Bøger af John Gaudet

Mutant pigs, evolving in a wild, forested area cause havoc on a tropical island in the South China Sea. The pigs were originally meant for organ transplants performed on older Americans who will pay anything for a new life. As the main characters become involved in deadly and very bloody experiences, they uncover the perverse secrets of the head of the Piper family, a wealthy old Bostonian driven by greed, and the Krian family, native to the island, driven by revenge, who suffers a band of headhunters to roam the area taking trophy heads at will. A thriller with an interweaving of a romantic sub-story involving Todd Weyman, ex-EPA environmentalist (unknowingly coöpted by the CIA), who falls in love with Susan Krian, a young, local mystic and amateur historian. She eventually gives in to a blood lust and an urge to become a headhunter. In another part of the Island Garrison Maclean, tropical research scientist, becomes the would-be suitor of Faith Piper, anthropologist and daughter of a wealthy Boston financier. Greg Piper, Faith's sadistic brother, a hunter and gambler, locates and procures organ donors worldwide for Dr. Montgomery Muttar, CEO and current owner of the island. Dr. Muttar looks after the resident donors, the backbone of the island's lucrative transplant business. He also spearheads the research to 'humanize' pigs as potential donors of organs in the near future. Is any of this grounded in reality? Just a few years ago Dayaks in Indonesian Borneo were slaughtering hundreds of people in Kalimantan, cutting off heads and carving out the hearts of victims. New pig breeding and genetic engineering programs are underway in the USA, and elsewhere, in a race to provide a cost effective source of organs compatible to the human species. Can or will genetic anomalies arise during this process? Buckminster Fuller perhaps answered that question when he said, "We are not nature's only experiment." Would wealthy Bostonians likely be involved in such things? That has to be one of the few points left to the reader's imagination.

How the invention of paper, a material prized by both scholars and kings, allowed information and ideas to shape humanity for 4000 years, from the Nile to the West. 'A wonderful, enlightening book.' (Alexander McCall Smith).

For our entire history, humans have always searched for new ways to share information. This innate compulsion led to the origin of writing on the rock walls of caves and coffin lids or carving on tablets. But it was with the advent of papyrus paper when the ability to record and transmit information exploded, allowing for an exchanging of ideas from the banks of the Nile throughout the Mediterranean-and the civilized world-for the first time in human history.  In The Pharaoh's Treasure, John Gaudet looks at this pivotal transition to papyrus paper, which would become the most commonly used information medium in the world for more than 4,000 years. Far from fragile, papyrus paper is an especially durable writing surface; papyrus books and documents in ancient and medieval times had a usable life of hundreds of years, and this durability has allowed items like the famous Nag Hammadi codices from the third and fourth century to survive.  The story of this material that was prized by both scholars and kings reveals how papyrus paper is more than a relic of our ancient past, but a key to understanding how ideas and information shaped humanity in the ancient and early modern world.