Walker & Company.Walker & Company 104--5th Ave., New York NY 10011 www.walkerbooks.com Setting: the late 1960s: Astro Turf (0802714277 $24.00) author M.G. Lord was becoming a teen in Southern California, her mother was dying of cancer, and her rocket engineer father disappeared into his work at the Jet Propulsion jet propulsion, propulsion of a body by a force developed in reaction to the ejection of a high-speed jet of gas. Jet Propulsion EnginesThe four basic parts of a jet engine are the compressor, turbine, combustion chamber, and propelling nozzles. Air is compressed, then led through chambers where its volume is increased by the heat of fuel combustion. On emergence it spins the compression rotors, which in turn act on the incoming air. Lab in Pasadena. Fast forward thirty years later, where Lord is assigned to report on the lab--and turns a report into a search of her past, an elusive father figure, and rocket science as a whole. Lord celebrates and examines her eccentric father and provides a history of the JPL concurrently: readers interested in rocket science will find this packed with intrigue, insights, and industry revelations, making it much more than another girl's inspection of a father. Andrew Taylor's World Of Gerard Mercator (0802713777, $26.00) provides a review of the mapmaker whose techniques changed geography. Mercator lived in 16th century Europe, when wear threatened the land and the Inquisition Inquisition (ĭn'kwĭzĭsh`ən), tribunal of the Roman Catholic Church established for the investigation of heresy. The Medieval InquisitionIn the early Middle Ages investigation of heresy was a duty of the bishops. muffled creativity and science. While Mercator never traveled beyond northern Europe, his imagination fueled a whole new field--mapmaking--and was to foster a new era of navigation and exploration. |
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