Gino Caper

“The Wizard and the Prophet is a book about the way knowledgeable people might think about the choices to come, rather than what will happen in this or that scenario. It is a book about the future that makes no predictions.”
― Charles C. Mann, The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World

“Several Indiana communities seemed seized by a perverse envy. When rumors spread that “a new ‘death farm’ where Mrs. Belle Gunness buried many of her victims” had been discovered near Warsaw, “the citizens of that place were thrown into a fever excitement” and appeared crestfallen when the story proved false.[”
― Harold Schechter, Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men

“When the corpses of [Sir John] Franklin's officers and crew were later discovered, miles from their ships, the men were found to have left behind their guns but to have lugged such essentials as monogrammed silver cutlery, a backgammon board, a cigar case, a clothes brush, a tin of button polish, and a copy of "The Vicar of Wakefield." These men may have been incompetent bunglers, but, by God, they were gentlemen.”
― Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

“To learn one’s longitude at sea, one needs to know what time it is aboard ship and also the time at the home port or another place of known longitude—at that very same moment. The two clock times enable the navigator to convert the hour difference into a geographical separation. Since the Earth takes twenty-four hours to complete one full revolution of three hundred sixty degrees, one hour marks one twenty-fourth of a spin, or fifteen degrees.”
― Dava Sobel, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of his Time