The Explorer Gene: How Three Generations of One Family Went Higher, Deeper, and Further Than Any Before
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.63 (627 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 147673027X |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 320 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-06-24 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Loved it! Growing up in a family of Star Trek fans, the name Jean-Luc Picard was as well known. The character on the Star Trek show was the captain of a ship that traveled through space exploring places humans had never been before. He had a strong sense of right and wrong, as well as compassion. It seem as if there was nothing that was beyond him knowing, but if there was he knew who to ask to find the answer. I had always wondered where the name for this character had been chosen. It didn't take too long into reading The Explorer Gene for me to figure out, it was like the fictional character had . How and why "we can all learn something of the Piccards' spirit and passion for discovery ourselves" Robert Morris Here is what caught my eye in James Cameron's Foreword: "An important aspect of the `expression' of the Explorer Gene is this requirement to see for oneself -- to bear witness, personally to the unknown, to see that which has never been seen before by human eyes. And to project not only one's consciousness on a journey of imagination, but tom project one's physical body, with full knowledge of the attendant risks, to some extreme vantage point from which no human being has ever looked out upon unknown vistas."What we have in this volume is Tom Cheshire's lively as well as rigorous and com. Zoe Strassfield said Engrossing and Enjoyable. A valuable and detailed history of the Piccard family, if a touch hagiographic in places. The character studies of each member of the family give a real sense of their personalities and thoughts, and readers who have already read some of the books written by the Piccards themselves about their adventures will find such insights illuminating. (For instance, Jacques Piccard's detached tone when writing about his father in "The Sun Beneath the Sea" becomes poignant when understood with the context given in "The Explorer Gene" about the effect Auguste's death had on him.)Fans of the history o
The remarkable account of an extraordinary family of explorers who spurred innovation and accomplished incredible feats—even when the popular consensus was against them.On May 27, 1931, Auguste Piccard became the first human to enter the stratosphere, flying an experimental balloon he invented himself. To this day, no one has gone deeper. None of the Piccards set out to explore: Auguste was a physicist, Jacques an economist and Bertrand a psychiatrist. Bertrand, the third generation, was the first person to fly around the world non-stop in a balloon. Thirty years later, his son Jacques went to the bottom of the earth, descending to the Mariana Trench in a submarine built by him and Auguste. Now, he’s building his own craft: a solar-powered plane to circumnavigate the globe.In The Explorer Gene, Tom Cheshire asks how three generations of one family achieved such extraordinary feats, often with the consensus against them. Was it fate, a famous family name – or their explorer gene?
--Vanessa Bush . Cheshire focuses on three generations of Piccards: Auguste, who traveled to the edge of space in a balloon he designed himself; his son, Jacques, who drew on that design for a submersible that traveled the sea more deeply than any one had before him; and grandson Bertrand, who’d hoped to escape the family business by going into psychiatry but became the first man to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon and is working on a solar-powered plane to fly nonstop across the globe. Cheshire presents a thrilling account of the scientific, personal, and, occasionally, governmental rivalries behind each endeavor as the Piccards tested theories and themselves, prodding and encouraging
Tom Cheshire received his BA in Classics at Cambridge University. He lives in London. . His work has also appeared in GQ, Italia, Conde Nast Traveler, and on BBC2. He is the deputy editor of the UK edition of Wired and has written several cover stories