Connections²

The favorite of students and educators everywhere, James Burke the scientific detective is back tracking the fascinating links between technological invention, social history, economics, and, well, everything. Life is a giant 3-dimensional globe made up of millions of threads that cross and recross each other, says Burke as he traces the lines that lead from a French loom to IBM, from a kink in a water pipe to a carburetor. He makes two dozen international stops by way of explaining how the steam pump led to carbon paper, to the entire Industrial revolution and the moon landing, with drill bits, X-rays and genetic engineering along the way; says New York Newsday.