Catalog All books
Bernard Diu
Do atoms really exist ?
Few scientific notions have aroused the speculative imagination like the thermodynamic entropy. All organised systems - societies, living creatures - are destined without exception to decline and eventual death. This book clearly exposes the historical and conceptual development of thermodynamics. Born from a desire to understand and master steam powered machines - the symbol of our industrialised societies - it became the science of the human body. However, it was suddenly passed over in favour of the theory of atoms. It was thus demolished by statistical mechanics which ceded to the imperatives dictated by the atomical structure of the body. After an epic struggle, sometimes quite ferocious, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics have been reconciled by adopting the base of the second with the techniques of the first. This book reads like a novel about contemporary physics. Bernard Diu, a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieur, is a professor at the University of Paris VII.
T. Berry Brazelton
Going to the Doctor
Written by one of the greatest American pediatriciens this book clearly explains to children the key moments of their medical visit. Through the choice of clear and interesting photographs, it awakens the natural curiosity of children, which is also raised by the often quite comical illustrations drawn by the author's nine year-old grandson. With this book, the former occasions of children's torments and parents' agony are transformed into a time of discovery and shared complicity. T. Berry Brazelton is an emerite professor at Harvard Medical School and has been a pediatricien for over forty years.
Richard S. Tedlow
Audacity and the Market The Invention of Marketing in the United States
What great commercial battles in the United States are at the origin of marketing ? What strategic choices, technologies and infrastuctures have made possible one of the great social and economic upheavals of the 20th century ? This book recounts the combats waged without mercy between Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola, and Ford and General Motors, and also the story of the pioneer manufacturers and distributors who created marketing, invented standardised products, international brands, the segmentation of markets, chains of shops and supermarkets... Richard Tedlow is a professor at Harvard Business School and has long been Editor-in-Chief of the famous Business History Review.
Stanislas Dehaene
A Good Head for Maths
Did you know that babies can count? And did you know that some animals can do simple arithmetic? Whether we possess astounding mathematical talents or the most basic of counting skills, we are all born with numerical intuition. In this book, the author describes some amazing scientific experiments that demonstrate the mental foundations of numerical intuition. If you want to know why you cant remember how much 7 x 8 makes, or how a cerebral lesion can make you forget 3 - 1, or if you want to figure out the fifth root of 759,375, just follow the author in a series of tortuous mental calculations and you dont even have to be a mathematical wizard. Stanislas Dehaene is a senior research fellow at Inserm and works at the Laboratory of cognitive sciences and of psycholinguistics at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.