Reading Diversions Book Club
Reading
Diversions is a special Scientific Library collection of books
written in an informative and entertaining way. People read these books for
scientific INTEREST rather than for scientific RESEARCH.
The Reading Diversions Book Club is
coordinated by Scientific Library staff and offers you an opportunity to read
and discuss books on fascinating scientific topics, generally from the
Library's
Reading
Diversions collection. We are also offering fiction compainions to
some titles. You may choose to read the fiction or non-fiction choice, or both.
It is NOT required that you read both books to attend the discussions.
All are welcome to participate, and we meet approximately
every five weeks at lunch time in the Conference Center in Building 549.
Feel free to bring your lunch along to the discussion. See a list of our
discussions below for dates and locations. If you prefer not to buy a
copy of the books, the Library may be able to
borrow a copy for you. Please
contact either Robin Meckley (x5840)
or Tracie Frederick (x1094), if
you would like to join the group or if you have questions.
Topic: Fraudulent
Science
Meeting Date and Location: Thursday,
January 8, 2009, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Conference Room A, Building 549
Non-fiction Option:
Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to
Fraud 
Author: Robert L. Park
Description: As
the author points out, the line between foolishness and fraud is thin. Because
it is not always easy to tell when that line is crossed, he uses the term
voodoo science to cover several types of science: pathological science, junk
science, pseudo-science, and fraudulent science. His book is intended to help
the reader recognize voodoo science and to understand the forces that conspire
to keep it alive. Scientists, Park observes, insist that the cure for voodoo
science is to raise the level of scientific literacy. But what is it that a
scientifically literate society should know? It is not specific knowledge of
science that the public needs, Park argues, so much as a scientific world view
- an understanding that we live in an orderly universe governed by natural laws
that cannot be circumvented by magic or miracles. (Source:
Books in Print)
Availability of Library
Copy
Discussion
Questions
Fiction Option:
Intuition 
Author:Allegra Goodman
Description: This
novel is an intricate mystery and a rich human drama set in the high-stakes
atmosphere of a prestigious research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Sandy Glass, a charismatic publicity-seeking oncologist, and Marion
Mendelssohn, a pure, exacting scientist, are codirectors of a lab at the
Philpott Institute dedicated to cancer research and desperately in need of a
grant. Both mentors and supervisors of their young postdoctoral proteges, Glass
and Mendelssohn demand dedication and obedience in a competitive environment
where funding is scarce and results elusive. So when the experiments of Cliff
Bannaker, a young postdoc in a rut, begin to work, the entire lab becomes giddy
with newfound expectations. But Cliff's rigorous colleague-and girlfriend-Robin
Decker suspects the unthinkable: that his findings are fraudulent. As Robin
makes her private doubts public and Cliff maintains his innocence, a
life-changing controversy engulfs the lab and everyone in it. (Source:
Books in Print)
Discussion
Questions
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Topic: Charles
Darwin
Meeting Date and Location: Thursday,
February 12, 2009, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Conference Room A, Building 549
Non-fiction Option:
The Reluctant Mr.
Darwin 
Author: David Quammen
Description: A
fresh look at Darwin's most radical idea, and the mysteriously slow process by
which he revealed it. Evolution, during the early nineteenth century, was an
idea in the air. Other thinkers had suggested it, but no one had proposed a
cogent explanation for how evolution occurs. Then, in September 1838, a young
Englishman named Charles Darwin hit upon the idea that "natural selection"
among competing individuals would lead to wondrous adaptations and species
diversity. Twenty-one years passed between that epiphany and publication of On
the Origin of Species, the human drama and scientific basis of Darwin's
twenty-one-year delay constitute a fascinating, tangled tale that elucidates
the character of a cautious naturalist who initiated an intellectual
revolution. The Reluctant Mr. Darwin is a book for everyone who has ever
wondered about who this man was and what he said. Drawing from Darwin's secret
"transmutation" notebooks and his personal letters, David Quammen has sketched
a vivid life portrait of the man whose work never ceases to be controversial.
(Source: Books in Print)
Availability of
Library Copy
Discussion
Questions
Fiction Option:
The Darwin
Conspiracy 
Author:John Darnton
Description: What led
Darwin to the theory of evolution? Why did he wait twenty-two years to write On
the Origin of Species? Why was he incapacitated by mysterious illnesses and
frightened of travel? Who was his secret rival? These are some of the questions
driving Darnton's richly dramatic narrative, which unfolds through three vivid
points of view: Darwin's own as he sails around the world aboard the Beagle;
his daughter Lizzie's as she strives to understand the guilt and fear that
struck her father at the height of his fame; and that of present-day
anthropologist Hugh Kellem and Darwin scholar Beth Dulicmer, whose obsession
with Darwin (and with each other) drives them beyond the accepted boundaries of
scholarly research. Hugh and Beth's discovery of Lizzie's diaries and letters
lead them to a hidden chapter of Darwin's autobiography. It is a maze of bitter
rivalries, petty deceptions, and jealously guarded secrets, at the heart of
which lies the birth of the theory of evolution. (Source:
Books in Print)
Discussion
Questions
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Topic:
Nanotechnology
Meeting Date and Location:
Thursday, March 19, 2009, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Conference Room A,
Building 549
Non-fiction Option:
The Dance of Molecules: How Nanotechnology Is
Changing Our Lives 
Author: Ted Sargent
Description: What if
a doctor could stop cancer by targeting a single malignant cell before it
multiplied? Imagine a paper-thin "power suit" that could keep you warm on a
winter day. What about a computer that connects directly with a person's
thoughts? In this groundbreaking exploration of the future of nanotechnology,
Ted Sargent reveals how all disciplines of science, from medicine to
microchips, are converging to create materials using the tiniest scale possible
-- molecule by molecule. And instead of trying to overcome the natural world,
nanotech takes its every move from the perfect, elegant structure of nature
itself. Its potential is seemingly endless, with practical implications that
will revolutionize the way we live, work, and play. In an age when science
often evokes more fear than faith, when the potential for super viruses and
diabolical cloning looms in our consciousness, Sargent enthusiastically
illuminates nanotech's positive possibilities. By working with the tiniest
building blocks in nature, pioneering scientists will drastically improve the
quality of life for all of us. (Source: Books in Print)
Availability of Library
Copy
Discussion
Questions
Fiction Option #1:
The Diamond Age: or a Young Lady's Illustrated
Primer 
Author:Neal Stephenson
Description:
Decades into our future, a stone's throw from the ancient city of Shanghai, a
brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has just broken the
rigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful neoVictorians. He's made an
illicit copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device called A Young Ladys
Illustrated Primer Commissioned by an eccentric duke for his grandchild, stolen
for Hackworth's own daughter, the Primer's purpose is to educate and raise a
girl capable of thinking for herself. It performs its function superbly.
Unfortunately for Hackworth, his smuggled copy has fallen into the wrong hands.
(Source:
Random
House)
Discussion
Questions
Fiction Option #2:
Prey 
Author:Michael Crichton
Description: In
the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of
nanoparticles-micro-robots-has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is
self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from
experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive. It has been programmed as
a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing
hour. Every attempt to destroy it has failed. And we are the prey. As fresh as
today's headlines, Michael Crichton's most compelling novel yet tells the story
of a mechanical plague and the desperate efforts of a handful of scientists to
stop it. Drawing on up-to-the-minute scientific fact, Prey takes us into the
emerging realms of nanotechnology and artificial distributed intelligence-in a
story of breathtaking suspense. Prey is a novel you can't put down because time
is running out. (Source: Books in
Print)
Discussion
Questions
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Topic: Use of Human
Cadavers
Meeting Date and Location: Thursday,
April 23, 2009, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Conference Room A, Building 549
Non-fiction Option:
Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human
Cadavers 
Author: Mary Roach
Description: Despite
the irreverent, macabre title, this is a respectful and serious examination of
what happens to cadavers, past and present. Salon columnist Roach explains how
surgeons and doctors use cadavers donated for research purposes to help the
living, and also examines potential new variations on how we bury the dead. She
explores some interesting historical side avenues as well: the use of corpses
to test the guillotine, earlier anatomical beliefs, grave robbers, the elixirs
various civilizations concocted out of corpses for medicinal purposes, and,
most important, how cadavers provided valuable information to us for
understanding such plane crashes as TWA Flight 800. Roach also addresses
philosophical issues. (Source: Books in
Print)
Availability of Library
Copy
Discussion
Questions
Fiction Option:
The Bone
Garden 
Author: Tess Gerritsen
Description:
Present day: Julia Hamill has made a horrifying discovery on the grounds of her
new home in rural Massachusetts: a skull buried in the rocky soil - human,
female, and, according to the trained eye of Boston medical examiner Maura
Isles, scarred with the unmistakable marks of murder. But whomever this
nameless woman was, and whatever befell her, is knowledge lost to another time.
Boston, 1830: In order to pay for his education, Norris Marshall, a talented
but penniless student at Boston Medical College, has joined the ranks for local
"resurrectionists" - those who plunder graveyards and harvest the dead for sale
on the black market. Yet even this ghoulish commerce pales beside the shocking
murder of a nurse found mutilated on the university hospital grounds. And when
a distinguished doctor meets the same grisly fate, Norris finds that
trafficking in the illicit cadaver trade has made him a prime suspect. To prove
his innocence, Norris must track down the only witness to have glimpsed the
killer: Rose Connolly, a beautiful seamstress from the Boston slums who fears
she may be the next victim. Joined by a sardonic, keenly intelligent young man
named Oliver Wendell Holmes, Norris and Rose comb the city - from its grim
cemeteries and autopsy suites to its glittering mansions and centers of Brahmin
power - on the trail of a maniacal fiend who lurks where least expected... and
who waits for his next lethal opportunity. With suspense and pitch-perfect
period detail, The Bone Garden interweaves the narratives of its nineteenth-
and twenty-first-century protagonists, tracing the dark mystery at its heart
across time and place to a finale as ingenious as it is shocking. (Source:
Books in Print)
Discussion Questions
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Topic: AIDS
Meeting Date and Location: Thursday, May 28, 2009, 12:00 p.m.
- 1:00 p.m. Conference Room A, Building 549
Non-fiction Option:
The Invisible Cure: Why We Are Losing the
Fight Against AIDS in Africa 
Author: Helen Epstein
Description: A New
York Times Notable Book of 2007, The Invisible Cure is an account of Africa's
AIDS epidemic from the inside--a revelatory dispatch from the intersection of
village life, government intervention, and international aid. Helen Epstein
left her job in the US in 1993 to move to Uganda, where she began work on a
test vaccine for HIV. Once there, she met patients, doctors, politicians, and
aid workers, and began exploring the problem of AIDS in Africa through the
lenses of medicine, politics, economics, and sociology. Amid the catastrophic
failure to reverse the epidemic, she discovered a village-based solution that
could prove more effective than any network of government intervention and
international aid, an intuitive response that calls into question many of the
fundamental assumptions about the AIDS in Africa. Hardcover title is
The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the
Fight Against AIDS (2007). (Source:
Books in Print)
Availability of Library
Copy
Discussion
Questions
Fiction Option:
Kennedy's
Brain 
Author: Henning Mankell
Description: When
Louise Cantor finds her twenty-eight year old son dead in his apartment,
everything indicates it was a suicide. Louise, however, refuses to accept this,
and with nothing more than few suspicions and a mother's intuition, she and her
ex-husband set out to find what happened. What they discover is a dark
underworld of people exploiting the victims of the AIDS epidemic: corrupt
businessmen dealing infected blood, suspicious researchers carrying out
dangerous tests, and lecherous drug dealers peddling black market medicine.
Their investigation takes them across three continents, and leads them into
some mighty financial institutions and highest corridors of power, where
suddenly their own lives are at stake. (Source:
Books in Print)
Discussion Questions
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Topic: Use of Stem
Cells
Meeting Date and Location: Thursday, July
2, 2009, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Conference Room A, Building 549
Non-fiction Option:
The Proteus Effect: Stem Cells And Their
Promise For Medicine 
Author: Ann B. Parson
Description: What
exactly are these biological wonders-these things called stem cells? They may
be tiny, but their impact is earth-shaking, generating excitement among medical
researchers-and outright turmoil in political circles. They are reported to be
nothing short of miraculous. But they have also incited fear and mistrust in
many. The power of stem cells rests in their unspecialized but marvelously
flexible nature. They are the clay of life waiting for the cellular signal that
will induce them to take on the shape of the beating cells of the heart muscle
or the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas. With a wave of our medical
magic wand, it's possible that stem cells could be used to effectively treat
(even cure) diseases such as Parkinson's disease, diabetes, heart disease,
autoimmune disorders, and even baldness. But should scientists be allowed to
pick apart 5-day-old embryos in order to retrieve stem cells? And when stem
cells whisper to us of immortality-they can divide and perpetuate new cells
indefinitely-how do we respond? Stem cells are forcing us to not only reexamine
how we define the beginning of life but how we come to terms with the end of
life. Meticulously researched, artfully balanced, and engagingly told, Ann
Parson chronicles a scientific discovery in progress, exploring the ethical
debates, describing the current research, and hinting of a spectacular new era
in medicine. (Source: Books in
Print)
Availability of Library
Copy
Discussion
Questions
Fiction Option:
My Sister's Keeper: a
Novel 
Author: Jodi Picoult
Description: Anna
is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone
countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate,
can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The
product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone
marrow match for Kate -- a life and a role that she has never
challenged...until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who
she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms
of her sister -- and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be
unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal
consequences for the sister she loves. My Sister's Keeper examines what it
means to be a good parent, a good sister, a good person. Is it morally correct
to do whatever it takes to save a child's life, even if that means infringing
upon the rights of another? Is it worth trying to discover who you really are,
if that quest makes you like yourself less? Should you follow your own heart,
or let others lead you? (Source: Books in
Print)
Discussion
Questions
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Topic: Science of
Scent
Meeting Date and Location: Thursday, August
6, 2009, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Conference Room A, Building 549
Non-fiction Option:
The Emperor of Scent: a Story of Perfume,
Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the
Senses 
Author: Chandler Burr
Description: For as
long as anyone can remember, a man named Luca Turin has had an uncanny
relationship with smells. He can distinguish the components of just about any
smell, from the world's most refined perfumes to the air in a subway car on the
Paris metro. A distinguished scientist, he once worked in an unrelated field,
though he made a hobby of collecting fragrances. But when, as a lark, he
published a collection of his reviews of the world's perfumes, the book hit the
small, insular business of perfume makers like a thunderclap. Who is this man
Luca Turin, they demanded, and how does he know so much? The closed community
of scent creation opened up to him, and he discovered a fact that astonished
him: no one in this world knew how smell worked. Billions and billions of
dollars were spent creating scents in a manner amounting to glorified trial and
error. The solution to the mystery of every other human sense has led to the
Nobel Prize, if not vast riches. Why, Luca Turin thought, should smell be any
different? So he gave his life to this great puzzle. And in the end,
incredibly, it would seem that he solved it. But when enormously powerful
interests are threatened and great reputations are at stake, Luca Turin
learned, nothing is quite what it seems. (Source:
Books in Print)
Availability of Library
Copy
Discussion Questions
Fiction Option:
Perfume: the Story of a
Murderer 
Author: Patrick Süskind
Description: The year is 1738; the place, Paris. A baby is
born under a fish-monger's bloody table in a marketplace, and abandoned.
Something is missing: he doesn't "smell" the way a baby should smell; indeed,
he has no scent at all. Slowly, as we watch Jean-Baptiste Grenouille cling
stubbornly to life, we begin to realize that a monster is growing before our
eyes. For this dark and sinister boy who has no smell himself possesses an
absolute sense of smell, and with it he can read the world to discover the
hidden truths that elude ordinary men. He can smell the very composition of
objects, and their history, and where they have been. As he leaves childhood
behind and comes to understand his terrible uniqueness, his obsession becomes
the quest to identify, and then to isolate, the most perfect scent of all, the
scent of life itself. At first, he hones his powers, learning the ancient arts
of perfume-making until the exquisite fragrances he creates are the rage of
Paris, and indeed Europe. Then, secure in his mastery of these means to an end,
he withdraws into a strange and agonized solitude, waiting, dreaming, until the
morning when he wakes, ready to embark on his monstrous quest: to find and
extract from the most perfect living creatures-- the most beautiful young
virgins in the land-- that ultimate perfume which alone can make him, too,
fully human. (Source: Books in
Print)
Discussion
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Topic: Marie Curie
Meeting Date and Location: Thursday, September 10, 2009, 12:00
p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Conference Room B, Building 549
Non-fiction Option:
Madame Curie: A
Biography 
Author: Eve Curie
Description: Marie
Sklodowska Curie (1867-1934) was the first woman scientist to win worldwide
fame, and indeed, one of the great scientists of this century. Winner of two
Nobel Prizes (for Physics in 1903 and for Chemistry in 1911), she performed
pioneering studies with radium and contributed profoundly to the understanding
of radioactivity. The history of her story-book marriage to Pierre Curie, of
their refusal to patent their processes or otherwise profit from the commercial
exploitation of radium, and her tragically ironic death from the very substance
that had made her famous is the stuff of legend. But, as this book reveals, it
was also true. An astonishing mind and a remarkable life are here portrayed by
Marie Curie's daughter in a classic and moving account. (Source:
Books in Print)
Availability of Library
Copy
Discussion Questions
Fiction Option:
The Book About Blanche and
Marie 
Author: Per Olov Enquist
Description:
Swedish novelist Enquist (The Royal Physician's Visit) finds various riveting
facets in the working friendship between Marie Curie and her lab assistant,
Blanche Wittman. After working with the uranium-rich ore called pitchblende,
Blanche got radiation poisoning; she eventually had both legs and one left arm
amputated. She moved around on a wagon and lived in Marie's Paris apartment,
where she died in 1913. Blanche kept several notebooks, collectively entitled
The Book of Questions, in which she revealed her obsession with love, first
stoked years before by the doctor who treated her for hysteria at age 18, J.M.
Charcot-the renowned head of Salpêtrière Hospital (Paris's asylum
for mad women) whose public experiments were duly absorbed by the young Sigmund
Freud. As Enquist fancifully, lugubriously and rapturously riffs on, extends,
and wonders after the notebooks (which really exist), Blanche, Marie (suffering
the scandal of her adulterous relationship with Paul Langevin) and the
conflicted Charcot get alternating point of view chapters, and the modern
sensibility that sprang from her body-scientifically scrutinized and dissected,
but ever resistant to being known or possessed-emerges beautifully. (Source:
Publishers Weekly)
Discussion
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Topic: Typhoid
Meeting Date and Location: Thursday, October 15, 2009, 12:00
p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Conference Room A, Building 549
Non-fiction Option:
Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's
Health 
Author: Judith W. Leavitt
Description:
She was an Irish immigrant cook. Between 1900 and 1907, she infected twenty-two
New Yorkers with typhoid fever through her puddings and cakes; one of them
died. Tracked down through epidemiological detective work, she was finally
apprehended as she hid behind a barricade of trashcans. To protect the public's
health, authorities isolated her on Manhattan's North Brother Island, where she
died some thirty years later. This book tells the remarkable story of Mary
Mallon--the real Typhoid Mary. Combining social history with biography,
historian Judith Leavitt re-creates early-twentieth-century New York City, a
world of strict class divisions and prejudice against immigrants and women.
Leavitt engages the reader with the excitement of the early days of
microbiology and brings to life the conflicting perspectives of journalists,
public health officials, the law, and Mary Mallon herself. Leavitt's readable
account illuminates dilemmas that continue to haunt us. To what degree are we
willing to sacrifice individual liberty to protect the public's health? How far
should we go in the age of AIDS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, and other
diseases? For anyone who is concerned about the threats and quandaries posed by
new epidemics, Typhoid Mary is a vivid reminder of the human side of disease
and disease control. (Source: Books in
Print)
Availability of Library
Copy
Discussion Questions
Fiction Option:
The Last Adam
Author: James Gould Cozzens
Description:
Dr. George Bull is an old-fashioned country doctor whose affair with Janet
Cardmaker is creating waves in the small town where he practices. When there is
a mysterious outbreak of typhoid which the doctor is slow in reacting to, it
all comes to a head. The townspeople hold an emergency meeting and decide to
replace Dr. Bull with a new doctor. Dr. Bull must find a way to save his job,
his reputation, and a young man's life, that all other practitioners have
written off as a permanent invalid.
Discussion Questions
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Topic: Smallpox
Meeting Date and Location: Thursday, November 19, 2009, 12:00
p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Conference Room A, Building 549
Non-fiction Option:
The Demon in the Freezer
Author: Richard Preston
Description: In
The Demon in the Freezer, Richard Preston takes us into the heart of USAMRIID,
the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at
Fort Detrick, Maryland, once the headquarters of the U.S. biological weapons
program and now the epicenter of national biodefense. Preston reports, in
unprecedented detail, on the government's response to the anthrax letter
attacks of October 2001 and takes us into the ongoing FBI investigation. His
story is based on interviews with top-level FBI agents and with Dr. Steven
Hatfill. He also introduces us to Dr. Peter Jahrling, the top scientist at
USAMRIID who is leading a team of scientists doing controversial experiments
with live smallpox virus at CDC. Jahrling's most urgent priority is to develop
a drug that will take on smallpox-and win. Preston takes us into the lab where
Jahrling is reawakening smallpox and explains what may be at stake if his last
bold experiment fails. (Source:
The
Publisher)
Availability of Library
Copy More copies are available for the
discussion. Contact the
Library to borrow one.
Fiction Option:
Sledgehammer 
Author: Paulo Reyes
Description: In
SledgeHammer, Max Kroose, an intuitive emergency room physician, suspects that
a case of smallpox has presented itself and believes that terrorists are to
blame. Worst yet, he fears it's the more lethal form of small pox Sledgehammer
Smallpox, which kills within days. As precious times passes, the risk of danger
for him and his staff grows and does the threat to the nation. The terrorists
planned attacks at a sports arena, mall, and airport must be stopped. One of
the terrorists arrives at the hospital, where the drama unfolds. Can this ER
Doctor convince the hospital administrator and the public health system of the
insidious presentation of this long dead disease--and the need to vaccinate the
American public? (Source:
The
Publisher)
NOTE: We will not be able to have
interlibrary loan copies of this book available, but there may be copies
available within the group to share. Or you may purchase a new or used copy of
the book from the publisher (Virtual
Word Publishing) or your favorite book vendor.
Contact the
Library to borrow a copy.
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Topic: The Best American Science
and Nature Writing from 2008
Meeting Date and Location:
Thursday, December 17, 2009, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Conference Room A,
Building 549
Non-fiction Option:
The Best American Science and Nature Writing
2008 
Author: Jerome Groopman, editor
Description: The 2008 Best American Science and Nature Writing
offers a rich assortment of "fascinating science and impressive journalism"
(New Scientist) culled from an array of periodicals, such as The New Yorker,
Scientific American, and National Geographic. The twenty-four provocative and
often visionary stories chosen by guest editor Jerome Groopman form an
outstanding sampling of the very best in a field of writing that stays ahead of
the curve, bringing important topics to the forefront of American discussion.
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008 packs a wallop of intriguing,
informative, and wondrous stories, each one bringing with it, as Jerome
Groopman writes, "a sense of excitement [to be] shared with others." (Source:
The
Publisher)
Availability of Library
Copy More copies are available for the
discussion. Contact the
Library to borrow one.
Fiction Option: There
will be no fiction option this month.
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Topic: Nikola
Tesla
Meeting Date and Location: Thursday,
January 21, 2010, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Conference Room A, Building 549
Non-fiction Option:
Tesla: Man out of
Time 
Author: Margaret Cheney
Description: In
Tesla: Man out of Time, Margaret Cheney explores the brilliant and prescient
mind of one of the twentieth century's greatest scientists and inventors.
Called a madman by his enemies, a genius by others, and an enigma by nearly
everyone, Nikola Tesla was, without a doubt, a trailblazing inventor who
created astonishing, sometimes world-transforming devices that were virtually
without theoretical precedent. Tesla not only discovered the rotating magnetic
field -- the basis of most alternating-current machinery -- but also introduced
us to the fundamentals of robotics, computers, and missile science. Almost
supernaturally gifted, unfailingly flamboyant and neurotic, Tesla was troubled
by an array of compulsions and phobias and was fond of extravagant, visionary
experimentations. He was also a popular man-about-town, admired by men as
diverse as Mark Twain and George Westinghouse, and adored by scores of society
beauties. From Tesla's childhood in Yugoslavia to his death in New York in the
1940s, Cheney paints a compelling human portrait and chronicles a lifetime of
discoveries that radically altered -- and continue to alter -- the world in
which we live. Tesla: Man Out of Time is an in-depth look at the seminal
accomplishments of a scientific wizard and a thoughtful examination of the
obsessions and eccentricities of the man behind the science.
Availability of Library
Copy More copies are available for the
discussion. Contact the
Library to borrow one.
Fiction Option:
The Invention of Everything
Else 
Author: Samantha Hunt
Description:A
wondrous imagining of an unlikely friendship between the eccentric inventor
Nikola Tesla and a young chambermaid in the Hotel New Yorker where Tesla lives
out his last days. From the moment she first catches sight of the Hotel New
Yorker's most famous resident on New Year's Day 1943, Louisa -- obsessed with
radio dramas and the secret lives of the guests -- is determined to befriend
this strange man. As Louisa discovers their shared affinity for pigeons, she
also begins to piece together Tesla's extraordinary story of life as an
immigrant, a genius, and a halfhearted capitalist. Meanwhile, Louisa--faced
with her father's imminent departure in a time machine to reunite with his late
wife, and pleasantly unsettled by the arrival in her life of a mysterious
mechanic (perhaps from the future) named Arthur -- begins to suspect that she
has understood something about the relationship of love and invention that
Tesla, for all his brilliance, never did. The Invention of Everything Else
luminously resurrects one of the greatest scientists of all time, Nikola Tesla,
while magically transporting us -- a la Steven Millhauser and Michael Chabon --
to an early twentieth-century New York City thrumming with energy, wonder, and
possibility.
Contact
the Library to borrow a copy.
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