Description Details
John Wesley Powell was a pioneer American explorer, ethnologist, and geologist in the 19th Century. In 1869 he set out to explore the Colorado and the Grand Canyon. He gathered nine men, four boats and food for ten months and set out from Green River, Wyoming, on May 24. Passing through dangerous rapids, the group passed down the Green River to its confluence with the Colorado River (then also known as the Grand River upriver from the junction), near present-day Moab, Utah. The expedition's route traveled through the Utah canyons of the Colorado River, which Powell described in his published diary as having …wonderful features—carved walls, royal arches, glens, alcove gulches, mounds and monuments. From which of these features shall we select a name? We decide to call it Glen Canyon. (Ironically, now almost completely submerged by Lake Powell, behind the Glen Canyon Dam.) One man (Goodman) quit after the first month and another three (Dunn and the Howland brothers) left at Separation Rapid in the third, only two days before the group reached the mouth of the Virgin River on August 30 after traversing almost 1,500 km. The three who l...

Excerpt Details
History, Science, Travel, Nature, Memoirs

Description Details
Cyrus W. Field had a dream: to link the Old World of Britain and Europe to that of the New World of North America by a telegraph cable stretching across the great Atlantic Ocean. It took him thirteen years, a lot of money, and many men and ships and cable to make it happen. He wanted to bring the world together and make it a smaller place; to forge alliances and achieve peace. This is his story. (Introduction by Alex C. Telander)...

Excerpt Details
History, Science

Description Details
Dies ist das erste Buch, in dem Alfred Wegener seine Theorie der Kontinentalverschiebung darlegt. Zeit seines Lebens wurde diese Theorie größtenteils abgelehnt, und geriet nach seinem Tod in Vergessenheit. Erst Jahrzehnte später wurden seine Ideen als wahr erkannt und auf verschiedene Arten nachgewiesen. Alfred Wegener war ein deutscher Meteorologe, Geo- und Polarwissenschaftler. Er starb auf seiner dritten Expedition nach Grönland. (Zusammenfassung von Availle)...

Excerpt Details
Nature, Science

Description Details
The Anatomy of Melancholy is a book by Robert Burton, first published in 1621. On its surface, the book is a medical textbook in which Burton applies his large and varied learning in the scholastic manner to the subject of melancholia (which includes what is now termed clinical depression). Though presented as a medical text, The Anatomy of Melancholy is as much a sui generis work of literature as it is a scientific or philosophical text, and Burton addresses far more than his stated subject. In fact, the Anatomy uses melancholy as the lens through which all human emotion and thought may be scrutinized, and virtually the entire contents of a 17th-century library are marshalled into service of this goal. Burton is forthright about his intentions in writing the Anatomy — I write of melancholy by being busy to avoid melancholy, he concedes. This acknowledged desire to distract and amuse himself motivated Burton to produce a wide-ranging document, containing digressions and commentary. Whatever its strengths as a medical text or as a historical document, it is the Anatomy's vast breadth — addressing topics such as digestion, goblins, th...

Excerpt Details
Psychology, Science

Description Details
This is the official report, published nearly 11 months after the first and only atomic bombings in history (to date), of a group of military physicians and engineers who accompanied the initial contingent of U.S. soldiers into the destroyed cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The report presents a clinical description of the devastation, loss of life and continued suffering of the survivors that resulted from the world's first and only atomic bombings, to date. The appendix is an eyewitness account, contrasting vividly with the dispassionate sang-froid of the report itself, written by a German Jesuit priest who survived the blast at Hiroshima, and whose order assisted in rescue efforts following the catastrophic attack. This recording was completed on the 63rd anniversary of the events. (Summary by Dennis Sayers)....

Excerpt Details
History, Science

Description Details
Robert Sterling Yard was an American writer, journalist, and wilderness activist. Born in Haverstraw, New York, Yard graduated from Princeton University and spent the first twenty years of his career in the editing and publishing business. In 1915, he was recruited by his friend Stephen Mather to help publicize the need for an independent national park agency. Their numerous publications were part of a movement that resulted in legislative support for a National Park Service (NPS) in 1916. Yard worked to promote the national parks as well as educate Americans about their use. Creating high standards based on aesthetic ideals for park selection, he also opposed commercialism and industrialization of what he called America's masterpieces. In 1935, he became one of the eight founding members of The Wilderness Society and acted as its first president from 1937 until his death eight years later. Yard is now considered an important figure in the modern wilderness movement. In the preface to this book, published in 1919, he writes, In offering the American public a carefully studied outline of its national park system, I have two principal...

Excerpt Details
Nature, Science, History

Description Details
In the book's preface, the author writes: Let anyone stop to consider how he individually would be affected if all electrical service were suddenly to cease, and he cannot fail to appreciate the claims of electricity to attentive study. In these days when we take for granted all kinds of technology - communications, entertainment, medical, military, industrial and domestic - it is interesting to learn what progress had been made in the fields of electricity and technology by the beginning of the 20th century. Including the dawn of hydro-electric power, the x-ray, the phonograph, the telephone and the wireless telegraph, this book explains the pioneering work of the men who made our modern world possible, and sets us wondering what the next century may bring - providing that we do not manage to destroy our planet in the meantime. The Gutenberg text of the 1915 edition (as recorded) does not have the benefit of the book's many diagrams. Also available, however, is an http://www.archive.org/stream/storyofelectrici00munriala#page/n5/mode/2up online book scan of the 1912 edition which includes the illustrations and coincides largely with...

Excerpt Details
Science, History