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The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge
David McCullough · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Making of the Atomic Bomb
Richard Rhodes · 886 pages
Here for the first time, in rich, human, political, and scientific detail, is the complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan. Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly -- or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the brig
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
Steven Levy · 455 pages
Today, technology is cool. Owning the most powerful computer, the latest high-tech gadget, and the whizziest website is a status symbol on a par with having a flashy car or a designer suit. And a media obsessed with the digital explosion has reappropriated the term "computer nerd" so that it's practically synonymous with "entrepreneur." Yet, a mere fifteen years ago, wireheads hooked on tweaking e
The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself
Daniel J. Boorstin · 747 pages
Tells the ongoing story of the progressive discovery by man of the nature of the observable world and universe.
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor
David S. Landes · 650 pages
David S. Landes tells the long, fascinating story of wealth and power throughout the world: the creation of wealth, the paths of winners and losers, the rise and fall of nations. He studies history as a process, attempting to understand how the world's cultures lead to - or retard - economic and military success and material achievement. Countries of the West, Landes asserts, prospered early thro
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
Mike Wallace, Edwin G. Burrows · 1,408 pages
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari · 456 pages
From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What hap
The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Built America’s First Subway
Doug Most · 418 pages
"In the late nineteenth century, as cities like Boston and New York grew larger, the streets became increasingly clogged with horse-drawn carts. When the great blizzard of 1888 brought New York City to a halt, a solution had to be found. Two brothers--Henry Melville Whitney of Boston and William Collins Whitney of New York City--pursued the dream of his city being the first American metropolis to
The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America
Russell Shorto · 416 pages
In a landmark work of history, Russell Shorto presents astonishing information on the founding of our nation and reveals in riveting detail the crucial role of the Dutch in making America what it is today.In the late 1960s, an archivist in the New York State Library made an astounding discovery: 12,000 pages of centuries-old correspondence, court cases, legal contracts, and reports from a forgotte
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
Erik Larson · 464 pages
From back cover: Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, Erik Larson's spell-binding bestseller intertwines the true tale of two men - the brilliant architect behind the legendary 1893 World's Fair, striving to secure America's place in the world; and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
Adam Higginbotham · 538 pages
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet
Katie Hafner, Matthew Lyon · 304 pages
Twenty five years ago, it didn't exist. Today, twenty million people worldwide are surfing the Net. Where Wizards Stay Up Late is the exciting story of the pioneers responsible for creating the most talked about, most influential, and most far-reaching communications breakthrough since the invention of the telephone. In the 1960's, when computers where regarded as mere giant calculators, J.C.R.
The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
Walter Isaacson · 560 pages
Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens. What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into di
The Secret Subway
Shana Corey · 40 pages
"In 1870, Alfred Ely Beach invents New York's first underground train"--
The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World
Jenny Uglow · 608 pages
River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West
Rebecca Solnit · 305 pages
An original telling of the story of Eadweard Muybridge, who in 1872 succeeded in capturing high-speed motion photographically, thus making movies possible. Solnit uses the story of Muybridge as a lens for a larger story about the transformation of time and space by railroads, telegraphy, photography, and myriad other contributions to the acceleration and industrialization of everyday life. She bol
Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages
Frances Gies, Joseph Gies · 357 pages
"In this account of Europe's rise to world leadership in technology, Frances and Joseph Gies make use of recent scholarship to destroy two time-honored myths. Myth One: that Europe's leap forward occurred suddenly in the "Renaissance," following centuries of medieval stagnation. Not so, say the Gieses: Early modern technology and experimental science were direct outgrowths of the decisive innovati
The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom
Simon Winchester · 316 pages
In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, the bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman ("Elegant and scrupulous"—New York Times Book Review) and Krakatoa ("A mesmerizing page-turner"—Time) brings to life the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the brilliant Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China, long the world's most technologically adva
Queens of Code
Eileen Buckholtz; foreword by Mar Hicks
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
Dava Sobel · 192 pages
The dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of one man's forty-year obsession to find a solution to the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day--"the longitude problem." Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day-and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailo
Color: A Natural History of the Palette
Victoria Finlay · 448 pages
How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
Daniel Immerwahr · 513 pages
The Victorian Internet
Tom Standage · 227 pages
The Victorian Internet tells the story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it. From the eighteenth-century French scientist Jean-Antoine Nollet, whose experiments proved that electricity could be transmitted over great distances, to Samuel F. B. Morse, who developed the first practical electric telegraph in 1837, to Tho
The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America
Ernest Freeberg · 361 pages
The late nineteenth century was a period of explosive technological creativity, but arguably the most important invention of the era was Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulb. Unveiled in his Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory in 1879, the light bulb overwhelmed Americans with the sense that they were witnessing the birth of a new age. More than any other invention, electric light marked the arr