The human stories behind the development of the internal combustion engine are combined with full-color photographs in this coffee-table book to present the beauty of the engines themselves. In addition to the portrait-quality photographs, line drawings, cutaways, and clear text describe how each engine works and its primary uses. The fascinating histories of the engineers and inventors who built these pioneering machines--stories of fame and fortune and tragedy and ruin--are also told. Key stationary and marine engines from France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are shown in addition to famous U.S. engines from such manufacturers as International Harvester and Fairbanks-Morse.

In Legendary Car Engines, John Simister expertly dissects twenty of the greatest powerplants. With photos by Automobile Magazine contributor Tim Andrew and illustrations by the late, great Bob Freeman, it looks as good as it reads. - "Speed Reading" Automobile Magazine, October 2004This book examines the 20 best road-car engines ever: the most tuneful, the most beautiful, the most significant, the most highly-prized. A car's engine is its heart and its soul. It gives a car its voice and its muscle. Some engines do this so well they seem like living things. But which are they? The words reveal who designed them, and the how, when, and why, while Tim Andrews' fabulous photography captures the familiar face and the hidden depths. Discover the engine's design features, and why they matter. Find out which is the world's most prolific engine, which began as a fire-pump, and which has components that are reversible. Discover things you never knew about engine technology. John Simister gets to the heart of these celebrated power plants and describes them as he might describe old friends. Only the master of his subject could handle so complex a subject with so light a touch.

Peter Hunn. It's common for homeowners to have 2- or 4-cycle small engines in their lawn and garden equipment, utility vehicles, recreational vehicles, generators and other machines. With this easy-to-follow, richly illustrated handbook, homeowners will be able to understanding small engines, troubleshooting them and working on them. The book has a brief history of significant and popular small engines and a guide to setting up a home workshop in which to work on them. It also includes case studies on the disassembly, maintenance, repair and/or rebuilding of: a 2-stroke lawnmower engine, a 4-stroke utility motor, a 2-stroke chainsaw engine, and a curbside junker. The writing is lively and entertaining and the color photos clearly show how to work on these useful engines.

This collection of biographical essays by G. K. Chesterton gives a one-of-a-kind insight into some of the most influential figures of the 20th century. Chesterton lends his prolific wit to these extremely unique and personal biographies, capturing a perfect snapshot of British society in the 1900s. ‘Twelve Types’ covers the life and works of Charlotte Bronte, Alexander Pope, Lord Byron, Robert Louis Stevenson, William Morris, Saint Francis, Edmond Rostand, Charles II, Thomas Carlyle, Savonarola, and Leo Tolstoy. A pastiche of the Victorian society and artists that would birth the Romantic and Gothic movements in English literature, ‘Twelve Types’ is an unmissable collection for any student of 20th century Britain. Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874 – 1936) was an English writer, journalist, philosopher, and literary critic. An unparalleled essayist, he produced over four thousand essays during his lifetime, alongside eighty novels and two hundred short stories. Tackling topics of politics, history, philosophy, and theology with tenacious wit and humour, G. K. Chesterton was often considered a master of the paradox. Himself both a modernist and devout Catholic, he is remembered best for his priest-detective short stories ‘Father Brown’, and his metaphysical thriller ‘The Man Who Was Thursday’. In his lifetime, Chesterton befriended and debated some of the greatest thinkers of the age, such as George Bernard Shore, H. G. Wells, and Bertrand Russell, while his works went on to inspire figures including T. S. Eliot, Michael Collins, and Mahatma Gandhi.

What are the ingredients of robust, elegant, flexible, and maintainable software architecture? Beautiful Architecture answers this question through a collection of intriguing essays from more than a dozen of today's leading software designers and architects. In each essay, contributors present a notable software architecture, and analyze what makes it innovative and ideal for its purpose. Some of the engineers in this book reveal how they developed a specific project, including decisions they faced and tradeoffs they made. Others take a step back to investigate how certain architectural aspects have influenced computing as a whole. With this book, you'll discover: How Facebook's architecture is the basis for a data-centric application ecosystem The effect of Xen's well-designed architecture on the way operating systems evolve How community processes within the KDE project help software architectures evolve from rough sketches to beautiful systems How creeping featurism has helped GNU Emacs gain unanticipated functionality The magic behind the Jikes RVM self-optimizable, self-hosting runtime Design choices and building blocks that made Tandem the choice platform in high-availability environments for over two decades Differences and similarities between object-oriented and functional architectural views How architectures can affect the software's evolution and the developers' engagement Go behind the scenes to learn what it takes to design elegant software architecture, and how it can shape the way you approach your own projects, with Beautiful Architecture.