electric

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

They say if you remember the '60s, you weren't there. But, fortunately, Tom Wolfe was there, notebook in hand, politely declining LSD while Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters fomented revolution, turning America on to a dangerously playful way of thinking as their Day-Glo conveyance, Further, made the most influential bus ride since Rosa Parks's. By taking On the Road's hero Neal Cassady as his driver on the cross-country revival tour and drawing on his own training as a magician, Kesey made Further into a bully pulpit, and linked the beat epoch with hippiedom. Paul McCartney's Many Years from Now cites Kesey as a key influence on his trippy Magical Mystery Tour film. Kesey temporarily renounced his literary magic for the cause of "tootling the multitudes"--making a spectacle of himself--and Prankster Robert Stone had to flee Kesey's wild party to get his life's work done. But in those years, Kesey's life was his work, and Wolfe infinitely multiplied the multitudes who got tootled by writing this major literary-journalistic monument to a resonant pop-culture moment.

Kesey's theatrical metamorphosis from the distinguished author of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest to the abominable shaman of the "Acid Test" soirees that launched The Grateful Dead required Wolfe's Day-Glo prose account to endure (though Kesey's own musings in Demon Box are no slouch either). Even now, Wolfe's book gives what Wolfe clearly got from Kesey: a contact high. --Tim Appelo

The Hungry Scientist Handbook: Electric Birthday Cakes, Edible Origami, and Other DIY Projects for Techies, Tinkerers, and Foodies

Inventive, (mostly) edible DIY gadgets and projects guaranteed to captivate

The Hungry Scientist Handbook brings DIY technology into the kitchen and onto the plate. It compiles the most mouthwatering projects created by mechanical engineer Patrick Buckley and his band of intrepid techie friends, whose collaboration on contraptions started at a memorable 2005 Bay Area dinner party and resulted in the formation of the Hungry Scientist Society—a loose confederation of creative minds dedicated to the pursuit of projects possessing varying degrees of whimsy and utility.

Featuring twenty projects ranging from edible origami to glowing lollipops, cryogenic martinis to Tupperware boom boxes, the book draws from the expertise of programmers, professors, and garden-variety geeks and offers something to delight DIYers of all skill levels.

Build Your Own Electric Vehicle

Go Green-Go Electric!. Faster, Cheaper, More Reliable . While Saving Energy and the Environment

This new, updated edition of Build Your Own Electric Vehicle contains everything that made the first edition so popular while adding all the technological advances and new parts that are readily available on the market today. . .

Build Your Own Electric Vehicle gets on the expressway to a green, ecologically sound, cost-effective way that even can look cool, too! . .

This comprehensive how-to goes through the process of transforming an internal combustion engine vehicle to electric or even building an EV from scratch for as much or even cheaper than purchasing a traditional car. The book describes each component in detail---motor, battery, controller, charger, and chassis---and provides step-by-step instructions on how to put them all together. . .

Build Your Own Electric Vehicle, Second Edition, covers:

.
• EV vs. Combustible Engine Overview.
• Environmental and Energy Savings.
• EV Evolution since the First Electric Car .
• Current Purchase and Conversion Costs.
• Chassis and Design.
• Today's Best Motors .
• Battery Discharging/Charging Styles.
• Electrical Systems.
• Licensing and Insurance Issues.
• Driving.
• Maintenance .
• Related Clubs and Associations.
• Additional Resources

Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik

Known in his lifetime primarily to readers of science fiction, Philip K. Dick (1928-82) is now seen as a uniquely visionary figure, a writer who, in editor Jonathan Lethem's words, "wielded a sardonic yet heartbroken acuity about the plight of being alive in the twentieth century, one that makes him a lonely hero to the readers who cherish him." Posing the questions "What is human?" and "What is real?" in a multitude of fascinating ways, Dick produced works-fantastic and weird yet developed with precise logic, marked by wild humor and soaring flights of religious speculation-that are startlingly prescient imaginative responses to 21st-century quandaries.

This Library of America volume brings together four of Dick's most original novels. The Man in the High Castle (1962), which won the Hugo Award, describes an alternate world in which Japan and Germany have won World War II and America is divided into separate occupation zones. The dizzying The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) posits a future in which competing hallucinogens proffer different brands of virtual reality. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), about a bounty hunter in search of escaped androids in a postapocalyptic future, was the basis for the movie Blade Runner. Ubik (1969), with its future world of psychic espionage agents and cryogenically frozen patients inhabiting an illusory "half-life," pursues Dick's theme of simulated realities and false perceptions to ever more disturbing conclusions. As with most of Dick's novels, no plot summary can suggest the mesmerizing and constantly surprising texture of these astonishing books.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

"The most consistently brilliant science fiction writer in the world."
--John Brunner
THE INSPIRATION FOR BLADERUNNER. . .
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was published in 1968. Grim and foreboding, even today it is a masterpiece ahead of its time.
By 2021, the World War had killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remained coveted any living creature, and for people who couldn't afford one, companies built incredibly realistic simulacrae: horses, birds, cats, sheep. . .
They even built humans.
Emigrees to Mars received androids so sophisticated it was impossible to tell them from true men or women. Fearful of the havoc these artificial humans could wreak, the government banned them from Earth. But when androids didn't want to be identified, they just blended in.
Rick Deckard was an officially sanctioned bounty hunter whose job was to find rogue androids, and to retire them. But cornered, androids tended to fight back, with deadly results.
"[Dick] sees all the sparkling and terrifying possibilities. . . that other authors shy away from."
--Paul Williams
Rolling Stone

The Magic School Bus and the Electric Field Trip

Joanna Cole, Illustrations Bruce Degen. A thunderstorm and a blackout send Ms. Frizzle and her class on a electrifying field trip to see how electricity functions.

Locomotives: The Modern Diesel and Electric Reference

The essential photographic reference to modern North American locomotives.

This remarkable large-format reference is a revised, updated and expanded work based on the author's Field Guide to Modern Diesel Locomotives. Locomotives covers all mainline models built for North American railroads from the mid-1 970s to today, from EMD Dash 2s and GE Dash 7s to the latest 70 Series and Evolution Series models, as well as Green Goats, Gensets and mainline passenger electric-powered locomotives.

Containing nearly 300 photographs of the more than 120 featured locomotive models from every locomotive manufacturer, this is the definitive reference for the North American rail fan. Greg McDonnell provides concise yet comprehensive information on each model, along with easy-to-read tables of production totals, build dates and mechanical specifications.

Grill Power: Everything you need to know to make delicious, healthy meals on your Indoor Electric Grill

This menu cookbook from Holly Rudin-Braschi is the first ever written specifically for electric tabletop grills and provides everything the home cook needs to make delicious and healthy meals using their particular type of indoor grill.

Beginning with the basics of all types of tabletop grills on the market and the special techniques used for each one, GRILL POWER goes on to cover a broad range of dishes, from burgers and steaks to seafood and vegetables. Each menu includes grill times for each type of grill, a menu game plan, estimates of total prep and cooking time, informative and entertaining "cook's notes", nutritional breakdown, and more!

The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life

The Body Electric tells the fascinating story of our bioelectric selves. Robert O. Becker, a pioneer in the filed of regeneration and its relationship to electrical currents in living things, challenges the established mechanistic understanding of the body. He found clues to the healing process in the long-discarded theory that electricity is vital to life. But as exciting as Becker's discoveries are, pointing to the day when human limbs, spinal cords, and organs may be regenerated after they have been damaged, equally fascinating is the story of Becker's struggle to do such original work. The Body Electric explores new pathways in our understanding of evolution, acupuncture, psychic phenomena, and healing.

In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead

Hollywood has sent its emissaries to New Iberia Parish to film a Civil War epic in the steaming mists of the Louisiana bayou -- reawakening the ghosts of a past best left undisturbed.

The restless specters wait in the shadows for cajun cop Dave Robicheaux -- as he hunts a serial butcher who is preying on the less-then-innocent young. For these spirits are the guardians of Robicheaux's darkest torments -- and they hold the key to his ultimate salvation...or a final, fatal downfall.