Books by James Burke

* Subtitle: HOW RENAISSANCE WATER GARDENS MADE THE CARBURETTOR POSSIBLE AND OTHER JOURNEYS THROUGH KNOWLEDGE. Phew!!

I'm not of your world, but I had a front-row seat to a little-known drama that nearly brought about your demise. Truth be told, I've actually been wanting to tell you about this saga for some time.It's a short tale, relatively speaking. It does, though, begin before the birth of Christ. There's a man named Quintus at the heart of it. First, he was a Roman Centurion, that is, until he ended up in China where he learned a thing or two from an old Taoist.Fast forward to today, and he still walks among you. You should know what he did through history wasn't done for himself, it was done for you, and it was done in the face of the greatest evil known to mankind.(A second and improved version of the novel was published in July 2023.)

Synopsis coming soon.......

Twin Tracks is a landmark book of real-world stories that investigates 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 different outcomes of an important historical event in the past often come together again in the future.Each chapter starts with an event -- such as the U.S. attack on Tripoli in 1804 -- that generates two divergent series of consequences. After tracking each pathway as it ranges far and wide through time and space, Burke shows how the paths finally and unexpectedly converge in the modern world.Twin Tracks pinpoints the myriad ways the future is shaped, whether by love, war, accident, genius, or discovery. For instance, in "e;The Marriage of Figaro to Stealth Fighter,"e; Burke's twin tracks start with the composer of the opera and the French spy from whose play he stole the plot. The tracks then encompass, among other things, freemasonry, the War of Independence, Captain Cook, jellyfish, Jane Austen, and audio tape. Ultimately, the convergence of the two Figaro tracks sets the stage for the development of Gulf War Stealth aircraft.Wonderfully accessible and lucidly written, Twin Tracks offers an amusing and instructive new view of the past and the future.

In THE KNOWLEDGE WEB, James Burke takes us on a fascinating tour through the interlocking threads of knowledge running through Western history.

"A detailed, original and persuasive reading of cultural and intellectual history."—Los Angeles Times. "A genuine tour de force."—San Francisco Chronicle.