The Pinball Effect: How Renaissance Water Gardens Made Carburetor Possible - And Other Journeys

"The Pinball Effect" takes the reader on many different journeys through the web of knowledge. Knowledge, it turns out, has many unforeseen and surprising effects. The book, for instance, owes its existence to German jeweler Johannes Gutenberg's getting the date wrong one day in the fifteenth century. James Burke, author and host of the highly rated documentary series Connections 2, draws upon years of research to examine the intrigues and surprises on the journey through knowledge, a trip with all the twists and turns of a detective story. Ultimately, the larger picture that emerges has far-reaching and important implications for the future, revealing why the fundamental mechanism of change is the way things come together and connect. To add to the excitement, "The Pinball Effect" has been designed to be read interactively: throughout the book, cross-chapter references mimic computer hypertext "hot links" and allow readers to leap from one chapter to another. The result is a fascinating tour through history's most dramatic innovations.

James Lee Burke, a rare winner of two Edgar Awards, and named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, ?is the author of?thirty previous novels and?two collections of short stories, including such "New York Times" bestsellers as?"The Glass Rainbow", ?"Swan Peak", "The Tin Roof Blowdown", "Last Car to Elysian Fields" and "Rain Gods".? He lives in Missoula, Montana.

For James Burke, knowledge is a vast interconnected web - which means you never know how a new discovery or development, or even a chance accident, will affect everything else. To prove his point, he takes us on twenty exhilarating, all-new journeys through history's byways and shortcuts - from the zigzag path that starts with medieval spicy food and ends with smart bombs to the road that connects bottle caps with the Bowie Knife. Through these and hundreds of other fascinating examples - further linked by 447 cross references - Burke proves once more that he has 'one of the most intriguing minds in the Western world' - WASHINGTON POST.

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