Posts with keyword: history

4 entries

Books on Kennedy's Assassination

Fri Nov 22 16:59:00 2013

I was five years old when JFK was assassinated. JFK is the first president I remember and his death was a shock to me. Even at that young age, I wasn't immune to the magic of the Kennedys—maybe I could relate to him because he had children around my age. I had one of those calendars with all the presidents around the edges hanging up in my room. I remember drawing Johnson in after Kennedy was killed. I recently read four books that all bear on the Kennedy assassination. I didn't necessarily set out to study this, but I
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Twelve Byzantine Rulers Podcast

Tue Jul 31 18:44:00 2007

Justinian by Meister von San Vitale(click to enlarge) I few weeks ago, I wrote a review of the book Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe. Darryl Rosin left a comment asking if I'd listened to the 12 Byzantine Rulers podcast by Lars Brownworth. I hadn't then, but I went out that day and downloaded it to my iPhone. I've been listening to it over the last few weeks and really enjoyed it. Lars has a great presentation style and makes the material accessible and interesting. If western history in the first eight centuries AD has always
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Conquering Gotham

Mon Jul 23 09:39:00 2007

Last month, I heard an interview on the Diane Rehm Show with Jill Jonnes about her book Conquering Gotham. The book tells the story of the Pennsylvania Railroads effort to bring rail service into Manhattan. The effort combined financial, engineering, and political challenges. The ultimate result was the construction of tunnels under the Hudson and East rivers as well as the monumental Pennsylvania Station. I enjoyed this book on several levels. First, I enjoy reading about railroads. Another great book I'd recommend is the Nothing Like it in the World by Stephen Ambrose about the building of the transcontinental
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John Backus Dies

Wed Mar 21 10:13:00 2007

John Backus, the inventor of FORTRAN, BNF, and winner of the 1977 Turing Award (read his lecture) has passed away at 82. I tell my CS330 students about Backus and the development of FORTRAN every semester when we discuss BNF (he's the "B" in BNF). As I said when Ralph Griswold died a few months ago, Computer Science has always been a discipline where the founders were still around. That's changing.
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