John Lienhard, M. D. Anderson Professor Emeritus of Technology and Culture with the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering, is no stranger to mass media. He has been broadcast thousands of times on public ratio stations across the country thanks to Engines of Our Ingenuity, a segment he created to illuminate the links between technology and culture.
Now Lienhard is being featured on another medium. Online retailer Amazon has selected his book Inventing Modern as a featured e-book for the month of May.
The book, which can be downloaded to the Kindle e-book reader for $1.99, explores what modern means in light of the first half of the twentieth century and the emergence of awe-inspiring creations such as skyscrapers and the radio.
According to the book’s description, one force behind this era’s modernity was “a new concept of boyhood--the risk-taking, hands-on savage inventor. Driven by an admiration of recklessness, America developed its technological empire with stunning speed… The rediscovery of mystery powerfully drove Modern as well. X-Rays, quantum mechanics, and relativity theory had followed electricity and radium. Here we read how, with reality seemingly altered, hope seemed limitless.”
More information on the book can be found here.