Rob James Books

  • The author thought he knew a few facts about the Big Dipper, and told them to children. When he finally researched them, he found they were false. Delving into the lore in an effort at atonement, he fell upon a sprawling trove of science, culture, myth, history, and imaginative literature, never as fully compiled, about the most famous constellation of all. Join Rob James on an exhilarating mental journey—from artifacts of the Stone Age to the latest research on sextuple star systems, coursing through ancient, medieval and modern societies and languages, and spanning the entire Northern Hemisphere. You will see one simple pattern of nature through stories both comfortingly familiar and strikingly new, and you will “feel a little prouder to be a human being.”

  • “Beautifully written, and effortless in bringing together concepts separated by great time and distance.”—Mark J. Sundahl, Director, Global Space Law Center

  • Let’s talk about the black birds!

    Roger Ebert said the plot of The Maltese Falcon is “almost impossible” to lay out in a logical and linear fashion. In this collection of essays Rob James takes up the task and presents a complete analysis, beginning with the Crusader knights and finishing with the culminating scenes of both the Dashiell Hammett novel and the John Huston-Humphrey Bogart screen classic.

    Colorful maps of a bygone era reveal as if by animation the progression of the falcon around the world, and of Sam Spade as the plot unfolds from Wednesday to Monday and from apartments to shipboard to hotels. A Victorian history chapter rife with Orientalism takes you back to the falcon’s origin story.

    Fasten your trench coat (though Bogie never wore one in this flick) and prepare to step out into the San Francisco fog, finally to understand what was going on in this complex detective story and iconic film noir.

  • “Better tie a rope around your waist for this deep, deep dive into Hammett’s iconic novel, as the author unleashes a series of essays that ‘triages the layers of truth,’ even unearthing a chapter from an 1858 book that relates the ‘peculiar rental agreement’ between King Charles of Spain and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem that may have inspired Hammett. Generously illustrated with color maps and illustrations, a bibliography, and a play-by-play summary of the lies in the novel (complete with plenty of color commentary), it’s an enthusiastic and ambitious labour of love, one that any real fan of Hammett’s masterpiece or the 1941 film adaptation will appreciate.”—Kevin Burton Smith, thrillingdetective.com

    “Essential for Maltese Falcon lovers!”—Amazon.com review

Even translated into Spanish! (See the Science & Technology Pieces tab for the original English.)

  • The 1970s witnessed the birth of handheld electronic devices that replicated the roots and powers, trig and log functions, and other uses of the slide rule that had dominated calculation for 350 years. Don’t believe the old saying that “form follows function”—these instruments had much the same purposes, but exploded in a wild variety of designs.

    Join Mike Konshak and Rob James on an adventure through this 550-page color catalog of global vintage calculators that ended the slide rule era and ushered in an electronic era—devices that themselves have now largely given way (outside SAT and ACT tests) to computer and smartphone apps.

    This full-color book, with a lengthy introductory essay “The Deaths of the Slide Rule” by Rob James, is a snapshot in time of over 350 calculators that contributed to the demise of the slide rule industry.

    Logarithmic-based slide rules were used in engineering, science, commerce, and education for 350 years until the sudden onslaught of the invention of the “electronic slide rule” and other scientific calculators. The death of all the slide rule manufacturers was kicked off by the Hewlett-Packard HP-35 in 1972 and sealed by the Texas Instruments TI-30 single-chip calculator in 1976.

    Except for the black-and-white advertisements from that period, all the images are in color to accent the beautiful and widely diverse product packaging and keyboard designs. A collector’s dream!

  • “This book is a must for anyone interested in early electronic hand-held calculators. Absolutely masses of information, manufacturer by manufacturer, model by model.”—Amazon.co.uk review