気まぐれ屋

【電子書籍なら、スマホ・パソコンの無料アプリで今すぐ読める！】Shooting the Sun A Novel【電子書籍】[ Max Byrd ]

＜p＞Charles Babbage was an English genius of legendary eccentricity. He invented the cowcatcher, the ophthalmoscope, and the “penny post.” He was an expert lock picker, he wrote a ballet, he pursued a vendetta against London organ-grinders that made him the laughingstock of Europe. And all his life he was in desperate need of enormous sums of money to build his fabled reasoning machine, the Difference Engine, the first digital computer in history.＜/p＞ ＜p＞To publicize his Engine, Babbage sponsors a private astronomical expeditionーa party of four men and one remarkable womanーwho will set out from Washington City and travel by wagon train two thousand miles west, beyond the last known outposts of civilization. Their ostensible purpose is to observe a total eclipse of the sun predicted by＜br /＞ Babbage’s computer, and to photograph it with the newly invented camera of Louis Daguerre.＜/p＞ ＜p＞The actual purpose, however…＜/p＞ ＜p＞Suffice it to say that in Shooting the Sun nothing is what it seems, eclipses have minds of their own, and even the best computer cannot predict treachery, greed, and the fickle passions of the human heart.＜/p＞画面が切り替わりますので、しばらくお待ち下さい。 ※ご購入は、楽天kobo商品ページからお願いします。※切り替わらない場合は、こちら をクリックして下さい。 ※このページからは注文できません。

【電子書籍なら、スマホ・パソコンの無料アプリで今すぐ読める！】Checkmate【電子書籍】[ Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu ]

＜p＞MORTLAKE HALL. There stands about a mile and a half beyond Islington, unless it has come down within the last two years, a singular and grand old house. It belonged to the family of Arden, once distinguished in the Northumbrian counties. About fifty acres of ground, rich with noble clumps and masses of old timber, surround it; old-world fish-ponds, with swans sailing upon them, tall yew hedges, quincunxes, leaden fauns and goddesses, and Other obsolete splendours surround it. It rises, tall, florid, built of Caen stone, with a palatial flight of steps, and something of the grace and dignity of the genius of Inigo Jones, to whom it is ascribed, with the shadows of ancestral trees and the stains of two centuries upon it, and a vague character of gloom and melancholy, not improved by some indications not actually of decay, but of something too like neglect. It is now evening, and a dusky glow envelopes the scene. The setting sun throws its level beams, through tall drawing-room windows, ruddily upon the Dutch tapestry on the opposite walls, and not unbecomingly lights up the little party assembled there. Good-natured, fat Lady May Penrose, in her bonnet, sips her tea and chats agreeably. Her carriage waits outside. You will ask who is that extremely beautiful girl who sits opposite, her large soft grey eyes gazing towards the western sky with a look of abstraction, too forgetful for a time of her company, leaning upon the slender hand she has placed under her cheek. How silken and golden-tinted the dark brown hair that grows so near her brows, making her forehead low, and marking with its broad line the beautiful oval of her face! Is there carmine anywhere to match her brilliant lips? And when, recollecting something to tell Lady May, she turns on a sudden, smiling, how soft and pretty the dimples, and how even the little row of pearls she discloses! This is Alice Arden, whose singularly handsome brother Richard, with some of her tints and outlines translated into masculine beauty, stands leaning on the back of a prie-dieu chair, and chatting gaily＜/p＞画面が切り替わりますので、しばらくお待ち下さい。 ※ご購入は、楽天kobo商品ページからお願いします。※切り替わらない場合は、こちら をクリックして下さい。 ※このページからは注文できません。

【電子書籍なら、スマホ・パソコンの無料アプリで今すぐ読める！】Higher A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City【電子書籍】[ Neal Bascomb ]

＜p＞The Roaring Twenties in New York was a time of exuberant ambition, free-flowing optimism, an explosion of artistic expression in the age of Prohibition. New York was the city that embodied the spirit and strength of a newly powerful America.＜/p＞ ＜p＞In 1924, in the vibrant heart of Manhattan, a fierce rivalry was born. Two architects, William Van Alen and Craig Severance (former friends and successful partners, but now bitter adversaries), set out to imprint their individual marks on the greatest canvas in the world--the rapidly evolving skyline of New York City. Each man desired to build the city’s tallest building, or ‘skyscraper.’ Each would stop at nothing to outdo his rival.＜/p＞ ＜p＞Van Alen was a creative genius who envisioned a bold, contemporary building that would move beyond the tired architecture of the previous century. By a stroke of good fortune he found a larger-than-life patron in automobile magnate Walter Chrysler, and they set out to build the legendary Chrysler building. Severance, by comparison, was a brilliant businessman, and he tapped his circle of downtown, old-money investors to begin construction on the Manhattan Company Building at 40 Wall Street.＜/p＞ ＜p＞From ground-breaking to bricklaying, Van Alen and Severance fought a cunning duel of wills. Each man was forced to revamp his architectural design in an attempt to push higher, to overcome his rival in mid-construction, as the structures rose, floor by floor, in record time. Yet just as the battle was underway, a third party entered the arena and announced plans to build an even larger building. This project would be overseen by one of Chrysler’s principal rivals--a representative of the General Motors group--and the building ultimately became known as The Empire State Building.＜/p＞ ＜p＞Infused with narrative thrills and perfectly rendered historical and engineering detail, ＜em＞Higher＜/em＞ brings to life a sensational episode in American history. Author Neal Bascomb interweaves characters such as Al Smith and Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, leading up to an astonishing climax that illustrates one of the most ingenious (and secret) architectural achievements of all time.＜/p＞画面が切り替わりますので、しばらくお待ち下さい。 ※ご購入は、楽天kobo商品ページからお願いします。※切り替わらない場合は、こちら をクリックして下さい。 ※このページからは注文できません。