Sequitur Books Blog

Google recognizes Jan Ingenhousz's 287th birthday

Critten 08/12/2017 0

Today, Jan Ingenhousz's 287th birthday is celebrated by Google Doodle. Ingenhousz was a brilliant Dutch physician, biologist and chemist who discovered the processes of photosynthesis and plant cellular respiration. Ingenhousz, working on Joseph Priestley's discovery that plants absorb gases, found that plants gave off oxygen in the presence of light. This led Ingenhousz to reason that at least part of the mass of plants came from the air. Also, Ingenhousz found that plants could renew air, i.e. restore oxygen, in the course of a few hours through respiration. In 1779, Ingenhousz publish...

Les Miserables: 155 years later

Critten 30/06/2017 0

Les Miserables: 155 years later June 30th marks the anniversary of one of greatest literature works of the 19th century, Victor Hugo’s landmark “Les Miserables.” First conceived in 1830, Hugo would spend 17 years writing and perfecting his magnum opus. The novel contains various subplots, but the main thread is the story of ex-convict Jean Valjean, who becomes a force for good in the world but cannot escape his criminal past. Les Miserables is one of the longest novels ever written: 1,500 pages in unabridged English-language editions and 1,900 pages in French. Hugo explained his ambitions fo...

Strangest Biotech Of All - United Therapeutics of Rockville - Annual Report 2010

Critten 10/03/2017 0

Unusual Finds. Strangest Biotech Of All - United Therapeutics of Rockville - Annual Report 2010 I recently acquired the 2010 annual report of United Therapeutics, a Rockville/Silver Spring bio-tech firm. While it may seem dreadfully dull to read the annual report of business from 7 years ago, United Therapeutics is not your average firm. United Therapeutics’s story is unique in bio-tech firms and reflects many of eccentricities the founder, Martine Rothblatt and the "Unitherian" culture. United Therapeutics’s report is illustrated in comic strip form and features the exploits of Dr. Ma...

Brain Pickings – An inventory of the meaningful life

Critten 26/02/2017 0

Brain Pickings – An inventory of the meaningful life. Brain Pickings is the product of Maria Popova’s beautiful mind. The Blog deals with culture, books, literature and a quest for human meaning. I happened on it while researching a Rackham illustrated Alice in Wonderland book we have for sale. See Popova’s: How Arthur Rackham’s 1907 Drawings for Alice in Wonderland Revolutionized the Carroll Classic, the Technology of Book Art, and the Economics of Illustration To me, Popova’s writings echoed many of intellectual voices of the post-war 20th century. What makes Brain Pickings so fun is the...

Integrative Action of the Nervous System by Charles Sherrington

Critten 24/01/2017 0

In 1904 Dr. Charles Sherrington gave a series of ten lectures at Yale on the nervous system. These lectures were compiled in 1906 in his book, The Integrative Action of the Nervous System. "This work stands as the true foundation of modern neurophysiology; it is considered by Fulton to rank in importance with Harvey's De Motu Cordis, while Walshe asserts that it holds a position in physiology similar to Newton's Principia in physics." (Garrison-McHenry, History of Neurology, p. 229) Before publishing The Integrative Action of the Nervous System, Sherrington had spent 20 years engaged in c...

Physical Nature of a Used Bookstore

sequiturbooksadmin 04/12/2016 2

Often when I survey my books I am reminded of a quote from the wonderful Terry Pratchett: “The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one of those that look as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole ...