Silver Arrows In Camera 1951 55

This is the story of Mercedes-Benz’s involvement in motorsport, from the first road trial in 1894, through the little-documented rallying exploits in the 1960s, to the McLaren-Mercedes partnership dominating Formula 1 today. Packed with historical and technical detail, this large-format, lavishly-illustrated book has a strong anecdotal content, including new interviews with drivers from the 1930s and 1950s. There are author interviews with Manfred von Brauchitsch, aged 94, Karl Kling, 90, Hans Herrmann, 72, and Britain’s favorite racer Sir Stirling Moss. The book covers the post-war revival including the sports coupés that won Le Mans in 1952, the sensational 300SLR racers, and the W196 grand prix cars. Also covered are the Juan Manuel Fangio/Moss partnership, and the famous 1955 Moss/Jenkinson Mille Miglia victory; Formula 1 with Sauber, then McLaren, with profiles of the team principals and drivers; and the US CART Championship and special relationship with the works Penske team. The book contains international race results and key driver biographies.

'A tragic age and a tragic character, both seemingly compelled to destroy themselves...a chilling reminder of how little control we have over our fates' Damon Hill 'One of the greatest motor racing stories' Nick Mason 'Timely, vivid and enthralling … it’s unputdownable’ Miranda Seymour, author of The Bugatti Queen Dick Seaman was the archetypal dashing motorsport hero of the 1930s, the first Englishman to win a race for Mercedes-Benz and the last Grand Prix driver to die at the wheel before the outbreak of the Second World War. Award-winning author Richard Williams reveals the remarkable but now forgotten story of a driver whose battles against the leading figures of motor racing's golden age inspired the post-war generation of British champions. The son of wealthy parents, educated at Rugby and Cambridge, Seaman grew up in a privileged world of house parties, jazz and fast cars. But motor racing was no mere hobby: it became such an obsession that he dropped out of university to pursue his ambitions, squeezing money out of his parents to buy better cars. When he was offered a contract with the world-beating, state-sponsored Mercedes team in 1937, he signed up despite the growing political tensions between Britain and Germany. A year later, he celebrated victory in the German Grand Prix with the beautiful 18-year-old daughter of the founder of BMW. Their wedding that summer would force a split with his family, a costly rift that had not been closed six months later when he crashed in the rain while leading at Spa, dying with his divided loyalties seemingly unresolved. He was just 26 years old. A Race with Love and Death is a gripping tale of speed, romance and tragedy. Set in an era of rising tensions, where the urge to live each moment to the full never seemed more important, it is a richly evocative story that grips from first to last.

The battle in Grand Prix racing between the German Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union teams during the six years from 1934 through 1939 was probably the greatest, most spectacular and most important era in motor racing history. The two German teams almost completely dominated Grand Prix racing, mainly because of their technical superiority. This superiority was made possible by the vast sums that the two teams could expend on racing. The money paid to them by the German government was not a direct subsidy, but represented the generous margin above cost incorporated in government contracts. In effect, while Mercedes-Benz developed and manufactured aero engines for the Luftwaffe, the Auto Union Group manufactured tanks and other armored vehicles for the Wehrmacht.

A beautifully illustrated tribute to one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century. Controversial, misunderstood, and sometimes overlooked, Minor White (1908–1976) is one of the great photographers of the twentieth century, whose ideas exerted a powerful influence on a generation of photographers and still resonate today. His photographic career began in 1938 in Portland, Oregon, with assignments for the WPA (Works Progress Administration). After serving in World War II and studying art history at Columbia University, White’s focus shifted toward the metaphorical. He began creating images charged with symbolism and a critical aspect called equivalency, referring to the invisible spiritual energy present in a photograph made visible to the viewer. This book brings together White’s key biographical information—his evolution as a photographer, teacher of photography, and editor of Aperture, as well as particularly insightful quotations from his journals, which he kept for more than forty years. The result is an engaging narrative that weaves through the main threads of White’s life, his growth as an artist, as well as his spiritual search and ongoing struggle with his own sexuality and self-doubt. He sought comfort in a variety of religious practices that influenced his continually metamorphosing artistic philosophy.

Lists members of the Overseas Press Club of America.

The significantly expanded and updated new edition of a widely used text on reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence. Reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence, is a computational approach to learning whereby an agent tries to maximize the total amount of reward it receives while interacting with a complex, uncertain environment. In Reinforcement Learning, Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto provide a clear and simple account of the field's key ideas and algorithms. This second edition has been significantly expanded and updated, presenting new topics and updating coverage of other topics. Like the first edition, this second edition focuses on core online learning algorithms, with the more mathematical material set off in shaded boxes. Part I covers as much of reinforcement learning as possible without going beyond the tabular case for which exact solutions can be found. Many algorithms presented in this part are new to the second edition, including UCB, Expected Sarsa, and Double Learning. Part II extends these ideas to function approximation, with new sections on such topics as artificial neural networks and the Fourier basis, and offers expanded treatment of off-policy learning and policy-gradient methods. Part III has new chapters on reinforcement learning's relationships to psychology and neuroscience, as well as an updated case-studies chapter including AlphaGo and AlphaGo Zero, Atari game playing, and IBM Watson's wagering strategy. The final chapter discusses the future societal impacts of reinforcement learning.