Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
49
result(s) for
"Bergreen, Laurence"
Sort by:
New Era of Discovery Should Aid Humanity
This month is particularly important in the new Age of Discovery, as two of NASA's latest generation of Mars exploration rovers land and transform themselves into roaming scientific laboratories. The robotic geologists will be prospecting Mars for its natural history, signs of water and, by extension, signs of life. The wonders began to unfold this past weekend. The first spacecraft, called Spirit, landed successfully Saturday night. Its identical twin, Opportunity, will set down, if all goes well, in three weeks. (Having learned the painful lessons of recent Mars failures, NASA has embraced redundancy.) The parallels between our methodical exploration of Mars and the Age of Discovery begin with the efforts of Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-'0). This Portuguese nobleman assembled a diverse academy of shipwrights, cartographers and mariners to explore the west coast of Africa, step by step. NASA's Mars team, from robotics experts and computer programmers to planetary geologists, are today's equivalent of that sort of diversity and expertise. Given all these hazards and difficulties, why did [Ferdinand Magellan] go? And why did his backers risk their capital and prestige on his expedition? The answer: greed and glory. If Magellan accomplished his goal, Spain hoped to seize control of the spice trade and, by extension, the emerging global economy. Magellan himself hoped to claim lands and titles and unimaginable wealth to pass on to his heirs.
Newspaper Article
Magellan : over the edge of the world, the true story of the terrifying first circumnavigation of the globe
\"A middle grade adaptation of Bergreen's adult title of the same name, about Magellan's historic voyage around the globe\"-- Provided by publublisher.
Book
WEEKEND JOURNAL; Books: Five Best
\"Dr. Livingstone, I presume.\" Welsh-born American journalist [Henry M. Stanley] (1841-1904) uttered those words, or so he claimed, upon tracking down the Scottish missionary and long-missing explorer Stanley Livingstone beside Lake Tanganyika in central Africa in 1871. Stanley continued to investigate Africa on a series of expeditions that he described in \"Through the Dark Continent\" -- journeys that later drew criticism for Stanley's harsh dealings with the tribesmen he encountered. But there was no question of his courage and energy in the face of extreme hardship. This book's subtitle alone -- \"The Sources of the Nile, Around the Great Lakes of Equatorial Africa, and Down the Livingstone River to the Atlantic Ocean\" -- is enough to quicken the pulse.
Newspaper Article
Hollywood Bio Hazards
Despite its terribly artful and plush staging, \"Finding Neverland\" never managed to get around the quiet, solitary and anti- dramatic nature of writing. At least it spared us painful scenes of Johnny Depp as [James Matthew Barrie] toiling over a manuscript, opting instead for sudden depictions of his fertile imagination, seen as if through his mind's eye. Yet, for all its intelligence, this movie in the end settles for being a high-end tear-jerker. Somehow, I was hoping for more ... revelation -- and even, I admit, a rosebud or two. Instead, Barrie, in Depp's muted portrayal, remains as remote as he likely was in real life. The success of Barrie's \"Peter Pan,\" combined with the author's shyness, provided an instance of what could be called the Sherlock Holmes phenomenon, in which an author creates a fictional character and universe that overwhelms the reality of his life. It is this peculiar confluence of reality and fantasy, of imagination and reputation that \"Finding Neverland\" tries to explore, settling, it seems to me, for tears rather than illumination. The more I pondered \"Finding Neverland,\" artfully directed by Marc Forster and based on Allan Knee's stage play, the more I realized that my inner biographer hungered for the full panoply of Barrie's rich life, and that no movie, no matter how artful, could sketch it all in. On the basis of \"Finding Neverland\" alone, you'd never know that Barrie was a prolific journalist and author whose early fiction was compared to that of Thomas Hardy and George Eliot, that he lived a long and productive life, or that he received the Order of Merit and won appointment as the rector of St. Andrews University. You wouldn't realize Sir J.M. Barrie lived on until 1937, well past the heyday of \"Peter Pan\" in 1904. Most alarming, you'd overlook perhaps the most salient biographical element about him, that he was thoroughly and robustly Scottish, unless you listened carefully for Johnny Depp's understated burr.
Newspaper Article
GUEST COLUMN: Setting the course for 'intelligent exploration'
NASA scientists see themselves as engaged in an enterprise that, like the voyages of the past, will change history: mapping the solar system and trying to understand our place among celestial objects that seem as exotic and remote to us now as the Spice Islands seemed to Europe in [Ferdinand Magellan]'s day. \"Intelligent exploration\" is the name James Garvin, NASA's senior Mars scientist, gives to their approach. This month is particularly important in the new Age of Discovery, as two of NASA's latest generation of Mars exploration rovers roughly bounce across the surface of Mars, slowly come to rest and gradually transform themselves into roaming scientific laboratories. To make matters worse, the art of navigation was still in its infancy. It was impossible for mariners to determine longitude and even the length of a degree of latitude was subject to debate. There were maps, but, as might be expected, the farther from home, the more inaccurate they became, until by the time Magellan reached South America, they contained more geographical fantasy than fact. Magellan became so exasperated with their wild inaccuracies that he threw them overboard.
Newspaper Article