John Tyler: The Accidental President

John Tyler: The Accidental President 

By: Edward P. Crapol

John Tyler is not one of the famous or better-known American presidents. If known at all, it usually is because of the catchy political slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler too,” which was the rallying cry in the 1840 campaign of presidential candidate William Henry Harrison and his vicepresidential running mate, John Tyler. Perhaps when questioned, a number of Americans also might know thatTylerwas the first vice president to succeed to the presidency upon the death of the incumbent president. Maybe even some would also remember from their school days that his opponents mockedTyleras “His Accidency,” because of the manner in which he became the nation’s tenth president. His obscurity has not been for want of historical accounts of his life and career. A decade after his death, one of Tyler’s good friends and political allies authored a highly laudatory biography of his long public life intended to salvage the tenth president’s historical reputation. [download]

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Charles Darwin: Leben und Werk

Charles Darwin: Leben und Werk 

By: Von Wolfgang Scaumann 

1st die Welt erschaffen worden, oder ist sie spontan entstanden? Alte Mythologien und Religionen sind sich mit den modernen Naturwissenschaften darin einig, dass es unsere Erde nicht von Ewigkeit an gegeben hat. Fruher war das eine Philosophie, heute sind wir dessen sicher. Als der Mensch zu denken begann, war ihm Vie-Ies unverstandlich, und so schuf er sich seine Cotter, denen er alles zuschrieb, was seine Vernunft nicht erklaren konnte. Dazu gehorte die Erschaffung der Welt als gottliche Tat. Gott erschuf die Welt in sechs Tagen, so steht es in der Bibel. Mit dem Aufkommen der Naturwissenschaften regten sich zunachst Zweifel, ob die sechs Tage wortlich zu nehmen sind. Wie kommen z.B. Muscheln in Gesteine, die man fernab von jedem groi3eren Gewasser und viele Meter iiber dem heutigen Wasserspiegel findet? [download]

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Ellsworth Bunker

Ellsworth Bunker 

By: Howard B. Schaffer

When Ellsworth Bunker accepted the invitation of his old Yale rowing coach and friend Secretary of State Dean Acheson to leave a successful business career and take on the difficult assignment of ambassador to Juan Perón’s Argentina in 1951, neither man anticipated that the appointment would lead to Bunker’s becoming one of the outstanding American diplomats of the Cold War decades. Already in his late fifties, Bunker had seen the Buenos Airesembassy as a brief stop on the way to a quiet, retired life, not as the start of a fullfledged, highly distinguished second career in public service. But before he finally left the diplomatic frontlines in 1979 at the age of eighty-five, he went on to become ambassador to Italy, India, Nepal, and, most famously, South Vietnam. As special diplomatic negotiator and troubleshooter, he helped resolve major challenges to U.S interests in such far-flung places as Indonesia,Yemen, Panama, and the Dominican Republic. [download]

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John Muir: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth

John Muir: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth

By: John Muir

WHEN I was a boy in ScotlandI was fond of everything that was wild, and all my life I’ve been growing fonder and fonder of wild places and wild creatures. Fortunately around my native town of Dunbar, by the stormy North Sea, there was no lack of wildness, though most of the land lay in smooth cultivation. With red blooded playmates, wild as myself, I loved to wander in the fields to hear the birds sing, and along the seashore to gaze and wonder at the shells and seaweeds, eels and crabs in the pools among the rocks when the tide was low; and best of all to watch the waves in awful storms thundering on the black headlands and craggy ruins of the old Dunbar Castle when the sea and the sky, the waves and the clouds, were mingled together as one. [download]

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H.J. Heinz-A Biography

H.J. Heinz-A Biography 

By: Quentin R. Scrabeck

FOR YEARS I HAVE BEEN WORKING on writing the biographies ofAmerica’s greatest capitalists. Amazingly, a large number of these icons lived in a singlePittsburghneighborhood and attended the same church. H. J. Heinz can in many ways be considered the Jupiter of these distinguished industrialists. Heinz’sPittsburghneighborhood included George Westinghouse, Thomas Mellon, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Philander Knox. This single neighborhood, known asEast Liberty, had the world’s highest income per capita in the 1800s. These capitalists were a strange mix of virtue and greed. Some, like George Westinghouse and H. J. Heinz, were saintly. Others like Henry Clay Frick found all the virtue they needed in money making. Some were more complex, exhibiting extremes such as Andrew Carnegie. Whether saint or devil, they did share a belief in the system of capitalism, in particular, paternal capitalism. [download]

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The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes 

By: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I was not surprised, Indeed, my only wonder was that he had not already been mixed up in this extraordinary case, which was the one topic of conversation through the length and breadth of Endland. For a whole day my companion had rambled about the room with his chin upon and his chest and his brows knitted, charging and recharging his pipe with the strongest balck tobacco, and absolutely deaf to any of my questions or ramark. Fresh editions of every paper had been sent up by pur news agent, only to be glanced over and tossed down into a corner. Yet, silent as he was, I knew perpectly well what it was over which he brooding. There was but one problem before the public which could challenge his powers of analysis, and that was the singular disappearance of the favorite for the wessexcup and the tragic murder of its trainer. [download]

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Encyclopedia of World Biography

Encyclopedia of World Biography

By: U.X.L. Encyclopedia 

U•X•L Encyclopedia of World Biography features 750 biographies of notable historic and contemporary figures from around the world. Chosen from American history, world history, literature, science and math, arts and entertainment, and the social sciences, the entries focus on the people studied most often in middle school and high school, as identified by teachers and media specialists. The biographies are arranged alphabetically across ten volumes. The two- to fourpage entries cover the early lives, influences, and careers of notable men and women of diverse fields and ethnic groups. Each essay includes birth and death information in the header and concludes with a list of sources. for further information. A contents section lists biographees by their nationality. [download]

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Chief Joseph-A Biography

Chief Joseph-A Biography 

By: Vanessa Gunter

The history of Americawould not be complete without a rendition of the exploits of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. In May 1804, accompanied by three dozen men, they set out across the still undiscovered land that would become part of the westernUnited Statesin order to create maps and discover what the land held for the fl edgling nation.Americawas still in its infancy when Lewis and Clark came across the Nez Perce Indians in the late summer of 1805. The American Revolution had concluded only a single generation earlier. In that short generation, after the United States had won its independence from Great Britain, it had suffered a depression and engendered serious doubts among European nations about whether this new experiment in republicanism would survive. [download]

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Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson of Kentucky

Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson of Kentucky 

By: James E. ST. clair and Linda C. Gugin

In the almost fifty years since his death, the name Fred M. Vinson has all but disappeared from public awareness and consciousness. This work is intended to bring the life and times of a dedicated public servant back to the surface for examination and study by present and future generations of Americans. He was, above all, a true believer in government and public service. Vinson never doubted for a moment that the highest calling for an American was serving in government federal, state, county, or municipal. For more than thirty years, he demonstrated that conviction, starting out as a part-time city attorney for his tiny hometown of Louisa, Kentucky, and rising to the top levels of all three branches of national government, a feat that few have equaled. He obviously enjoyed the fame and acclaim he received from public service, but more pleasing to him than any personal glory was the good that government could do for the “folks back home.” [download]

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Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso 

By: Tim McNeese

At 4:40 on the afternoon of April 26, 1937, shopkeepers, street vendors, and shoppers in the town of Guernica,Spain, were enjoying themselves. On that sunny Mediterranean afternoon, the town’s streets were bustling. It was Monday market day in this otherwise quiet town, situated in northeasternSpain, in the Basque provinceofVizcaya. The weekly shopping day usually brought 2,000 people intoGuernica, swelling the town’s population to 12,000. Suddenly, the skies above the sleepy Basque town were filled with foreign aircraft. Military planes were not unknown to the Basques in the region. The Spanish Civil War was in its second year. The war had become intensely violent, pitting the forces of the Fascist general Francisco Franco against the Nationalist armies of the new but shaky Spanish republican government. [download]

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Nevill Mott-Reminiscences and Appreciations

Nevill Mott-Reminiscences and Appreciations 

By: E.A. Davis

The death of Sir Nevill Mott at age 90 brought to a close the illustrious ‘life in science’ of a man who stood academically, as well as literally, head and shoulders above his contemporaries, many of whom were awed and inspired by his remarkable powers of intuition, his penetrating insight and his versatile creativity. The staggering length of his scientific career his first paper was published in 1927 during the early days of quantum theory and his last on hightemperature superconductivity in 1996, four months after his death must be unprecedented, and the range of his contributions to physics possibly unequalled. He was the author of at least fifteen books and over three hundred scientific papers, covering a range of topics as diverse as wave mechanics, nuclear physics, the properties of metals, ionic crystals, semiconductors and glasses, and the nature of superconductivity. [download]

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Jane Goodall-A Biography

Jane Goodall-A Biography 

By: Meg Greene

In recent polls, Jane Goodall has emerged as the most easily recognizable living scientist in the Western world. Her work with the chimpanzees at Gombe has been renowned as one of the great achievements of scientific research. GoodalPs research and dedication are held in the same regard as Albert Einstein’s. Her approach to field study, once ridiculed and challenged by the scientific world, has now become the model for other ethologists to use. Young girls want to be like her; adults respect her. Children across the world have tried to help her. Throughout it all, Goodall stays steady as she continues to bring her message of peace, hope, and challenge to make the world for all living creatures a better place. Jane GoodalPs childhood dream to live among, study, and write about wild animals in Africaseemed the stuff of which fantasies are made. [download]

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Joseph Stalin-A Biographical Companion

Joseph Stalin-A Biographical Companion 

By: Helen Rappaport

This is not a book for Stalinist historians. The highly selective bibliography that can be found at its conclusion testifies to a vast range of academic study that is at times compelling, at times utterly indigestible. Most of it has been painstakingly gathered, often from obscure and difficultto access Russian archival sources, and many of the books cited have been written by highly respected academics who have devoted a lifetime to ground-breaking Stalinist historical research. In so doing, they have, collectively, opened up an endlessly fascinating but also highly contentious debate. Latterly, the field of Stalinist studies has been further complicated by a new and radical revisionist approach, much of which is contained in complex and exhausting arguments over facts, figures, and statistics. [download]

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The Nicklaus Way

The Nicklaus Way

By: John Andrisani

On my office  wall is a framed copy of the cover to a special commemorative issue of GOLF Magazine, circa 1988. The cover line reads, “Player of the Century: A 40-page tribute to Jack Nicklaus.” The issue was a commemoration of the one-hundredth anniversary of the opening of the first country club,St. Andrewsin Yonkers,New York, and the beginning of golf inAmerica. George Peper, the editor in chief of GOLF Magazine, chose to put Nicklaus on the cover because he felt Nicklaus was the greatest golfer of all time, a level better than Arnold Palmer, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, and other golf heroes, many of which attended a gala affair celebrating the Centennial at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel. I attended the celebratory dinner, as at the time I was in my sixth year of a sixteen-year stint at GOLF Magazine, as senior editor of instruction. [download]

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Red-My Uncensored Life in Rock

Red-My Uncensored Life in Rock

By: Sammy Hagar with Joel Selvin

I first saw the Van Halen brothers play when I was going toArcadiaHigh School, on the eastern edge ofLos Angeles. It was during a student fair held on the football field, and the band was called Mammoth. It was just Eddie Van Halen on guitar, his brother Alex Van Halen on drums, and a guy named Mark Stone playing bass. Eddie did all the vocals. They played Cream, Grand Funk railroad, and the Who. Eddie nailed every single note of every song, exactly like the records. After high school, I belonged to a band called Snake. Pretty original name, I know. We opened a show for Van Halen atPasadenaHigh School. Now they had a vocalist. I remember sitting around the parking lot after the gig, talking with Eddie. [download]

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John Scottus Eriugena

John Scottus Eriugena

By: Deirdre Carabien

This book is intended to serve as an introduction to the ideas of the ninth century Irish philosopher John Scottus Eriugena. It requires no special knowledge of Eriugena nor of medieval philosophy, but it will, I hope, also be of interest to more experienced readers. A short introduction to Eriugena's thought cannot possibly offer a comprehensive account of the many ideas and concepts he himself grappled with during his short but fairly prolific literary career. Unfortunately, I have found it necessary to omit discussion of many themes that could have found a place this volume. I have not, for example, dealt specifically with Eriugena's more theological works, and I have examined neither the various commentaries he wrote nor some of the more peripheral themes of the Periphyseon. [download]

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Anne Conway-A Woman Philosopher

Anne Conway-A Woman Philosopher 

By: Sarah Hutton

This is the first intellectual biography of one of the very first English women philosophers. At a time when very few women received more than basic education, Lady Anne Conway wrote an original treatise of philosophy: her Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, which challenged the major philosophers of her day Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza. Sarah Hutton’s study places Anne Conway in her historical and philosophical context by reconstructing her social and intellectual milieu. She traces her intellectual development in relation to friends and associates such as Henry More, Sir John Finch, F. M. van Helmont, Robert Boyle and George Keith. And she documents Conway’s debt to Cambridge Platonism and her interest in religion an interest which extended beyond Christian orthodoxy to Quakerism, Judaism and Islam. Her book offers an insight into both the personal life of a very private woman, and the richness of seventeenth century intellectual culture. [download]

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Nixon

Nixon 

By: Ivan Morgan

On 9 August 1974 Richard Milhous Nixon became the first American president to resign office, thereby avoiding certain impeachment by Congress. The chain of events that brought about Nixon’s downfall began with the most famous burglary in history. On 17 June 1972 operatives of the Committee to Reelect the President had been caught breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex in WashingtonDC. For the next two years Nixon sought to cover up White House involvement in political espionage, but the investigations of journalists, the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, special prosecutors and Congress inexorably uncovered evidence of the President’s obstruction of justice and abuse of power. [download]

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Ludwig Boltzmann-The Man Who Trusted Atoms

Ludwig Boltzmann-The Man Who Trusted Atoms

By: Carlo Cercignani 

The existence of irreversible processes is well known from everyday life: one cannot go backwards in time. This holds not only for living beings but also for those objects of macroscopic dimensions which we usually deal with. Everybody laughs when a film is run backwards, and not only because people then walk backwards. Just imagine a film showing a cup of coffee falling from a table, breaking into pieces, and dispersing its contents on the floor, and think of what you would see when the film ran backward. I shall not dwell on this example, since a similar one which goes back to 1874 and is due to Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) is quoted in detail in Chapter 5. The strange fact is that all the fundamental laws of physics are symmetric with respect to the inversion of the time arrow; the cup which reunites itself from the broken pieces, recovers the coffee from the floor, and jumps back to the table does not violate any law of mechanics. [download]

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Regis-The Unauthorized Biography

Regis-The Unauthorized Biography

By: Kathleen Tracy 

Sometimes it’s all a matter of chemistry that ultimately indefinable but instantly recognizable magic that happens between two people whose auras align just so. Chemistry is particularly enigmatic because it can happen between two people who don’t like each other some of the most electric o-screen romances in movie history happened between costars whose offcamera animosity crackled. In the case of Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford, their on-air chemistry catapulted two journeymen television personalities into the stratosphere of daytime megastars. Prior to their pairing, they’d made names for themselves, but neither had shown any promise of rising above the broadcast multitudes. But together they exuded an edgy energy, and watching them perform their unique early morning verbal dance became an addictive, guilty pleasure for many. [download]

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