Книги, похожие на «Benjamin Wardhaugh, Gunpowder and Geometry»

LIVES THAT NEVER GROW OLDThis unique series – edited by Richard Holmes – recovers the great classical tradition of English biography. Every book is a biographical masterpiece – still thrilling to read and vividly alive.The philosopher William Godwin fell in love with and married the radical feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, only to attend her deathbed (giving birth to their child, the late Mary Shelley). Heartbroken, Godwin immediately shut himself up in his study and wrote this intensely moving biography.True to his philosophical belief in absolute sincerity, Godwin coolly describes Wollstonecraft’s previous love affairs, her time in revolutionary Paris, her illegitimate child, and her two suicide attempts. The book almost wrecked both their reputations, but can now be seen as a masterpiece of indiscretion and human honesty.

In August 1930, a Norwegian sloop, sailing in the Arctic Ocean, stopped at a remote island, where its crew members foudn a book, together with a boathook stamped ‘Andree’s Pol. Exp 1896’. Not far from the boat was a body leaning against a rock, with its frozen legs extended. They carefully opened the jacket the corpse was wearing. When they saw a large monogram ‘A’, they knew who they were looking at: S. A. Andrée, the Swede who, in 1897, set off to discover the North Pole, one of the last unmapped places on earth.The Ice Balloon is the story of the heroic ago of polar exploration, and the dream of conquering one of the most inhumane landscapes on earth. In this golden age of discovery, Andrée’s ambition was the most original and remarkable, with many comparing him to Columbus for novelty and daring. For, of the thousand or so people who had gone looking for the Pole, at least seven hundred and fifty of whom had died, only Andrée used a balloon.