The Invention of Wings

The Invention of Wings
Author: Sue Monk Kidd
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2014-01-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0698175247

The newest Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection: this special eBook edition of The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd features exclusive content, including Oprah’s personal notes highlighted within the text, and a reading group guide. Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world. Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women. Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love. As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women’s rights movements. Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful’s cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something better. This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved. Please note there is another digital edition available without Oprah’s notes. Go to Oprah.com/bookclub for more OBC 2.0 content

The Greatest Science Stories Never Told

The Greatest Science Stories Never Told
Author: Rick Beyer
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2009-11-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0061626961

100 tales of invention and discovery to astonish, bewilder, & stupefy Meet the angry undertaker who gave us the push-button phone. Discover how modesty led to the invention of the stethoscope. Find out why Albert Einstein patented a refrigerator. Learn how a train full of trumpeters made science history. Did you know about: The frustrated fashion designer who created the space suit? The gun-toting newspaperman who invented the parking meter? The midnight dreams that led to a Nobel Prize? They're so good, you can't read just one!

The Invention of Yesterday

The Invention of Yesterday
Author: Tamim Ansary
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1610397975

From language to culture to cultural collision: the story of how humans invented history, from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age Traveling across millennia, weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant, The Invention of Yesterday shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won), geographic (farmers thrive), or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative. Many thousands of years ago, when we existed only as countless small autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers widely distributed through the wilderness, we began inventing stories--to organize for survival, to find purpose and meaning, to explain the unfathomable. Ultimately these became the basis for empires, civilizations, and cultures. And when various narratives began to collide and overlap, the encounters produced everything from confusion, chaos, and war to cultural efflorescence, religious awakenings, and intellectual breakthroughs. Through vivid stories studded with insights, Tamim Ansary illuminates the world-historical consequences of the unique human capacity to invent and communicate abstract ideas. In doing so, he also explains our ever-more-intertwined present: the narratives now shaping us, the reasons we still battle one another, and the future we may yet create.

The Myth of Persecution

The Myth of Persecution
Author: Candida Moss
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2013-03-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0062104543

An expert on early Christianity reveals how the early church invented stories of Christian martyrs—and how this persecution myth persists today. According to church tradition and popular belief, early Christians were systematically persecuted by a brutal Roman Empire intent on their destruction. As the story goes, vast numbers of believers were thrown to the lions, tortured, or burned alive because they refused to renounce Christ. But as Candida Moss reveals in The Myth of Persecution, the “Age of Martyrs” is a fiction. There was no sustained 300-year-long effort by the Romans to persecute Christians. Instead, these stories were pious exaggerations; highly stylized rewritings of Jewish, Greek, and Roman noble death traditions; and even forgeries designed to marginalize heretics, inspire the faithful, and fund churches. The traditional story of persecution is still invoked by church leaders, politicians, and media pundits who insist that Christians were—and always will be—persecuted by a hostile, secular world. While violence against Christians does occur in select parts of the world today, the rhetoric of persecution is both misleading and rooted in an inaccurate history of the early church. By shedding light on the historical record, Moss urges modern Christians to abandon the conspiratorial assumption that the world is out to get them.

How the Scots Invented the Modern World

How the Scots Invented the Modern World
Author: Arthur Herman
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0307420957

An exciting account of the origins of the modern world Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics—contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since. Herman has charted a fascinating journey across the centuries of Scottish history. Here is the untold story of how John Knox and the Church of Scotland laid the foundation for our modern idea of democracy; how the Scottish Enlightenment helped to inspire both the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution; and how thousands of Scottish immigrants left their homes to create the American frontier, the Australian outback, and the British Empire in India and Hong Kong. How the Scots Invented the Modern World reveals how Scottish genius for creating the basic ideas and institutions of modern life stamped the lives of a series of remarkable historical figures, from James Watt and Adam Smith to Andrew Carnegie and Arthur Conan Doyle, and how Scottish heroes continue to inspire our contemporary culture, from William “Braveheart” Wallace to James Bond. And no one who takes this incredible historical trek will ever view the Scots—or the modern West—in the same way again.

The Inventor's Secret

The Inventor's Secret
Author: Suzanne Slade
Publisher: Charlesbridge Publishing
Total Pages: 52
Release: 2015-09-08
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1580896677

Both Thomas Edison and Henry Ford started off as insatiably curious tinkerers. That curiosity led them to become inventors—with very different results. As Edison invented hit after commercial hit, gaining fame and fortune, Henry struggled to make a single invention (an affordable car) work. Witnessing Thomas's glorious career from afar, a frustrated Henry wondered about the secret to his success. This little-known story is a fresh, kid-friendly way to show how Thomas Edison and Henry Ford grew up to be the most famous inventors in the world—and best friends, too.

The Boy Who Invented TV

The Boy Who Invented TV
Author: Kathleen Krull
Publisher: Perfection Learning
Total Pages: 40
Release: 2014-02-11
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781627655750

"An inspiring true story of a boy genius. "Plowing a potato field in 1920, a 14-year-old farm boy from Idaho saw in the parallel rows of overturned earth a way to make pictures fly through the air. This boy was not a magician; he was a scientific genius and just eight years later he made his brainstorm in the potato field a reality by transmitting the world s first television image. This fascinating picture-book biography of Philo Farnsworth covers his early interest in machines and electricity, leading up to how he put it all together in one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. The author s afterword discusses the lawsuit Farnsworth waged and won against RCA when his high school science teacher testified that Philo s invention of television was years before RCA s."

The Most Powerful Idea in the World

The Most Powerful Idea in the World
Author: William Rosen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2012-03-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226726347

"The Most Powerful Idea in the World argues that the very notion of intellectual property drove not only the invention of the steam engine but also the entire Industrial Revolution." -- Back cover.

Have You Thanked an Inventor Today?

Have You Thanked an Inventor Today?
Author: Patrice McLaurin
Publisher: Digital Arts, Incorporated
Total Pages: 36
Release: 2016-05-01
Genre:
ISBN: 9780997315202

Have You Thanked an Inventor Today? is a journey into the often forgotten contributions of African-American inventors, that contributed to the American landscape. This book was written to appeal to African-American youth, inspiring creative thought and innovation. It was also written to demonstrate to children how the genius of African-American minds is utilized on a daily basis. Biographies about each inventor, as well as activity sheets are included in the book to further stimulate the minds of young readership.