he unravels the skein knotting the pugnacious father of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener, to the equally pugnacious antivivisectionists, and "a thirty-three-year-old married Englishwoman with a hidden past and the habit of wearing no underwear" to, 211 pages later, the Elgin marbles. Burke again makes use of "gateways" in his narrative, a system of numeric codes that link distant strands within the text into a literary subspace, allowing readers to skip about throughout the book, as if Burke's caperings a Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group 0-684-85934-3 / 9780684859347
Hardcover Very Good Condition New York
Price:
22.22 USD
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TWIN TRACKS : THE UNEXPECTED ORIGINS OF THE MODERN WORLD
Burke, James
2003 1400497 James Burke, author and public television star, returns with another quirky look at the way history works. In Twin Tracks, Burke connects "trigger events" with unexpected outcomes. For instance, the invention of the lens-grinding lathe leads to hairdressing, and the debut of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro connects to development of the stealth fighter jet. These events are tied together via two tracks, one written along the book's left-hand pages, and one along the right. The narratives meet up in the end, giving readers a clear idea that the lines of history can be quite subjective. Some of the examples even run backward, as when Burke explains the connections between smallpox and the Big Bang. While Burke is justifiably famous for linking historical events, the paths he takes, especially those involving lots of unfamiliar names, can be tricky to follow: In 1710 the art collection was sold to Philip, regent of France, in a deal brokered by Benedetto Luti, the best painter in Rome at the time.... That year Luti took on an assistant.... By 1714 William Kent was painting originals.... His patron in all this was the trillionaire Earl of Burlington. The best way to read Twin Tracks, as with any of Burke's lovely books, is one chapter at a time, taking thinking breaks in between so as not to become overwhelmed by detail. The networks he describes form a more accurate, if more challenging, picture of history's motion than any linear sequence. --Therese Littleton Product Description: Twin Tracks is a landmark book of real-world stories that investigates the nature of change and divines as never before the unlikely origins of many aspects of contemporary life. In each of the work's twenty-five narratives, we discover how the different outcomes of an important historical event in the past often come together again in the future. Each chapter starts with an event -- such as the U.S. attack on Tripoli in 1804 -- that generates two divergent series of consequences. After tracking each pathway as it ranges far and wide through time and space, Burke shows how the paths finally and unexpectedly converge in the modern world. Twin Tracks pinpoints the myriad ways the future is shaped, whether by love, war, accident, genius, or discovery. For instance, in "The Marriage of Figaro to Stealth Fighter," Burke's twin tracks start with the composer of the opera and the French spy from whose play he stole the plot. The tracks then encompass, among other things, freemasonry, the War of Independence, Captain Cook, jellyfish, Jane Austen, and audio tape. Ultimately, the convergence of the two Figaro tracks sets the stage for the development of Gulf War Stealth aircraft. Wonderfully accessible and lucidly written, Twin Tracks offers an amusing and instructive new view of the past and the future. Simon & Schuster 0-7432-2619-4 / 9780743226196
Hardcover Brand New New York Small Remainder Mark
Price:
15.75 USD
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