Ryan Jacobs

Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel
Michio Kaku presents concepts familiar to both casual and hard-core sci-fi fans alike and discusses the possibility of them happening. Each concept fits into what he calls a Class I, Class II or Class III impossibility.
Class I = [...]

Chris Anderson has written a book that took an interesting idea and then beat the heck out of it. That said, there was enough incremental information over the original Wired article about the book to make it worth a read.
I rather enjoyed the portion of the book devoted to the relatively recent historical events that [...]

“Eating’s not a bad way to get to know a place,” according to Michael Pollan. This said after he created a meal entirely by hunting and gathering the food himself. Of the meals explored in this book, this surely seemed to please him the most. Most certainly, this statement referred to eating food local to [...]

August 25, 2007 I finished the book today and am giving it the 4 star rating above. I really liked how each chapter explained a particular myth and explored the causes of it. In some chapters, there was more practical advice for dealing with the myth, while in others you are sort of left to [...]

After reading The Devil in the White City, I thought that I would read another book by Erik Larson that sounded like it had similar qualities. Thunderstruck is the two stories of Marconi and his quest to deliver wireless communication with a murder mystery that ultimately is foiled in part because of Marconi’s invention.
While the [...]

The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson tells the parallel tales of Chicago winning and developing the site for the 1893 World’s Fair and the tale of a serial murder who utilized the fair as a tool to lure his victims. On the one hand we have Daniel Burnham struggling to make his [...]