Twin Tracks: The Unexpected Origins of the Modern World

	Author(s): Burke, James Publisher: Simon & Schuster Format: Hardcover List Price:  $24.00
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Overview:
Bestselling science author James Burke, "one of the most intriguing minds in the Western World" (The Washington Post), delivers a fascinating inquiry into the makings of modern civilization. Twin Tracks is a landmark book of real-world stories that contends with the nature of change and divines as never before the unlikely origins of many aspects of contemporary life. In each of the work's twenty-five narratives, we discover how the results of an important historical event often meet again in the future. Each chapter starts with an event--like the U.S. attack on Tripoli in 1804--and from there follows two divergent historical paths. After tracking these paths through time and space, Burke shows how they converge again in the present. Twin Tracks pinpoints the myriad ways the future is shaped, whether by love, war, accident, genius, or discovery. In the Figaro narrative, Burke's twin tracks involve the composer of the opera and the French spy from whom he stole it. Their tracks encompass, among other things, freemasonry, the War of Independence, Captain Cook, jellyfish, and Jane Austen. Ultimately, the convergence of these Figaro tracks sets up the stage for the development of Gulf War Stealth aircraft. (Really.) Wonderfully accessible and lucidly written, Twin Tracks manages to amuse and instruct.

Category: General