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Celebrating 25 years of The Sopranos: The executive producer of The White Lotus shares how he got his start in…
film and television production on &“the greatest TV show of all time&” (Rolling Stone)An inside look at the film industry for fans, students, and aspiring professionals — featuring a foreword by Golden Globe and Emmy Award winning creator of The White Lotus, Mike WhiteThis page-turning account of starting at the lowest rung on the production ladder among enormously famous & outrageously demanding people will be devoured for its insights, gossip, humor, & storytelling. Married and with a child, the author takes unpaid gigs to get a foot in the door, and eventually ends up working on all seasons of The Sopranos, often named the best TV show ever.The show's setting and its creator's insistence on accuracy placed the native New Jersey author in the right place at the right time to become part of television history, and to witness the effects of sudden fame and acclaim on the show's principal players.Includes many stories about guest stars like Steve Buscemi, Peter Bogdanovich, and Lauren Bacall, as well as the beloved cast, including new tales of James Gandolfini, who Kamine first meets after David Chase casts him as the Dean of Admissions in the classic first season "College" episode. Later, after he&’s been promoted, Kamine gets the calls from Gandolfini when he's hungover, or still drunk, and might or might not make it to the shoot that day. One night, Kamine tries to prevent Gandolfini from taking a swim in the ocean after they've been drinking all night, telling him it could be dangerous but Jim doesn't listen.Woven in is a personal story of home life and strife, achievement and frustration, anxiety and accomplishment. The book's epilogue brings readers up to the moment as the author, after many more years as an anonymous everyman, eventually enjoys outsize professional success as executive producer of the HBO hit series created by Mike White, The White Lotus.The Avro Arrow: For the Record
Par Palmiro Campagna. 2003
“No one has done more than Palmiro Campagna to document the story of Canada’s extraordinary Avro Arrow ... This latest…
work sheds new light on the Arrow’s fascinating saga.” — ANDREW CHAIKIN, author of A Man on the MoonAn expanded edition of the bestselling book, including newly discovered American records that shed further light on the disastrous cancellation of the Avro Arrow. The controversial cancellation of the Avro Arrow — an extraordinary achievement of Canadian military aviation — continues to inspire debate today. When the program was scrapped in 1959, all completed aircraft and those awaiting assembly were destroyed, along with tooling and technical information. Was abandoning the program the right decision? Did Canada lose more than it gained?Brimming with information to fill the gaps in the Arrow’s troubled history, this new edition also brings to light recently discovered documents that answer whether the United States government wished Canada to continue the development of what was considered the world’s most advanced interceptor aircraft.Kenneyism: Jason Kenney's Pursuit of Power
Par Jeremy Appel. 2024
The harsh moralistic worldview of Jason Kenney has spurred right-wing populism to the mainstream in Canadian politics, but he unleashed…
forces he couldn’t control.From Jason Kenney’s days as an anti-abortion activist at the University of San Francisco, and through his years as a Canadian Taxpayers Federation lobbyist, Reform MP, top cabinet minister in the Harper government, and Alberta premier, he has been single-mindedly driven to bring his harsh moralistic worldview into the mainstream. Kenney took on the old guard of Canada’s liberal consensus and won, playing a key role in shifting the country’s political discussion to the right. But the very right-wing populist forces Kenney cultivated would come back to haunt him.Jeremy Appel has observed Alberta politics and reported on various aspects of Kenney’s agenda since 2017, when Kenney made his way across the province in his big blue pickup truck to rile up aggrieved conservatives. Kenneyism examines Kenney's political beliefs, his rise through federal political ranks, and his ultimate resignation from the leadership of the United Conservative Party.Albert Einstein, The Human Side: Glimpses from His Archives
Par Albert Einstein. 2014
Modesty, humor, compassion, and wisdom are the traits most evident in this illuminating selection of personal papers from the Albert…
Einstein Archives. The illustrious physicist wrote as thoughtfully to an Ohio fifth-grader, distressed by her discovery that scientists classify humans as animals, as to a Colorado banker who asked whether Einstein believed in a personal God. Witty rhymes, an exchange with Queen Elizabeth of Belgium about fine music, and expressions of his devotion to Zionism are but some of the highlights found in this warm and enriching book.“Amazing….Explores human courage under the most trying circumstances.” —New York Post“An inspirational story about business, medical science, and one father’s…
refusal to give up hope.” —Boston GlobeThe book that inspired the movie, Extraordinary Measures, starring Harrison Ford, Brendan Fraser, and Keri Russell, The Cure by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Geeta Anand is the remarkable true story of one father’s determination to find a cure for his terminally sick children even if it meant he had to build a business from scratch to do so. At once a riveting story of the birth of an enterprise—ala Tracy Kidder’s The Soul of a New Machine—and a inspiring tale of the indomitable human spirit in the vein of Erin Brockovich and A Civil Action, The Cure is a testament to ingenuity, unflagging will, and unconquerable love.John Napier: Life, Logarithms, and Legacy
Par Julian Havil. 2015
The most comprehensive account of the mathematician's life and workJohn Napier (1550–1617) is celebrated today as the man who invented…
logarithms—an enormous intellectual achievement that would soon lead to the development of their mechanical equivalent in the slide rule: the two would serve humanity as the principal means of calculation until the mid-1970s. Yet, despite Napier's pioneering efforts, his life and work have not attracted detailed modern scrutiny. John Napier is the first contemporary biography to take an in-depth look at the multiple facets of Napier’s story: his privileged position as the eighth Laird of Merchiston and the son of influential Scottish landowners; his reputation as a magician who dabbled in alchemy; his interest in agriculture; his involvement with a notorious outlaw; his staunch anti-Catholic beliefs; his interactions with such peers as Henry Briggs, Johannes Kepler, and Tycho Brahe; and, most notably, his estimable mathematical legacy.Julian Havil explores Napier’s original development of logarithms, the motivations for his approach, and the reasons behind certain adjustments to them. Napier’s inventive mathematical ideas also include formulas for solving spherical triangles, "Napier’s Bones" (a more basic but extremely popular alternative device for calculation), and the use of decimal notation for fractions and binary arithmetic. Havil also considers Napier’s study of the Book of Revelation, which led to his prediction of the Apocalypse in his first book, A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St. John—the work for which Napier believed he would be most remembered.John Napier assesses one man’s life and the lasting influence of his advancements on the mathematical sciences and beyond.The Logician and the Engineer: How George Boole and Claude Shannon Created the Information Age
Par Paul J. Nahin. 2012
How two pioneers of math and technology ushered in the computer revolutionBoolean algebra, also called Boolean logic, is at the…
heart of the electronic circuitry in everything we use—from our computers and cars, to home appliances. How did a system of mathematics established in the Victorian era become the basis for such incredible technological achievements a century later? In The Logician and the Engineer, Paul Nahin combines engaging problems and a colorful historical narrative to tell the remarkable story of how two men in different eras—mathematician and philosopher George Boole and electrical engineer and pioneering information theorist Claude Shannon—advanced Boolean logic and became founding fathers of the electronic communications age. Nahin takes readers from fundamental concepts to a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of modern digital machines, in order to explore computing and its possible limitations in the twenty-first century and beyond.Einstein and the Quantum: The Quest of the Valiant Swabian
Par A. Douglas Stone. 2016
The untold story of Albert Einstein's role as the father of quantum theoryEinstein and the Quantum reveals for the first…
time the full significance of Albert Einstein's contributions to quantum theory. Einstein famously rejected quantum mechanics, observing that God does not play dice. But, in fact, he thought more about the nature of atoms, molecules, and the emission and absorption of light—the core of what we now know as quantum theory—than he did about relativity.A compelling blend of physics, biography, and the history of science, Einstein and the Quantum shares the untold story of how Einstein—not Max Planck or Niels Bohr—was the driving force behind early quantum theory. It paints a vivid portrait of the iconic physicist as he grappled with the apparently contradictory nature of the atomic world, in which its invisible constituents defy the categories of classical physics, behaving simultaneously as both particle and wave. And it demonstrates how Einstein's later work on the emission and absorption of light, and on atomic gases, led directly to Erwin Schrödinger's breakthrough to the modern form of quantum mechanics. The book sheds light on why Einstein ultimately renounced his own brilliant work on quantum theory, due to his deep belief in science as something objective and eternal.Undiluted Hocus-Pocus: The Autobiography of Martin Gardner
Par Martin Gardner. 2013
The autobiography of the beloved writer who inspired a generation to study math and scienceMartin Gardner wrote the Mathematical Games…
column for Scientific American for twenty-five years and published more than seventy books on topics as diverse as magic, religion, and Alice in Wonderland. Gardner's illuminating autobiography is a candid self-portrait by the man evolutionary theorist Stephen Jay Gould called our "single brightest beacon" for the defense of rationality and good science against mysticism and anti-intellectualism.Gardner takes readers from his childhood in Oklahoma to his varied and wide-ranging professional pursuits. He shares colorful anecdotes about the many fascinating people he met and mentored, and voices strong opinions on the subjects that matter to him most, from his love of mathematics to his uncompromising stance against pseudoscience. For Gardner, our mathematically structured universe is undiluted hocus-pocus—a marvelous enigma, in other words.Undiluted Hocus-Pocus offers a rare, intimate look at Gardner’s life and work, and the experiences that shaped both.A comparative look at evangelical churches across the U.S.-Canada border that reveals deep political differencesIt is now a common refrain…
among liberals that Christian Right pastors and television pundits have hijacked evangelical Christianity for partisan gain. The Politics of Evangelical Identity challenges this notion, arguing that the hijacking metaphor paints a fundamentally distorted picture of how evangelical churches have become politicized. The book reveals how the powerful coalition between evangelicals and the Republican Party is not merely a creation of political elites who have framed conservative issues in religious language, but is anchored in the lives of local congregations.Drawing on her groundbreaking research at evangelical churches near the U.S. border with Canada—two in Buffalo, New York, and two in Hamilton, Ontario—Lydia Bean compares how American and Canadian evangelicals talk about politics in congregational settings. While Canadian evangelicals share the same theology and conservative moral attitudes as their American counterparts, their politics are quite different. On the U.S. side of the border, political conservatism is woven into the very fabric of everyday religious practice. Bean shows how subtle partisan cues emerge in small group interactions as members define how "we Christians" should relate to others in the broader civic arena, while liberals are cast in the role of adversaries. She explains how the most explicit partisan cues come not from clergy but rather from lay opinion leaders who help their less politically engaged peers to link evangelical identity to conservative politics.The Politics of Evangelical Identity demonstrates how deep the ties remain between political conservatism and evangelical Christianity in America.Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age
Par W. Bernard Carlson. 2013
The definitive account of Tesla's life and workNikola Tesla was a major contributor to the electrical revolution that transformed daily…
life at the turn of the twentieth century. His inventions, patents, and theoretical work formed the basis of modern AC electricity, and contributed to the development of radio and television. Like his competitor Thomas Edison, Tesla was one of America's first celebrity scientists, enjoying the company of New York high society and dazzling the likes of Mark Twain with his electrical demonstrations. An astute self-promoter and gifted showman, he cultivated a public image of the eccentric genius. Even at the end of his life when he was living in poverty, Tesla still attracted reporters to his annual birthday interview, regaling them with claims that he had invented a particle-beam weapon capable of bringing down enemy aircraft.Plenty of biographies glamorize Tesla and his eccentricities, but until now none has carefully examined what, how, and why he invented. In this groundbreaking book, W. Bernard Carlson demystifies the legendary inventor, placing him within the cultural and technological context of his time, and focusing on his inventions themselves as well as the creation and maintenance of his celebrity. Drawing on original documents from Tesla's private and public life, Carlson shows how he was an "idealist" inventor who sought the perfect experimental realization of a great idea or principle, and who skillfully sold his inventions to the public through mythmaking and illusion.This major biography sheds new light on Tesla's visionary approach to invention and the business strategies behind his most important technological breakthroughs.Karl Pearson: The Scientific Life in a Statistical Age
Par Theodore M. Porter. 2004
Karl Pearson, founder of modern statistics, came to this field by way of passionate early studies of philosophy and cultural…
history as well as ether physics and graphical geometry. His faith in science grew out of a deeply moral quest, reflected also in his socialism and his efforts to find a new basis for relations between men and women. This biography recounts Pearson's extraordinary intellectual adventure and sheds new light on the inner life of science. Theodore Porter's intensely personal portrait of Pearson extends from religious crisis and sexual tensions to metaphysical and even mathematical anxieties. Pearson sought to reconcile reason with enthusiasm and to achieve the impersonal perspective of science without sacrificing complex individuality. Even as he longed to experience nature directly and intimately, he identified science with renunciation and positivistic detachment. Porter finds a turning point in Pearson's career, where his humanistic interests gave way to statistical ones, in his Grammar of Science (1892), in which he attempted to establish scientific method as the moral educational basis for a refashioned culture. In this original and engaging book, a leading historian of modern science investigates the interior experience of one man's scientific life while placing it in a rich tapestry of social, political, and intellectual movements.Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germany: Individual Fates and Global Impact
Par Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze. 2009
The emigration of mathematicians from Europe during the Nazi era signaled an irrevocable and important historical shift for the international…
mathematics world. Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germany is the first thoroughly documented account of this exodus. In this greatly expanded translation of the 1998 German edition, Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze describes the flight of more than 140 mathematicians, their reasons for leaving, the political and economic issues involved, the reception of these emigrants by various countries, and the emigrants' continuing contributions to mathematics. The influx of these brilliant thinkers to other nations profoundly reconfigured the mathematics world and vaulted the United States into a new leadership role in mathematics research. Based on archival sources that have never been examined before, the book discusses the preeminent emigrant mathematicians of the period, including Emmy Noether, John von Neumann, Hermann Weyl, and many others. The author explores the mechanisms of the expulsion of mathematicians from Germany, the emigrants' acculturation to their new host countries, and the fates of those mathematicians forced to stay behind. The book reveals the alienation and solidarity of the emigrants, and investigates the global development of mathematics as a consequence of their radical migration. An in-depth yet accessible look at mathematics both as a scientific enterprise and human endeavor, Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germany provides a vivid picture of a critical chapter in the history of international science.The most famous scientist of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein was also one of the century's most outspoken political activists.…
Deeply engaged with the events of his tumultuous times, from the two world wars and the Holocaust, to the atomic bomb and the Cold War, to the effort to establish a Jewish homeland, Einstein was a remarkably prolific political writer, someone who took courageous and often unpopular stands against nationalism, militarism, anti-Semitism, racism, and McCarthyism. In Einstein on Politics, leading Einstein scholars David Rowe and Robert Schulmann gather Einstein's most important public and private political writings and put them into historical context. The book reveals a little-known Einstein--not the ineffectual and naïve idealist of popular imagination, but a principled, shrewd pragmatist whose stands on political issues reflected the depth of his humanity.Nothing encapsulates Einstein's profound involvement in twentieth-century politics like the atomic bomb. Here we read the former militant pacifist's 1939 letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning that Germany might try to develop an atomic bomb. But the book also documents how Einstein tried to explain this action to Japanese pacifists after the United States used atomic weapons to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki, events that spurred Einstein to call for international control of nuclear technology.A vivid firsthand view of how one of the twentieth century's greatest minds responded to the greatest political challenges of his day, Einstein on Politics will forever change our picture of Einstein's public activism and private motivations.Freedom: A Mixtape
Par Marcel Stewart with Suitcase In Point. 2024
Freedom: A Mixtape is a soulful artistic response to recent and historical violence on Black bodies, presented through a collection…
of original songs, stories, poems, anecdotes, spoken-word pieces, and musical instrumentation from folks living in Ontario's Niagara Region. A community conversation about our complicated relationship with emancipation and the human right to be free, Freedom: A Mixtape is a compilation album that is part protest and part celebration. It is history and the present moment all at once, a reminder that this moment is part of a larger, ongoing movement. Familiar pains are felt deeply in moments both bygone and bitingly present, setting the tone—and stage—for action.Analog field recordings and soothing talk-radio energy give voice to the residue of intergenerational trauma, the depths of colonialism, resilience amidst oppressive conditions, and a clarion call that joy is a birthright for everyone. With emotional precision and softness, Freedom: A Mixtape offers a radical reminder that in our bleakest moments, we rise up through love of self and community.Twin to Twin: From High-Risk Pregnancy to Happy Family
Par Crystal Duffy. 2019
A twenty-nine-year-old mother’s harrowing and inspiring adventure through a high-risk twin pregnancy.One minute Crystal was sitting at a candlelight dinner…
in Paris with her husband. The next she was back home in Houston, sitting in her OB-GYN’s office concerned that she was having a second miscarriage. But she was actually pregnant with twins! Since Crystal and her husband Ed already had a two-year-old daughter, Abigail, she couldn’t imagine why mothering twins would be all that different. That is until she learns her twins have a life-threatening condition called Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome, meaning Baby B is transfusing blood (disproportionately) to Baby A.Crystal is declared too high risk, so her OB sends her to the 5th floor of the Houston Medical Center for the duration of her pregnancy. Sitting alone in her hospital bed, Crystal wonders how she’ll pass the next few weeks, away from her husband and daughter. Soon she embarks on an emotional rollercoaster—from late night emergency ultrasounds to hospital baby blessings, sprinkled with comic relief from nurses and hospital staff.Twin to Twin is a raw and inspirational story filled with tenderness, vulnerability, and humor. It chronicles the wildest, most terrifying and challenging year of Crystal’s life, which is also the most beautiful and eye-opening. Her hope is that it will bring strength to other women dealing with their own personal trials and tragedies, so they can also triumph.Praise for Twin to Twin“An “orphan” disease, expectant mothers with Twin to Twin (and their support systems) should adopt . . . Twin to Twin. An intimate account, told with flagging and unflagging optimism, Duffy’s story ensures that others need not ride alone through this rollercoaster experience.” —Suzy Becker, author of One Good Egg“Duffy’s wit and self-deprecating humor helped her survive the realities and (sometimes devastating) physical and emotional truths of her high-stakes twin pregnancy. Twin to Twin is engaging, compelling, and yes, entertaining read.” —Susan Krawitz, author of Viva RoseDear Mom and Dad: A Letter About Family, Memory, and the America We Once Knew
Par Patti Davis. 2024
A remarkably poignant writer for our troubled times, Patti Davis writes about love, loss, and the power of redemption in…
this poetic letter to her long-gone parents. Written with dignity and grace in the form of a letter to her parents, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Dear Mom and Dad is that surprisingly poignant work that succeeds not only as a memoir but as a moving account that will inspire readers to recall their own childhoods in a totally new light. Eager to retell the narrative of her own family and her coming-of-age, Patti Davis casts aside misperceptions that defined her in the past. Far from being the enfant terrible, Dear Mom and Dad reveals young Patti as a sensitive child, who was not able to be the public person her family demanded. Just as she re-examines her own role in an increasingly dysfunctional family drama, Davis casts an empathetic yet honest eye on her parents—on her father, the eternal lifeguard, who saved seventy-seven people, yet failed to create a coherent AIDS policy, and her mother, who never escaped her own tortured youth. What comes across are Davis’s burnished skills as a writer, something she always dreamed of becoming. Even as she unravels her mother’s highly edited persona, and her father’s loving but distant personality, Davis remains steadfast in her artistic expression, as she melds irony, comedy, and tragedy with dreamlike memories of an ever-present past. Dear Mom and Dad, with its account of her father’s Alzheimer's and her mother’s end-of-life struggles, becomes an account of forgiveness, reaching levels of redemption rarely found in contemporary memoirs.Rogers v. Rogers: The Battle for Control of Canada's Telecom Empire
Par Alexandra Posadzki. 2024
A riveting, deeply reported account that takes us inside the dramatic battle for control of Canada&’s largest wireless carrier, and…
paints a broader picture of the cutthroat telecom industry, the labyrinth of regulatory and political systems that govern it, and the high-stakes corporate games played by the Canadian establishment. Alexandra Posadzki&’s ground-breaking coverage in the Globe and Mail exposed one of the most spectacular boardroom and family dramas in Canadian corporate history—one that has pitted the company&’s extraordinarily powerful chairman and controlling shareholder, Edward Rogers, against not only his own management team but also the wishes of his mother and two of his sisters. Hanging in the balance is no less than the pending $20 billion acquisition of Shaw Communications, a historic deal that promises to transform Rogers into the truly national telecom empire that its late founder, Ted Rogers, always envisioned. Based on deeply sourced, investigative reporting of the iconic $30 billion publicly traded telecom and media giant, Posadzki takes us inside a company that touches the lives of millions of Canadians, challenging what we thought we knew about corporate governance and who really holds the power. Rogers v. Rogers is also a story of family legacy and succession, of an old guard pushing back at the new guard, and of a company struggling to find its footing in the wake of its legendary founder&’s death. At the heart of it all is a dispute between warring factions of the family over how they each interpret the desires of the late patriarch and the very identity of the company that bears their name.The Open Heart Club: A Story about Birth and Death and Cardiac Surgery
Par Gabriel Brownstein. 2019
This absorbing and poignant book is not merely the story of one writer's flawed heart. It is a history of…
cardiac medicine, a candid personal journey, and a profound reflection on mortality.Born in 1966 with a congenital heart defect known as the tetralogy of Fallot, Gabriel Brownstein entered the world just as doctors were learning to operate on conditions like his. He received a life-saving surgery at five years old, and since then has ridden wave after wave of medical innovation, a series of interventions that have kept his heart beating.The Open Heart Club is both a memoir of a life on the edge of medicine's reach and a history of the remarkable people who have made such a life possible. It begins with the visionary anatomists of the seventeenth century, tells the stories of the doctors (all women) who invented pediatric cardiology, and includes the lives of patients and physicians struggling to understand the complexities of the human heart. The Open Heart Club is a riveting work of compassionate storytelling, a journey into the dark hinterlands between sickness and health lit by bright moments of humor and inspiration.A surprising, groundbreaking, and fiercely entertaining medical history that is both a collective narrative of women’s bodies and a call…
to action for a new conversation around women’s health.For as long as medicine has been a practice, women's bodies have been treated like objects to be practiced on: examined and ignored, idealized and sexualized, shamed, subjugated, mutilated, and dismissed. The history of women’s healthcare is a story in which women themselves have too often been voiceless—a narrative instead written from the perspective of men who styled themselves as authorities on the female of the species, yet uninformed by women’s own voices, thoughts, fears, pain and experiences. The result is a cultural and societal legacy that continues to shape the (mis)treatment and care of women.While the modern age has seen significant advancements in the medical field, the notion that female bodies are flawed inversions of the male ideal lingers on—as do the pervasive societal stigmas and lingering ignorance that shape women’s health and relationships with their own bodies.Memorial Sloan Kettering oncologist and medical historian Dr. Elizabeth Comen draws back the curtain on the collective medical history of women to reintroduce us to our whole bodies—how they work, the actual doctors and patients whose perspectives and experiences laid the foundation for today’s medical thought, and the many oversights that still remain unaddressed. With a physician’s knowledge and empathy, Dr. Comen follows the road map of the eleven organ systems to share unique and untold stories, drawing upon medical texts and journals, interviews with expert physicians, as well as her own experience treating thousands of women.Empowering women to better understand ourselves and advocate for care that prioritizes healthy and joyful lives— for us and generations to come—All in Her Head is written with humor, wisdom, and deep scientific and cultural insight. Eye-opening, sometimes enraging, yet always captivating, this shared memoir of women’s medical history is an essential contribution to a holistic understanding and much-needed reclaiming of women’s history and bodies.