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Pilote du bout du monde: souvenirs d'un pilote de brousse dans le Grand Nord
Par Dominique Prinet. 2022
Au cours des années 1960 et 1970, le Grand Nord canadien était en pleine effervescence. Dominique Prinet, alors jeune pilote…
de brousse, y a effectué des vols incroyables, lui qui a transporté, par tous les temps, des pêcheurs, des chasseurs et des trappeurs, des chercheurs d'or ou de pétrole, ainsi que des blessés et des malades nécessitant une évacuation d'urgence. C'était bien avant le GPS, quand les cartes se révélaient imprécises, les modes de communication, rudimentaires, et que les voyages du genre duraient des semainesUn dernier tour d'ambulance: récits d'un paramédic
Par Martin Viau. 2023
Peu de gens savent ce qui se passe réellement à l'arrière d'une ambulance. Martin Viau, paramédic, vous dirait que c'est…
très bien ainsi. Lui et ses collègues interviennent sur des corps amochés, parfois méconnaissables, retrouvés dans des circonstances souvent effroyables. Ils affrontent tous les jours la souffrance et parfois, presque régulièrement, la mortSearching Beyond the Stars: Seven Women in Science Take On Space's Biggest Questions
Par Nicole Mortillaro. 2022
Are we alone in the cosmos? Could we one day live on a different planet? How is life formed? What…
other secrets does the universe hold? Through profiles of seven remarkable women scientists and their achievements in their respective fields, Searching Beyond the Stars takes us deep into space, looking at once to the distant past and the distant future to capture the awe and intrigue of some of the biggest questions we can possibly ask.Making connections across astronomy, chemistry, physics, history, and more, Nicole Mortillaro draws on her own experience as a woman in STEM to highlight the incredible odds each scientist faces while chasing new discoveries and the ways in which sexism and racism, among other barriers, still affect women scientists to this day. Sidebars filled with fascinating facts take readers behind the science and encourage them to delve deeper. Vibrant illustrations by Amanda Key showcase the wonder of space and the passion and eternal curiosity that drive each scientist in their work unfurling the mysteries of our universe.Scientists ProfiledKatherine Johnson, research mathematician and aerospace technologist at NASA. Helped get the first American astronauts into space and safely home again. Lived in Newport News, Virgina.Jill Tarter, radio astronomer and project scientist at NASA. Opened up possibilities for communicating with aliens. Lives in Berkeley, California.Sara Seager, astrophysicist and planetary scientist. Credited with laying the foundation for the field of exoplanet atmospheres and the search for life on exoplanets. Originally from Toronto, Ontario, Sara now lives in Massachusetts.Emily Lakdawalla, planetary scientist, journalist, speaker, and expert science communicator formerly of The Planetary Society. Lives in Los Angeles, California.Tanya Harrison, planetary scientist and geologist. Was on the science operations team for NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter analyzing imaging from a geologist’s standpoint to see whether we might one day live on Mars. Director of Science Strategy at Planet Labs. Lives in Washington, D.C.Renée Hložek, astrophysicist and cosmologist. Her work is to imagine, dream, and calculate the mathematical equations that govern and predict the end of the universe. Originally from South Africa, Renée now lives in Toronto, Ontario.Ashley Walker, astrochemist, science communicator, and activist. Co-organizer of #BlackinChem, #BlackInAstro, and #BlackInPhysics to highlight and amplify the voices of Black researchers and scholars in these fields. Lives in Chicago, Illinois.*A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard SelectionDriven: Rush in the '90s and "in the end" (Rush Across the Decades #3)
Par Martin Popoff. 2021
The conclusion to the definitive biography of the rock 'n' roll kings of the North. In this conclusion to his…
trilogy of authoritative books on Canada's most beloved and successful rock band, Martin Popoff takes us through three decades of "life at the top" for Rush's Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart. Though this era begins with the brisk-selling Roll the Bones and sees throngs of fans sell out international tours, there is also unimaginable tragedy, with Peart losing his daughter and his wife within the space of ten months and, two decades later, succumbing to cancer himself. In between, however, there is a gorgeous and heartbreaking album of reflection and bereavement, as well as a triumphant trip to Brazil, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, and-some say surprisingly-the band's first full-blown concept album to close an immense career marked by integrity and idealismEvery Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life
Par Jason Roberts. 2024
From the bestselling author of A Sense of the World comes this dramatic, globe-spanning and meticulously-researched story of two scientific…
rivals and their race to survey all life on Earth.In the 18th century, two men dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Their approaches could not have been more different. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster's flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France's royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic swirl of complexities. Both began believing their work to be difficult, but not impossible—how could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species? Stunned by life's diversity, both fell far short of their goal. But in the process they articulated starkly divergent views on nature, on humanity's role in shaping the fate of our planet and on humanity itself. The rivalry between these two unique, driven individuals created reverberations that still echo today. Linnaeus, with the help of acolyte explorers he called "apostles" (only half of whom returned alive), gave the world such concepts as mammal, primate and homo sapiens—but he also denied species change and promulgated racist pseudo-science. Buffon coined the term reproduction, formulated early prototypes of evolution and genetics, and argued passionately against prejudice. It was a clash that, during their lifetimes, Buffon seemed to be winning. But their posthumous fates would take a very different turn.With elegant, propulsive prose grounded in more than a decade of research, featuring appearances by Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin and Charles Darwin, bestselling author Jason Roberts tells an unforgettable true-life tale of intertwined lives and enduring legacies, tracing an arc of insight and discovery that extends across three centuries into the present day.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 bodiesThe bodies keep coming: Dispatches from a black trauma surgeon on racism, violence, and how we heal
Par Brian H Williams. 2023
Trauma surgeon Dr. Brian H. Williams has seen it all—gunshot wounds, stabbings, traumatic brain injuries—and ushers us into the trauma…
bay, where the wounds of a national emergency amass. As a Harvard-trained physician, he learned to keep his head down and his scalpel ready. As a Black man, he learned to swallow rage when patients told him to take out the trash. Just days after the tragic police shootings of two Black men, he tried to save the lives of officers shot in the deadliest incident for US law enforcement since 9/11. Thrust into the spotlight in a nation that loves feel-good stories more than hard truths, he came to rethink everything he thought he knew about medicine, injustice, and what true healing looks like. Now, in raw, intimate detail, he narrates not only the events of that night, but the grief and anger of a Black doctor on the front lines of trauma care. Working in the physician-writer tradition of Gawande and Tweedy, he diagnoses the roots of the violence that plagues us. He draws a through line between white supremacy, gun violence, and the bodies he tries to revive, training his surgeon's gaze on the structural ills manifesting themselves in his patients' bodies. What if racism is a feature of our healthcare system, not a bug? What if profiting from racial inequality is exactly what it's designed to do? Black and brown bodies will continue to be wracked by all types of violence, Williams argues, until we transform policy and law with compassion and careBitter crop: The heartache and triumph of billie holiday's last year
Par Paul Alexander. 2024
A revelatory look at the tumultuous life of a jazz legend and American cultural icon In the first biography of…
Billie Holiday in more than two decades, Paul Alexander—author of heralded lives of Sylvia Plath and J. D. Salinger—gives us an unconventional portrait of arguably America&’s most eminent jazz singer. He shrewdly focuses on the last year of her life—with relevant flashbacks to provide context—to evoke and examine the persistent magnificence of Holiday&’s artistry when it was supposed to have declined, in the wake of her drug abuse, relationships with violent men, and run-ins with the law. During her lifetime and after her death, Billie Holiday was often depicted as a down-on-her-luck junkie severely lacking in self-esteem. Relying on interviews with people who knew her, and new material unearthed in private collections and institutional archives, Bitter Crop —a reference to the last two words of Strange Fruit , her moving song about lynching—limns Holiday as a powerful, ambitious woman who overcame her flaws to triumph as a vital figure of American popular musicAlbert 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.Richard Wagner and His World (The Bard Music Festival #21)
Par Thomas S. Grey. 2009
Richard Wagner (1813-1883) aimed to be more than just a composer. He set out to redefine opera as a "total…
work of art" combining the highest aspirations of drama, poetry, the symphony, the visual arts, even religion and philosophy. Equally celebrated and vilified in his own time, Wagner continues to provoke debate today regarding his political legacy as well as his music and aesthetic theories. Wagner and His World examines his works in their intellectual and cultural contexts. Seven original essays investigate such topics as music drama in light of rituals of naming in the composer's works and the politics of genre; the role of leitmotif in Wagner's reception; the urge for extinction in Tristan und Isolde as psychology and symbol; Wagner as his own stage director; his conflicted relationship with pianist-composer Franz Liszt; the anti-French satire Eine Kapitulation in the context of the Franco-Prussian War; and responses of Jewish writers and musicians to Wagner's anti-Semitism. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Karol Berger, Leon Botstein, Lydia Goehr, Kenneth Hamilton, Katherine Syer, and Christian Thorau. This book also includes translations of essays, reviews, and memoirs by champions and detractors of Wagner; glimpses into his domestic sphere in Tribschen and Bayreuth; and all of Wagner's program notes to his own works. Introductions and annotations are provided by the editor and David Breckbill, Mary A. Cicora, James Deaville, Annegret Fauser, Steven Huebner, David Trippett, and Nicholas Vazsonyi.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.Franz Schubert and His World (The Bard Music Festival #37)
Par Christopher H. Gibbs and Morten Solvik. 2014
The life, times, and music of Franz SchubertDuring his short lifetime, Franz Schubert (1797–1828) contributed to a wide variety of…
musical genres, from intimate songs and dances to ambitious chamber pieces, symphonies, and operas. The essays and translated documents in Franz Schubert and His World examine his compositions and ties to the Viennese cultural context, revealing surprising and overlooked aspects of his music.Contributors explore Schubert's youthful participation in the Nonsense Society, his circle of friends, and changing views about the composer during his life and in the century after his death. New insights are offered about the connections between Schubert’s music and the popular theater of the day, his strategies for circumventing censorship, the musical and narrative relationships linking his song settings of poems by Gotthard Ludwig Kosegarten, and musical tributes he composed to commemorate the death of Beethoven just twenty months before his own. The book also includes translations of excerpts from a literary journal produced by Schubert’s classmates and of Franz Liszt’s essay on the opera Alfonso und Estrella. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Leon Botstein, Lisa Feurzeig, John Gingerich, Kristina Muxfeldt, and Rita Steblin.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.Brahms and His World: Revised Edition (The Bard Music Festival #20)
Par Walter Frisch and Kevin C. Karnes. 2009
Since its first publication in 1990, Brahms and His World has become a key text for listeners, performers, and scholars…
interested in the life, work, and times of one of the nineteenth century's most celebrated composers. In this substantially revised and enlarged edition, the editors remain close to the vision behind the original book while updating its contents to reflect new perspectives on Brahms that have developed over the past two decades. To this end, the original essays by leading experts are retained and revised, and supplemented by contributions from a new generation of Brahms scholars. Together, they consider such topics as Brahms's relationship with Clara and Robert Schumann, his musical interactions with the "New German School" of Wagner and Liszt, his influence upon Arnold Schoenberg and other young composers, his approach to performing his own music, and his productive interactions with visual artists. The essays are complemented by a new selection of criticism and analyses of Brahms's works published by the composer's contemporaries, documenting the ways in which Brahms's music was understood by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century audiences in Europe and North America. A new selection of memoirs by Brahms's friends, students, and early admirers provides intimate glimpses into the composer's working methods and personality. And a catalog of the music, literature, and visual arts dedicated to Brahms documents the breadth of influence exerted by the composer upon his contemporaries.Jean Sibelius and His World (The Bard Music Festival #25)
Par Daniel M. Grimley. 2011
New perspectives on the greatest Finnish composer of all timePerhaps no twentieth-century composer has provoked a more varied reaction among…
the music-loving public than Jean Sibelius (1865–1957). Originally hailed as a new Beethoven by much of the Anglo-Saxon world, he was also widely disparaged by critics more receptive to newer trends in music. At the height of his popular appeal, he was revered as the embodiment of Finnish nationalism and the apostle of a new musical naturalism. Yet he seemingly chose that moment to stop composing altogether, despite living for three more decades. Providing wide cultural contexts, contesting received ideas about modernism, and interrogating notions of landscape and nature, Jean Sibelius and His World sheds new light on the critical position occupied by Sibelius in the Western musical tradition.The essays in the book explore such varied themes as the impact of Russian musical traditions on Sibelius, his compositional process, Sibelius and the theater, his understanding of music as a fluid and improvised creation, his critical reception in Great Britain and America, his "late style" in the incidental music for The Tempest, and the parallel contemporary careers of Sibelius and Richard Strauss.Documents include the draft of Sibelius's 1896 lecture on folk music, selections from a roman à clef about his student circle in Berlin at the turn of the century, Theodor Adorno's brief but controversial tirade against the composer, and the newspaper debates about the Sibelius monument unveiled in Helsinki a decade after the composer's death.The contributors are Byron Adams, Leon Botstein, Philip Ross Bullock, Glenda Dawn Goss, Daniel Grimley, Jeffrey Kallberg, Tomi Mäkelä, Sarah Menin, Max Paddison, and Timo Virtanen.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.Alban Berg and His World (The Bard Music Festival #24)
Par Christopher Hailey. 2010
An incisive new look at the pivotal modernist composerAlban Berg and His World is a collection of essays and source…
material that repositions Berg as the pivotal figure of Viennese musical modernism. His allegiance to the austere rigor of Arnold Schoenberg's musical revolution was balanced by a lifelong devotion to the warm sensuousness of Viennese musical tradition and a love of lyric utterance, the emotional intensity of opera, and the expressive nuance of late-Romantic tonal practice.The essays in this collection explore the specific qualities of Berg's brand of musical modernism, and present newly translated letters and documents that illuminate his relationship to the politics and culture of his era. Of particular significance are the first translations of Berg's newly discovered stage work Night (Nocturne), Hermann Watznauer's intimate account of Berg's early years, and the famous memorial issue of the music periodical 23. Contributors consider Berg's fascination with palindromes and mirror images and their relationship to notions of time and identity; the Viennese roots of his distinctive orchestral style; his links to such Viennese contemporaries as Alexander Zemlinsky, Franz Schreker, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold; and his attempts to maneuver through the perilous shoals of gender, race, and fascist politics.The contributors are Antony Beaumont, Leon Botstein, Regina Busch, Nicholas Chadwick, Mark DeVoto, Douglas Jarman, Sherry Lee, and Margaret Notley.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.