Richard Rhodes

Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author Richard Rhodes reveals the fascinating history behind energy transitions over time—wood to coal to oil to electricity and beyond. People have lived and died, businesses have prospered and failed, and nations have risen to world power and declined, all over energy challenges. Ultimately, the history of these challenges tells the story of humanity itself. Through an unforgettable cast of characters, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes explains how wood gave way to coal and coal made room for oil, as we now turn to natural gas, nuclear power, and renewable energy. Rhodes looks back on five centuries of progress, through such influential figures as Queen Elizabeth I, King James I, Benjamin Franklin, Herman Melville, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford. In Energy, Rhodes highlights the successes and failures that led to each breakthrough in energy production; from animal and waterpower to the steam engine, from internal-combustion to the electric motor. He addresses how we learned from such challenges, mastered their transitions, and capitalized on their opportunities. Rhodes also looks at the current energy landscape, with a focus on how wind energy is competing for dominance with cast supplies of coal and natural gas. He also addresses the specter of global warming, and a population hurtling towards ten billion by 2100. Human beings have confronted the problem of how to draw life from raw material since the beginning of time. Each invention, each discovery, each adaptation brought further challenges, and through such transformations, we arrived at where we are today. In Rhodes’s singular style, Energy details how this knowledge of our history can inform our way tomorrow.

A Human History

Energy

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes delivers a remarkable story of science history: how a ravishing film star and an avant-garde composer invented spread-spectrum radio, the technology that made wireless phones, GPS systems, and many other devices possible. Beginning at a Hollywood dinner table, Hedy's Folly tells a wild story of innovation that culminates in U.S. patent number 2,292,387 for a "secret communication system." Along the way Rhodes weaves together Hollywood’s golden era, the history of Vienna, 1920s Paris, weapons design, music, a tutorial on patent law and a brief treatise on transmission technology. Narrated with the rigor and charisma we've come to expect of Rhodes, it is a remarkable narrative adventure about spread-spectrum radio's genesis and unlikely amateur inventors collaborating to change the world.

The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World

Hedy's Folly

Tells the story of the making of the H-bomb and reveals how it created a nuclear stalemate that lasted forty years.

The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb

Dark Sun

Traces the development of the atomic bomb from Leo Szilard's concept through the drama of the race to build a workable device to the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima.

25th Anniversary Edition

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian challenges traditional interpretations of the Holocaust in a study that describes the role of the Einsatzgruppen, task forces deployed in Eastern Europe by the SS, whose job was to slaughter Eastern European Jews, the development of less personalized means of murder, and Hitler's eventual plans to annihilate members of other ethnic groups. Reprint.

The Ss-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust

Masters of Death

Describes the Spanish Civil War, fought to defend democracy in the face of the growing fascism that was overtaking Europe in the 1930s.

The Spanish Civil War and the World it Made

Hell and Good Company

a Life in Nature

Scientist : E. O. Wilson

Draws on interviews with criminals in prison to explain why individuals commit violence, examining the common threads that lead to violent behavior and explaining how intervention can stop the cycle.

The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist

Why They Kill

A biography of artist John James Audubon offers a study of his private life, detailing his arrival in America from France in 1803, his life in frontier Kentucky, and his extraordinary images of native American wildlife.

The Making of an American

John James Audubon

In this brilliant and gripping medical detective story. Richard Rhodes follows virus hunters on three continents as they track the emergence of a deadly new brain disease that first kills cannibals in New Guinea, then cattle and young people in Britain and France -- and that has already been traced to food animals in the United States. In a new Afterword for the paperback, Rhodes reports the latest U.S. and worldwide developments of a burgeoning global threat.

Tracking The Secrets Of A Terrifyin

Deadly Feasts

the making of the hydrogen bomb

Dark sun

The "Prion" Controversy and the Public's Health

Energija. Istorija chelovechestva

Richard Lee Rhodes

Richard. (Nuclear). Rhodes

Traces the development of the atomic bomb from Leo Szilard's concept through the drama of the race to build a workable device to the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima

Uniquely fusing practical advice on writing with his own insights into the craft, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes constructs beautiful prose about the issues would-be writers are most afraid to articulate: How do I dare write? Where do I begin? What do I do with this story I have to tell that fills and breaks my heart? Rich with personal vignettes about Rhode's sources of inspiration, How to Write is also a memoir of one of the most original and celebrated writers of our day.

Advice and Reflections

How to Write

Jak powstała bomba atomowa

The culminating volume in Richard Rhodes’s monumental and prizewinning history of nuclear weapons, offering the first comprehensive narrative of the challenges faced in a post–Cold War age. The past twenty years have transformed our relationship with nuclear weapons drastically. With extraordinary depth of knowledge and understanding, Rhodes makes clear how the five original nuclear powers—Russia, Great Britain, France, China, and especially the United States—have struggled with new realities. He shows us how the stage was set for a second tragic war when Iraq secretly destroyed its nuclear infrastructure and reveals the real reasons George W. Bush chose to fight a second war in Iraq. We see how the efforts of U.S. weapons labs laid the groundwork for nuclear consolidation in the former Soviet Union, how and why South Africa secretly built and then destroyed a small nuclear arsenal, and how Jimmy Carter’s private diplomacy prevented another Korean War. We also see how the present day represents a nuclear turning point and what hope exists for our future. Rhodes assesses the emerging threat of nuclear terrorism and offers advice on how our complicated relationships with North Korea and South Asia should evolve. Finally, he imagines what a post-nuclear world might look like, suggesting what might make it possible. Powerful and persuasive, The Twilight of the Bombs is an essential work of contemporary history.

Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World Without Nuclear Weapons

The Twilight of the Bombs

Looks at the development of technology over the course of the twentieth century, showing how it has led to both gains and losses for the planet, and charts the evolution of our technological future

A Century Of Vital Debate About Machines Systems And The Human World

Visions Of Technology

An award-winning author recounts the abuse he and his brother endured at the hands of their terrorizing stepmother and negligent father, and tells of the courageous role his brother played in delivering them to the care of others who would protect and support them. Includes bandw personal photos. This tenth anniversary edition includes a new epilogue. Lacks a subject index. First published by Simon and Schuster in 1990. Rhodes received the Pulitzer Prize for his book The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Richard Rhodes

About

Books

Join the club