Reinventing the Wheel is the riveting, behind-the-scenes story of the enigmatic and cocksure inventor Dean Kamen and the Segway Human Transporter. When Kamen invented the two-wheeled vehicle known to many by its code name, Ginger, he promised it would transform the face of personal transportation forever. But when this brilliant and driven inventor attempted to become an entrepreneur, a colossal power struggle ensued. Here, Steve Kemper takes you along for the wild ride. In Reinventing the Wheel, Kemper goes inside Kamen's world of technology development, where nerve and ingenuity collide with high finance and the bottom line.

Reinventing the Wheel: A Story of Genius, Innovation, and Grand Ambition

Business & Money

Kemper, Steve

Biography & History

Harper Business

"Gripping history, offering both drama and suspense." --Wall Street Journal A riveting, behind-the-scenes account of the personalities and contending forces in Tokyo during the volatile decade that led to World War II, as seen through the eyes of the American ambassador who attempted to stop the slide to war. In 1932, Japan was in crisis. Naval officers had assassinated the prime minister and conspiracies flourished. The military had a stranglehold on the government. War with Russia loomed, and propaganda campaigns swept the country, urging schoolchildren to give money to procure planes and tanks.&nbsp; Into this maelstrom stepped Joseph C. Grew, America's most experienced and talented diplomat. When Grew was appointed ambassador to Japan, not only was the country in turmoil, its relationship with America was rapidly deteriorating. For the next decade, Grew attempted to warn American leaders about the risks of Japan's raging nationalism and rising militarism, while also trying to stabilize Tokyo's increasingly erratic and volatile foreign policy.&nbsp;From domestic terrorism by Japanese extremists to the global rise of Hitler and the fateful attack on Pearl Harbor, the events that unfolded during Grew's tenure proved to be pivotal for Japan, and for the world.&nbsp;His dispatches from the darkening heart of the Japanese empire would prove prescient--for his time, and for our own.&nbsp;&nbsp; Drawing on Grew's diary of his time in Tokyo as well as U.S. embassy correspondence, diplomatic dispatches, and firsthand Japanese accounts, Our Man in Tokyo&nbsp;brings to life a man who risked everything to avert another world war, the country where he staked it all--and the abyss that swallowed it.&nbsp;

Our Man in Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

William Morrow Large Print

About the Author\nSteve Kemper is a journalist and the author of A Labyrinth of Kingdoms: 10,000 Miles through Islamic Africa, A Splendid Savage: The Restless Life of Frederick Russell Burnham, and Code Name Ginger. He has written for Smithsonian, National Geographic, National Geographic Adventure, National Geographic Traveler, Outside, Wall Street Journal, Yankee, National Wildlife, The Ecologist, Plenty, BBC Wildlife, and many other magazines and newspapers. He lives in West Hartford, Connecticut.\n"Gripping history, offering both drama and suspense." —Wall Street Journal 
A riveting, behind-the-scenes account of the personalities and contending forces in Tokyo during the volatile decade that led to World War II, as seen through the eyes of the American ambassador who attempted to stop the slide to war. 
In 1932, Japan was in crisis. Naval officers had assassinated the prime minister and conspiracies flourished. The military had a stranglehold on the government. War with Russia loomed, and propaganda campaigns swept the country, urging schoolchildren to give money to procure planes and tanks. 
Into this maelstrom stepped Joseph C. Grew, America’s most experienced and talented diplomat. When Grew was appointed ambassador to Japan, not only was the country in turmoil, its relationship with America was rapidly deteriorating. For the next decade, Grew attempted to warn American leaders about the risks of Japan’s raging nationalism and rising militarism, while also trying to stabilize Tokyo’s increasingly erratic and volatile foreign policy. From domestic terrorism by Japanese extremists to the global rise of Hitler and the fateful attack on Pearl Harbor, the events that unfolded during Grew’s tenure proved to be pivotal for Japan, and for the world. His dispatches from the darkening heart of the Japanese empire would prove prescient—for his time, and for our own. 
Drawing on Grew’s diary of his time in Tokyo as well as U.S. embassy correspondence, diplomatic dispatches, and firsthand Japanese accounts, Our Man in Tokyo brings to life a man who risked everything to avert another world war, the country where he staked it all—and the abyss that swallowed it.

Our Man In Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor

Mariner Books

Dean Kamen is a secretive multimillionaire inventor who has been described as a cross between Thomas Edison and Willy Wonka. In February 1999 he invited Steve Kemper to write the inside story of the development of a secret new invention he codenamed Ginger. It was the accidental leak of Kemper's book proposal in which Steve Jobs of Apple was quoted as calling "It" the biggest invention since the PC, that sparked off frenzied internet and media hype. When in December 2001 this mystery invention was unveiled, far from being a science-fiction fantasy, a personal flying pack or anti-gravity device, it was revealed to be a self-balancing, battery-powered personal transporter called Segway. It was dismissed by many as "just an electric scooter", and there was a terrible sense of anti-climax. But the jury is still out: the device is being tested by early adopters like the US Postal Service and various police forces, and the consumer launch is not yet announced. There are still many important people who believe that the Segway will change the way we live. Whether or not the Segway finds a big consumer market and proves to be the solution to our inner-city transportation problems is impossible to predict, but the inside story of larger-than-life Dean Kamen and his supernerd team of engineers - obstinately independent to the extreme of insisting on manufacuring and marketing his own product, while being wooed by all the major companies and such Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and John Doerr, the famous venture capitalist - makes fascinating reading. "Code Name Ginger" is a cross between "The Soul of a New Machine" and "No Logo", a humorous, not-too-techie, behind-the-scenes story of the strange men behind the world's greatest innovations, illuminating just how a new invention turns into a product - or not.

Code Name Ginger

Engineering & Transportation

Engineering

Transworld Pub

A true story that rivals the travels of Burton or Stanley for excitement, and surpasses them in scientific achievements.
In 1849 Heinrich Barth joined a small British expedition into unexplored regions of Islamic North and Central Africa. One by one his companions died, but he carried on alone, eventually reaching the fabled city of gold, Timbuktu. His five-and-a-half-year, 10,000-mile adventure ranks among the greatest journeys in the annals of exploration, and his discoveries are considered indispensable by modern scholars of Africa.
Yet because of shifting politics, European preconceptions about Africa, and his own thorny personality, Barth has been almost forgotten. The general public has never heard of him, his epic journey, or his still-pertinent observations about Africa and Islam; and his monumental five-volume Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa is rare even in libraries. Though he made his journey for the British government, he has never had a biography in English. Barth and his achievements have fallen through a crack in history. 8 pages of illustrations

A Labyrinth of Kingdoms: 10,000 Miles through Islamic Africa

W.W.Norton&Company

A life of adventure and military daring on violent frontiers across the American West, Africa, Mexico, and the Klondike.
Frederick Russell Burnham’s (1861–1947) amazing story resembles a newsreel fused with a Saturday matinee thriller. One of the few people who could turn his garrulous friend Theodore Roosevelt into a listener, Burnham was once world-famous as “the American scout.” His expertise in woodcraft, learned from frontiersmen and Indians, helped inspire another friend, Robert Baden-Powell, to found the Boy Scouts. His adventures encompassed Apache wars and range feuds, booms and busts in mining camps around the globe, explorations in remote regions of Africa, and death-defying military feats that brought him renown and high honors. His skills led to his unusual appointment, as an American, to be Chief of Scouts for the British during the Boer War, where his daring exploits earned him the Distinguished Service Order from King Edward VII.
After a lifetime pursuing golden prospects from the deserts of Mexico and Africa to the tundra of the Klondike, Burnham found wealth, in his sixties, near his childhood home in southern California. Other men of his era had a few such adventures, but Burnham had them all. His friend H. Rider Haggard, author of many best-selling exotic tales, remarked, “In real life he is more interesting than any of my heroes of romance.”
Among other well-known individuals who figure in Burnham’s story are Cecil Rhodes and William Howard Taft, as well as some of the wealthiest men of the day, including John Hays Hammond, E. H. Harriman, Henry Payne Whitney, and the Guggenheim brothers.
Failure and tragedy streaked his life as well, but he was endlessly willing to set off into the unknown, where the future felt up for grabs and values worth dying for were at stake. Steve Kemper brings a quintessential American story to vivid life in this gripping biography. 8 pages of illustrations

A Splendid Savage: The Restless Life of Frederick Russell Burnham

Leaders & Notable People

"Kemper’s majestic account of Barth’s journey restores the reputation of an explorer who was as passionate about science as he was about rigorous travel. It’s an enthralling adventure, captivatingly told." ―Ziauddin Sardar, Times (London)
In 1840 Heinrich Barth joined a small British expedition into unexplored regions of Islamic North and Central Africa. One by one his companions died, but he carried on alone, eventually reaching the fabled city of gold, Timbuktu. His five-and-a-half-year, 10,000-mile trek ranks among the greatest journeys in the annals of exploration, and his discoveries are considered indispensable by modern scholars of Africa. In this historical adventure, the first book about Barth in English, Kemper goes a long way toward rescuing this fascinating figure from obscurity. 8 pages of illustrations

"Rich, detailed, and pitch-perfect, with the witty and wonderful skipping off every page." ―Maxwell Carter, Wall Street Journal
Frederick Russell Burnham’s (1861–1947) amazing story resembles a newsreel fused with a Saturday matinee thriller. One of the few people who could turn his garrulous friend Theodore Roosevelt into a listener, Burnham was once world-famous as “the American scout.” His expertise in woodcraft, learned from frontiersmen and Indians, helped inspire another friend, Robert Baden-Powell, to found the Boy Scouts. His adventures encompassed Apache wars and range feuds, booms and busts in mining camps around the globe, explorations in remote regions of Africa, and death-defying military feats that brought him renown and high honors. His skills led to his unusual appointment, as an American, to be Chief of Scouts for the British during the Boer War, where his daring exploits earned him the Distinguished Service Order from King Edward VII.
After a lifetime pursuing golden prospects from the deserts of Mexico and Africa to the tundra of the Klondike, Burnham found wealth, in his sixties, near his childhood home in southern California. Other men of his era had a few such adventures, but Burnham had them all. His friend H. Rider Haggard, author of many best-selling exotic tales, remarked, “In real life he is more interesting than any of my heroes of romance.”
Among other well-known individuals who figure in Burnham’s story are Cecil Rhodes and William Howard Taft, as well as some of the wealthiest men of the day, including John Hays Hammond, E. H. Harriman, Henry Payne Whitney, and the Guggenheim brothers.
Failure and tragedy streaked his life as well, but he was endlessly willing to set off into the unknown, where the future felt up for grabs and values worth dying for were at stake. Steve Kemper brings a quintessential American story to vivid life in this gripping biography. 8 pages of illustrations

Chronicles the journey behind Dean Kamen's invention of an electric-powered human transporter, explaining the machine's innovative engineering and relationships with investors.

Code Name Ginger: The Story Behind Segway and Dean Kamen's Quest to Invent a New World

Harvard Business Review Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kemper, Steve. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Kemper, Steve

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kemper, Steve. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Reinventing the Wheel: A Story of Genius, Innovation, and Grand Ambition

Our Man in Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor

Our Man In Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor

Code Name Ginger

A Labyrinth of Kingdoms: 10,000 Miles through Islamic Africa

A Splendid Savage: The Restless Life of Frederick Russell Burnham

A Labyrinth of Kingdoms: 10,000 Miles through Islamic Africa

A Splendid Savage: The Restless Life of Frederick Russell Burnham

Code Name Ginger: The Story Behind Segway and Dean Kamen's Quest to Invent a New World