Sarah Knowles Bolton (1841–1916)

Contents:

1. Benjamin Franklin
2. Samuel Johnson
3. James Watt
4. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
5. Michael Faraday
6. David Glasgow Farragut
7. William Lloyd Garrison
8. Giuseppe Garibaldi
9. Ezra Cornell
10. Abraham Lincoln
11. Ole Bull
12. Charles Dickens
13. John D. Rockefeller
14. Thomas Alva Edison
15. Pope Pius XI
16. The Mayo Brothers
17. George Washington Carver
18. Edward Bok
19. Henry Ford
20. The Wright Brothers
21. Calvin Coolidge
22. Will Rogers
23. Grant Wood… (altro)

Very quick read, and put in an easy to understand style. It was probably written for kids, but I am not too certain. In any case, I had heard of most of the people covered in this book. Obviously Jonas Salk did the Polio vaccine; Newton, Galileo and Einstein were physicists I had heard of and so on. I had not heard of the last two men off the top of my head though, and it might be because it gave their original Chinese Names. Either that or I just never encountered the idea of Parity in an atomic reaction before.

Either way, this book is quite accessible and a good introduction to the men and women that it covers in these pages. It is rather dated, but that is not really surprising since the version I have is copyright 1960 or so. I'm sure that if it was reprinted today it would have to include people like Feynman and other luminaries of science.

It was quite an enjoyable read, but I won't read it again, at least not right away.… (altro)