Summary of Simon Winchester’s Knowing What We Know

Summary of Simon Winchester’s Knowing What We Know PDF Author: Milkyway Media
Publisher: Milkyway Media
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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Book Description
Get the Summary of Simon Winchester’s Knowing What We Know in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. Simon Winchester's book "Knowing What We Know" explores the evolution of knowledge transmission from ancient times to the modern era. It begins with the story of Shukla Bose, who transformed from a hotel executive to an educator, providing free education to impoverished children in Bengaluru, India. The book examines the nature of curiosity and its role in knowledge acquisition, as well as the origins of writing and education in ancient civilizations like Mesopotamia and China...

Summary of Simon Winchester’s Knowing What We Know

Summary of Simon Winchester’s Knowing What We Know PDF Author: Milkyway Media
Publisher: Milkyway Media
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 24

Get Book Here

Book Description
Get the Summary of Simon Winchester’s Knowing What We Know in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. Simon Winchester's book "Knowing What We Know" explores the evolution of knowledge transmission from ancient times to the modern era. It begins with the story of Shukla Bose, who transformed from a hotel executive to an educator, providing free education to impoverished children in Bengaluru, India. The book examines the nature of curiosity and its role in knowledge acquisition, as well as the origins of writing and education in ancient civilizations like Mesopotamia and China...

The Perfectionists

The Perfectionists PDF Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062652575
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
“Another gem from one of the world’s justly celebrated historians specializing in unusual and always fascinating subjects and people.” — Booklist (starred review) The revered New York Times bestselling author traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement—precision—in a superb history that is both an homage and a warning for our future. The rise of manufacturing could not have happened without an attention to precision. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in eighteenth-century England, standards of measurement were established, giving way to the development of machine tools—machines that make machines. Eventually, the application of precision tools and methods resulted in the creation and mass production of items from guns and glass to mirrors, lenses, and cameras—and eventually gave way to further breakthroughs, including gene splicing, microchips, and the Hadron Collider. Simon Winchester takes us back to origins of the Industrial Age, to England where he introduces the scientific minds that helped usher in modern production: John Wilkinson, Henry Maudslay, Joseph Bramah, Jesse Ramsden, and Joseph Whitworth. It was Thomas Jefferson who later exported their discoveries to the fledgling United States, setting the nation on its course to become a manufacturing titan. Winchester moves forward through time, to today’s cutting-edge developments occurring around the world, from America to Western Europe to Asia. As he introduces the minds and methods that have changed the modern world, Winchester explores fundamental questions. Why is precision important? What are the different tools we use to measure it? Who has invented and perfected it? Has the pursuit of the ultra-precise in so many facets of human life blinded us to other things of equal value, such as an appreciation for the age-old traditions of craftsmanship, art, and high culture? Are we missing something that reflects the world as it is, rather than the world as we think we would wish it to be? And can the precise and the natural co-exist in society?

Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World

Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World PDF Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 000835913X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 525

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Book Description
From the bestselling author Simon Winchester, a human history of land around the world: who mapped it, owned it, stole it, cared for it, fought for it and gave it back.

Pacific

Pacific PDF Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062315439
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
One of Library Journal’s 10 Best Books of 2015 Following his acclaimed Atlantic and The Men Who United the States, New York Times bestselling author Simon Winchester offers an enthralling biography of the Pacific Ocean and its role in the modern world, exploring our relationship with this imposing force of nature. As the Mediterranean shaped the classical world, and the Atlantic connected Europe to the New World, the Pacific Ocean defines our tomorrow. With China on the rise, so, too, are the American cities of the West coast, including Seattle, San Francisco, and the long cluster of towns down the Silicon Valley. Today, the Pacific is ascendant. Its geological history has long transformed us—tremendous earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis—but its human history, from a Western perspective, is quite young, beginning with Magellan’s sixteenth-century circumnavigation. It is a natural wonder whose most fascinating history is currently being made. In telling the story of the Pacific, Simon Winchester takes us from the Bering Strait to Cape Horn, the Yangtze River to the Panama Canal, and to the many small islands and archipelagos that lie in between. He observes the fall of a dictator in Manila, visits aboriginals in northern Queensland, and is jailed in Tierra del Fuego, the land at the end of the world. His journey encompasses a trip down the Alaska Highway, a stop at the isolated Pitcairn Islands, a trek across South Korea and a glimpse of its mysterious northern neighbor. Winchester’s personal experience is vast and his storytelling second to none. And his historical understanding of the region is formidable, making Pacific a paean to this magnificent sea of beauty, myth, and imagination that is transforming our lives.

The Men Who United the States

The Men Who United the States PDF Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 006207962X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
“Simon Winchester never disappoints, and The Men Who United the States is a lively and surprising account of how this sprawling piece of geography became a nation. This is America from the ground up. Inspiring and engaging.” —Tom Brokaw Simon Winchester, acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Atlantic and The Professor and the Madman, delivers his first book about America: a fascinating popular history that illuminates the men who toiled fearlessly to discover, connect, and bond the citizenry and geography of the U.S.A. from its beginnings. How did America become “one nation, indivisible”? What unified a growing number of disparate states into the modern country we recognize today? To answer these questions, Winchester follows in the footsteps of America’s most essential explorers, thinkers, and innovators, such as Lewis and Clark and the leaders of the Great Surveys; the builders of the first transcontinental telegraph and the powerful civil engineer behind the Interstate Highway System. He treks vast swaths of territory, from Pittsburgh to Portland, Rochester to San Francisco, Seattle to Anchorage, introducing the fascinating people who played a pivotal role in creating today’s United States. Throughout, he ponders whether the historic work of uniting the States has succeeded, and to what degree. Featuring 32 illustrations throughout the text, The Men Who United the States is a fresh look at the way in which the most powerful nation on earth came together.

The River at the Center of the World

The River at the Center of the World PDF Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312423377
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
Chronicle of the author's adventures following the often difficult course of the Yangtze River in China, providing a portrait of the vast country, its history, politics, geography, climate, and culture.

A Crack in the Edge of the World

A Crack in the Edge of the World PDF Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060572000
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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Book Description
Unleashed by ancient geologic forces, a magnitude 8.25 earthquake rocked San Francisco in the early hours of April 18, 1906. Less than a minute later, the city lay in ruins. Bestselling author Simon Winchester brings his inimitable storytelling abilities to this extraordinary event, exploring the legendary earthquake and fires that spread horror across San Francisco and northern California in 1906 as well as its startling impact on American history and, just as important, what science has recently revealed about the fascinating subterranean processes that produced it—and almost certainly will cause it to strike again.

Pacific Nightmare

Pacific Nightmare PDF Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
The year is 1999. As Hong Kong collapsed in the years leading up to 1997, Asia became dangerously unstable. Civil war breaks out in China between North and South, Shanghai against Szechuan. A new North Korean leader follows in his father's footsteps and invades the prosperous miracle country of South Korea. The Western allies, committed to defending South Korea, are reluctantly drawn into a conflict not of their own making.

GPS Declassified

GPS Declassified PDF Author: Richard D. Easton
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1612344089
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
GPS Declassified examines the development of GPS from its secret, Cold War military roots to its emergence as a worldwide consumer industry. Drawing on previously unexplored documents, the authors examine how military rivalries influenced the creation of GPS and shaped public perceptions about its origin. Since the United States’ first program to launch a satellite in the late 1950s, the nation has pursued dual paths into space—one military and secret, the other scientific and public. Among the many commercial spinoffs this approach has produced, GPS arguably boasts the greatest impact on our daily lives. Told by the son of a navy insider—whose work helped lay the foundations for the system—and a science and technology journalist, the story chronicles the research and technological advances required for the development of GPS. The authors peek behind the scenes at pivotal events in GPS history. They note how the technology moved from the laboratory to the battlefield to the dashboard and the smartphone, and they raise the specter of how this technology and its surrounding industry affect public policy. Insights into how the system works and how it fits into a long history of advances in navigation tie into discussions of the myriad applications for GPS.

Atlantic

Atlantic PDF Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062020102
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
"Variably genial, cautionary, lyrical, admonitory, terrifying, horrifying and inspiring…A lifetime of thought, travel, reading, imagination and memory inform this affecting account." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Blending history and anecdote, geography and reminiscence, science and exposition, New York Times bestselling author Simon Winchester tells the breathtaking saga of the Atlantic Ocean. A gifted storyteller and consummate historian, Winchester sets the great blue sea's epic narrative against the backdrop of mankind's intellectual evolution, telling not only the story of an ocean, but the story of civilization. Fans of Winchester's Krakatoa, The Man Who Loved China, and The Professor and the Madman will love this masterful, penetrating, and resonant tale of humanity finding its way across the ocean of history.