THE PINBALL EFFECT "Thoughtful, articulate, titillating...Burke pulls off that neatest of tricks: to amuse and instruct." -- Kirkus Reviews Knowledge has many unforeseen and surprising effects. Like a pinball, a simple discovery in one area can -- through necessity, intuition, or serendipity -- connect with, bounce off, and redirect the course of another seemingly unrelated discovery made elsewhere in the world or at a distant time. This book, for instance, owes its existence to the German jeweler Johannes Gutenberg's getting the date wrong one day in the fifteenth century. The science of anthropology might not exist had it not been for the discovery of America. The problems of Italian miners led to learning about the vacuum inside a lightbulb. Renaissance water gardens made the carburetor possible. James Burke draws on years of research to examine the intrigue and surprises on the journey through knowledge, a trip with all the twists and turns of a detective story. The picture that emerges has far-reaching implications for the future, revealing why the fundamental mechanism of change is the unplanned way ideas come together. To re-create the "pinball effect" of history, this book is designed with cross-chapter references that allow readers to leap from one related discovery to another. The result is a fascinating tour through some of history's most revolutionary and dramatic innovations. A Little Brown & Co. Book ISBN: 0316116106 - - - Click on a title below to order: The Pinball Effect : How Renaissance Water Gardens Made the Carburetor Possible and Other Journeys Through Knowledge - (paperback)