The Ghost Of The Executed Engineer

Download The Ghost Of The Executed Engineer full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online The Ghost Of The Executed Engineer ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

The Ghost of the Executed Engineer

Author : Loren Graham
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674254171
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Ghost of the Executed Engineer by : Loren Graham

Download or read book The Ghost of the Executed Engineer written by Loren Graham and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1996-02-01 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stalin ordered his execution, but here Peter Palchinsky has the last word. As if rising from an uneasy grave, Palchinsky’s ghost leads us through the miasma of Soviet technology and industry, pointing out the mistakes he condemned in his time, the corruption and collapse he predicted, the ultimate price paid for silencing those who were not afraid to speak out. The story of this visionary engineer’s life and work, as Loren Graham relates it, is also the story of the Soviet Union’s industrial promise and failure. We meet Palchinsky in pre-Revolutionary Russia, immersed in protests against the miserable lot of laborers in the tsarist state, protests destined to echo ironically during the Soviet worker’s paradise. Exiled from the country, pardoned and welcomed back at the outbreak of World War I, the engineer joined the ranks of the Revolutionary government, only to find it no more open to criticism than the previous regime. His turbulent career offers us a window on debates over industrialization. Graham highlights the harsh irrationalities built into the Soviet system—the world’s most inefficient steel mill in Magnitogorsk, the gigantic and ill-conceived hydroelectric plant on the Dnieper River, the infamously cruel and mislocated construction of the White Sea Canal. Time and again, we see the effects of policies that ignore not only the workers’ and consumers’ needs but also sound management and engineering precepts. And we see Palchinsky’s criticism and advice, persistently given, consistently ignored, continue to haunt the Soviet Union right up to its dissolution in 1991. The story of a man whose gifts and character set him in the path of history, The Ghost of the Executed Engineer is also a cautionary tale about the fate of an engineering that disregards social and human issues.

The Essential Engineer

Author : Henry Petroski
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307473503
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Essential Engineer by : Henry Petroski

Download or read book The Essential Engineer written by Henry Petroski and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-03-08 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed author of The Pencil and To Engineer Is Human, The Essential Engineer is an eye-opening exploration of the ways in which science and engineering must work together to address our world’s most pressing issues, from dealing with climate change and the prevention of natural disasters to the development of efficient automobiles and the search for renewable energy sources. While the scientist may identify problems, it falls to the engineer to solve them. It is the inherent practicality of engineering, which takes into account structural, economic, environmental, and other factors that science often does not consider, that makes engineering vital to answering our most urgent concerns. Henry Petroski takes us inside the research, development, and debates surrounding the most critical challenges of our time, exploring the feasibility of biofuels, the progress of battery-operated cars, and the question of nuclear power. He gives us an in-depth investigation of the various options for renewable energy—among them solar, wind, tidal, and ethanol—explaining the benefits and risks of each. Will windmills soon populate our landscape the way they did in previous centuries? Will synthetic trees, said to be more efficient at absorbing harmful carbon dioxide than real trees, soon dot our prairies? Will we construct a “sunshade” in outer space to protect ourselves from dangerous rays? In many cases, the technology already exists. What’s needed is not so much invention as engineering. Just as the great achievements of centuries past—the steamship, the airplane, the moon landing—once seemed beyond reach, the solutions to the twenty-first century’s problems await only a similar coordination of science and engineering. Eloquently reasoned and written, The Essential Engineer identifies and illuminates these problems—and, above all, sets out a course for putting ideas into action.

Lysenko’s Ghost

Author : Loren Graham
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674969049
Total Pages : 190 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Lysenko’s Ghost by : Loren Graham

Download or read book Lysenko’s Ghost written by Loren Graham and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-11 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lysenko became one of the most notorious figures in twentieth-century science after his genetic theories were discredited decades ago. Yet some scientists now claim that discoveries in epigenetics prove that he was right after all. Loren Graham reopens the case, to determine whether new developments in molecular biology validate Lysenko’s claims.

Lonely Ideas

Author : Loren Graham
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262317397
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Lonely Ideas by : Loren Graham

Download or read book Lonely Ideas written by Loren Graham and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An expert investigates Russia's long history of technological invention followed by commercial failure and points to new opportunities to break the pattern. When have you gone into an electronics store, picked up a desirable gadget, and found that it was labeled “Made in Russia”? Probably never. Russia, despite its epic intellectual achievements in music, literature, art, and pure science, is a negligible presence in world technology. Despite its current leaders' ambitions to create a knowledge economy, Russia is economically dependent on gas and oil. In Lonely Ideas, Loren Graham investigates Russia's long history of technological invention followed by failure to commercialize and implement. For three centuries, Graham shows, Russia has been adept at developing technical ideas but abysmal at benefiting from them. From the seventeenth-century arms industry through twentieth-century Nobel-awarded work in lasers, Russia has failed to sustain its technological inventiveness. Graham identifies a range of conditions that nurture technological innovation: a society that values inventiveness and practicality; an economic system that provides investment opportunities; a legal system that protects intellectual property; a political system that encourages innovation and success. Graham finds Russia lacking on all counts. He explains that Russia's failure to sustain technology, and its recurrent attempts to force modernization, reflect its political and social evolution and even its resistance to democratic principles. But Graham points to new connections between Western companies and Russian researchers, new research institutions, a national focus on nanotechnology, and the establishment of Skolkovo, “a new technology city.” Today, he argues, Russia has the best chance in its history to break its pattern of technological failure.

Naming Infinity

Author : Loren Graham
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674032934
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Naming Infinity by : Loren Graham

Download or read book Naming Infinity written by Loren Graham and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-31 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1913, Russian imperial marines stormed an Orthodox monastery at Mt. Athos, Greece, to haul off monks engaged in a dangerously heretical practice known as Name Worshipping. Exiled to remote Russian outposts, the monks and their mystical movement went underground. Ultimately, they came across Russian intellectuals who embraced Name Worshipping—and who would achieve one of the biggest mathematical breakthroughs of the twentieth century, going beyond recent French achievements. Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor take us on an exciting mathematical mystery tour as they unravel a bizarre tale of political struggles, psychological crises, sexual complexities, and ethical dilemmas. At the core of this book is the contest between French and Russian mathematicians who sought new answers to one of the oldest puzzles in math: the nature of infinity. The French school chased rationalist solutions. The Russian mathematicians, notably Dmitri Egorov and Nikolai Luzin—who founded the famous Moscow School of Mathematics—were inspired by mystical insights attained during Name Worshipping. Their religious practice appears to have opened to them visions into the infinite—and led to the founding of descriptive set theory. The men and women of the leading French and Russian mathematical schools are central characters in this absorbing tale that could not be told until now. Naming Infinity is a poignant human interest story that raises provocative questions about science and religion, intuition and creativity.

A Face in the Rock

Author : Loren R. Graham
Publisher : Washington, D.C. : Island Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 184 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis A Face in the Rock by : Loren R. Graham

Download or read book A Face in the Rock written by Loren R. Graham and published by Washington, D.C. : Island Press. This book was released on 1995-06 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of the Grand Island Chippewa Indians and also presents a morality play about the phlight of populations destroyed by the violence of other cultures.

Engineering a Life

Author : Krishan K. Bedi
Publisher : SparkPress
ISBN 13 : 1943006423
Total Pages : 377 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (43 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Engineering a Life by : Krishan K. Bedi

Download or read book Engineering a Life written by Krishan K. Bedi and published by SparkPress. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Included on BookBub’s "The Most Exciting Memoirs Coming Out in 2018” list Krishan Bedi came to the United States in December of 1961 at the tender age of twenty. He had only $300 in his pocket, and he had made it out of his small village in India on sheer faith, determined to get education in the US. For him, there was no option but to succeed—so he began his new life in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he had to adapt to the culture shock not only of being in the US but a Punjabi man in the South in the 1960s. Engineering a Life is an examination of Bedi’s life, and how he has handled the plethora of curve balls thrown his way with determination, humor, and an unwavering faith that everything would work out. This is a book about values and faith and the importance of friendship, family, and hard work. It’s a story about achieving the American Dream, proving that no matter how thoroughly you map out your life’s journey, no matter how many blueprints you draw up, when you veer off the course you’ve plotted—as we all do, somehow, in the end—you end up where you’re supposed to be.

The Forgotten Engineer

Author : TS Paul
Publisher : T S Paul
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 56 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Forgotten Engineer by : TS Paul

Download or read book The Forgotten Engineer written by TS Paul and published by T S Paul. This book was released on with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Ethics, Politics, and Whistleblowing in Engineering

Author : Nicholas Sakellariou
Publisher : CRC Press
ISBN 13 : 1351242393
Total Pages : 389 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (512 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Ethics, Politics, and Whistleblowing in Engineering by : Nicholas Sakellariou

Download or read book Ethics, Politics, and Whistleblowing in Engineering written by Nicholas Sakellariou and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2018-11-09 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aim of this book is to generate a strong operational ethic in the work of engineers from all disciplines. It provides numerous examples of engineers who sought to meet the highest ethical standards, risking both professional and personal retaliations. In short, it presents the fields of engineering ethics in the context of actual conflict situations on the job, and points to an urgent need for a strong ethical framework for the profession. This book is about engineering students and practitioners truly understanding, valuing, and championing their wider critical role. Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and champion of engineers, wrote the preface. Presents various viewpoints which hail from a wide variety of disciplines in the engineering, science, and technology communities. Includes a mix of historical and contemporary examples, a list of relevant television series and documentaries for engineers, as well as links to informative websites for practicing engineers and engineering students. Examines engineering professionalism as related to the imperative of sustainable development. Provides numerous examples of corporate whistleblowing and ethical dilemmas in engineering. Includes a foreword written by consumer advocate Ralph Nader.

What is Global Engineering Education For? The Making of International Educators, Part III

Author : Gary Downey
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3031021258
Total Pages : 239 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (31 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis What is Global Engineering Education For? The Making of International Educators, Part III by : Gary Downey

Download or read book What is Global Engineering Education For? The Making of International Educators, Part III written by Gary Downey and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-06-01 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global engineering offers the seductive image of engineers figuring out how to optimize work through collaboration and mobility. Its biggest challenge to engineers, however, is more fundamental and difficult: to better understand what they know and value qua engineers and why. This volume reports an experimental effort to help sixteen engineering educators produce ""personal geographies"" describing what led them to make risky career commitments to international and global engineering education. The contents of their diverse trajectories stand out in extending far beyond the narrower image of producing globally-competent engineers. Their personal geographies repeatedly highlight experiences of incongruence beyond home countries that provoked them to see themselves and understand their knowledge differently. The experiences were sufficiently profound to motivate them to design educational experiences that could provoke engineering students in similar ways. For nine engineers, gaining new international knowledge challenged assumptions that engineering work and life are limited to purely technical practices, compelling explicit attention to broader value commitments. For five non-engineers and two hybrids, gaining new international knowledge fueled ambitions to help engineering students better recognize and critically examine the broader value commitments in their work. A background chapter examines the historical emergence of international engineering education in the United States, and an epilogue explores what it might take to integrate practices of critical self-analysis more systematically in the education and training of engineers. Two appendices and two online supplements describe the unique research process that generated these personal geographies, especially the workshop at the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in which authors were prohibited from participating in discussions of their manuscripts. Table of Contents: Communicating Across Cultures: Humanities in the International Education of Engineers (Bernd Widdig) / Linking Language Proficiency and the Professions (Michael Nugent) / Language, Life, and Pathways to Global Competency for Engineers (and Everyone Else) (Phil McKnight) / Bridging Two worlds (John M. Grandin) / Opened Eyes: From Moving Up to Helping Students See (Gayle G. Elliott) / What is Engineering for? A Search for Engineering beyond Militarism and Free-markets (Juan Lucena) / Location, Knowledge, and Desire: From Two Conservatisms to Engineering Cultures and Countries (Gary Lee Downey) / Epilogue - Beyond Global Competence: Implications for Engineering Pedagogy (Gary Lee Downey)

What is Global Engineering Education For?

Author : Gary Lee Downey
Publisher : Morgan & Claypool Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1608455440
Total Pages : 247 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (84 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis What is Global Engineering Education For? by : Gary Lee Downey

Download or read book What is Global Engineering Education For? written by Gary Lee Downey and published by Morgan & Claypool Publishers. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global engineering offers the seductive image of engineers figuring out how to optimize work through collaboration and mobility. Its biggest challenge to engineers, however, is more fundamental and difficult: to better understand what they know and value qua engineers and why. This volume reports an experimental effort to help sixteen engineering educators produce "personal geographies" describing what led them to make risky career commitments to international and global engineering education. The contents of their diverse trajectories stand out in extending far beyond the narrower image of producing globally-competent engineers. Their personal geographies repeatedly highlight experiences of incongruence beyond home countries that provoked them to see themselves and understand their knowledge differently. The experiences were sufficiently profound to motivate them to design educational experiences that could provoke engineering students in similar ways. For nine engineers, gaining new international knowledge challenged assumptions that engineering work and life are limited to purely technical practices, compelling explicit attention to broader value commitments. For five non-engineers and two hybrids, gaining new international knowledge fueled ambitions to help engineering students better recognize and critically examine the broader value commitments in their work. A background chapter examines the historical emergence of international engineering education in the United States, and an epilogue explores what it might take to integrate practices of critical self-analysis more systematically in the education and training of engineers. Two appendices and two online supplements describe the unique research process that generated these personal geographies, especially the workshop at the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in which authors were prohibited from participating in discussions of their manuscripts.

The Private World of Soviet Scientists from Stalin to Gorbachev

Author : Maria Rogacheva
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108171338
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (81 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Private World of Soviet Scientists from Stalin to Gorbachev by : Maria Rogacheva

Download or read book The Private World of Soviet Scientists from Stalin to Gorbachev written by Maria Rogacheva and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-10 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rogacheva sheds new light on the complex transition of Soviet society from Stalinism into the post-Stalin era. Using the case study of Chernogolovka, one of dozens of scientific towns built in the USSR under Khrushchev, she explains what motivated scientists to participate in the Soviet project during the Cold War. Rogacheva traces the history of this scientific community from its creation in 1956 through the Brezhnev period to paint a nuanced portrait of the living conditions, political outlook, and mentality of the local scientific intelligentsia. Utilizing new archival materials and an extensive oral history project, this book argues that Soviet scientists were not merely bought off by the Soviet state, but that they bought into the idealism and social optimism of the post-Stalin regime. Many shared the regime's belief in the progressive development of Soviet society on a scientific basis, and embraced their increased autonomy, material privileges and elite status.

Ghost

Author : Fred Burton
Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN 13 : 0345494253
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (454 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Ghost by : Fred Burton

Download or read book Ghost written by Fred Burton and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2009-06-09 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this hard-hitting memoir, Fred Burton, a key figure in international counterterrorism and domestic spycraft, emerges from the shadows to reveal who he is, what he has accomplished, and the threats that lurk unseen except by an experienced, worldly-wise few. Plunging readers into the murky world of violent religious extremism that spans the streets of Middle Eastern cities and the informant-filled alleys of American slums, Burton takes us behind the scenes to reveal how the United States tracked Libya-linked master terrorist Abu Nidal; captured Ramzi Yusef, architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; and pursued the assassins of major figures including Yitzhak Rabin, Meir Kahane, and General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the president of Pakistan–classic cases that have sobering new meaning in the treacherous years since 9/11. Here, too, is Burton’s advice on personal safety for today’s most powerful CEOs, gleaned from his experience at Stratfor, the private firm Barron’s calls “the shadow CIA.” Told in a no-holds-barred, gripping, nuanced style that illuminates a complex and driven man, Ghost is both a riveting read and an illuminating look into the shadows of the most important struggle of our time.

The Ghost Army of World War II

Author : Rick Beyer
Publisher : Chronicle Books
ISBN 13 : 1797225308
Total Pages : 275 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (972 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Ghost Army of World War II by : Rick Beyer

Download or read book The Ghost Army of World War II written by Rick Beyer and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A riveting tale told through personal accounts and sketches along the way—ultimately, a story of success against great odds. I enjoyed it enormously.” —Tom Brokaw The first book to tell the full story of how a traveling road show of artists wielding imagination, paint, and bravado saved thousands of American lives—now updated with new material. In the summer of 1944, a handpicked group of young GIs—artists, designers, architects, and sound engineers, including such future luminaries as Bill Blass, Ellsworth Kelly, Arthur Singer, Victor Dowd, Art Kane, and Jack Masey—landed in France to conduct a secret mission. From Normandy to the Rhine, the 1,100 men of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, known as the Ghost Army, conjured up phony convoys, phantom divisions, and make-believe headquarters to fool the enemy about the strength and location of American units. Every move they made was top secret, and their story was hushed up for decades after the war's end. Hundreds of color and black-and-white photographs, along with maps, official memos, and letters, accompany Rick Beyer and Elizabeth Sayles’s meticulous research and interviews with many of the soldiers, weaving a compelling narrative of how an unlikely team carried out amazing battlefield deceptions that saved thousands of American lives and helped open the way for the final drive to Germany. The stunning art created between missions also offers a glimpse of life behind the lines during World War II. This updated edition includes: A new afterword by co-author Rick Beyer Never-before-seen additional images The successful campaign to have the unit awarded a Congressional Gold Medal History and WWII enthusiasts will find The Ghost Army of World War II an essential addition to their library.

Restricted Data

Author : Alex Wellerstein
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226833445
Total Pages : 558 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (268 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Restricted Data by : Alex Wellerstein

Download or read book Restricted Data written by Alex Wellerstein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2024-04-23 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full history of US nuclear secrecy, from its origins in the late 1930s to our post–Cold War present. The American atomic bomb was born in secrecy. From the moment scientists first conceived of its possibility to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and beyond, there were efforts to control the spread of nuclear information and the newly discovered scientific facts that made such powerful weapons possible. The totalizing scientific secrecy that the atomic bomb appeared to demand was new, unusual, and very nearly unprecedented. It was foreign to American science and American democracy—and potentially incompatible with both. From the beginning, this secrecy was controversial, and it was always contested. The atomic bomb was not merely the application of science to war, but the result of decades of investment in scientific education, infrastructure, and global collaboration. If secrecy became the norm, how would science survive? Drawing on troves of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time through the author’s efforts, Restricted Data traces the complex evolution of the US nuclear secrecy regime from the first whisper of the atomic bomb through the mounting tensions of the Cold War and into the early twenty-first century. A compelling history of powerful ideas at war, it tells a story that feels distinctly American: rich, sprawling, and built on the conflict between high-minded idealism and ugly, fearful power.

Steps toward a Philosophy of Engineering

Author : Carl Mitcham
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1786611287
Total Pages : 466 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (866 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Steps toward a Philosophy of Engineering by : Carl Mitcham

Download or read book Steps toward a Philosophy of Engineering written by Carl Mitcham and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-12-06 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of classic Euro-American philosophy of technology in the 1950s originally emphasized the importance of technologies as material entities and their mediating influence within human experience. Recent decades, however, have witnessed a subtle shift toward reflection on the activity from which these distinctly modern artifacts emerge and through which they are engaged and managed, that is, on engineering. What is engineering? What is the meaning of engineering? How is engineering related to other aspects of human existence? Such basic questions readily engage all major branches of philosophy --- ontology, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics --- although not always to the same degree. The historico-philosophical and critical reflections collected here record a series of halting steps to think through engineering and the engineered way of life that we all increasingly live in what has been called the Anthropocene. The aim is not to promote an ideology for engineering but to stimulate deeper reflection among engineers and non-engineers alike about some basic challenges of our engineered and engineering lifeworld.

The Cosmonaut Who Couldn’t Stop Smiling

Author : Andrew L. Jenks
Publisher : Northern Illinois University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501757687
Total Pages : 325 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Cosmonaut Who Couldn’t Stop Smiling by : Andrew L. Jenks

Download or read book The Cosmonaut Who Couldn’t Stop Smiling written by Andrew L. Jenks and published by Northern Illinois University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Let's go!" With that, the boyish, grinning Yuri Gagarin launched into space on April 12, 1961, becoming the first human being to exit Earth's orbit. The twenty-seven-year-old lieutenant colonel departed for the stars from within the shadowy world of the Soviet military-industrial complex. Barbed wires, no-entry placards, armed guards, false identities, mendacious maps, and a myriad of secret signs had hidden Gagarin from prying outsiders—not even his friends or family knew what he had been up to. Coming less than four years after the Russians launched Sputnik into orbit, Gagarin's voyage was cause for another round of capitalist shock and Soviet rejoicing. The Cosmonaut Who Couldn't Stop Smiling relates this twentieth-century icon's remarkable life while exploring the fascinating world of Soviet culture. Gagarin's flight brought him massive international fame—in the early 1960s, he was possibly the most photographed person in the world, flashing his trademark smile while rubbing elbows with the varied likes of Nehru, Castro, Queen Elizabeth II, and Italian sex symbol Gina Lollobrigida. Outside of the spotlight, Andrew L. Jenks reveals, his tragic and mysterious death in a jet crash became fodder for morality tales and conspiracy theories in his home country, and, long after his demise, his life continues to provide grist for the Russian popular-culture mill. This is the story of a legend, both the official one and the one of myth, which reflected the fantasies, perversions, hopes and dreams of Gagarin's fellow Russians. With this rich, lively chronicle of Gagarin's life and times, Jenks recreates the elaborately secretive world of space-age Russia while providing insights into Soviet history that will captivate a range of readers.