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Author: Ellen Prager Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022654169X Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 247
Book Description
The Earth is a beautiful and wondrous planet, but also frustratingly complex and, at times, violent: much of what has made it livable can also cause catastrophe. Volcanic eruptions create land and produce fertile, nutrient-rich soil, but they can also bury forests, fields, and entire towns under ash, mud, lava, and debris. The very forces that create and recycle Earth’s crust also spawn destructive earthquakes and tsunamis. Water and wind bring and spread life, but in hurricanes they can leave devastation in their wake. And while it is the planet’s warmth that enables life to thrive, rapidly increasing temperatures are causing sea levels to rise and weather events to become more extreme. Today, we know more than ever before about the powerful forces that can cause catastrophe, but significant questions remain. Why can’t we better predict some natural disasters? What do scientists know about them already? What do they wish they knew? In Dangerous Earth, marine scientist and science communicator Ellen Prager explores the science of investigating volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, landslides, rip currents, and—maybe the most perilous hazard of all—climate change. Each chapter considers a specific hazard, begins with a game-changing historical event (like the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens or the landfall and impacts of Hurricane Harvey), and highlights what remains unknown about these dynamic phenomena. Along the way, we hear from scientists trying to read Earth’s warning signs, pass its messages along to the rest of us, and prevent catastrophic loss. A sweeping tour of some of the most awesome forces on our planet—many tragic, yet nonetheless awe-inspiring—Dangerous Earth is an illuminating journey through the undiscovered, unresolved, and in some cases unimagined mysteries that continue to frustrate and fascinate the world’s leading scientists: the “wish-we-knews” that ignite both our curiosity and global change.
Author: Ellen Prager Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022654169X Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 247
Book Description
The Earth is a beautiful and wondrous planet, but also frustratingly complex and, at times, violent: much of what has made it livable can also cause catastrophe. Volcanic eruptions create land and produce fertile, nutrient-rich soil, but they can also bury forests, fields, and entire towns under ash, mud, lava, and debris. The very forces that create and recycle Earth’s crust also spawn destructive earthquakes and tsunamis. Water and wind bring and spread life, but in hurricanes they can leave devastation in their wake. And while it is the planet’s warmth that enables life to thrive, rapidly increasing temperatures are causing sea levels to rise and weather events to become more extreme. Today, we know more than ever before about the powerful forces that can cause catastrophe, but significant questions remain. Why can’t we better predict some natural disasters? What do scientists know about them already? What do they wish they knew? In Dangerous Earth, marine scientist and science communicator Ellen Prager explores the science of investigating volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, landslides, rip currents, and—maybe the most perilous hazard of all—climate change. Each chapter considers a specific hazard, begins with a game-changing historical event (like the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens or the landfall and impacts of Hurricane Harvey), and highlights what remains unknown about these dynamic phenomena. Along the way, we hear from scientists trying to read Earth’s warning signs, pass its messages along to the rest of us, and prevent catastrophic loss. A sweeping tour of some of the most awesome forces on our planet—many tragic, yet nonetheless awe-inspiring—Dangerous Earth is an illuminating journey through the undiscovered, unresolved, and in some cases unimagined mysteries that continue to frustrate and fascinate the world’s leading scientists: the “wish-we-knews” that ignite both our curiosity and global change.
Author: Lindsey Lee Johnson Publisher: Random House ISBN: 081299728X Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
An unforgettable cast of characters is unleashed into a realm known for its cruelty—the American high school—in this captivating debut novel. The wealthy enclaves north of San Francisco are not the paradise they appear to be, and nobody knows this better than the students of a local high school. Despite being raised with all the opportunities money can buy, these vulnerable kids are navigating a treacherous adolescence in which every action, every rumor, every feeling, is potentially postable, shareable, viral. Lindsey Lee Johnson’s kaleidoscopic narrative exposes at every turn the real human beings beneath the high school stereotypes. Abigail Cress is ticking off the boxes toward the Ivy League when she makes the first impulsive decision of her life: entering into an inappropriate relationship with a teacher. Dave Chu, who knows himself at heart to be a typical B student, takes desperate measures to live up to his parents’ crushing expectations. Emma Fleed, a gifted dancer, balances rigorous rehearsals with wild weekends. Damon Flintov returns from a stint at rehab looking to prove that he’s not an irredeemable screwup. And Calista Broderick, once part of the popular crowd, chooses, for reasons of her own, to become a hippie outcast. Into this complicated web, an idealistic young English teacher arrives from a poorer, scruffier part of California. Molly Nicoll strives to connect with her students—without understanding the middle school tragedy that played out online and has continued to reverberate in different ways for all of them. Written with the rare talent capable of turning teenage drama into urgent, adult fiction, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth makes vivid a modern adolescence lived in the gleam of the virtual, but rich with sorrow, passion, and humanity. Praise for The Most Dangerous Place on Earth “Alarming, compelling . . . Here’s high school life in all its madness.”—The New York Times “Unputdownable.”—Elle “Impossibly funny and achingly sad . . . [Lindsey Lee] Johnson cracks open adolescent angst with adult sensibility and sensitivity.”—San Francisco Chronicle “[A] piercing debut . . . Johnson proves herself a master of the coming-of-age story.”—The Boston Globe “Entrancing . . . Johnson’s novel possesses a propulsive quality. . . . Hard to put down.”—Chicago Tribune “Readers may find themselves so swept up in this enthralling novel that they finish it in a single sitting.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Author: Nicola Davies Publisher: ISBN: 9781484462423 Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Lions and scorpions and lethal little jellyfish, oh my! Kids will sink their teeth into this fascinating look at nature's fiercest creatures.
Author: Frederick Kempe Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 1101515023 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 816
Book Description
In June 1961, Nikita Khrushchev called Berlin "the most dangerous place on earth." He knew what he was talking about. Much has been written about the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later, but the Berlin Crisis of 1961 was more decisive in shaping the Cold War-and more perilous. It was in that hot summer that the Berlin Wall was constructed, which would divide the world for another twenty-eight years. Then two months later, and for the first time in history, American and Soviet fighting men and tanks stood arrayed against each other, only yards apart. One mistake, one nervous soldier, one overzealous commander-and the tripwire would be sprung for a war that could go nuclear in a heartbeat. On one side was a young, untested U.S. president still reeling from the Bay of Pigs disaster and a humiliating summit meeting that left him grasping for ways to respond. It would add up to be one of the worst first-year foreign policy performances of any modern president. On the other side, a Soviet premier hemmed in by the Chinese, East Germans, and hardliners in his own government. With an all-important Party Congress approaching, he knew Berlin meant the difference not only for the Kremlin's hold on its empire-but for his own hold on the Kremlin. Neither man really understood the other, both tried cynically to manipulate events. And so, week by week, they crept closer to the brink. Based on a wealth of new documents and interviews, filled with fresh-sometimes startling-insights, written with immediacy and drama, Berlin 1961 is an extraordinary look at key events of the twentieth century, with powerful applications to these early years of the twenty-first. Includes photographs
Author: Iain MacGregor Publisher: Scribner ISBN: 1982100044 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 352
Book Description
A “constantly captivating…well-researched and often moving” (The Wall Street Journal) history of Checkpoint Charlie, the famous military gate on the border of East and West Berlin where the United States confronted the USSR during the Cold War. In the early 1960s, East Germany committed a billion dollars to the creation of the Berlin Wall, an eleven-foot-high barrier that consisted of seventy-nine miles of fencing, 300 watchtowers, 250 guard dog runs, twenty bunkers, and was operated around the clock by guards who shot to kill. Over the next twenty-eight years, at least five thousand people attempt to smash through it, swim across it, tunnel under it, or fly over it. In 1989, the East German leadership buckled in the face of a civil revolt that culminated in half a million East Berliners demanding an end to the ban on free movement. The world’s media flocked to capture the moment which, perhaps more than any other, signaled the end of the Cold War. Checkpoint Charlie had been the epicenter of global conflict for nearly three decades. Now, “in capturing the essence of the old Cold War [MacGregor] may just have helped us to understand a bit more about the new one” (The Times, London)—the mistrust, oppression, paranoia, and fear that gripped the world throughout this period. Checkpoint Charlie is about the nerve-wracking confrontation between the West and USSR, highlighting such important global figures as Eisenhower, Stalin, JFK, Nikita Khrushchev, Mao Zedung, Nixon, Reagan, and other politicians of the period. He also includes never-before-heard interviews with the men who built and dismantled the Wall; children who crossed it; relatives and friends who lost loved ones trying to escape over it; military policemen and soldiers who guarded the checkpoints; CIA, MI6, and Stasi operatives who oversaw operations across its borders; politicians whose ambitions shaped it; journalists who recorded its story; and many more whose living memories contributed to the full story of Checkpoint Charlie.
Author: Gar Smith Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing ISBN: 160358434X Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 323
Book Description
Nuclear power is not clean, cheap, or safe. With Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, the nuclear industry's record of catastrophic failures now averages one major disaster every decade. After three US-designed plants exploded in Japan, many countries moved to abandon reactors for renewables. In the United States, however, powerful corporations and a compliant government still defend nuclear power-while promising billion-dollar bailouts to operators. Each new disaster demonstrates that the nuclear industry and governments lie to "avoid panic," to preserve the myth of "safe, clean" nuclear power, and to sustain government subsidies. Tokyo and Washington both covered up Fukushima's radiation risks and-when confronted with damning evidence-simply raised the levels of "acceptable" risk to match the greater levels of exposure. Nuclear Roulette dismantles the core arguments behind the nuclear-industrial complex's "Nuclear Renaissance." While some critiques are familiar-nuclear power is too costly, too dangerous, and too unstable-others are surprising: Nuclear Roulette exposes historic links to nuclear weapons, impacts on Indigenous lands and lives, and the ways in which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission too often takes its lead from industry, rewriting rules to keep failing plants in compliance. Nuclear Roulette cites NRC records showing how corporations routinely defer maintenance and lists resulting "near-misses" in the US, which average more than one per month. Nuclear Roulette chronicles the problems of aging reactors, uncovers the costly challenge of decommissioning, explores the industry's greatest seismic risks-not on California's quake-prone coast but in the Midwest and Southeast-and explains how solar flares could black out power grids, causing the world's 400-plus reactors to self-destruct. This powerful exposé concludes with a roundup of proven and potential energy solutions that can replace nuclear technology with a "Renewable Renaissance," combined with conservation programs that can cleanse the air, and cool the planet.
Author: Steve Sheinkin Publisher: Roaring Brook Press ISBN: 159643953X Category : Juvenile Nonfiction Languages : en Pages : 385
Book Description
Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War is New York Times bestselling author Steve Sheinkin's award-winning nonfiction account of an ordinary man who wielded the most dangerous weapon: the truth. “Easily the best study of the Vietnam War available for teen readers.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) A YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award winner A National Book Award finalist A Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Blue Ribbon book A Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature finalist Selected for the Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People List In 1964, Daniel Ellsberg was a U.S. government analyst, helping to plan a war in Vietnam. It was the height of the Cold War, and the government would do anything to stop the spread of communism—with or without the consent of the American people. As the fighting in Vietnam escalated, Ellsberg turned against the war. He had access a top-secret government report known as the Pentagon Papers, and he knew it could blow the lid off of years of government lies. But did he have the right to expose decades of presidential secrets? And what would happen to him if he did it? A lively book that interrogates the meanings of patriotism, freedom, and integrity, the National Book Award finalist Most Dangerous further establishes Steve Sheinkin—author of Newbery Honor book Bomb as a leader in children's nonfiction. This thoroughly-researched and documented book can be worked into multiple aspects of the common core curriculum. “Gripping.”—New York Times Book Review “A master of fast-paced histories...[this] is Sheinkin’s most compelling one yet. ”—Washington Post Also by Steve Sheinkin: Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism & Treachery Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights Which Way to the Wild West?: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About Westward Expansion King George: What Was His Problem?: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the American Revolution Two Miserable Presidents: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the Civil War Born to Fly: The First Women's Air Race Across America
Author: Walter S. Judd Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190276320 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 425
Book Description
Few settings in literature are as widely known or celebrated as J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth. The natural landscape plays a major role in nearly all of Tolkien's major works, and readers have come to view the geography of this fictional universe as integral to understanding and enjoying Tolkien's works. And in laying out this continent, Tolkien paid special attention to its plant life; in total, over 160 plants are explicitly mentioned and described as a part of Middle-Earth. Nearly all of these plants are real species, and many of the fictional plants are based on scientifically grounded botanic principles. In Flora of Middle Earth: Plants of Tolkien's Legendarium, botanist Walter Judd gives a detailed species account of every plant found in Tolkien's universe, complete with the etymology of the plant's name, a discussion of its significance within Tolkien's work, a description of the plant's distribution and ecology, and an original hand-drawn illustration by artist Graham Judd in the style of a woodcut print. Among the over three-thousand vascular plants Tolkien would have seen in the British Isles, the authors show why Tolkien may have selected certain plants for inclusion in his universe over others, in terms of their botanic properties and traditional uses. The clear, comprehensive alphabetical listing of each species, along with the visual identification key of the plant drawings, adds to the reader's understanding and appreciation of the Tolkien canon.
Author: David Wallace-Wells Publisher: Crown ISBN: 052557672X Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 386
Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • The Economist • The Paris Review • Toronto Star • GQ • The Times Literary Supplement • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible—food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. An “epoch-defining book” (The Guardian) and “this generation’s Silent Spring” (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it—the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today’s. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD “The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.”—Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times “Riveting. . . . Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wells’s outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too.”—The Economist “Potent and evocative. . . . Wallace-Wells has resolved to offer something other than the standard narrative of climate change. . . . He avoids the ‘eerily banal language of climatology’ in favor of lush, rolling prose.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times “The book has potential to be this generation’s Silent Spring.”—The Washington Post “The Uninhabitable Earth, which has become a best seller, taps into the underlying emotion of the day: fear. . . . I encourage people to read this book.”—Alan Weisman, The New York Review of Books
Author: Avi Melamed Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1634509765 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 294
Book Description
Acclaimed Israeli intelligence analyst Avi Melamed has spent more than thirty years interpreting Middle East affairs. His long-awaited Inside the Middle East challenges widely-accepted perceptions and provides a gripping and uniquely enlightening guide to make sense of the events unfolding in the region—to answer how the Arab world got to this point, what is currently happening, what the ramifications will be, how they will affect Israel, and what actions must immediately be undertaken, including how Western leaders need to respond. Melamed considers all the major power players in the Middle East, explains the underlying issues, and creates a three-dimensional picture, an illustration that connects the dots and provides a fascinating roadmap. He elucidates developments such as the Arab Spring, the downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood, the rise of ISIS, the epic Sunni-Shiite animosity, the essence of the war in Syria, the role of the Caliphate and Jihad, and the looming nuclear arms race. He also provides a rare opportunity to journey into the psyche of Arab society. Look through the lens of its leaders and its most ruthless terrorists. See what makes them tick and what they want. Discover how they can be overtaken. This unparalleled volume is a milestone in our understanding of the Middle East. It is the untold story of the struggles that will shape the region, and the world, for decades to come, and a groundbreaking guide that will shake you to the core, force you to reevalute your outlook, and give you tips to navigate the future. From author Avi Melamed: The conflicts in the Middle East grow more confusing and dangerous every day. In my encounters with thousands of people from across the world - from global leaders to high school students - I know there is deep and intense thirst for knowledge because today understanding the Middle East is not optional – it’s mandatory. My new book, Inside the Middle East: Making Sense of the Most Dangerous and Complicated Region on Earth is based on my decades of advisory, counterterrorism, education, and intelligence – positions - as well as my intimate connections throughout the Arab world. The book also provides the building blocks and database to understand the contemporary Middle East, offers a unique insight into the Arab world, and is “a GPS to help you navigate the dramatically changing Middle East.” In the book, I also offer an out of the box idea that could lead to a positive breakthrough in the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.
Author: Ellen Prager
Author: Ellen Prager
Author: Lindsey Lee Johnson
Author: Nicola Davies
Author: Frederick Kempe
Author: Iain MacGregor
Author: Gar Smith
Author: Steve Sheinkin
Author: Walter S. Judd
Author: David Wallace-Wells
Author: Avi Melamed