Four undocumented Mexican American students, two great teachers, one robot-building contest . . . and a major motion pictureIn 2004, four Latino teenagers arrived at the Marine Advanced Technology Education Robotics Competition at the University of California, Santa Barbara. They were born in Mexico but raised in Phoenix, Arizona, where they attended an underfunded public high school. No one had ever suggested to Oscar, Cristian, Luis, or Lorenzo that they might amount to much—but two inspiring science teachers had convinced these impoverished, undocumented kids from the desert who had never even seen the ocean that they should try to build an underwater robot. And build a robot they did. Their robot wasn't pretty, especially compared to those of the competition. They were going up against some of the best collegiate engineers in the country, including a team from MIT backed by a $10,000 grant from ExxonMobil. The Phoenix teenagers had scraped together less than $1,000 and built their robot out of scavenged parts. This was never a level competition—and yet, against all odds . . . they won! But this is just the beginning for these four, whose story—which became a key inspiration to the DREAMers movement—will go on to include first-generation college graduations, deportation, bean-picking in Mexico, and service in Afghanistan. Joshua Davis's Spare Parts is a story about overcoming insurmountable odds and four young men who proved they were among the most patriotic and talented Americans in this country—even as the country tried to kick them out.
A sensation on its publication in 1859, The Origin of Species profoundly shocked Victorian readers by calling into question the belief in a Creator with its description of evolution through natural selection. And Darwin's seminal work is nearly as c...
Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispen...
Narrator: Dennis Boutsikaris Published: 10/07/2014
Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispen...
Narrator: Dennis Boutsikaris Published: 10/07/2014
Nikola Tesla, a Serbian immigrant, invented the radio, the induction motor, the neon lamp, and the remote control. His breakthrough came in alternating current, the basis of the electric grid and long-distance electrical transmission. This pitted hi...
Soon to be a major motion picture, this is the first—and only—definitive authorized account of Neil Armstrong, the man whose “one small step” changed history.When Apollo 11 touched down on the Moon’s surface in 1969, th...
Narrator: Jeremy Bobb,Boyd Gaines Published: 05/29/2018
From "Masters of Doom" author, David Kushner, comes "Prepare to Meet Thy Doom”, a compilation of true gaming stories covering many facets of America’s biggest entertainment business: the video game industry. In addition to more than a d...
Called a madman by some, a genius by others, and an enigma by nearly everyone, Nikola Tesla was possibly the greatest inventor the world has ever known. He was, without a doubt, a trail blazer who created astonishing, sometimes world-transforming, d...
James Gleick has long been fascinated by the making of science -- how ideas order visible appearances, how equations can give meaning to molecular and stellar phenomena, how theories can transform what we see. In Chaos, he chronicled the emergence ...
"I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla," writes Robert Sapolsky in this witty and riveting chronicle of a scientist's coming-of-age in remote Africa.
An exhila...
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