Small Things Considered

Author: Henry Petroski
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307427803
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
Why has the durable paper shopping bag been largely replaced by its flimsy plastic counterpart? What circuitous chain of improvements led to such innovations as the automobile cup holder and the swiveling vegetable peeler? With the same relentless curiosity and lucid, witty prose he brought to his earlier books, Henry Petroski looks at some of our most familiar objects and reveals that they are, in fact, works in progress. For there can never be an end to the quest for the perfect design. To illustrate his thesis, Petroski tells the story of the paper drinking cup, which owes its popularity to the discovery that water glasses could carry germs. He pays tribute to the little plastic tripod that keeps pizza from sticking to the box and analyzes the numerical layouts of telephones and handheld calculators. Small Things Considered is Petroski at his most trenchant and provocative, casting his eye not only on everyday artifacts but on their users as well.

In the Company of Microbes

Author: Moselio Schaechter
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1555819605
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
A look at the amazing, groovy world of microbes With more than 1,000 posts and 2 million views, the esteemed blog Small Things Considered has been sparking the imagination of microbiologists for an entire decade. Throughout the years, Elio Schaechter and his team of dedicated bloggers have shared exciting, unexpected, and unusual stories from the microbial world. In the Company of Microbes is a carefully selected treasure chest of wise, amusing, and even profound statements about the ubiquity and relevance of the microbial world. Schaechter, past ASM Presidents, and distinguished microbiologists from around the globe reflect on personal, sometimes historic interactions with microbes and unexpected discoveries, each essay conveying the excitement and sense of surprise that microbiology holds for them. This is the reason that Small Things Considered is a scientific and social media phenomenon that has impacted scientists at every stage of their careers and shared the magical of microbes with world. Join Schaechter in discovering a never-ending pageant of astounding variations on the theme of microbial life. Enjoy!

Life at the Edge of Sight

Author: Scott Chimileski
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067497591X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Book Description
This stunning photographic essay opens a new frontier for readers to explore through words and images. Microbial studies have clarified life’s origins on Earth, explained the functioning of ecosystems, and improved both crop yields and human health. Scott Chimileski and Roberto Kolter are expert guides to an invisible world waiting in plain sight.

Small Things Like These

Author: Claire Keegan
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 0802158757
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 79

Book Description
Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize "A hypnotic and electrifying Irish tale that transcends country, transcends time." —Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers Small Things Like These is award-winning author Claire Keegan's landmark new novel, a tale of one man's courage and a remarkable portrait of love and family It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church. An international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.

Viruses: Essential Agents of Life

Author: Günther Witzany
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 940074899X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
A renaissance of virus research is taking centre stage in biology. Empirical data from the last decade indicate the important roles of viruses, both in the evolution of all life and as symbionts of host organisms. There is increasing evidence that all cellular life is colonized by exogenous and/or endogenous viruses in a non-lytic but persistent lifestyle. Viruses and viral parts form the most numerous genetic matter on this planet.

The God of Small Things

Author: Arundhati Roy
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 030737467X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 333

Book Description
The beloved debut novel about an affluent Indian family forever changed by one fateful day in 1969, from the author of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • MAN BOOKER PRIZE WINNER Compared favorably to the works of Faulkner and Dickens, Arundhati Roy’s modern classic is equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama. The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevocably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and intentional, exposing “big things [that] lurk unsaid” in a country drifting dangerously toward unrest. Lush, lyrical, and unnerving, The God of Small Things is an award-winning landmark that started for its author an esteemed career of fiction and political commentary that continues unabated.

The Book of (More) Delights

Author: Ross Gay
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1643755471
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Book Description
From bestselling author of The Book of Delights and award-winning poet, a book of lyrical mini-essays celebrating the everyday that will inspire readers to rediscover the joys in the world around us. In Ross Gay’s new collection of small, daily wonders, again written over the course of a year, one of America’s most original voices continues his ongoing investigation of delight. For Gay, what delights us is what connects us, what gives us meaning, from the joy of hearing a nostalgic song blasting from a passing car to the pleasure of refusing the “nefarious” scannable QR code menus, from the tiny dog he fell hard for to his mother baking a dozen kinds of cookies for her grandchildren. As always, Gay revels in the natural world—sweet potatoes being harvested, a hummingbird carousing in the beebalm, a sunflower growing out of a wall around the cemetery, the shared bounty from a neighbor’s fig tree—and the trillion mysterious ways this glorious earth delights us. The Book of (More) Delights is a volume to savor and share.

In Small Things Forgotten

Author: James Deetz
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307874389
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
History is recorded in many ways. According to author James Deetz, the past can be seen most fully by studying the small things so often forgotten. Objects such as doorways, gravestones, musical instruments, and even shards of pottery fill in the cracks between large historical events and depict the intricacies of daily life. In his completely revised and expanded edition of In Small Things Forgotten, Deetz has added new sections that more fully acknowledge the presence of women and African Americans in Colonial America. New interpretations of archaeological finds detail how minorities influenced and were affected by the development of the Anglo-American tradition in the years following the settlers' arrival in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. Among Deetz's observations: Subtle changes in building long before the Revolutionary War hinted at the growing independence of the American colonies and their desire to be less like the British. Records of estate auctions show that many households in Colonial America contained only one chair--underscoring the patriarchal nature of the early American family. All other members of the household sat on stools or the floor. The excavation of a tiny community of freed slaves in Massachusetts reveals evidence of the transplantation of African culture to North America. Simultaneously a study of American life and an explanation of how American life is studied, In Small Things Forgotten, through the everyday details of ordinary living, colorfully depicts a world hundreds of years in the past.

The Way Things Were.

Author: Aatish Taseer
Publisher: Dylan Fazel
ISBN:
Category : Delhi (India)
Languages : en
Pages : 124

Book Description
When Skanda's father Toby dies, estranged from Skanda's mother and from the India he once loved, it falls to Skanda to return his body to his birthplace. This is a journey that takes him halfway around the world and deep within three generations of his family, whose fractures, frailties and toxic legacies he has always sought to elude. Both an intimate portrait of a marriage and its aftershocks, and a panoramic vision of India's half-century - in which a rapacious new energy supplants an ineffectual elite - 'The way things were' is an epic novel about the pressures of history upon the present moment. It is also a meditation on the stories we tell and the stories we forget; their tenderness and violence in forging bonds and in breaking them apart. Set in modern Delhi and at flashpoints from the past four decades, fusing private and political, classical and contemporary to thrilling effect, this book confirms Aatish Taseer as one of the most arresting voices of his generation.

Cheese and Microbes

Author: Catherine W. Donnelly
Publisher: ASM Press
ISBN: 1555818595
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Book Description
A scientific overview of the association of microbes with cheese, through the lens of select cheese varieties that result due to surface mold ripening, internal mold ripening, rind washing, cave aging, or surface smear rind development. Over the past decade, there has been explosive growth in the U.S. artisan cheese industry. The editor, Ms. Donnelly, was involved in developing a comprehensive education curriculum for those new to cheese making, which focused on the science of cheese, principally to promote cheese quality and safety. Many of the chapters in this book focus on aspects of that requisite knowledge. • Explains the process of transformation of milk to cheese and how sensory attributes of cheese are evaluated. • Provides an overview of cheese safety and regulations governing cheese making, both in the US and abroad, to ensure safety. • Explores how the tools of molecular biology provide new insights into the complexity of the microbial biodiversity of cheeses. • Examines the biodiversity of traditional cheeses as a result of traditional practices, and overviews research on the stability of the microbial consortium of select traditional cheese varieties. • Key text for cheese makers, scientists, students, and cheese enthusiasts who wish to expand their knowledge of cheeses and traditional foods.