Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  Honeybee Decline

  PBS NewsHour

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  Five years ago, honeybees began dying in large numbers and hives were becoming defunct. Spencer Michels reports on the scientists who are still trying to figure out why this is happening and what can be done to help the problem.

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  The Elements of Marie Curie -...

  Dava Sobel

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  The acclaimed Pulitzer Prize finalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Galileo’s Daughter crafts a luminous chronicle of the most famous woman in the history of science, and the untold story of the remarkable young women trained in her laboratory 
   
  “Even now, nearly a century after her death, Marie Curie remains the only female scientist most people can name,” writes Dava Sobel at the opening of her shining portrait of the sole Nobel laureate decorated in two separate fields of science—Physics in 1903 with her husband, Pierre, and Chemistry by herself in 1911. And yet, as brilliant and creative as she was in the laboratory, Marie Curie was equally memorable outside it. Grieving Pierre’s untimely death in 1906, she took his place as professor of physics at the Sorbonne, devotedly raised two brilliant daughters, drove a van she outfitted with X-ray equipment to the front lines of World War I, befriended Albert Einstein and other luminaries of twentieth-century physics, won support from two US presidents, and inspired generations of young women to pursue science as a way of life.  
   
  As Sobel did so masterfully in her portrait of Galileo through the prism of his daughter, she approaches Marie Curie from a unique angle, narrating her remarkable life of discovery and fame alongside the women who became her legacy—from France’s Marguerite Perey, who discovered the element francium, and Norway’s Ellen Gleditsch, to Mme. Curie’s elder daughter, Irène, winner of the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. For decades the only woman in the room at international scientific gatherings that probed new theories about the interior of the atom, Marie Curie traveled far and wide, despite constant illness, to share the secrets of radioactivity, a term she coined. Her two triumphant tours of the United States won her admirers for her modesty even as she was mobbed at every stop; her daughters, in Ève’s later recollection, “discovered all at once what the retiring woman with whom they had always lived meant to the world.” 
   
  With the consummate skill that made bestsellers of Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter, and the appreciation for women in science at the heart of The Glass Universe, Dava Sobel has authored a radiant biography and a masterpiece of storytelling, illuminating the life and enduring influence of one of the most consequential figures of our time.

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  Benny Goodman: The Life and...

  Charles River Editors

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    “After you've done all the work and prepared as much as you can, what the hell, you might as well go out and have a good time.” – Benny Goodman 
  	Sprightly swing music spills across the dimly lit club. The grayish curtains of cigarette smoke part every once in a while to reveal a sparkling stage and tables upon tables of patrons, some incurably inebriated and others high on the fast-paced nightlife. Fabulous flappers in shimmery cocktail dresses and stylish feather headbands throw their hands up and stomp their feet to the addictive beat on the dance floor. Smartly dressed men, their hair neatly parted and slicked back, toss fistfuls of dice onto the plush green baize of the craps tables. Some hover over roulette wheels, staring intently at the spinning flashes of silver, while others finger their playing cards as they sip on tumblers of whiskey, eyeing both the river and the tower of tokens next to them.  
  	Frisky tunes, chic fashion, and American gambling are nostalgic, rose-tinted images most choose to project when visualizing the Roaring Twenties, but the other side of the coin brought an uninviting, much harsher reality that most would prefer to sweep under the rug. The first real estate bubble was on the brink of bursting, and progress was evident, but painfully slow, which gave way to yet another era of violent riots, lynchings, and other forms of oppression imposed on minorities.  
  	When the phrase “the King” is used in the context of American music, most people think of Elvis Presley, but Presley was just a baby when the title was first conferred upon Benny Goodman as the King of Swing in 1935. The Swing Era was a magical period in American history between the hedonism of the Roaring Twenties and the rebelliousness sparked by rock music beginning in the 1950s. Swing music was rooted in ragtime, blues, and jazz music that had long been popular in African American enclaves in Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, and New Orleans. Swing took the entire nation by storm thanks in large part to Benny Goodman and his bands, earning Goodman the nearly undisputed title of the King of Swing.  
  	Goodman's life was a genuine rags-to-riches story. The son of nearly destitute Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Goodman was a musical prodigy who began playing professionally at the tender age of 13, and he was also among the first mainstream bandleaders to hire black musicians. Referring to music as “a great escape for me from the poverty," Goodman’s lifelong focus was on good music, no matter who it came from. As he put it, “If a guy's got it, let him give it. I'm selling music, not prejudice.” Goodman’s popularity was so instrumental that Lionel Hampton went so far as to claim, "As far as I'm concerned, what he did in those days—and they were hard days, in 1937—made it possible for Negroes to have their chance in baseball and other fields." 
   
  	Apart from a few hiatuses to tend his health and his growing family, Goodman remained a consistently active musician literally right up until his death in 1986 at the age of 77. Somewhat fittingly, he died in his study with his clarinet next to him and a Brahms sonata on a music stand nearby. 
  	Benny Goodman: The Life and Legacy of the King of Swing profiles how Goodman rose from obscure beginnings to become one of 20th century music’s most influential figures. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the King of Swing like never before.

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  Hogan's Heroes - Behind the...

  Brenda Scott Royce

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  An insider’s look at the surprisingly successful, perennially popular classic 1960s sitcom set in a prisoner-of-war camp in World War II Germany. 
   
  If your fondest TV memories involve the POWs of Stalag 13 cleverly outwitting their captors, Schultz stammering “I know nothing!” and Hochstetter threatening to send everyone to the Russian front, then this is the book for you. This fun and informative book takes you behind the scenes of the classic 1960s sitcom to reveal:the story behind the creation, production, and eventual cancellation of the seriesthe controversy surrounding the show’s unlikely premiseinterviews with many of the show’s stars and crewbiographies of the stars and supporting actorsa detailed guide to each of the 168 episodesa guide to collecting Hogan’s memorabilia and more . . .  
   
  Hogan’s Heroes is more popular now than ever before, especially in Germany, where it has become a surprising cult hit. In this book, most of the show’s stars and behind-the-scenes personnel share their memories and reflect on the series’ enduring popularity.

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  The Most Desperate Acts of...

  Daniel T. Davis

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  “Presents Custer’s Civil War accomplishments in clear and engaging prose, while its ample images and battle maps place unfamiliar readers in the action.” —The Civil War Monitor 
   
  Through the passage of time, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s last fight, the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, has come to overshadow the rest of his military career, which had its brilliant beginning in the American Civil War. 
   
  Plucked from obscurity by Maj. Gen. George McClellan, Custer served as a staff officer through the early stages of the war. His star began to rise in late June, 1863, when he catapulted several grades to brigadier general and was given brigade command. Shortly thereafter, at Gettysburg and Buckland Mills, he led his men—the Wolverines—in some of the heaviest cavalry fighting of the Eastern Theater. 
   
  At Yellow Tavern, Custer’s assault broke the enemy line, and one of his troopers mortally wounded the legendary Confederate cavalryman, J.E.B. Stuart. At Trevilian Station, his brigade was nearly destroyed. At Third Winchester, he participated in an epic cavalry charge. Elevated to lead the Third Cavalry Division, Custer played a major role at Tom’s Brook and, later, at Appomattox, which ultimately led to the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. 
   
  Historian Daniel T. Davis, a long-time student of George Custer, has spent countless hours walking and studying the battlefields where Custer fought in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. In The Most Desperate Acts of Gallantry, he chronicles the Civil War experiences of one of the most recognized individuals to emerge from that tragic chapter in American history. 
   
  “A fast-paced study, engaging study.” —Journal of the Shenandoah Valley During the Civil War Era

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  Field Marshal - The Life and...

  Daniel Allen Butler

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  A biography of the WWII military genius known as the Desert Fox—and his complex, ultimately fatal relationship with Hitler from a New York Times–bestselling author.   Born leader, brilliant soldier, devoted husband and father—Erwin Rommel was intelligent, brave, and compassionate, while at the same time vain, egotistical, and arrogant. In France in 1940, then for two years in North Africa, then at Normandy in 1944, he proved himself a master of armored warfare, running rings around a succession of Allied generals who never got his measure and could only resort to overwhelming numbers to defeat him.   Yet for all his genius, Rommel was also naive, a man who could admire Adolf Hitler at the same time that he despised the Nazis, dazzled by a Führer whose successes blinded him to the true nature of the Third Reich. Above all, he was the quintessential German patriot, who ultimately would refuse to abandon his moral compass—so that on one pivotal day in June 1944, he came to understand that he had mistakenly served an evil man and evil cause. He would still fight for Germany, even as he abandoned his oath of allegiance to the Führer, when he came to realize that Hitler had morphed into nothing more than an agent of death and destruction. In the end, Erwin Rommel was forced to die by his own hand, not because, as some would claim, he had dabbled in a tyrannicidal conspiracy, but because he had committed a far greater crime—he dared to tell Adolf Hitler the truth.   In Field Marshal, New York Times–bestselling historian Daniel Allen Butler describes the swirling, innovative campaigns in which Rommel won his military reputation, and assesses the temper of the man who finally fought only for his country and no dark depths beyond.

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