___James Burke, the BBC's chief reporter on the Apollo missions to the moon, was awarded the Royal Television Society silver medal in 1973 and the gold medal in 1974. Connections was over two years in the making, the research and filming taking the author to twnety-three countries. James Burke lives in London. ___You can make all the plans you will, plot to make a fortune in the commodities market, speculate on developing trends: all will likely come to naught, for "however carefully you plan for the future, someone else's actions will inevitably modify the way your plans turn out". So writes the English scholar and documentary producer James Burke in his sparkling book Connections, a favourite of historically minded readers ever since its first publication in 1978. Taking a hint from Jacob Bronowski's Ascent of Man, Burke charts the course of technological innovation from ancient times to the present, but always with a subversive eye for things happening in spite of, and not because of, their inventors' intentions. Burke gives careful attention to the role of accident in human history. In his opening pages, for instance, he writes of the invention of uniform coinage, an invention that hinged on some unknown Anatolian prospector's discovering that a fleck of gold rubbed against a piece of schist - a "touchstone" - would leave a mark indicating its quality. Just so, we owe the invention of modern printing to Johann Gutenberg's training as a goldsmith, for his knowledge of the properties of metals enabled him to develop a press whose letterforms would not easily wear down. With Gutenberg's invention, Burke notes, came a massive revolution in the European economy, for, as he writes, "the easier it is to communicate, the faster change happens". Burke's book is a splendid and educational entertainment for our fast-changing time. - Gregory McNamee - This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell by Basil Mahon
This is the first biography in twenty years of James Clerk Maxwell, one of the greatest scientists of our time and yet a man relatively unknown to the wider public. Approaching science with a freshness unbound by convention or previous expectations, he produced some of the most original scientific thinking of the nineteenth century — and his discoveries went on to shape the twentieth century .
"James and the Giant Peach" [UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK WITH TEXT]
by Roald Dahl
Description: James has lived with his beastly Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker ever since the day his parents were eaten up outside London Zoo by an angry escaped rhinocerous. Then something very peculiar and magical happens and James is whisked away from his wretched existence and taken on the most amazing and unbelievable journey!
Three characters in Hard Times; James Harthouse, Josiah Bounderby and Stephen Blackpool, exemplify this realistic quality and each is representative of a different social division. These divisions are the upper, middle and lower class. Each class, because of social interaction or absence of the same, creates different dilemmas.
The upper-class, as holds true in real-life, is the smallest of the three categories and, consequently, has its own unique problems. James Harthouse, a characteristic member of the upper-class, comes to Coketown to search for something else to bide his time with.
Connections by James Burke
!["James and the Giant Peach" by Roald Dahl [UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK WITH TEXT]](http://englishtips.org/uploads/old/posts/thumbs/1171908333_rdjgp.jpg)
