Technology & Engineering

22718 books

Mapping the Nation: History and Cartography in Nineteenth-Century America

$58.14

Report copyright infringementby Susan Schulten (Author)In the nineteenth century, Americans began to use maps in radically new ways. For the first time, medical men mapped diseases to understand and prevent epidemics, natural scientists mapped climate and rainfall to uncover weather patterns, educators mapped the past to foster national loyalty among students, and Northerners mapped slavery to assess the power of the South. After the Civil War, federal agencies embraced statistical and themat...

$56.43

Report copyright infringementby Harry Collins (Author)What does it mean to be an expert? In Rethinking Expertise, Harry Collins and Robert Evans offer a radical new perspective on the role of expertise in the practice of science and the public evaluation of technology. Collins and Evans present a Periodic Table of Expertises based on the idea of tacit knowledge-knowledge that we have but cannot explain. They then look at how some expertises are used to judge others, how laypeople judge betwe...

Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine

$54.72

Report copyright infringementby Angela N. H. Creager (Author)After World War II, the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began mass-producing radioisotopes, sending out nearly 64,000 shipments of radioactive materials to scientists and physicians by 1955. Even as the atomic bomb became the focus of Cold War anxiety, radioisotopes represented the government's efforts to harness the power of the atom for peace-advancing medicine, domestic energy, and foreign relations. In Life Atomic, Angela N. H...

American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870-1970

$41.38

Report copyright infringementby Thomas P. Hughes (Author)*PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST* A sweeping history of the inventors, inventions, and innovations that together created modern America. A stunning, wide-ranging history from one of the foremost historians of technology of our age American Genesis tells the sweeping story of the technological revolution that made modern America. Unlike other histories of technology, which focus on particular inventions like the light bulb or the automobile, Am...

Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology and Culture

$46.80

Report copyright infringementby Thomas P. Hughes (Author)To most people, technology has been reduced to computers, consumer goods, and military weapons; we speak of "technological progress" in terms of RAM and CD-ROMs and the flatness of our television screens. In Human-Built World, thankfully, Thomas Hughes restores to technology the conceptual richness and depth it deserves by chronicling the ideas about technology expressed by influential Western thinkers who not only understood its multif...

Marking Modern Times: A History of Clocks, Watches, and Other Timekeepers in American Life

$49.59

Report copyright infringementby Alexis McCrossen (Author)The public spaces and buildings of the United States are home to many thousands of timepieces--bells, time balls, and clock faces--that tower over urban streets, peek out from lobbies, and gleam in store windows. And in the streets and squares beneath them, men, women, and children wear wristwatches of all kinds. Americans have decorated their homes with clocks and included them in their poetry, sermons, stories, and songs. And as polit...

Thinking through Technology: The Path between Engineering and Philosophy

$56.43

Report copyright infringementby Carl Mitcham (Author)What does it mean to think about technology philosophically? Why try? These are the issues that Carl Mitcham addresses in this work, a comprehensive, critical introduction to the philosophy of technology and a discussion of its sources and uses. Tracing the changing meaning of "technology" from ancient times to our own, Mitcham identifies the most important traditions of critical analysis of technology: the engineering approach, which assu...

$68.40

Report copyright infringementby Luis A. Campos (Author)Before the hydrogen bomb indelibly associated radioactivity with death, many chemists, physicians, botanists, and geneticists believed that radium might hold the secret to life. Physicists and chemists early on described the wondrous new element in lifelike terms such as "decay" and "half-life," and made frequent references to the "natural selection" and "evolution" of the elements. Meanwhile, biologists of the period used radium in exper...

$53.01

Report copyright infringementby Lewis Mumford (Author), Langdon Winner (Foreword by)Technics and Civilization first presented its compelling history of the machine and critical study of its effects on civilization in 1934--before television, the personal computer, and the Internet even appeared on our periphery. Drawing upon art, science, philosophy, and the history of culture, Lewis Mumford explained the origin of the machine age and traced its social results, asserting that the development ...

The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000

$53.01

Report copyright infringementby William H. McNeill (Author)In this magnificent synthesis of military, technological, and social history, William H. McNeill explores a whole millennium of human upheaval and traces the path by which we have arrived at the frightening dilemmas that now confront us. McNeill moves with equal mastery from the crossbow-banned by the Church in 1139 as too lethal for Christians to use against one another-to the nuclear missile, from the sociological consequences of dr...

$64.98

Report copyright infringementby Sophia Roosth (Author)In the final years of the twentieth century, émigrés from engineering and computer science devoted themselves to biology and resolved that if the aim of biology is to understand life, then making life would yield better theories than experimentation. Armed with the latest biotechnology techniques, these scientists treated biological media as elements for design and manufacture: viruses named for computers, bacterial genomes encoding passag...

Tunnel Visions: The Rise and Fall of the Superconducting Super Collider

$58.14

Report copyright infringementby Michael Riordan (Author), Lillian Hoddeson (Author), Adrienne W. Kolb (Author)Starting in the 1950s, US physicists dominated the search for elementary particles; aided by the association of this research with national security, they held this position for decades. In an effort to maintain their hegemony and track down the elusive Higgs boson, they convinced President Reagan and Congress to support construction of the multibillion-dollar Superconducting Super Co...

In the Watches of the Night: Life in the Nocturnal City, 1820-1930

$52.20

Report copyright infringementby Peter C. Baldwin (Author)Before skyscrapers and streetlights glowed at all hours, American cities fell into inky blackness with each setting of the sun. But over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, new technologies began to light up streets, sidewalks, buildings, and public spaces. Peter C. Baldwin's evocative book depicts the changing experience of the urban night over this period, visiting a host of actors-scavengers, newsboys, and mashe...

$66.60

Report copyright infringementby A. F. K. Organski (Author), Jacek Kugler (Author)The War Ledger provides fresh, sophisticated answers to fundamental questions about major modern wars: Why do major wars begin? What accounts for victory or defeat in war? How do victory and defeat influence the recovery of the combatants? Are the rules governing conflict behavior between nations the same since the advent of the nuclear era? The authors find such well-known theories as the balance of power and co...

Drones and the Future of Armed Conflict: Ethical, Legal, and Strategic Implications

$51.30

Report copyright infringementby David Cortright (Editor), Rachel Fairhurst (Editor), Kristen Wall (Editor)During the past decade, armed drones have entered the American military arsenal as a core tactic for countering terrorism. When coupled with access to reliable information, they make it possible to deploy lethal force accurately across borders while keeping one's own soldiers out of harm's way. The potential to direct force with great precision also offers the possibility of reducing harm...

The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention

$21.00

Report copyright infringementby William Rosen (Author)This bracing history uses the earth-shaking development of the steam engine to show how the very idea of intellectual property was essential to the entire Industrial Revolution. Hardly a week passes without some high-profile court case that features intellectual property at its center. But how did the belief that one could own an idea come about? And how did that belief change the way humankind lives and works? William Rosen, author of J...

$61.20

Report copyright infringementby Alan Trachtenberg (Author)Fourteen of Walker Evans's evocative photographs of Brooklyn Bridge, most of which have never been published, appear in this edition of Alan Trachenberg's Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol. In the new afterword Trachenberg explores the history of Hart Crane's The Bridge, especially the poem's integral relationship with the powerful photography of Evans. "[Brooklyn Bridge] is familiar in so many movies, in so many stage sets and, as Mr. ...

The Science of Energy: A Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain

$100.80

Report copyright infringementby Crosbie Smith (Author)Although we take it for granted today, the concept of "energy" transformed nineteenth-century physics. In The Science of Energy, Crosbie Smith shows how a North British group of scientists and engineers, including James Joule, James Clerk Maxwell, William and James Thomson, Fleeming Jenkin, and P. G. Tait, developed energy physics to solve practical problems encountered by Scottish shipbuilders and marine engineers; to counter biblical re...

Solving Problems in Technical Communication

$88.20

Report copyright infringementby Johndan Johnson-Eilola (Editor)The field of technical communication is rapidly expanding in both the academic world and the private sector, yet a problematic divide remains between theory and practice. Here Stuart A. Selber and Johndan Johnson-Eilola, both respected scholars and teachers of technical communication, effectively bridge that gap. Solving Problems in Technical Communication collects the latest research and theory in the field and applies it to real...

SuperVision: An Introduction to the Surveillance Society

$47.88

Report copyright infringementby John Gilliom (Author)We live in a surveillance society. Anyone who uses a credit card, cell phone, or even search engines to navigate the Web is being monitored and assessed-and often in ways that are imperceptible to us. The first general introduction to the growing field of surveillance studies, SuperVision uses examples drawn from everyday technologies to show how surveillance is used, who is using it, and how it affects our world. Beginning with a look at ...

$198.00

Report copyright infringementby John Uren (Author), Bill Price (Author)The fifth edition of this classic textbook sets out the essential techniques needed for a solid grounding in the surveying. The popular and trusted textbook covers the traditional topics such as levelling, measurement of angles, measuring distances, and how to carry out traversing and compute coordinates, as well as the latest technological advances. It is packed with clear illustrations, exercises and worked examples, mak...

Engineering Empires: A Cultural History of Technology in Nineteenth-Century Britain

$194.38

Report copyright infringementby B. Marsden (Author), C. Smith (Author)Engineers are empire-builders. Watt, Brunel, and others worked to build and expand personal and business empires of material technology and in so doing these engineers also became active agents of political and economic empire. This book provides a fascinating exploration of the cultural construction of the large-scale technologies of empire.Author BiographyBEN MARSDEN is currently Lecturer in Cultural History in the Depart...

Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age

$75.58

Report copyright infringementby J. Shurkin (Author)This is the first biography of William Shockley, founding father of Silicon Valley - one of the most significant and reviled scientists of the 20th century. Drawing upon unique access to the private Shockley archives, veteran technology historian and journalist Joel Shurkin gives an unflinching account of how such promise ended in such ignominy.Author BiographyJOEL N. SHURKIN is Science Writer Emeritus at Stanford University, USA, where he ha...

$39.99

Report copyright infringementby Timothy Taylor (Author)A breakthrough theory that tools and technology are the real drivers of human evolution Although humans are one of the great apes, along with chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, we are remarkably different from them. Unlike our cousins who subsist on raw food, spend their days and nights outdoors, and wear a thick coat of hair, humans are entirely dependent on artificial things, such as clothing, shelter, and the use of tools, and woul...

$89.08

Report copyright infringementby C. Best (Author)This book covers significant new ground, examining the impact and imprint of new leading technology on a range of popular expressions. This technology includes the internet, the computer, the cell phone, television, and radio, among others. Best argues that Caribbean culture has gone wireless, virtual, and simulated in the age of the machines.Author BiographyCurwen Best is Senior Lecturer in English, University of the West Indies. N...

Green: Your Place in the New Energy Revolution: Your Place in the New Energy Revolution

$22.99

Report copyright infringementby Jane Hoffman (Author), Michael Hoffman (Author)Green illustrates and sheds new light on the gamut of issues associated with renewable energy, a topic whose importance increases exponentially with every temperature record-setting year. Jane and Michael Hoffman use their years of experience to explain the technological and economic future of this ecologically significant issue. They incisively explain its politics: what countries are doing right now and, most imp...

$75.60

Report copyright infringementby Alan Heil (Author)The Voice of America is the nation's largest publicly funded broadcasting network, reaching more than 90 million people worldwide in over forty languages. Since it first went on the air as a regional wartime enterprise in February 1942, VOA has undergone a spectacular transformation, and it now employs scores of reporters worldwide and broadcasts around the clock every day of every year, reaching listeners in the four-fifths of the world still...

Soldiers, Statesman, and Cold War Crises

$66.60

Report copyright infringementby Richard Betts (Author)Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crisis explores, in fascinating depth, the nature, direction, and impact of military and civilian influence on violence. Richard K. Betts discusses the postwar involvement of U.S. military and nonmilitary leaders in decisions on the use of force in foreign affairs, and the variety of advice from the different military services. Twenty intervention decisions and ten escalation desicions in crises are examin...

$17.95

Report copyright infringementby Carlo Petrini (Author), William McCuaig (Translator), Alice Waters (Foreword by)Take a breath.... Read slowly. How often in the course and crush of our daily lives do we afford ourselves moments to truly relish-to truly be present in-the act of preparing and eating food? For most of us, our enjoyment of food has fallen victim to the frenetic pace of our lives and to our increasing estrangement, in a complex commercial economy, from the natural processes by whic...

Hierarchy Theory: A Vision, Vocabulary, and Epistemology

$68.40

Report copyright infringementby Valerie Ahl (Author), T. F. H. Allen (Author)This basic guide introduces the relationships between observation, perception, and learning that form the substance of hierarchy theory. This theory aims to answer the question of whether there is a basic structure to nature, comprising discreet levels of organization within an overall pattern. Number of Pages: 208 Dimensions: 0.5 x 9 x 6 IN Publication Date: August 22, 1996 ...

$57.60

Report copyright infringementby Paul Virilio (Author), Steve Redhead (Editor)If nothing else, the war in Iraq and the 1991 Gulf War have taught us much about media and technology as key players in how war is waged, packaged for public consumption, and exported in real time to the rest of the globe. A critic of the art of technology, Paul Virilio has keenly observed that media images quite often constitute a strategy of war and that accident is becoming indistinguishable from attack. For more ...

Soldier Dead: How We Recover, Identify, Bury, and Honor Our Military Fallen

$30.19

Report copyright infringementby Michael Sledge (Author)What happens to members of the United States Armed Forces after they die? Why do soldiers endanger their lives to recover the remains of their comrades? Why does the military spend enormous resources and risk further fatalities to recover the bodies of the fallen, even decades after the cessation of hostilities? Soldier Dead is the first book to fully address the complicated physical, social, religious, economic, and political issues conc...