About the Book
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 212. Chapters: Isaac Asimov, William Beebe, Stephen Jay Gould, Robert A. Heinlein, Carl Sagan, Joseph J. Romm, Sam Harris (author), Ray Kurzweil, Jack Sarfatti, Loren Eiseley, Norman Mailer, E. O. Wilson, Paul R. Ehrlich, Marshall McDonald, Matthew Fontaine Maury, Ernst Mayr, Douglas Hofstadter, George Gamow, Martin Gardner, Edmund Jaeger, Robert Burns Woodward, Stephen Barrett, Steven Pinker, Judith Hand, Michael Pollan, Clifford A. Pickover, David Eagleman, Simon Newcomb, Elias Loomis, Jared Diamond, Mary Roach, Daniel Levitin, Charles Sheffield, Robert L. Park, Alan Lightman, Timothy Ferris, Brian Wansink, Robert Tuttle Morris, Robert Wright (journalist), Jerome J. Workman, Jr., Walter Russell, Jonah Lehrer, Brian Dunning (author), Robert Lawrence Kuhn, Charles Davenport, Jon Lomberg, Christopher Nowinski, Bill Bryson, Archie Frederick Collins, Harvey Williams Cushing, John C. Lilly, Harriet A. Hall, Liberty Hyde Bailey, Kendrick Frazier, Robert Ardrey, Howard Bloom, Eric Lerner, David Starr Jordan, G. Stanley Hall, Andrew Delmar Hopkins, Brian Greene, Victor J. Stenger, Vam k Volkan, K. Eric Drexler, Robert Zubrin, Robert A. Baker, Phil Plait, Kenneth R. Miller, Gary Taubes, Sidney Perkowitz, John David Jackson (physicist), Dario Maestripieri, Lawrence M. Krauss, Adolf Meyer (psychiatrist), Francis Delafield, Dandridge MacFarlan Cole, Todd Siler, W. W. Behrens, Jr., Jeffries Wyman, Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Edward B. Titchener, Cleveland Abbe, Eugene Mallove, Eben Norton Horsford, Lynn Poole, Jeffrey S. Medkeff, Deborah Blum, Luther Gulick (physician), Constance Reid, David Kahn (writer), Austin Flint, Frederick Starr, George B. Johnson. Excerpt: Isaac Asimov ( -z k - -mov; born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov, Russian: c. January 2, 1920 - April 6, 1992) was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. His works have been published in all ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System (although his only work in the 100s-which covers philosophy and psychology-was a foreword for The Humanist Way). Asimov is widely considered a master of hard science fiction and, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, he was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers during his lifetime. Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation Series; his other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are explicitly set in earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation Series. Later, beginning with Foundation's Edge, he linked this distant future to the Robot and Spacer stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories much like those pioneered by Robert A. Heinlein and previously produced by Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson. He wrote many short stories, among them "Nightfall," which in 1964 was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America the best short science fiction story of all time. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French. The prolific Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much non-fiction. Most of his popular science books explain scientific concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. He often provides nationalities, birth dates, and death dates for the scientists he mentions, as well as etymologies and pronunciation guide
