The partnership of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace was one that would change science forever. They were an unlikely pair – one the professor son of a banker, the other the only child of an acclaimed poet and a social-reforming mathematician – but perhaps that is why their work was so revolutionary. They were the pioneers of computer science, creating plans for what could have been the first computer. They each saw things the other did not: it may have been Charles who des...

Welcome to the illogical, idiosyncratic, outrageous linguistic phenomenon known as the English language. The story of how this ragtag collection of words evolved is a winding tale replete with intriguing accidents and bizarre twists of fate. In this eye-opening, fabulously entertaining book, James Essinger unlocks the mysteries that have confounded linguists and scholars for millennia.From the sophisticated writing systems of the ancient Sumerians through the tongue twisters of Mid...

Ada Lovelace was the only legitimate child of Lord Byron, the dangerous romantic poet whose name became a byword for scandal. Over the past decades, she herself has become a surprising underground star for digital pioneers all over the world, starting with Alan Turing. Embraced by programmers and women in technology, Ada even has her own day that is commemorated every year on Google's search engine. Ada's Algorithm, tells the exceptional story of Ada Lovelace's life and achievement, and tr...

‘One Man’s Mountain’ is a powerful and energetic memoir describing how what seem to be distant and unachievable dreams can become real and develop into a life’s experience that is way beyond what was thought possible.The book depicts life’s experiences leading from war-time to normal peacetime living. An ordinary suburban lifestyle enables the writer to explore and adventure on two wheels and brings to life a competitive spirit, which causes the writer to see and develop an ambition. The g...

Writing Fiction is a little pot of gold... 'Screenplay' by Syd Field for film, 'Writing Fiction' by James Essinger for fiction. It's that simple.'William Osborne, novelist and screenwriter'Writing Fiction - a user-friendly guide' is a must-read if you want to write stories to a professional standard.It draws on the author's more than thirty years of experience as a professional writer, and on the work and ideas of writers including:— Anthony Burgess— Jo...

Ten million thalidomide pills had already been produced for distribution in the United States when it was first submitted to the FDA for approval. The morning sickness wonder drug had been approved for sale in Germany, Canada, and the UK, and the drug's distributors assumed that it would be no different in the United States. The answer they received was unexpected and firm: it needed more testing. It later came to light that thalidomide was causing severe birth defects throughout the world...

Jacquard's Web is the story of some of the most ingenious inventors the world has ever known, a fascinating account of how a hand-loom invented in Napoleonic France led to the development of the modern information age. James Essinger, a master story-teller, shows through a series of remarkable and meticulously researched historical connections (spanning two centuries and never investigated before) that the Jacquard loom kick-started a process of scientific evolution which would le...

In the tradition of Dava Sobel's Longitude comes sailing expert David Barrie's compelling and dramatic tale of invention and discovery—an eloquent elegy to one of the most important navigational instruments ever created, and the daring mariners who used it to explore, conquer, and map the world.Since its invention in 1759, a mariner's most prized possession has been the sextant. A navigation tool that measures the angle between a celestial object and the horizon, the sextant allowe...

The first full-scale history of Hannibal's Carthage in decades and "a convincing and enthralling narrative." (The Economist )Drawing on a wealth of new research, archaeologist, historian, and master storyteller Richard Miles resurrects the civilization that ancient Rome struggled so mightily to expunge. This monumental work charts the entirety of Carthage's history, from its origins among the Phoenician settlements of Lebanon to its apotheosis as a Mediter...

“An elegant, wide-ranging history” (The New York Review of Books) of the centuries-long quest to discover the critical role of germs in disease thatreveals as much about human reasoning—and the pitfalls of ego—as it does about microbes.“Levenson takes readers through an entertaining . . . journey of missed opportunities in microbiology and the eventual advances that arose in this field.”—ScienceScientists and enthusiastic ...

A scholar and bookmaker “breathes both books-as-objects and their creators back into life” (Financial Times) in this five-hundred-year history of printed books, told through the people who created themBooks tell all kinds of stories—romances, tragedies, comedies—but if we learn to read the signs correctly, they can tell us the story of their own making too. The Book-Makers offers a new way into the story of Western culture’s most important object,...