Otto's Dream

An experiment in storytelling...let me know what you think!

Sunday Radio Alert

Earlybirds and night-owls, this Sunday is your chance to hear me spinning tails from my latest book The Greatest Science Stories Never Told.

Sunday morning at 6 AM ET I will be appearing on Boston Sunday Review, on WBZ-FM with Mat Schaffer. Sunday Night at 11 PM ET I will be appearing on The Jordan Rich Show on WBZ-AM. It's a "BZ" day--get it? Of course you do. Mat and Jordan are two old friends, I've been on both shows several times, and it is always great fun. Lucky for me, Mat's show is taped the day before so I don't actually have to burnt the candle at both ends. If you aren't in the Boston area you can listen in to both shows online. Jordan's show is a call in--so please do!

Civil War Correspondents Memorial

Evan Haning at WTOP Radio in Washington DC sent me some very cool photographs of an intriguing and little-known Civil War monument in Gathland Park just outside Burkittsville, MD.

It is the Civil War Correspondents Memorial, ereceted in 1896 by a man named George Alfred Townsend on an estate he bought there. It commemorates 157 artists and reporters who covered the Civil War. Townsend was himself a Civil War reporter (many consider him the youngest correspondet covering the war) who wrote under the pen-name "Gath, derived from adding an "h" to his initials. Townsend later became a successful novelist, and eventually grew rich enough to buy a large tract of land in 1884 and start building a baronial estate in the area known as Crampton's Grap. The memorial is one of many buildings he designed and had built. His former estate is now a Maryland State Park.

Evan says that Townsend built a huge house and many other buildings on the site, including a tomb that was supposed to be his final resting place, but apparently he ran out of money in the process. Obviously this monument was something he felt was pretty important, and given that the Civil War in many ways gave birth to modern war-reporting, it is fitting to remember the folks who made it happen. I was tickled to find out about it. The park isn't terribly far from the Antietam battlefield, and definitely seems worth checking out to anyone visiting the area.

Lo and Behold

Mega Publisher HarperCollins has 21 new titles coming out today including books by Barbara Kingsolver, Walter Isaacson, Bill Bryson, Bon Jovi, and yes, Rick Beyer. The Greatest Science Stories Never Told is officially on-sale.

Yay!

I'm a few days late with this story, but last week marked the 40th anniversary of the first transmission sent across the internet, a story told in the new book. The date was October 29th, 1969. Programmers at UCLA prepared to log onto a computer at Stanford. (The two universities were he first nodes on ARPANET, which eventually morphed into the internet.) Internet pioneer Len Kleinrock actually re-enacted the moment for me when I visited him at UCLA a few years ago. As we stood next to the IMP (Internet Message Processor) that was the first computer on the Internet, he recalled what happened:

Charlie Klein with a headset and a microphone, connected over this network, with a voice line to the fellow at the other end. Charlie typed the L, said, “Did you get the L?” The other guy said, “I got the L.” He typed the o. “Did you get the o?” “I got the o.” He typed in the g. Crash. So the first message on the Internet was lo . . . as in “Lo and Behold.”

Science Stories Preview

Harper Collins is offering a preview of the new book, you can browse through to read the introduction and the first few stories.

Also, there are a couple of days left to register to win a free copy at goodreads.com. To find out more, click here.

Book Talk Thursday 10/22 at Newton Free Library

At the Library - Newton, Massachusetts - Newton TAB

Posted using ShareThis

Smoki and Dick Redux

I did the first interview for the new book today, with Smoki Bacon and Dick Concannon--the fourth time I've had the delightful experience of being on their show, The Literati Scene. As usual we taped at the Swan Cafe at the Park Plaza Hotel, and had lunch afterwards with the other guests. And as usual, it was a fascinating and electic collection:

Robin Abrahams, who writes the "Miss Conduct" column for the Boston Globe (being interviewed by Smoki in the picture above.)

Mystery writer Toni Kelner

Linda Nathan, educator and author, founding princial of the Boston Arts Academy, and author of The Hardest Questions Aren’t on the Test: Lessons from an Innovative Urban School.

James Schwartz, author of In Pursuit of the Gene

Our lunchtime conversation ranged over everything from Smoki's experiences working at Bolt, Beranek and Newman in the 1950's to Afghanistan/Vietnam analogies. The interview will air in a few weeks, I'll post details in the appropriate places when I know them!