Edward Dolnick

El maestro de la divulgación y autor de La escritura de los dioses nos traslada a uno de los momentos cumbre de la historia de la ciencia: el descubrimiento de los dinosaurios A comienzos del siglo X

Un apasionante thriller cultural. Un fascinante retrato de imperios antiguos y modernos, una mirada sin parangón a la historia, la cultura y la humanidad. Delta del Nilo, 1799. En un asfixiante día de julio es hallada entre un monton de escombros la piedra de Rosetta, uno de los objetos arqueologicos mas famosos del mundo y la clave para desentrañar una lengua perdida. La losa de granito contenia el mismo texto grabado en tres idiomas distintos: en egipcio, en demotico y en griego. Hasta su descubrimiento, nadie era capaz de leer los innumerables jeroglificos que cubrian los templos y estatuas del antiguo Egipto, un poderoso imperio que habia dominado el mundo durante treinta siglos, pero sobre el que, sin embargo, se ignoraba practicamente todo. Quien fuera capaz de descifrar la piedra de Rosetta abriria definitivamente la puerta de un misterio sellado desde hacia dos mil años. A partir de 1802, en una epoca en que Inglaterra y Francia se disputaban encarnizadamente en todos los frentes la supremacia mundial, dos brillantes rivales se propusieron alcanzar ese honor: Thomas Young, un polimata britanico que destacaba tanto en fisica como en linguistica, y Jean-François Champollion, educado en un pequeño enclave provinciano durante la Revolucion francesa y con una verdadera fijacion por todo lo egipcio. La escritura de los dioses narra esta trepidante carrera intelectual, en la que el ganador obtendria sin duda la gloria eterna, tanto para su nacion como para si mismo. Un fascinante retrato de imperios antiguos y modernos, una mirada sin parangon a la historia, la cultura y la humanidad.Un viaje al corazon del enigma, la historia del libro de piedra que nos enseño a descifrar codigos secretos, la hebra que une el antiguo Egipto con el nacimiento de la informatica, el nexo entre Champollion y Sherlock Holmes.Irene VallejoEdward Dolnick narra el apasionante relato sobre como se descifro el enigma de la piedra de Rosetta.Monica Arrizabalaga, ABCEl placer que ofrece la lectura del libro de Edward Dolnick es comparable al de El infinito en un junco, de Irene Vallejo. Luis Alemany, El MundoUn libro absorbente que se lee, creanme, como una novela.Jose Manuel Sanchez Ron, El CulturalEs un libro extraordinario. Explica una historia compleja de manera apasionante, con gran talento narrativo. Sergio del Molino, La Cultureta, Onda Cero

From the bestselling author of The Clockwork Universe and The Writing of the Gods, an utterly delightfulhugely entertaining (Air Mail) book about the eccentric Victorians who discovered dinosaur bones, leading to a whole new understanding of human history.In the early 1800s the natural world was a safe and cozy place, or so people believed. But then a twelve-year-old farm boy in Massachusetts stumbled on a row of fossilized three-toed footprints the size of dinner platesthe first dinosaur tracks ever found. Soon, in England, scientists unearthed enormous bones that reached as high as a mans head. Outside of myths and fairy tales, no one had even imagined that creatures like three-toed giants had once lumbered across the landnor dreamed that they could all have vanished, hundreds of millions years ago.In Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party, celebrated storyteller and historian Edward Dolnick leads us through a compelling true adventure as the paleontologists of the early 19th century puzzled their way through the fossil record to create the story of dinosaurs we know today. The tale begins with Mary Anning, a poor, uneducated woman who had a sixth sense for finding fossils buried deep inside cliffs; moves to William Buckland, an eccentric geologist who filled his home with specimens and famously pieced together a prehistoric scene from the fossil record inside a cave; and then on to the controversial Richard Owen, the eras best-known scientist, and the one who coined the term dinosaur.Exuberant (Kirkus Reviews), entertaining, erudite, and featuring an unconventional cast of characters, Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party tells the story of how the accidental discovery of prehistoric creatures upended humanitys understanding of the world and its own place within it.

The fast-paced and engrossing account (The New York Times Book Review) of one of the greatest breakthroughs in archaeological history (The Christian Science Monitor): two rival geniuses in a race to decode the writing on one of the worlds most famous documentsthe Rosetta Stone.The Rosetta Stone is one of the most famous objects in the world, attracting millions of visitors to the British museum every year, and yet most people dont really know what it is. Discovered in a pile of rubble in 1799, this slab of stone proved to be the key to unlocking a lost language that baffled scholars for centuries.Carved in ancient Egypt, the Rosetta Stone carried the same message in different languagesin Greek using Greek letters, and in Egyptian using picture-writing called hieroglyphs. Until its discovery, no one in the world knew how to read the hieroglyphs that covered every temple and text and statue in Egypt.Dominating the world for thirty centuries, ancient Egypt was the mightiest empire the world had ever known, yet everything about itthe pyramids, mummies, the Sphinxwas shrouded in mystery. Whoever was able to decipher the Rosetta Stone would solve that mystery and fling open a door that had been locked for two thousand years.Two brilliant rivals set out to win that prize. One was English, the other French, at a time when England and France were enemies and the worlds two great superpowers. Written like a thriller (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), The Writing of the Gods chronicles this high-stakes intellectual race in which the winner would win glory for both himself and his nation. A riveting portrait of empires both ancient and modern, this is an unparalleled look at the culture and history of ancient Egypt, and also a lessonin what the human mind does when faced with a puzzle (The New Yorker).

Why cracking the code of human conception took centuries of wild theories, misogynist blunders, and ludicrous mistakes Throughout most of human history, babies were surprises. People knew the basics: men and women had sex, and sometimes babies followed. But beyond that the origins of life were a colossal mystery. The Seeds of Life is the remarkable and rollicking story of how a series of blundering geniuses and brilliant amateurs struggled for two centuries to discover where, exactly, babies come from. Taking a page from investigative thrillers, acclaimed science writer Edward Dolnick looks to these early scientists as if they were detectives hot on the trail of a bedeviling and urgent mystery. These strange searchers included an Italian surgeon using shark teeth to prove that female reproductive organs were not failed male genitalia, and a Catholic priest who designed ingenious miniature pants to prove that frogs required semen to fertilize their eggs. A witty and rousing history of science, The Seeds of Life presents our greatest scientists struggling-against their perceptions, their religious beliefs, and their deep-seated prejudices-to uncover how and where we come from.

A riveting portrait of the Gold Rush, by the award-winning author of Down the Great Unknown and The Forgers Spell. In the spring of 1848, rumors began to spread that gold had been discovered in a remote spot in the Sacramento Valley. A year later, newspaper headlines declared "Gold Fever!" as hundreds of thousands of men and women borrowed money, quit their jobs, and allowed themselves- for the first time ever-to imagine a future of ease and splendor. In The Rush, Edward Dolnick brilliantly recounts their treacherous westward journeys by wagon and on foot, and takes us to the frenzied gold fields and the rowdy cities that sprang from nothing to jam-packed chaos. With an enthralling cast of characters and scenes of unimaginable wealth and desperate ruin, The Rush is a fascinating-and rollicking-account of the greatest treasure hunt the world has ever seen.

Drawing on rarely examined diaries and journals, Down the Great Unknown is the first book of narrative nonfiction to tell the full, dramatic story of the Powell expedition.On May 24, 1869, a one-armed Civil War veteran, John Wesley Powell, and a ragtag band of nine mountain men embarked on the last great quest in the American West. Their goal was the Grand Canyon, an area of the United States not explored before, as mysterious as Atlantisand as perilous. The ten men set out for their American West exploration from Green River Station, Wyoming Territory, down the Colorado River in four wooden rowboats. Ninety-nine days later, six half-starved wretches came ashore near Callville, Arizona.Lewis and Clark opened the West in 1803; six decades later, Powell and his scruffy band aimed to resolve the Wests last mystery. A brilliant narrative, a thrilling journey, a cast of memorable heroesall these mark Down the Great Unknown, the true story of the last epic adventure on American soil.This gripping work of historical nonfiction reveals their incredible true storya definitive account of bravery, survival, and the obsession to conquer the unknown.American West History: Follow the 1869 journey of John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran, as he leads a band of mountain men on the last great quest in the American West, decades after Lewis and Clark. Epic Exploration: Witness the first-ever descent of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, a region as mysterious and perilous as Atlantis, based on rarely examined diaries and journals. A Harrowing Survival Story: Experience the treacherous ninety-nine-day expedition where ten men in four wooden boats battled the elements, and only six half-starved wretches made it to the end. Definitive Powell Biography: Delve into the life of John Wesley Powell, an amateur explorer and geology professor whose ambition and leadership drove one of the last great adventures on American soil.

El maestro de la divulgación y autor de La escritura de los dioses nos traslada a uno de los momentos cumbre de la historia de la ciencia: el descubrimiento de los dinosauriosA comienzos del siglo XIX, el mundo parecia un lugar previsible. La gente creia que la Tierra no tenia mas que seis mil años de antiguedad y que las enormes huellas fosilizadas que aparecian en la naturaleza pertenecian a dragones o a seres mitologicos. Fueron personajes como Mary Anning, una humilde mujer que tenia aficion por recoger fosiles, William Buckland, un excentrico geologo, o Richard Owen, el primero en acuñar la palabra dinosaurio, quienes permitieron que los cientificos de la epoca victoriana pudieran reconstruir la historia de unas criaturas que hoy todos conocemos.Con el rigor historico y el pulso narrativo propios de Edward Dolnick, este libro nos descubre como el hallazgo de los dinosaurios significo el nacimiento de la paleontologia como disciplina, sento las bases de la historia natural moderna y demostro que la edad de nuestro planeta no se media en miles de años, sino en millones, cambiando para siempre nuestra comprension del mundo.Dolnick demuestra un dominio total del tema y construye una historia exhaustiva y muy atractiva. ScienceVibrante, entretenido y plenamente recomendable. The Wall Street Journal

Un apasionante thriller cultural. Un fascinante retrato de imperios antiguos y modernos, una mirada sin parangón a la historia, la cultura y la humanidad. Delta del Nilo, 1799. En un asfixiante día de julio es hallada entre un monton de escombros la piedra de Rosetta, uno de los objetos arqueologicos mas famosos del mundo y la clave para desentrañar una lengua perdida. La losa de granito contenia el mismo texto grabado en tres idiomas distintos: en egipcio, en demotico y en griego. Hasta su descubrimiento, nadie era capaz de leer los innumerables jeroglificos que cubrian los templos y estatuas del antiguo Egipto, un poderoso imperio que habia dominado el mundo durante treinta siglos, pero sobre el que, sin embargo, se ignoraba practicamente todo. Quien fuera capaz de descifrar la piedra de Rosetta abriria definitivamente la puerta de un misterio sellado desde hacia dos mil años. A partir de 1802, en una epoca en que Inglaterra y Francia se disputaban encarnizadamente en todos los frentes la supremacia mundial, dos brillantes rivales se propusieron alcanzar ese honor: Thomas Young, un polimata britanico que destacaba tanto en fisica como en linguistica, y Jean-François Champollion, educado en un pequeño enclave provinciano durante la Revolucion francesa y con una verdadera fijacion por todo lo egipcio. La escritura de los dioses narra esta trepidante carrera intelectual, en la que el ganador obtendria sin duda la gloria eterna, tanto para su nacion como para si mismo. Un fascinante retrato de imperios antiguos y modernos, una mirada sin parangon a la historia, la cultura y la humanidad.Un viaje al corazon del enigma, la historia del libro de piedra que nos enseño a descifrar codigos secretos, la hebra que une el antiguo Egipto con el nacimiento de la informatica, el nexo entre Champollion y Sherlock Holmes.Irene VallejoEdward Dolnick narra el apasionante relato sobre como se descifro el enigma de la piedra de Rosetta.Monica Arrizabalaga, ABCEl placer que ofrece la lectura del libro de Edward Dolnick es comparable al de El infinito en un junco, de Irene Vallejo. Luis Alemany, El MundoUn libro absorbente que se lee, creanme, como una novela.Jose Manuel Sanchez Ron, El Cultural

En la era dorada de la terapia del habla, las décdas de los años cincuenta y sesenta, la psicoterapia no veía límites a lo que podía hacer. Creyendo que realmente habían explicado el origen de la guerra, la homosexualidad, el anti-semitismo y toda una suerte de trastornos neuroticos, pusieron manos a la obra para conquistar uno de los mas feroces enemigos de la humanidad: la enfermedad mental. En La locura del divan , el consumado escritor cientifico Edward Dolnick nos explica la tragica historia de dicha confrontacion.