Books about Unified from Amazon.com

As a scientist, Albert Einstein is undoubtedly the most epic among 20th-century thinkers Albert Einstein as a man, however, has been a much harder portrait to paint, and what we know of him as a husband, father, and friend is fragmentary at best. With Einstein: His Life and Universe, Walter Isaacson (author of the bestselling biographies Benjamin Franklin and Kissinger) brings Einstein's experience of life, love, and intellectual discovery into brilliant focus. The book is the first biography to tackle Einstein's enormous volume of personal correspondence that heretofore had been sealed from the public, and it's hard to imagine another book that could do such a richly textured and complicated life as Einstein's the same thoughtful justice. Isaacson is a master of the form and this latest opus is at once arresting and wonderfully revelatory. --Anne Bartholomew

Read "The Light-Beam Rider," the first chapter of Walter Isaacson's Einstein: His Life and Universe.

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Five Questions for Walter Isaacson

Amazon.com: What kind of scientific education did you have to give yourself to be able to understand and explain Einstein's ideas?

Isaacson: I've always loved science, and I had a group of great physicists--such as Brian Greene, Lawrence Krauss, and Murray Gell-Mann--who tutored me, helped me learn the physics, and checked various versions of my book. I also learned the tensor calculus underlying general relativity, but tried to avoid spending too much time on it in the book. I wanted to capture the imaginative beauty of Einstein's scientific leaps, but I hope folks who want to delve more deeply into the science will read Einstein books by such scientists as Abraham Pais, Jeremy Bernstein, Brian Greene, and others.

Amazon.com: That Einstein was a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office when he revolutionized our understanding of the physical world has often been treated as ironic or even absurd. But you argue that in many ways his time there fostered his discoveries. Could you explain?

Isaacson: I think he was lucky to be at the patent office rather than serving as an acolyte in the academy trying to please senior professors and teach the conventional wisdom. As a patent examiner, he got to visualize the physical realities underlying scientific concepts. He had a boss who told him to question every premise and assumption. And as Peter Galison shows in Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps, many of the patent applications involved synchronizing clocks using signals that traveled at the speed of light. So with his office-mate Michele Besso as a sounding board, he was primed to make the leap to special relativity.

Amazon.com: That time in the patent office makes him sound far more like a practical scientist and tinkerer than the usual image of the wild-haired professor, and more like your previous biographical subject, the multitalented but eminently earthly Benjamin Franklin. Did you see connections between them?

Isaacson: I like writing about creativity, and that's what Franklin and Einstein shared. They also had great curiosity and imagination. But Franklin was a more practical man who was not very theoretical, and Einstein was the opposite in that regard.

Amazon.com: Of the many legends that have accumulated around Einstein, what did you find to be least true? Most true?

Isaacson: The least true legend is that he failed math as a schoolboy. He was actually great in math, because he could visualize equations. He knew they were nature's brushstrokes for painting her wonders. For example, he could look at Maxwell's equations and marvel at what it would be like to ride alongside a light wave, and he could look at Max Planck's equations about radiation and realize that Planck's constant meant that light was a particle as well as a wave. The most true legend is how rebellious and defiant of authority he was. You see it in his politics, his personal life, and his science.

Amazon.com: At Time and CNN and the Aspen Institute, you've worked with many of the leading thinkers and leaders of the day. Now that you've had the chance to get to know Einstein so well, did he remind you of anyone from our day who shares at least some of his remarkable qualities?

Isaacson: There are many creative scientists, most notably Stephen Hawking, who wrote the essay on Einstein as "Person of the Century" when I was editor of Time. In the world of technology, Steve Jobs has the same creative imagination and ability to think differently that distinguished Einstein, and Bill Gates has the same intellectual intensity. I wish I knew politicians who had the creativity and human instincts of Einstein, or for that matter the wise feel for our common values of Benjamin Franklin.

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More to Explore

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

Kissinger: A Biography

The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made

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Price: $14.89 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"Since its original introduction in 1997, the Unified Modeling Language has revolutionized software development Every integrated software development environment in the world--open-source, standards-based, and proprietary--now supports UML and, more importantly, the model-driven approach to software development. This makes learning the newest UML standard, UML 2.0, critical for all software developers--and there isn't a better choice than this clear, step-by-step guide to learning the language."
--Richard Mark Soley, Chairman and CEO, OMG

If you're like most software developers, you're building systems that are increasingly complex. Whether you're creating a desktop application or an enterprise system, complexity is the big hairy monster you must manage.

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) helps you manage this complexity. Whether you're looking to use UML as a blueprint language, a sketch tool, or as a programming language, this book will give you the need-to-know information on how to apply UML to your project. While there are plenty of books available that describe UML, Learning UML 2.0 will show you how to use it. Topics covered include:

• Capturing your system's requirements in your model to help you ensure that your designs meet your users' needs
• Modeling the parts of your system and their relationships
• Modeling how the parts of your system work together to meet your system's requirements
• Modeling how your system moves into the real world, capturing how your system will be deployed

Engaging and accessible, this book shows you how to use UML to craft and communicate your project's design. Russ Miles and Kim Hamilton have written a pragmatic introduction to UML based on hard-earned practice, not theory. Regardless of the software process or methodology you use, this book is the one source you need to get up and running with UML 2.0. Additional information including exercises can be found at www.learninguml2.com.

Russ Miles is a software engineer for General Dynamics UK, where he works with Java and Distributed Systems, although his passion at the moment is Aspect Orientation and, in particular, AspectJ. Kim Hamilton is a senior software engineer at Northrop Grumman, where she's designed and implemented a variety of systems including web applications and distributed systems, with frequent detours into algorithms development.

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Price: $24.78 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Beyond Einstein takes readers on an exciting excursion into the discoveries that have led scientists to the brightest new prospect in theoretical physics today -- superstring theory. What is superstring theory and why is it important? This revolutionary breakthrough may well be the
fulfillment of  Albert Einstein's lifelong dream of a Theory of Everything, uniting the laws of physics into a single description explaining all the known forces in the universe. Co-authored by one of the leading pioneers in superstrings, Michio Kaku, and completely revised and updated with the newest groundbreaking research, the book approaches scientific questions with the excitement of a detective story, offering a fascinating look at the new science that may make the impossible possible..
Price: $8.09 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $14.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Only Official RUP® Certification Prep Guide and Compact RUP Reference

The IBM® Rational Unified Process® has become the de facto industry-standard process for large-scale enterprise software development. The IBM Certified Solution Designer - IBM Rational Unified Process V7.0 certification provides a powerful way for solutions developers to demonstrate their proficiency with RUP.

The first and only official RUP certification guide, this book fully reflects the latest versions of the Rational Unified Process and of the IBM RUP exam. Authored by two leading RUP implementers, it draws on extensive contributions and careful reviews by the IBM RUP process leader and RUP certification manager.

This book covers every facet of RUP usage. It has been carefully organized to help you prepare for your exam quickly and efficiently--and to provide a handy, compact reference you can rely on for years to come.

Coverage includes

• A full section on RUP exam preparation and a 52-question practice exam
• Core RUP concepts, the new RUP process architecture, and key principles of business-driven development
• RUP’s architecture-centric approach to iterative development: practical issues and scenarios
• Patterns for successful RUP project implementation–and “anti-patterns” to avoid
• The Unified Method Architecture (UMA): basic content and process elements
• RUP content disciplines, in depth: Business Modeling, Requirements, Analysis and Design, Implementation, Test, Deployment, Project Management, Change and Configuration Management, and Environment
• Essential RUP work products, roles, and tasks
• RUP phases, activities, and milestones
• RUP tailoring and tools for your organization--including introductions to IBM Rational Method Composer (RMC) and MyRUP

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Price: $19.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) introduces a new organizational governance system that integrates analytics with innovation The IEE system shows business leaders what to measure and report; when and how to report it; how to interpret and use the results to establish goals; how to orchestrate work activities; and how to develop strategies that are consistent with established goals. These strategies ultimately lead to specific projects that enhance organizational focus and success.

This book discusses how the application of IEE methods, tools, and techniques can overcome the enterprise management challenges of the twenty-first century and the limitations of traditional business measurement systems..
Price: $10.31 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A Spellbinding Thriller about a Science History
Professor on the Run for his Life and an Unpublished Einstein
Theory that Could Change the World

Debut novelist Mark Alpert brings one of the most explosive books of 2008, seamlessly weaving current issues of science, history, and politics with white-knuckle chases.

David Swift, a professor at Columbia University, is called to the hospital to comfort his mentor, a physicist who's been brutally tortured. Before dying, the old man wheezes "Einheitliche Feldtheorie." The Theory of Everything. The Destroyer of Worlds. Could this be Einstein's proposed Unified Theory--a set of equations that combines the physics of galaxies with the laws of atoms? Einstein died without discovering it. Or did he? Within hours of hearing his mentor's last words, David is running for his life. The FBI and a ruthless mercenary are vying to get their hands on the long-hidden theory. Teaming up with his old girlfriend, a brilliant Princeton scientist, David frantically works out Einstein's final theory to reveal the staggering scope of its consequences.

With publishers around the world snapping up rights in sixteen languages, the book has already become a global phenomenon, and the dynamic characters and gripping plot will keep readers compulsively turning the pages until the very end..
Price: $16.32 [Notify me when price goes down.]