![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Readers will come away with a smattering of historical information in several scientific and cultural fields, but it's presented in such a way that they'll feel like experts. Milo's tone is amiably conversational, filled with casual asides such as the discovery that "the electric car was also the flavor of the month more than one hundred years ago." He delves into the work of some famous visionaries, from Paul Ehrlich to Hal Lindsey but refrains from mocking even those who were completely off the mark. Its individual entries detail the technologies and philosophies of the times that led some great (and not so great) minds to think the ridiculous was achievable. ![]() Sometimes the wrong guesses even contradict themselves: airplanes would never work, conventional wisdom once ran once they'd proven successful, people believed they'd be fast enough to cover the globe in mere hours. Examining the most outrageous predictions from the last 100 years in entertaining, bite-sized descriptions, 'Your Flying Car Awaits' is organized by type (transportation, the human body). Milo explains why these and dozens of other predictions never came to fruition in a wide-ranging survey that covers everything from atomic energy (which some scientists predicted would never work out) to Puerto Rican statehood. There was a time when people thought future generations would be living in cities topped by geodesic domes, and that all babies would be born in mechanical incubators, probably after having their DNA selected for better intelligence or physical attractiveness. ![]()
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