In 1989 Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery that normal genes under certain conditions can cause cancer. In this book, Bishop tells us how he and Varmus made their momentous discovery. More than a lively account of the making of a brilliant scientist, How to Win the Nobel Prize is also a broader narrative combining two major and intertwined strands of medical history: the long and ongoing struggles to control infectious diseases and to find and attack the causes of cancer.
Alongside his own story, that of a youthful humanist evolving into an ambivalent medical student, an accidental microbiologist, and finally a world-class researcher, Bishop gives us a fast-paced and engrossing tale of the microbe hunters. It is a narrative enlivened by vivid anecdotes about our deadliest microbial enemies--the Black Death, cholera, syphilis, tuberculosis, malaria, smallpox, HIV--and by biographical sketches of the scientists who led the fight against these scourges.
Bishop then provides an introduction for nonscientists to the molecular underpinnings of cancer and concludes with an analysis of many of today's most important science-related controversies--ranging from stem cell research to the attack on evolution to scientific misconduct. How to Win the Nobel Prize affords us the pleasure of hearing about science from a brilliant practitioner who is a humanist at heart. Bishop's perspective will be valued by anyone interested in biomedical research and in the past, present, and future of the battle against cancer.
Centering around the life and times of the revered American sportswriter Grantland Rice (1880-1954), How You Played the Game takes us back to those magical days of sporting tales and mythic heroes. Through Rice's eyes we behold such sports as bicycle racing, boxing, golf, baseball, football, and tennis as they were played before 1950. We witness ups and downs in the careers of such legendary figures as Christy Mathewson, Jack Dempsey, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Jim Thorpe, Red Grange, Bobby Jones, Bill Tilden, Notre Dame's Four Horsemen, Gene Tunney, and Babe Didrikson--all of whom Rice helped become household names.
Grantland Rice was a remarkably gifted and honorable sportswriter. From his early days in Nashville and Atlanta, to his famed years in New York, Rice was acknowledged by all for his uncanny grasp of the ins and outs of a dozen sports, as well as his personal friendship with hundreds of sportsmen and sportswomen. As a pioneer in American sportswriting, Rice helped establish and dignify the profession, sitting shoulder to shoulder in press boxes around the nation with the likes of Ring Lardner, Damon Runyon, Heywood Broun, and Red Smith.
Besides being a first-rate reporter, Rice was also a columnist, poet, magazine and book writer, film producer, family man, war veteran, fund-raiser, and skillful golfer. His personal accomplishments over a half century as an advocate for sports and good sportsmanship are astounding by any standard. What truly set Rice apart from so many of his peers, however, was the idea behind his sports reporting and writing. He believed that good sportsmanship was capable of lifting individuals, societies, and even nations to remarkable heights of moral and social action.
More than just a biography of Grantland Rice, How You Played the Game is about the rise of American sports and the early days of those who created the art and craft of sportswriting. Exploring the life of a man who perfectly blended journalism and sporting culture, this book is sure to appeal to all, sports lovers or not.
Believing that Americans should understand their leadership, Harry Truman was the first American president to authorize an oral history of his life and times. In that vein, almost forty years ago, the Truman Library in the president’s native Independence, Missouri, began the daunting task of compiling the words of Truman’s contemporaries, including his senior aides, foreign policy and military advisors, political strategists, and close friends. Longtime Chicago journalist Steve Neal has edited twenty of these remarkable interviews for HST: Memories of the Truman Years.
Candid and insightful, the recollections include those of statesmen Dean Acheson and Averell Harriman; soldiers Omar Bradley and Lucius Clay; Truman’s best friend Thomas Evans; associates Clark Clifford and Matt Connelly; 1948 Republican vice-presidential nominee Earl Warren; artist Thomas Hart Benton; West German leader Konrad Adnauer; former New Dealers Sam Rosenman and James Rowe; journalist Richard L. Strout; and many others.
An honest portrait of Truman emerges from the twenty firsthand accounts of those who knew him best. HST: Memories of the Truman Years spans Truman’s rise to the presidency and his responses to the challenges of World War II, the Soviet blockade of Berlin, the rebuilding of postwar Europe, the 1948 campaign, his controversial firing of General Douglas MacArthur, and his courageous leadership on civil rights.
“The goal of these histories,” explains Truman’s grandson, Clifton Truman Daniel, in the foreword, “in keeping with Grandpa’s stated desire that the [Truman Library] be about his presidency, not a monument to him, was to preserve forever the perspective of those who had shared his life and times and, in many cases, helped him shape the world.”
In Human Documents, Robert Gardner introduces the work of photographers with whom he has worked over a period of nearly fifty years under the auspices of the Film Study Center at Harvard. Their images achieve the status of what Gardner calls “human documents”: visual evidence that testifies to our shared humanity. In images and words, the book adds to the already significant literature on photography and filmmaking as ways to gather both fact and insight into the human condition. In nearly 100 images spanning geographies and cultures including India, New Guinea, Ethiopia, and the United States, Human Documents demonstrates the important role photography can play in furthering our understanding of human nature and connecting people through an almost universal visual language.
Author and cultural critic Eliot Weinberger contributes the essay “Photography and Anthropology (A Contact Sheet),” in which he provides a new and intriguing context for viewing and thinking about the images presented here.
With photographs by Michael Rockefeller, Robert Gardner, Kevin Bubriski, Adelaide de Menil, Christopher James, Jane Tuckerman, Susan Meiselas, and Alex Webb.
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