Showing results for "the quest" in Professionals & Academics

At the age of eight, Karl Popper was puzzling over the idea of infinity and by fifteen was beginning to take a keen interest in his father's well-stocked library of books. Unended Quest recounts these moments and many others in the life of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, providing an indispensable account of the ideas that influenced him most. As an introduction to Popper's philosophy, Unended Quest also shines. Popper lucidly explains the central ideas in his work, making this book ideal for anyone coming to Popper's life and work for the first time.

A kaleidoscopic journey through the secret history of hues—and the story of the obsessive genius behind the definitions of colors we use today, from the beloved author of Word by Word begonia (n.): 3 -s : a deep pink that is bluer, lighter, and stronger than average coral (see coral 3b), bluer...

The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the 20th century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, MD, who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman's documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius. 

The search to find medicines is as old as disease, which is to say as old as the human race. Through serendipity - by chewing, brewing, and snorting - some Neolithic souls discovered opium, alcohol, snakeroot, juniper, frankincense, and other helpful substances. Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,000-year-old hunter frozen in the Italian Alps, was found to have whipworms in his intestines and Bronze Age medicine, a worm-killing birch fungus, knotted to his leggings.

A rollicking history of the life and work of an unheralded genius: Dr. Solomon Snyder, whose experiments with mind-altering drugs helped change the way we think about the causes and treatments of schizophrenia. This program is read by the author. In the 1950s, the field of psychiatry had nothing...

A "pacy, smartly reported" (Financial Times) account of the historic quest to rekindle the human exploration and colonization of space led by two rival billionaires The Space Barons is the story of a group of billionaire entrepreneurs who are pouring their fortunes into the epic resurrection of...

As a graduate student at MIT, Steve Ramirez successfully created false memories in the lab. Now, as a neuroscientist working at the frontiers of brain science, he foresees a future where we can replace our negative memories with positive ones. In How to Change a Memory, Ramirez draws on his own memories of friendship, family, loss and recovery to reveal how memory can be turned on and off like a switch, edited and even constructed from nothing.

Brought to you by Penguin. We are entering an empathy crisis. Most of our communication is conveyed through non-verbal cues - facial expressions, tone of voice, body language - nuances that are completely lost when we interact through our smartphones and other technology. The result is a digital...

A powerful and inspiring memoir about how one man's cancer diagnosis led to him become a doctor and advocate for change in the healthcare system. At the age of twenty-eight, with his Beijing-based science communications business doing well and a new relationship blossoming, Ben Bravery woke from...

In October 2008, someone going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto posted a white paper outlining 'a peer-to-peer electronic cash system' called Bitcoin to an arcane listserv populated by Cypherpunks. No one in the community had heard of Nakamoto, and just as people were starting to wonder who he was, he vanished. As the years passed, and the scope of Nakamoto's achievement became clear, the truth of his identity grew into the greatest unsolved mystery of our time. The Mysterious Mr Nakamoto traces Benjamin Wallace's attempt to unmask the figure behind the currency and the world it wrought.

Sex, Drugs and Walking Sticks is a one-stop guide for living well and feeling confident in your older years. It frees you from being what you “ought” to be, to being whatever you like. You’ve earned that freedom. Dr Miriam’s approach is to get you feeling happy about as many aspects of your life as you want to, whether that be confidence in health, happiness, relationships, looks and more.

Does your blood pressure surge if the car in front of you turns without signaling? Do your neck veins pulsate when a cashier takes too long to ring you up? Does relaxing seem like it'll have to wait until you're dead? Then your name could very well be Brian Frazer. On paper, Frazer is the world's healthiest guy. He eats right, exercises regularly, gets plenty of sleep, has never smoked and has missed only one day of flossing in the last five years. But inside he's a swirling vortex of angst, capable of contracting a new malady every month.

How I Became a Human Being is Mark O'Brien’s account of his struggles to lead an independent life despite a lifelong disability. In 1955 he contracted polio and became permanently paralyzed from the neck down. O'Brien describes growing up without the use of his limbs, his adolescence struggling with physical rehabilitation and suffering the bureaucracy of hospitals and institutions, and his adult life as an independent student and writer. Despite his physical limitations, O'Brien crafts a narrative that is as rich and vivid as the life he led.

From the co-author of Three Cups of Tea comes the inspiring story of two very different doctors—one from the United States, the other from Nepal—united in a common mission: to rid the world of preventable blindness. In this transporting book, David Oliver Relin shines a light on the work...

Everyone knows the story of the codebreaker and computer science pioneer Alan Turing. Except.... When Dermot Turing is asked about his famous uncle, people want to know more than the bullet points of his life. They want to know everything—was Alan Turing actually a codebreaker? What did he make of artificial intelligence? What is the significance of Alan Turing's trial, his suicide, the Royal Pardon, the 50 note and the film The Imitation Game? In Reflections of Alan Turing, Dermot strips off the layers to uncover the real story.

'Ultimately as inspiring and devastating as the Amazon itself' The Guardian 'Bold, pacy, bursting with optimism and filled with vivid descriptions, this is the work of an indomitable soul' - Guy Shrubsole A brilliantly colourful work of reportage ... a haunting and truly important read' - The...

When Bob Quinn was a kid, a stranger at a county fair gave him a few kernels of an unusual grain. Little did he know, that grain would change his life. Years later, after finishing a PhD in plant biochemistry and returning to his family's farm in Montana, Bob started experimenting with organic wheat. In the beginning, his concern wasn't health or the environment; he just wanted to make a decent living and some chance encounters led him to organics.  

A journey through the attempts artists, scientists, and tinkerers have made to imagine and communicate with the otherworldly using various technologies, from cameras to radiowaves. Strange Frequencies takes readers on an extraordinary narrative and historical journey to discover how people have...

"A hilarious and moving story of unconventional entrepreneurialism, passion, and guts." --Danny Meyer, CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group; Founder of Shake Shack; Author of Setting the Table Original recipes by J. Kenji López-Alt of The Food Lab and Stella Parks of BraveTart James Beard...

The uplifting, adventure-filled memoir of one groundbreaking scientist’s quest to develop new ways to fight illness and disease through the healing powers of plants. “A fascinating and deeply personal journey.” ­—Amy Stewart, author of Wicked Plants and The Drunken Botanist Traveling by...