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"""Otto Lellep's fascinating autobiography (annotated with sensitivity by his daughter) carries a potpourri of the major themes of the entire twentieth century, presented through the eyes of what Lellep's early classmates called ""the chemist."" We get a picture of pre-industrial farm life in the hardscrabble and frosty fields of Estonia; of a budding nationalist culture dominated by Russian imperial designs; of the opening salvos of World War I fought in Poland; of the attractiveness of the technological achievements of 1930's German; and of the chaotic uncertainties for families of mixed nationality with the outbreak of World War II. All this is sotto voce background to the story of a technologically endowed Estonian who built his own steam engine as a middle schooler and a high-temperature furnace in his twenties. Self-described as an inventor when he was young, Lellep later developed processes to purify nickel, to effectively utilize heat wasted in cement production, and to build a revolutionary kiln system. His lifelong dedication to reducing the enormous energy premiums required to produce cement and steel capped a life of ingenious invention. Having lived in Estonia, Russia, Germany, and the United States (fluent in Estonian, Russian, German and English), with extended visits to Cuba, Argentina, Canada, and Mexico, his perspective was invariably international. His was a life worth remembering."" --DAVID D. LAITIN, WATKINS PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, STANFORD UNIVERSITY ""Seldom has there been composed such a fusion of memories, as this combination autobiography-biography by and about Otto G. Lellep (1884-1968), an Estonian-American inventory and world-traveler. His daughter Renate Lellep Fernandez brings her father's words into one seamless story and provides the global and family history necessary to situate his ideas, actualized inventions, and collaborations within the socio-culturo-technological contexts of several wars and around four continents. Otto relates the folkways and livelihoods of his eighteenth and nineteenth century ancestors, his rich formal and informal education in several countries, the inspirations and motivations behind his varied and numerous inventions, and his international work history before and after his arrival, with his young family, in New York in 1940. His book will be indispensable to scholars of technology; to historians of the Russo-Baltic region; to students of migration, trade, and warfare; and to anthropologists and folklorists, all over the world."" --MYRDENE ANDERSON, PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY, PURDUE UNIVERSITY"

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9781954744837

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Born in 1932 in Heidelberg, German, Dr. Renate Lellep Fernandez is the youngest daughter of Otto G. Lellep and Frieda Brandt Lellep. Raised in the United States and originally trained as an occupational therapist, Dr. Fernandez earned a Ph.D. from Rutgers University as a biocultural anthropologist. Author of A Simple Matter of Salt: An Ethnography of Nutritional Deficiency in Spain, she is an independent scholar, writer, and consultant who has been published in books and professional journals in the United States and abroad.

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