Presents the life and accomplishments of Benjamin Franklin, one of the nation's most beloved figures, credited with introducing bifocals, daylight savings time, lightning rods, and the establishment of post offices.

"A worldwide race is on to perfect the next engine of economic growth, the advanced lithium-ion battery. It will power the electric car, relieve global warming, and catapult the winner into a new era of economic and political mastery. Can the United States win? Steve LeVine was granted unprecedented access to a secret federal laboratory outside Chicago, where a group of geniuses is trying to solve this next monumental task of physics. But these scientists--...

"What if you discovered by accident that you could change the world? Mick Ebeling--a film producer by trade, optimist by nature--set out to perform a simple act of kindness that quickly turned into a lifelong mission. In the process he discovered that hecould, indeed, change the world--and this fascinating new book shows how you can, too. On the cutting edge of the new "Maker Movement"--an outgrowth of the "hackers" of a decade ago--Mick Ebeling...

"Emma Lilian Todd's mind was always soaring--she loved to solve problems. Lilian tinkered and fiddled with all sorts of objects, turning dreams into useful inventions. As a child, she took apart and reassembled clocks to figure out how they worked. As an adult, typing up patents at the U.S. Patent Office, Lilian built the inventions in her mind, including many designs for flying machines. However, they all seemed too impractical. Lilian knew she could...

Presents a biography of the tireless Thomas Edison, illustrated with many photos of his life and inventions.

"In this remarkable book, the historian Jack Rakove shows how the private lives of these men were suddenly transformed into public careers--how Washington became a strategist, Franklin a pioneering cultural diplomat, Madison a sophisticated constitutional thinker, and Hamilton a brilliant policymaker. Rakove shakes off accepted notions of these men as godlike visionaries, focusing instead on the evolution of their ideas and the crystallizing of their...