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Fire on the Horizon: The Untold Story of the Gulf Oil Disaster
By John Konrad, Tom Shroder. 2011
"A phenomenal feat of journalism. . . . I tore through it like a novel but with the queasy knowledge…
that the whole damn thing is true." —Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm and WarBlending exclusive first-person interviews and penetrating investigative reporting, oil rig captain John Konrad and veteran Washington Post writer Tom Shroder give the definitive, white-knuckled account of the Deepwater Horizon explosion—as well as a riveting insider’s view of the byzantine culture of offshore drilling that made the disaster inevitable. As the world continues to cope with the oil spill’s grim aftermath—with environmental and economic consequences all the more dire in a region still rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina—Konrad and Schroder’s real-time account of the disaster shows us just where things went wrong, and points the way to a safer future for us all.The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence
By Stephen Kurczy. 2021
In this riveting account of an area of Appalachia known as the Quiet Zone where cell phones and WiFi are…
banned, journalist Stephen Kurczy explores the pervasive role of technology in our lives and the innate human need for quiet.“Captures the complex beauty of a disconnected way of life.” —The NationWith a new afterword to the paperback editionDeep in the Appalachian Mountains lies the last truly quiet town in America. Green Bank, West Virginia, is a place at once futuristic and old-fashioned: It’s home to the Green Bank Observatory, where astronomers search the depths of the universe using the latest technology, while schoolchildren go without WiFi or iPads. With a ban on all devices emanating radio frequencies that might interfere with the observatory’s telescopes, Quiet Zone residents live a life free from constant digital connectivity. But a community that on the surface seems idyllic is a place of contradictions, where the provincial meets the seemingly supernatural and quiet can serve as a cover for something darker.Stephen Kurczy embedded in Green Bank, making the residents of this small Appalachian village his neighbors. He shopped at the town’s general store, attended church services, went target shooting with a seven-year-old, square-danced with the locals, sampled the local moonshine. In The Quiet Zone, he introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters. There is a tech buster patrolling the area for illegal radio waves; “electrosensitives” who claim that WiFi is deadly; a sheriff’s department with a string of unsolved murder cases dating back decades; a camp of neo-Nazis plotting their resurgence from a nearby mountain hollow. Amongst them all are the ordinary citizens seeking a simpler way of living. Kurczy asks: Is a less connected life desirable? Is it even possible?The Quiet Zone is a remarkable work of investigative journalism—at once a stirring ode to place, a tautly wound tale of mystery, and a clarion call to reexamine the role technology plays in our lives.Biography of Resistance: The Epic Battle Between People and Pathogens
By Muhammad H. Zaman. 2020
Award-winning Boston University educator and researcher Muhammad H. Zaman provides a chilling look at the rise of antibiotic-resistant superbugs, explaining…
how we got here and what we must do to address this growing global health crisis.In September 2016, a woman in Nevada became the first known case in the U.S. of a person who died of an infection resistant to every antibiotic available. Her death is the worst nightmare of infectious disease doctors and public health professionals. While bacteria live within us and are essential for our health, some strains can kill us. As bacteria continue to mutate, becoming increasingly resistant to known antibiotics, we are likely to face a public health crisis of unimaginable proportions. “It will be like the great plague of the middle ages, the influenza pandemic of 1918, the AIDS crisis of the 1990s, and the Ebola epidemic of 2014 all combined into a single threat,” Muhammad H. Zaman warns.The Biography of Resistance is Zaman’s riveting and timely look at why and how microbes are becoming superbugs. It is a story of science and evolution that looks to history, culture, attitudes and our own individual choices and collective human behavior. Following the trail of resistant bacteria from previously uncontacted tribes in the Amazon to the isolated islands in the Arctic, from the urban slums of Karachi to the wilderness of the Australian outback, Zaman examines the myriad factors contributing to this unfolding health crisis—including war, greed, natural disasters, and germophobia—to the culprits driving it: pharmaceutical companies, farmers, industrialists, doctors, governments, and ordinary people, all whose choices are pushing us closer to catastrophe.Joining the ranks of acclaimed works like Microbe Hunters, The Emperor of All Maladies, and Spillover, A Biography of Resistance is a riveting and chilling tale from a natural storyteller on the front lines, and a clarion call to address the biggest public health threat of our time.Fly-Fishing the 41st: From Connecticut to Mongolia and Home Again—A Fisherman's Oddesy
By James Prosek. 2003
“James Prosek has eloquently demonstrated that angling is a kind of universal language. . . . he has taken us…
on an unforgettable journey.” — Thomas McGuane, author of The Cadence of Grass and The Longest Silence: A Life in FishingThe New York Times has called James Prosek "the Audubon of the fishing world," and in Fly-Fishing the 41st, he uses his talent for descriptive writing to illuminate an astonishing adventure. Beginning in his hometown of Easton, Connecticut, Prosek circumnavigates the globe along the 41st parallel, traveling through Spain, Greece, Turkey, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, China, and Japan. Along the way he shares some of the best fishing in the world with a host of wonderfully eccentric and memorable characters.Guide to making accurate business valuations based on investing metrics that matter In The Little Book of Valuation: How to…
Value a Company, Pick a Stock, and Profit, professor and economist Aswath Damodaran guides readers through the fundamentals and step-by-step process of picking winning companies to invest in. In the book, you'll learn how to make your own accurate valuation assessments, avoiding common pitfalls and mistakes along the way. From widespread misunderstandings to undeniable truths in valuation, the author covers exactly where to turn your attention to when assessing a company's value based on a myriad of factors, with stories and real examples included throughout to prepare you for any modern investing challenge you may find yourself facing. You'll also learn: Simple but extremely effective valuation tools and formulas for success The complex relationship between assets, debt, equity, and business value Special market considerations regarding valuation that require a dynamic approach Rather than relying on third-party sources—often drawing from the same public information that you have access to, but getting it wrong—The Little Book of Valuation, Updated Edition gives readers all the insight and practical tools they need to cut through the noise and arrive at their own accurate valuations, pick profitable stocks, and establish successful long-term portfolios.A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art, and Science
By Michael S. Schneider. 1994
Discover how mathematical sequences abound in our natural world in this definitive exploration of the geography of the cosmosYou need…
not be a philosopher or a botanist, and certainly not a mathematician, to enjoy the bounty of the world around us. But is there some sort of order, a pattern, to the things that we see in the sky, on the ground, at the beach? In A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe, Michael Schneider, an education writer and computer consultant, combines science, philosophy, art, and common sense to reaffirm what the ancients observed: that a consistent language of geometric design underpins every level of the universe, from atoms to galaxies, cucumbers to cathedrals. Schneider also discusses numerical and geometric symbolism through the ages, and concepts such as periodic renewal and resonance. This book is an education in the world and everything we can't see within it.Contains numerous b&w photos and illustrations.The Economics of Innocent Fraud: Truth For Our Time
By John Kenneth Galbraith. 2004
John Kenneth Galbraith has long been at the center of American economics, in key positions of responsibility during the New…
Deal, World War II, and since, guiding policy and debate. His trenchant new book distills this lifetime of experience in the public and private sectors; it is a scathing critique of matters as they stand today.Sounding the alarm about the increasing gap between reality and "conventional wisdom" -- a phrase he coined -- Galbraith tells, along with much else, how we have reached a point where the private sector has unprecedented control over the public sector. We have given ourselves over to self-serving belief and "contrived nonsense" or, more simply, fraud. This has come at the expense of the economy, effective government, and the business world.Particularly noted is the central power of the corporation and the shift in authority from shareholders and board members to management. In an intense exercise of fraud, the pretense of shareholder power is still maintained, even with the immediate participants. In fact, because of the scale and complexity of the modern corporation, decisive power must go to management. From management and its own inevitable self-interest, power extends deeply into government -- the so-called public sector. This is particularly and dangerously the case in such matters as military policy, the environment, and, needless to say, taxation. Nevertheless, there remains the firm reference to the public sector.How can fraud be innocent? In his inimitable style, Galbraith offers the answer. His taut, wry, and severe comment is essential reading for everyone who cares about America's future. This book is especially relevant in an election year, but it deeply concerns the much longer future.Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, from Arsenic to Zinc
By Hugh Aldersey-Williams. 2011
In the spirit of A Short History of Nearly Everything comes Periodic Tales. Award-winning science writer Hugh Andersey-Williams offers readers…
a captivating look at the elements—and the amazing, little-known stories behind their discoveries. Periodic Tales is an energetic and wide-ranging book of innovations and innovators, of superstition and science and the myriad ways the chemical elements are woven into our culture, history, and language. It will delight readers of Genome, Einstein’s Dreams, Longitude, and The Age of Wonder.Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience
By Michael S. Gazzaniga. 2015
Michael S. Gazzaniga, one of the most important neuroscientists of the twentieth century, gives us an exciting behind-the-scenes look at…
his seminal work on that unlikely couple, the right and left brain. Foreword by Steven Pinker.In the mid-twentieth century, Michael S. Gazzaniga, “the father of cognitive neuroscience,” was part of a team of pioneering neuroscientists who developed the now foundational split-brain brain theory: the notion that the right and left hemispheres of the brain can act independently from one another and have different strengths.In Tales from Both Sides of the Brain, Gazzaniga tells the impassioned story of his life in science and his decades-long journey to understand how the separate spheres of our brains communicate and miscommunicate with their separate agendas. By turns humorous and moving, Tales from Both Sides of the Brain interweaves Gazzaniga’s scientific achievements with his reflections on the challenges and thrills of working as a scientist. In his engaging and accessible style, he paints a vivid portrait not only of his discovery of split-brain theory, but also of his comrades in arms—the many patients, friends, and family who have accompanied him on this wild ride of intellectual discovery.The Fragile Earth: Writing from The New Yorker on Climate Change
By Elizabeth Kolbert. 2020
A New York Times New & Noteworthy BookOne of the Daily Beast’s 5 Essential Books to Read Before the ElectionA…
collection of the New Yorker’s groundbreaking reporting from the front lines of climate change—including writing from Bill McKibben, Elizabeth Kolbert, Ian Frazier, Kathryn Schulz, and moreJust one year after climatologist James Hansen first came before a Senate committee and testified that the Earth was now warmer than it had ever been in recorded history, thanks to humankind’s heedless consumption of fossil fuels, New Yorker writer Bill McKibben published a deeply reported and considered piece on climate change and what it could mean for the planet. At the time, the piece was to some speculative to the point of alarmist; read now, McKibben’s work is heroically prescient. Since then, the New Yorker has devoted enormous attention to climate change, describing the causes of the crisis, the political and ecological conditions we now find ourselves in, and the scenarios and solutions we face. The Fragile Earth tells the story of climate change—its past, present, and future—taking readers from Greenland to the Great Plains, and into both laboratories and rain forests. It features some of the best writing on global warming from the last three decades, including Bill McKibben’s seminal essay “The End of Nature,” the first piece to popularize both the science and politics of climate change for a general audience, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning work of Elizabeth Kolbert, as well as Kathryn Schulz, Dexter Filkins, Jonathan Franzen, Ian Frazier, Eric Klinenberg, and others. The result, in its range, depth, and passion, promises to bring light, and sometimes heat, to the great emergency of our age.Joy on Demand: The Art of Discovering the Happiness Within
By Chade-Meng Tan. 2016
A long-awaited follow-up to the New York Times bestselling Search Inside Yourself shows us how to cultivate joy within the…
context of our fast-paced lives and explains why it is critical to creativity, innovation, confidence, and ultimately success in every arena.In Joy on Demand, Chade-Meng Tan shows that you don’t need to meditate for hours, days, months or years to achieve lasting joy—you can actually get consistent access to it in as little as fifteen seconds. Explaining joy and meditation as complementary things that naturally reinforce each other, Meng explains how these two skills form a virtuous cycle, and once put into motion, become a solid practice that can be sustained in daily life.For many years, meditation has been taught and practiced in cultures where almost all meditators practice full-time for years, resulting in training programs optimized for practitioners with lots of free time and not much else to do but develop profound mastery over the mind. Seeing a disconnect between the traditional practice and the modern world, the bestselling author and Google’s “Jolly Good Fellow” has developed a program, through “wise laziness,” to help readers meditate more efficiently and effectively. Meng shares the three pillars of joy (inner peace, insight, and happiness), why joy is the secret is to success, and demonstrates the practical tools anyone can use to cultivate it on demand.Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe
By Greg Epstein. 2009
A provocative and positive response to Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and other New Atheists, Good Without God makes…
a bold claim for what nonbelievers do share and believe. Author Greg Epstein, the Humanist chaplain at Harvard, offers a world view for nonbelievers that dispenses with the hostility and intolerance of religion prevalent in national bestsellers like God is Not Great and The God Delusion. Epstein’s Good Without God provides a constructive, challenging response to these manifestos by getting to the heart of Humanism and its positive belief in tolerance, community, morality, and good without having to rely on the guidance of a higher being.For lovers of language and fans of Blink and Freakonomics, New York Times bestselling author James Geary offers this fascinating look at metaphors and their…
influence in every aspect of our lives, from art to medicine, psychology to the stock market.From President Obama’s political rhetoric to the bursting of the housing bubble, from conversations to commercials, James Geary shows that every aspect of our day-to-day experience is molded by metaphor. Geary takes readers from Aristotle’s investigation of metaphor right up to the latest neuroscientific insights into how metaphor works in the brain. Romeo’s exclamation “It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!” may be one of the most well-known metaphors in literature, but metaphor is more than a device of love-struck poets. As Geary demonstrates, metaphor has leaped off the page and landed with a mighty splash right in the middle of the stream of consciousness.Witty, persuasive, and original, I Is an Other explores metaphor’s effects on financial decision making, effective advertising, leadership, learning, and more.Vital Organs
By Suzie Edge. 2023
The remarkable stories of the world's most famous body parts.Louis XIV's rear end inspired the British National Anthem. Queen Victoria's…
armpit led to the development of antiseptics.Robert Jenkin's ear started a war.All too often, historical figures feel distant and abstract; more myth and legend than real flesh and blood. These stories of bodies and its parts remind us that history's most-loved, and most-hated, were real breathing creatures who inhabited organs and limbs just like us - until they're cut off that is.Medical historian Dr Suzie Edge investigates over 40 cases of how we've used, abused, dug up, displayed, experimented on, and worshipped body parts, including why Percy Shelley's heart refused to burn; how Yao Niang's toes started a 1000 year long ritual; why a giant's bones are making us rethink medical ethics; and the strange case of Hitler's right testicle.WJEC Level 1/2 Vocational Award Engineering (Technical Award) - Student Book (Revised Edition)
By Matthew Wrigley, Carl Williams. 2024
This popular Student Book has been revised and updated in line with WJEC's new Level 1/2 Technical Award specification for…
first teaching from September 2022. Written by an experienced Engineering teacher and examiner, it offers high quality support you can trust.- Carefully designed to be accessible, flexible, practical and student-friendly.- Introduces students to many of the basic engineering skills and principles and gives them a good understanding of the subject area.- Shows students how to communicate effectively as an engineer via 3D drawing techniques and technical drawings as well as how to use and identify many tools, machines and pieces of equipment that are commonplace in the engineering world.- Includes new exam-style questions to help students practice and prepare for the exams.- Provides links to other relevant areas of the specification to encourage a more holistic understanding of topics.- Includes a variety of features to ensure students get the most out of the course and achieve their potential in the exams.Rich Forever: What They Didn’t Teach You about Money, Finance and Investments in School
By Bianca Miller-Cole, Byron Cole. 2023
Discover what they should have taught you about money, finance and investment at schoolRemember when talking about money was taboo?…
Times have changed and in our times, with so many radical and disruptive changes to the economy, the role of the entrepreneur now embedded at the centre of so much societal and technological change, and digital currencies changing the way we think about exchange, money has become a vital, insistent of conversation for everyone. All of us acknowledge it matters desperately; yet so few of us really understand it.The press and social media are awash with rags to riches stories, stories of kitchen table businesses that become multi-million-pound enterprises. Stories of teenagers and young adults investing in digital currencies from their bedrooms. On the flip side of these aspirational stories there is the reality of the everyday person who simply wants to understand what to and what not to do with their money. Should they save or invest, if they invest - what in, if they save - what for? Should they buy a home or rent, should they live for the moment or live for retirement. How does having credit provide more credit and would insurance be the best bet if all falls around you and what the hell is APR anyway?Finance and money are topics we all wish we learnt at school but instead we find ourselves having to 'learn on the job', having to do deep investigations and 'trust' the advice from online experts. There must be a better way and a better place to go to for this insight and here we have it, courtesy of two authors who have known hardship and huge success - "What they should have taught you about money, finance and investment at school' to fill that void.(P)2023 Hodder & Stoughton LimitedJournal of the Association for Consumer Research, volume 9 number 2 (April 2024)
By Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. 2024
This is volume 9 issue 2 of Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. The Journal of the Association for…
Consumer Research (JACR) publishes quarterly thematic issues exploring unique topics in consumer behavior. The mission of JACR is to broaden the intellectual scope and interdisciplinary influence of the Association for Consumer Research. Each issue of JACR has a well-defined theme, chosen from the broad substantive, managerial, and methodological topics relevant to understanding consumer behavior; and each issue is directed by a different team of editors who, with their relevant experience and expertise, are best poised to assemble outstanding articles around that theme.At a time when consulting has increasingly come under scrutiny by governments and communities, Professional Management Consulting: A Guide for…
New and Emerging Consultants redefines “management consulting” and reinforces what it means to be a professional. With a focus on the importance of ethical practice and continuous personal development for building reputation, this easy‑to‑read book sets a new benchmark for aspiring consultants.Based on sound research and supported by the author’s background in leadership, management consulting practice, research, business strategy, and academia over several decades, Blackman brings together a range of tried and tested theoretical models commonly used by successful consultants. Drawing on his own experiences as a director of the industry’s peak body, the International Council of Management Consulting Institutes, he provides a clear explanation on what a management consultant is and how and why clients use consultants to help them solve complex problems and manage change. With an emphasis on the importance of building and recognising relationships as a basis for problem‑solving and implementing change, this book is an essential contribution to the profession worldwide.This book is a vital resource for new and emerging professional consultants. It is suitable as an introductory text for business/commerce and engineering undergraduate students and a secondary reading for graduate students in engineering and management.Wild Treasures: A Year of Extraordinary Encounters with Cornwall's Wildlife
By Hannah Stitfall. 2024
'An anarchically charming calendar of Cornwall's wildlife. This is Stitfall in spadefuls; she celebrates the ragged corner of the UK…
and all its natural treasures. So refreshing!' - Chris PackhamGet up close to Cornwall's wildlife with this magical guide to the yearHannah Stitfall is a TV presenter and zoologist, who regularly gets up in the early hours of the morning to try and catch sight of some of Cornwall's best hidden wildlife. She will spend hours on end waiting for a creature to appear among a hedgerow, scurrying across Cornwall's open fields or taking flight across its towering cliffs and sandy beaches. In these brief, magical moments, Hannah is able to see and capture animal behaviour that the general public rarely get to witness. In this book, Hannah shares her incredible stories, beautiful photographs and often funny meetings with Cornwall's wildlife through the course of a year. From brown hares boxing in the grass in the spring, watching an otter cub hunt in the wetlands in winter, to witnessing the unique bioluminescence of a glow-worm in the summer, Wild Treasures is a remarkable diary, informative guide and joyous celebration of our nation's wonderful creatures.Wild Treasures: A Year of Extraordinary Encounters with Cornwall's Wildlife
By Hannah Stitfall. 2024
'An anarchically charming calendar of Cornwall's wildlife. This is Stitfall in spadefuls; she celebrates the ragged corner of the UK…
and all its natural treasures. So refreshing!' - Chris PackhamGet up close to Cornwall's wildlife with this magical guide to the yearHannah Stitfall is a TV presenter and zoologist, who regularly gets up in the early hours of the morning to try and catch sight of some of Cornwall's best hidden wildlife. She will spend hours on end waiting for a creature to appear among a hedgerow, scurrying across Cornwall's open fields or taking flight across its towering cliffs and sandy beaches. In these brief, magical moments, Hannah is able to see and capture animal behaviour that the general public rarely get to witness. In this book, Hannah shares her incredible stories, beautiful photographs and often funny meetings with Cornwall's wildlife through the course of a year. From brown hares boxing in the grass in the spring, watching an otter cub hunt in the wetlands in winter, to witnessing the unique bioluminescence of a glow-worm in the summer, Wild Treasures is a remarkable diary, informative guide and joyous celebration of our nation's wonderful creatures.