How Renaissance Water Gardens Made the Carburetor Possible - and Other Journeys
Narrated by the Author.


Picking up the theme of his bestselling Connections and utilizing cross-chapter
margin references that imitate computer hypertext, Burke investigates the dynamic
interplay of scientific discovery, technological innovation and social change in
a dizzying, mind-expanding adventure that explores the crosscurrents of history.

One chapter follows a trail from slavery in America to English Quaker abolitionist
Sampson Lloyd's nail-making business to German-American immigrant engineer John
Roebling's wire suspension bridges (including the Brooklyn Bridge) to rustproofing
with cadmium to nuclear reactors. Accident, luck, greed, ambition and mistakes
abound as Scientific American columnist Burke tries to demonstrate the
interconnectedness of all things.

Another typical chapter unravels the serendipitous interactions among Cyrus
Dalkin's invention of carbon paper, Edison's telephone (which used sooty carbon
black in the transmitter), the rise of suburbs, X-ray crystallography and DNA.

Often as maddening as a pinball game, this nevertheless unique and exciting
odyssey may change the way you look at the world.

James Burke
James Burke, the BBC.s chief reporter on the Apollo missions to the moon, was
awarded the Royal Television Society silver medal in 1973 and the gold medal
in 1974. The PBS series Connections was over two years in the making, the research
and filming taking the author to twenty-three countries.

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