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How we built a less-explodey lithium battery and kickstarted the EV revolution
For the final installment of Hitting the Books for 2023, we're bringing you an excerpt from the fantastic Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization by Ed Conway.
Margaret Atwood protests book bans with 'unburnable' copy of 'The Handmaid's Tale'
Watch the author take a flamethrower to a fireproof edition of her dystopian magnum opus.
Hitting the Books: This $80 prosthetic has helped millions walk again
In her new book, What Can a Body Do, Hendren examines the challenges that people with disabilities face on a daily basis in a world that often doesn’t take their needs into account and shows that more inclusive design — from cybernetic prosthetic arms and more accessible city streets to tactile doorbells for the deaf — isn’t just possible, it’s already practical. In the excerpt below, Hendren looks at the Jaipur Foot, an unpowered, low-cost prosthetic that has helped nearly two million lower leg amputees in India and other countries regain their ability to walk. From WHAT CAN A BODY DO: How We Meet the Built World by Sara Hendren published on August 18, 2020 by Riverhead, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2020 Sara Hendren.
Book publishers sue Internet Archive for allegedly enabling piracy
Four major publishers filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive for alleged “willful mass copyright infringement" related to its Open Library.
Hitting the Books: Boomers not understanding tech is the circle of life
Welcome to Hitting the Books. With less than one in five Americans reading just for fun these days, we've done the hard work for you by scouring the internet for the most interesting, thought provoking books on science and technology we can find and delivering an easily digestible nugget of their stories.
Obama to provide 10,000 free e-books through your library
President Barack Obama announced a new program on Thursday aimed at delivering access for more than 10,000 e-books to financially strapped schoolchildren throughout the United States. The $250 million program will feature titles from numerous publishers including Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins and Hachette, selected by volunteers from Digital Public Library of America. The New York Public Library has signed on to develop the free app. "It's very different than from our generation," Cecilia Muñoz, Obama's domestic policy adviser, told Reuters. "More and more, you're going to be seeing kids using devices, and what we're doing is making sure that there's more books available on those devices." As the president's top economic advisor Jeff Zients pointed out to Reuters, research shows that some 80 percent of low-income children are behind the rest of their grade in terms of reading skills. Few of them have books at home. That's why Obama's program will also work with local libraries, boosting their enrollment of local kids in order to provide them with hardware necessary to enjoy these books. Each age-appropriate title will be made available from the publishers' online libraries, though there's no word on whether the e-title will be given away or simply checked out as traditionally lent books are. Still, any excuse to get kids into the library is a good one. [Image credit: Getty]
Penguin and Random House merge, promise a brave new e-book future
The pressure of digital transitions can lead traditional media companies to circle the wagons -- for better or for worse -- and book publishers certainly aren't immune as e-books take hold. Bertelsmann and Pearson are worried enough to be merging their respective Random House and Penguin publishing wings into a joint venture, not-so-creatively titled Penguin Random House, that they hope will better survive "long-term trends" like the shift away from paper-centric business models. While the two are engaged in the usual corporatespeak of creating "synergies" (read: resource cuts), we're more interested in talk of the union being a springboard for digital efforts: Penguin Random House wants to be "more adventurous" with e-book models like self-publishing. Whether the merger leads to a renaissance for established publishers or just reduced competition when the deal closes in the back half of 2013, we're bracing ourselves for the possibility of a Fifty Shades of Jamie Oliver crossover.
