Biography & Autobiography: Science, Technology & Engineering

Why contagion matters: a rallying cry for a new form of global solidarity in the wake of the CoV epidemic.

A moving medical memoir written by intensive care doctor Dr. Matt Morgan.

Dr Weekes is the invisible giant on whose shoulders many psychiatrists and psychologists now stand. Her extraordinary story has never been told because she was completely ignored by professionals in the field, who had had no answers to the anxiety state and no understanding of th...e scholarship that lay behind her work. Yet her books, which sold for a handful of dollars, worked. The mail from grateful readers was unceasing and unmanageable, and the media competed for interviews with her. Dr Weekes's approach to treating anxiety proved state-of-the-art, and her books still change lives. Her work benefitted tens of millions of people, according to one of the foremost experts in anxiety, Dr David Barlow. How was it that she came to have such a unique understanding of the anxiety state, which was an epidemic hiding in plain sight? Cracking the anxiety code was a long, isolated, individual mission. It started when a terrified young woman, about to earn her first doctorate, was standing on a London wharf in 1929 feeling she simply couldn't go on. It ended with her changing the trajectory of global treatment.
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What if we could have babies without bearing children, eat meat without killing animals, have a perfect sexual relationship without involving another human being or chose the time of our painless death?

A fresh interpretation of the life of Galileo Galilei, one of history's greatest and most fascinating scientists, that sheds new light on his discoveries and how he was challenged by science deniers. We really need this story now, because we're living through the next chapter of ...science denial (Bill McKibben). Galileo's story may be more relevant today than ever before. At present, we face enormous crises-such as the minimization of the dangers of climate change-because the science behind these threats is erroneously questioned or ignored. Galileo encountered this problem 400 years ago. His discoveries, based on careful observations and ingenious experiments, contradicted conventional wisdom and the teachings of the church at the time. Consequently, in a blatant assault on freedom of thought, his books were forbidden by church authorities. Astrophysicist and bestselling author Mario Livio draws on his own scientific expertise to provide captivating insights into how Galileo reached his bold new conclusions about the cosmos and the laws of nature. A freethinker who followed the evidence wherever it led him, Galileo was one of the most significant figures behind the scientific revolution. He believed that every educated person should know science as well as literature, and insisted on reaching the widest audience possible, publishing his books in Italian rather than Latin. Galileo was put on trial with his life in the balance for refusing to renounce his scientific convictions. He remains a hero and inspiration to scientists and all of those who respect science-which, as Livio reminds us in this gripping book, remains threatened even today.
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