Product Description

Using 100s of fascinating examples, James Burke shows how old established ideas in science and technology often lead to serendipitous and amazing modern discoveries and innovations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #387448 in Books
• Published on: 1997-08-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 9.25" h x 1.00" w x 6.00" l, .84 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Amazon.com
Follow the bouncing ball, James Burke-style: spice trading in the Middle Ages leads to the European tea-drinking craze, which helps instigate the development of the science of natural history, which in turns inspires the creation of the coal miner's safety lamp, which is somehow related to the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimack. From there we go to North Carolina cotton industry, Thomas Edison's very first electric power station, air conditioning, glass manufacturing, and laser beams. The end result? The smart bombs used during the Gulf War. Burke, who wrote Connections (the book and the television show), revels--or better, wallows--in the accidental nature of the march of discovery. Despite a penchant for playing it loose and free with scientific and historical accuracy, Burke has compiled a fascinating look at the great matrix of change and transformation that humans have created for themselves.

From Publishers Weekly
Picking up the theme of his bestselling Connections and utilizing cross-chapter margin references that imitate computer hypertext, Burke investigates the dynamic interplay of scientific discovery, technological innovation and social change in a dizzying, mind-expanding adventure that explores the crosscurrents of history. One chapter follows a trail from slavery in America to English Quaker abolitionist Sampson Lloyd's nail-making business to German-American immigrant engineer John Roebling's wire suspension bridges (including the Brooklyn Bridge) to rustproofing with cadmium to nuclear reactors. Accident, luck, greed, ambition and mistakes abound as Scientific American columnist Burke tries to demonstrate the interconnectedness of all things. Another typical chapter unravels the serendipitous interactions among Cyrus Dalkin's invention of carbon paper, Edison's telephone (which used sooty carbon black in the transmitter), the rise of suburbs, X-ray crystallography and DNA. Often as maddening as a pinball game, this nevertheless unique and exciting odyssey may change the way you look at the world. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In this aptly titled work, James Burke (coauthor with Robert Ornstein of The Axemaker's Gift: A Double-Edged History, Audio Reviews, LJ 12/95) leads his audience on five intriguing tours through what he calls the "great, dynamic web of historical change." Burke draws on years of research to show how even the simplest act can have significant repercussions years later. He notes, for example, how George Eastman started one of the great corporate giants of modern economic history (Eastman Kodak) after quitting a bank job because he failed to get a promotion he thought he deserved. Among his fascinating historical tours, Burke shows how the government's design for a defense early warning system in the Arctic sparked the idea for automated airline reservation systems, how photography contributed to race car victories, and how modern warfare and medical technology exist in part because of each other. He also discusses how the rate of change is accelerating so rapidly that human beings will need to reskill every decade just to keep a job. Burke, who also serves as narrator, describes his historical tours as a detective story?an intricate puzzle with interlocking pieces, but he makes sense of them in a way that entertains. Recommended for public libraries.?Germaine C. Linkins, SUNY at Post
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.