Blackett's War

Author: Stephen Budiansky
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307743632
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
A Washington Post Notable Book In March 1941, after a year of devastating U-boat attacks, the British War Cabinet turned to an intensely private, bohemian physicist named Patrick Blackett to turn the tide of the naval campaign. Though he is little remembered today, Blackett did as much as anyone to defeat Nazi Germany, by revolutionizing the Allied anti-submarine effort through the disciplined, systematic implementation of simple mathematics and probability theory. This is the story of how British and American civilian intellectuals helped change the nature of twentieth-century warfare, by convincing disbelieving military brass to trust the new field of operational research.

Blackett's War

Author: Stephen Budiansky
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307962636
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

The Singapore Grip

Author: J.G. Farrell
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590174178
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 586

Book Description
Singapore, 1939: life on the eve of World War II just isn't what it used to be for Walter Blackett, head of British Singapore's oldest and most powerful firm. No matter how forcefully the police break one strike, the natives go on strike somewhere else. His daughter keeps entangling herself with the most unsuitable beaus, while her intended match, the son of Blackett's partner, is an idealistic sympathizer with the League of Nations and a vegetarian. Business may be booming—what with the war in Europe, the Allies are desperate for rubber and helpless to resist Blackett's price-fixing and market manipulation—but something is wrong. No one suspects that the world of the British Empire, of fixed boundaries between classes and nations, is about to come to a terrible end. A love story and a war story, a tragicomic tale of a city under siege and a dying way of life, The Singapore Grip completes the “Empire Trilogy” that began withTroubles and the Booker prize-winning Siege of Krishnapur.

Swallows and Amazons

Author: Arthur Ransome
Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher
ISBN: 156792462X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
When their boat is burned and they are cast adrift in the South China Sea, Titty, Roger, Peggy, John, Nancy, Susan, and Captain Flint make their way to land only to find themselves the captives of the redoubtable Missee Lee, one of the last pirates operating off the China coast.

Interactive Operations Research with Maple

Author: Mahmut Parlar
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461213568
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 478

Book Description
Interactive Operations Research with Maple: Methods and Models has two ob jectives: to provide an accelerated introduction to the computer algebra system Maple and, more importantly, to demonstrate Maple's usefulness in modeling and solving a wide range of operations research (OR) problems. This book is written in a format that makes it suitable for a one-semester course in operations research, management science, or quantitative methods. A nwnber of students in the departments of operations research, management science, oper ations management, industrial and systems engineering, applied mathematics and advanced MBA students who are specializing in quantitative methods or opera tions management will find this text useful. Experienced researchers and practi tioners of operations research who wish to acquire a quick overview of how Maple can be useful in solving OR problems will find this an excellent reference. Maple's mathematical knowledge base now includes calculus, linear algebra, ordinary and partial differential equations, nwnber theory, logic, graph theory, combinatorics, statistics and transform methods. Although Maple's main strength lies in its ability to perform symbolic manipulations, it also has a substantial knowledge of a large nwnber of nwnerical methods and can plot many different types of attractive-looking two-dimensional and three-dimensional graphs. After almost two decades of continuous improvement of its mathematical capabilities, Maple can now boast a user base of more than 300,000 academics, researchers and students in different areas of mathematics, science and engineering.

The Picts and the Martyrs

Author: Arthur Ransome
Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher
ISBN: 9781567922288
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
The two Blackett sisters are to stay at Beckfoot on the lakeshore with their cook, but when their great aunt hears of the abandonment, she's on the next train.

The Bloody Shirt

Author: Stephen Budiansky
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780670018406
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
A narrative account of Reconstruction-era violence documents vigilante attacks on African Americans and their white allies, in a fast-paced analysis that traces the period as reflected by the careers of two Union officers, a Confederate general, a northern entrepreneur, and a former slave.

Swallowdale

Author: Arthur Ransome
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448139848
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 644

Book Description
'Ahoy! Ahoy! Swallows! Ahoy!' Have you ever sailed in a boat or built a camp? Have you caught trout and cooked it yourself? The four Swallows, John, Susan, Titty and Roger return to the lake full of such plans and they can't wait to meet up with Nancy and Peggy, the Amazon Pirates. When the Swallow is shipwrecked and the Amazon's fearsome Great-Aunt makes decides to make a visit their summer seems ruined. Then they discover a wonderful hidden valley and things take a turn for the better... BACKSTORY: Discover the real Swallowdale, swot up on seafaring and learn all about the adventurous author.

The Pleasures of Counting

Author: T. W. Körner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316025454
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 548

Book Description
What is the connection between the outbreak of cholera in Victorian Soho, the Battle of the Atlantic, African Eve and the design of anchors? One answer is that they are all examples chosen by Dr Tom Körner to show how a little mathematics can shed light on the world around us, and deepen our understanding of it. Dr Körner, an experienced author, describes a variety of topics which continue to interest professional mathematicians, like him. He does this using relatively simple terms and ideas, yet confronting difficulties (which are often the starting point for new discoveries) and avoiding condescension. If you have ever wondered what it is that mathematicians do, and how they go about it, then read on. If you are a mathematician wanting to explain to others how you spend your working days (and nights), then seek inspiration here.

Avid Reader

Author: Robert Gottlieb
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374713901
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
Winner of the Anne M. Sperber Prize A spirited and revealing memoir by the most celebrated editor of his time. After editing The Columbia Review, staging plays at Cambridge, and a stint in the greeting-card department of Macy's, Robert Gottlieb stumbled into a job at Simon and Schuster. By the time he left to run Alfred A. Knopf a dozen years later, he was the editor in chief, having discovered and edited Catch-22 and The American Way of Death, among other bestsellers. At Knopf, Gottlieb edited an astonishing list of authors, including Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Doris Lessing, John le Carré, Michael Crichton, Lauren Bacall, Katharine Graham, Robert Caro, Nora Ephron, and Bill Clinton--not to mention Bruno Bettelheim and Miss Piggy. In Avid Reader, Gottlieb writes with wit and candor about succeeding William Shawn as the editor of The New Yorker, and the challenges and satisfactions of running America's preeminent magazine. Sixty years after joining Simon and Schuster, Gottlieb is still at it--editing, anthologizing, and, to his surprise, writing. But this account of a life founded upon reading is about more than the arc of a singular career--one that also includes a lifelong involvement with the world of dance. It's about transcendent friendships and collaborations, "elective affinities" and family, psychoanalysis and Bakelite purses, the alchemical relationship between writer and editor, the glory days of publishing, and--always--the sheer exhilaration of work. Photograph of Bob Gottlieb © by Jill Krementz