Download or read book The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti written by Meryle Secrest and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2019 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human, business, design, engineering, cold war, and tech story of how the Olivetti company's first desktop computer, the P101, came to be. Within eighteen months it had caught up with, and surpassed, IBM, the American giant that had become an arm of the American government. Secrest tells how Olivetti made inroads into the US market in 1959 by taking control of Underwood of Hartford CT as an assembly plant for Olivetti's own typewriters and future miniaturized personal computers. Within a week of the purchase, the US government filed an antitrust suit to try to stop it. In 1960 Adriano Olivetti died suddenly of a heart attack; eighteen months later the young engineer who had assembled Olivetti's team of electronic engineers was killed in a suspicious car crash. The Olivetti company and the P101 came to an insidious and shocking end. -- adapted from jacket

Download or read book The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti written by Meryle Secrest and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The never-before-told true account of the design and development of the first desktop computer by the world's most famous high-styled typewriter company, more than a decade before the arrival of the Osborne 1, the Apple 1, the first Intel microprocessor, and IBM's PC5150. The human, business, design, engineering, cold war, and tech story of how the Olivetti company came to be, how it survived two world wars and brought a ravaged Italy back to life, how after it mastered the typewriter business with the famous "Olivetti touch," it entered the new, fierce electronics race; how its first desktop compter, the P101, came to be; how, within eighteen months, it had caught up with, and surpassed, IBM, the American giant that by then had become an arm of the American government, developing advanced weapon systems; Olivetti putting its own mainframe computer on the market with its desktop prototype, selling 40,000 units, including to NASA for its lunar landings. How Olivetti made inroads into the US market by taking control of Underwood of Hartford CT as an assembly plant for Olivetti's own typewriters and future miniaturized personal computers; how a week after Olivetti purchased Underwood, the US government filed an antitrust suit to try to stop it; how Adriano Olivetti, the legendary idealist, socialist, visionary, heir to the company founded by his father, built the company into a fantastical dynasty--factories, offices, satellite buildings spread over more than fifty acres--while on a train headed for Switzerland in 1960 for supposed meetings and then to Hartford, never arrived, dying suddenly of a heart attack at fifty-eight . . . how eighteen months later, his brilliant young engineer, who had assembled Olivetti's superb team of electronic engineers, was killed, as well, in a suspicious car crash, and how the Olivetti company and the P101 came to its insidious and shocking end.

Download or read book The Mysterious Affair at Styles written by Agatha Christie and published by Ryerson Press ; New York : J. Lane ; London : J. Lane, 1920 (New York : J.J. Little & Ives). This book was released on 1920 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The heiress of Styles has been murdered, dying in agony from strychnine slipped into her coffee. And there are plenty who would gain from her death: the financially strapped stepson, the gold digging younger husband, and an embittered daughter-in-law. Agatha Christie's eccentric and hugely popular detective, Hercule Poirot, was introduced to the world in this book, which launched her career as the most famous and best loved of all mystery writers.

Download or read book They Will Drown in Their Mothers Tears written by Johannes Anyuru and published by . This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This daring speculative novel tackles terrorism and anti-immigrant hysteria, combining lyric intensity with the tools of science fiction.

Download or read book Empire of the Sum The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator written by Keith Houston and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2023-08-22 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hidden history of the pocket calculator—a device that ushered in modern mathematics, helped build the atomic bomb, and went with us to the moon—and the mathematicians, designers, and inventors who brought it to life. Starting with hands, abacus, and slide rule, humans have always reached for tools to simplify math. Pocket-sized calculators ushered in modern mathematics, helped build the atomic bomb, took us to the bottom of the ocean, and accompanied us to the moon. The pocket calculator changed our world, until it was supplanted by more modern devices that, in a cruel twist of irony, it helped to create. The calculator is dead; long live the calculator. In this witty mathematic and social history, Keith Houston transports readers from the nascent economies of the ancient world to World War II, where a Jewish engineer calculated for his life at Buchenwald, and into the technological arms race that led to the first affordable electronic pocket calculators. At every turn, Houston is a scholarly, affable guide to this global history of invention. Empire of the Sum will appeal to math lovers, history buffs, and anyone seeking to understand our trajectory to the computer age.

Download or read book Inherent Vice written by Thomas Pynchon and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-06-13 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The funniest book Pynchon has written." — Rolling Stone "Entertainment of a high order." - Time Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon—private eye Doc Sportello surfaces, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era. In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre that is at once exciting and accessible, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there. It's been a while since Doc Sportello has seen his ex- girlfriend. Suddenly she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. It's the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that "love" is another of those words going around at the moment, like "trip" or "groovy," except that this one usually leads to trouble. Undeniably one of the most influential writers at work today, Pynchon has penned another unforgettable book.

Download or read book Stephen Sondheim written by Meryle Secrest and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first full-scale life of the most important composer-lyricist at work in musical theatre today, Meryle Secrest, the biographer of Frank Lloyd Wright and Leonard Bernstein, draws on her extended conversations with Stephen Sondheim as well as on her interviews with his friends, family, collaborators, and lovers to bring us not only the artist--as a master of modernist compositional style--but also the private man. Beginning with his early childhood on New York's prosperous Upper West Side, Secrest describes how Sondheim was taught to play the piano by his father, a successful dress manufacturer and amateur musician. She writes about Sondheim's early ambition to become a concert pianist, about the effect on him of his parents' divorce when he was ten, about his years in military and private schools. She writes about his feelings of loneliness and abandonment, about the refuge he found in the home of Oscar and Dorothy Hammerstein, and his determination to become just like Oscar. Secrest describes the years when Sondheim was struggling to gain a foothold in the theatre, his attempts at scriptwriting (in his early twenties in Rome on the set of Beat the Devil with Bogart and Huston, and later in Hollywood as a co-writer with George Oppenheimer for the TV series Topper), living the Hollywood life. Here is Sondheim's ascent to the peaks of the Broadway musical, from his chance meeting with play- wright Arthur Laurents, which led to his first success-- as co-lyricist with Leonard Bernstein on West Side Story--to his collaboration with Laurents on Gypsy, to his first full Broadway score, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. And Secrest writes about his first big success as composer, lyricist, writer in the 1960s with Company, an innovative and sophisticated musical that examined marriage à la mode. It was the start of an almost-twenty-year collaboration with producer and director Hal Prince that resulted in such shows as Follies, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, and A Little Night Music. We see Sondheim at work with composers, producers, directors, co-writers, actors, the greats of his time and ours, among them Leonard Bernstein, Ethel Merman, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Jerome Robbins, Zero Mostel, Bernadette Peters, and Lee Remick (with whom it was said he was in love, and she with him), as Secrest vividly re-creates the energy, the passion, the despair, the excitement, the genius, that went into the making of show after Sondheim show. A biography that is sure to become the standard work on Sondheim's life and art.

Download or read book Next Life Might be Kinder written by Howard A. Norman and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2014 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From National Book Award finalist Howard Norman, a novel of extraordinary emotional power--the story of a writer whose short and erotically charged marriage has ended in his wife's unsolved murder, and who, in the confusing aftermath, sells the story to an ambitious filmmaker

Download or read book Disgusting Things A Miscellany written by Don Voorhees and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of extreme, gross-out, cringe-worthy-and irresistible-trivia. How long does the human head remain conscious after decapitation? What fish communicates by farting? What birds use vomit and poop as weapons? What worm lives in your intestine and may crawl out your nose? What is 'liquid cat?' What historical figure drank the ashes of her dead husband? What men can tie their penises into knots? From trivia expert Don Voorhees, Disgusting Things: A Miscellany is the ultimate book of outrageous, revolting, and repugnant trivia, a collection of equally upsetting and intriguing facts that will leave the reader grossed out and wanting more.

Download or read book The Periodic Table written by Primo Levi and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 1996-10-01 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Periodic Table is largely a memoir of the years before and after Primo Levi’s transportation from his native Italy to Auschwitz as an anti-Facist partisan and a Jew. It recounts, in clear, precise, unfailingly beautiful prose, the story of the Piedmontese Jewish community from which Levi came, of his years as a student and young chemist at the inception of the Second World War, and of his investigations into the nature of the material world. As such, it provides crucial links and backgrounds, both personal and intellectual, in the tremendous project of remembrance that is Levi’s gift to posterity. But far from being a prologue to his experience of the Holocaust, Levi’s masterpiece represents his most impassioned response to the events that engulfed him. The Periodic Table celebrates the pleasures of love and friendship and the search for meaning, and stands as a monument to those things in us that are capable of resisting and enduring in the face of tyranny.

Download or read book Crime written by Ferdinand von Schirach and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Ferdinand von Schirach, one of Germany’s most prominent defense attorneys, comes a jolting debut collection of short stories that daringly brings to light the motivations stirring within the criminal mind. By turns witty and sorrowful, unflinchingly brutal and heartbreaking, the deeply affecting, quietly unnerving cases presented in Crime urge a closer examination of guilt and innocence. In “Fähner,” a small-town physician and avid gardener betrays little emotion when he takes an ax to his wife’s head, an act that shocks the locals but provides a long-awaited reprieve for the good doctor. Abbas, a Palestinian refugee who is cornered into a life of crime, finds true love and seemingly a saving grace with a beautiful student named Stefanie in “Summertime.” But when she is viciously murdered in a hotel room after having been paid to sleep with one of the country’s wealthiest men, is Abbas to blame or is it the man who seems to have it all? And in the startling story “Love,” a young man’s infatuation with his girlfriend takes a grisly turn as he comes to grips with his unconventional—and uncontrollable—impulses to truly know a woman. “Guilt,” writes von Schirach, “always presents a bit of a problem.” In this beautifully nuanced and telling collection, guilt is indeed never as clear-cut as the crime, and justice is more nebulous still.

Download or read book The Big Book of Reel Murders written by Otto Penzler and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 1202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler's new anthology rolls out the red carpet for the stories that Hollywood is made of. A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original. Lights! Camera! Action! The latest book in the Big Book series takes us behind the curtain to uncover the stories that became some of the greatest films of the silver screen. There's the W. Somerset Maugham short story that inspired Hitchcock's Secret Agent; Robert Louis Stevenson's horrifying tale that was later turned into the iconic movie The Body Snatcher, starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff; Sir Ian Fleming's "From a View to a Kill," later one of Roger Moore's greatest Bond films; and "Cyclists' Raid," the short story that formed the basis for the legendary Brando film The Wild One. Otto Penzler delivers the director's cut on these classic short stories and the films they gave rise to. So grab your Sno-Caps and a jumbo box of popcorn and curl up with these cinematic tales from the likes of Agatha Christie, Dennis Lehane, Joyce Carol Oates, Dashiell Hammett, O. Henry, Edgar Allan Poe, and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Download or read book My Documents written by Alejandro Zambra and published by McSweeney's. This book was released on 2015-01-19 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archived in a folder on award-winning author Alejandro Zambra's desktop are 11 stories of liars and ghosts, armed bandits and young lovers. Intimate, mysterious, and uncanny, these stories reveal a mind that is as undeniably singular as it is universal. Together, they constitute the debut short-story collection from Zambra, whose first novel was heralded as a “bloodletting in Chilean literature.” Whether chronicling the return of a mercurial godson or the disappearance of a trusted cousin, the worlds of these stories are so powerful and deep that the works might better be described as brief novels. My Documents is by turns hilarious and heart-stopping, tragic and tender, but most of all, it is unflinchingly human and essential evidence of a sublimely talented writer working at the height of his powers.

Download or read book Global Business Regulation written by John Braithwaite and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-02-13 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How has the regulation of business shifted from national to global institutions? What are the mechanisms of globalization? Who are the key actors? What of democratic sovereignty? In which cases has globalization been successfully resisted? These questions are confronted across an amazing sweep of the critical areas of business regulation--from contract, intellectual property and corporations law, to trade, telecommunications, labor standards, drugs, food, transport and environment. This book examines the role played by global institutions such as the World Trade Organization, World Health Organization, the OECD, IMF, Moodys and the World Bank, as well as various NGOs and significant individuals. Incorporating both history and analysis, Global Business Regulation will become the standard reference for readers in business, law, politics, and international relations.

Download or read book Public Technology Procurement and Innovation written by Charles Edquist and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public Technology Procurement and Innovation studies public technology procurement as an instrument of innovation policy. In the past few years, public technology procurement has been a relatively neglected topic in the theoretical and research literature on the economics of innovation. Similarly, preoccupation with `supply-side' measures has led policy-makers to avoid making very extensive use of this important `demand-side' instrument. These trends have been especially pronounced in the European Union. There, as this book will argue, existing legislation governing public procurement presents obstacles to the use of public technology procurement as a means of stimulating and supporting technological innovation. Recently, however, there has been a gradual re-awakening of practical interest in such measures among policy-makers in the EU and elsewhere. For these and other related measures, this volume aims to contribute to a serious reconsideration of public technology procurement from the complementary standpoints of innovation theory and innovation policy.

Download or read book Brand New Justice written by Simon Anholt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-08-11 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recently vilified as the prime dynamic driving home the breach between poor and rich nations, here the branding process is rehabilitated as a potential saviour of the economically underprivileged. Brand New Justice, now in a revised paperback edition, systematically analyses the success stories of the Top Thirteen nations, demonstrating that their wealth is based on the 'last mile' of the commercial process: buying raw materials and manufacturing cheaply in third world countries, these countries realise their lucrative profits by adding value through finishing, packaging and marketing and then selling the branded product on to the end-user at a hugely inflated price. The use of sophisticated global media techniques alongside a range of creative marketing activities are the lynchpins of this process. Applying his observations on economic history and the development and impact of global marketing, Anholt presents a cogent plan for developing nations to benefit from globalization. So long the helpless victim of capitalist trading systems, he shows that they can cross the divide and graduate from supplier nation to producer nation. Branding native produce on a global scale, making a commercial virtue out of perceived authenticity and otherness and fully capitalising on the 'last mile' benefits are key to this graduation and fundamental to forging a new global economic balance. Anholt argues with a forceful logic, but also backs his hypothesis with enticing glimpses of this process actually beginning to take place. Examining activities in India, Thailand, Russia and Africa among others, he shows the risks, challenges and pressures inherent in 'turning the tide', but above all he demonstrates the very real possibility of enlightened capitalism working as a force for good in global terms.

Download or read book salt slow written by Julia Armfield and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award From White Review Short Story Prize winner Julia Armfield, a brilliant, provocative debut story collection for fans of Carmen Maria Machado and Kelly Link. In her electrifying debut, Julia Armfield explores women’s experiences in contemporary society, mapped through their bodies. As urban dwellers’ sleeps become disassociated from them, like Peter Pan’s shadow, a city turns insomniac. A teenager entering puberty finds her body transforming in ways very different than her classmates’. As a popular band gathers momentum, the fangirls following their tour turn into something monstrous. After their parents remarry, two step-sisters, one a girl and one a wolf, develop a dangerously close bond. And in an apocalyptic landscape, a pregnant woman begins to realize that the creature in her belly is not what she expected. Blending elements of horror, science fiction, mythology, and feminism, salt slow is an utterly original collection of short stories that are sure to dazzle and shock, heralding the arrival of a daring new voice.