Global Positioning Systems has conquered the world, and become an essential global utility free at the point of use, as our reliance on GPS extends in the past couple of decades, goes way beyond the satellite navigation, as it made paper maps obsolete. GPS helps land planes, route mobile calls, anticipate earthquakes, predicts the weather,…
This biography of Oscar Wilde is presented as part of an Anglo-Irish family, an actor with a compelling intergenerational tragedy. Sir William Wilde, his father, a prominent Dublin doctor and folklorist and mother Jane, a political poet “Speranza”. Sir William, a Victorian polymath, expert in aural medicine, and who was appointed Queen Victoria’s doctor…
Defend your right to free speech, should fears over security and social cohesion curtail it. Every person with an internet connection now has instant access to diversified opinions and crucially a platform to air their own opinions. In Free Speech, Timothy Garton Ash, scholar, and a journalist, direct us how to think freely and to…
If you believe the hype in this book you can re-create Rembrandts, write Shakespeare-like sonnets, have faith in an algorithm that can predict chart- toppers and in another that can work out whether a novel will “hit” the bestseller lists. Google’s artificial intelligence system has also recently had a go at writing poetry with questionable…
1966 is the year when London was swinging, the Beatles and the Stones were at their height of their popularity and there was full employment and England’s football team was on the verge to make history. Peter Chapman’s humble beginnings in a grammar school in Islington, taught him to be sporty and had the gift…
Mark Braude, Canadian born historian, looks behind the creation of Monte Carlo, how a small town grew into a prosperous resort and its rapid rise, luring of Monte Carlo’s gambling tables, and the desperation on the faces of gamblers who lost left a lasting impression on Edvard Munch. In 1891, the Norwegian painter described the…
Kathleen Kennedy and Billy, Marquess of Hartington, had an encounter during the summer of 1938 and fell in love at first sight. He was the oldest son and heir of the Duke of Devonshire, she one of the nine children of the American Ambassador. But there was trouble ahead as the Kennedy’s were prominent…
Duncan Clark a former Morgan Stanley investment consultant who runs the Beijing-based tech consultancy BDA, was invited to visit the lakeside apartment of Jack Ma, in 1999. The story of the evolution of Chinese Internet, particularly the rise of the south of China, Clark tells an interesting story about a conference for entrepreneurs held in…
Sean Carrol, an award-winning scientist, writer and educator, found how life works at vastly different scales and one of the most important revelations about the natural world is that everything is regulated, even there are rules the amount of every molecule in our bodies and rules that govern the numbers of every animal and plant…
Sunil Khilnani’s Incarnations, journeys across India and explores modern India spanning two and half thousand years, through lives of 50 historical phenomenal idiosyncratic people, including Birsa Munda. a young charismatic healer who led his tribal community in revolt against the British, Jyotirao Phule, the life of the lower-caste boy who rose to become a…