The Children's Blizzard
"David Laskin deploys historical fact of the finest grain to tell the story of a monstrous blizzard that caught the settlers of the Great Plains utterly by surprise. . . . This is a book best read with a fire roaring in the hearth and a blanket and box of tissues near at hand." -- Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City"Heartbreaking. . . . This account of the 1888 blizzard reads like a thriller." -- Entertainment WeeklyThe gripping true story of an epic prairie snowstorm that killed hundreds of newly arrived homesteaders and cast a shadow on the promise of the American frontier.January 12, 1888, began as an unseasonably warm morning across the Great Plains of Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, the weather so mild that children walked to school without coats and gloves. But that afternoon, without warning, the atmosphere suddenly, violently changed. One moment the air was calm; the next the sky exploded in a raging chaos of horizontal snow and hurricane-force winds. Temperatures plunged as an unprecedented cold front ripped through the center of the continent.By the next morning, some five hundred people lay dead on the drifted prairie after a devastating natural disaster, many of them children who had perished on their way home from country schools. In a few terrifying hours, the hopes of the pioneers had been blasted by the bitter realities of their harsh environment. Recent immigrants from Germany, Norway, Denmark, and the Ukraine learned that their free homestead was not a paradise but a hard, unforgiving place governed by natural forces they neither understood nor controlled.With the storm as its dramatic, heartbreaking focal point, The Children's Blizzard captures this pivotal moment in American history by tracing the stories of five families who were forever changed that day. In this powerful work of narrative nonfiction, David Laskin has produced a masterful portrait of a tragic crucible in the settlement of the American heartland.The P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.Laskin's meticulous account of this Gilded Age tragedy reveals: Pioneer History: The harrowing true story of settlers on the American frontier, lured by the promise of free land only to face an unforgiving environment they could not control.Extreme Weather: A minute-by-minute account of January 12, 1888, when an unseasonably mild day exploded into a hurricane of snow, trapping hundreds of adults and children without warning.A Survival Story: The intertwined fates of five immigrant families whose lives were forever changed by a few terrifying hours, a pivotal event in 19th-century history.Historical Nonfiction: Meticulously researched and deeply moving, this portrait of an epic prairie snowstorm reads with the urgency of a thriller.
Whale And The Supercomputer
In The Whale and the Supercomputer, scientists and natives wrestle with our changing climate in the land where it has hit first--and hardest A traditional Eskimo whale-hunting party races to shore near Barrow, Alaska-their comrades trapped on a floe drifting out to sea-as ice that should be solid this time of year gives way. Elsewhere, a team of scientists transverses the tundra, sleeping in tents, surviving on frozen chocolate, and measuring the snow every ten kilometers in a quest to understand the effects of albedo, the snow's reflective ability to cool the earth beneath it. Climate change isn't an abstraction in the far North. It is a reality that has already dramatically altered daily life, especially that of the native peoples who still live largely off the land and sea. Because nature shows her footprints so plainly here, the region is also a lure for scientists intent on comprehending the complexities of climate change. In this gripping account, Charles Wohlforth follows the two groups as they navigate a radically shifting landscape. The scientists attempt to decipher its smallest elements and to derive from them a set of abstract laws and models. The natives draw on uncannily accurate traditional knowledge, borne of long experience living close to the land. Even as they see the same things-a Native elder watches weather coming through too fast to predict; a climatologist notes an increased frequency of cyclonic systems-the two cultures struggle to reconcile their vastly different ways of comprehending the environment. With grace, clarity, and a sense of adventure, Wohlforth--a lifelong Alaskan--illuminates both ways of seeing a world in flux, and in the process, helps us to navigate a way forward as climate change reaches us all.
High Tide
"President Bush and his Administration have risen to the global warming challenge with responses ranging from obfuscation to pretense to outright denial...I'd like to issue each and every one of them a challenge. Come with me--see what I have seen--and try to understand what global warming really means for us and for our children. Leave Washington and travel to the places I have visited..."--From the Preface A glacier disappears high in the Peruvian Andes. Floodwaters surge across the English countryside. Ten thousand Pacific Islanders begin to evacuate their homeland. A dust storm turns day into night across the Inner Mongolian plains. These events may seem unrelated, but they are not. Even as scientists and other experts debate the specifics, climate crisis is already affecting the lives of millions. In this ground-breaking book, Mark Lynas reveals the first evidence--collected during an epic three-year journey across five continents--about how global warming is hitting people's lives all around the world. From American hurricane chasers to Mongolian herders, from Alaskan Eskimos to South Sea islanders, Lynas's encounters and discoveries give us a stark warning about the even worse dangers that lie ahead if nothing is done. High Tide's message is urgent and its revelations are at once shocking and inspiring--shocking as so few of us yet realize the magnitude of what's happening, and inspiring as there is still time to avert much greater catastrophe. No one who reads this book will be able to look their children in the eyes and say "I didn't know." As global temperatures soar to record levels, Lynas bears witness to: - CRIPPLING DROUGHT: China's Yellow River no longer reaches the sea for half the year, and villages across the north of the country are disappearing under advancing sand dunes - BAKED ALASKA: Permafrost is melting, leaving houses, roads and whole forests sucked into the thawing ground. Winter is in retreat, leaving animals confused and Native Alaskan people without a livelihood - DISAPPEARING GLACIERS: Every glaciated mountain range on Earth is experiencing massive ice losses. Montana's Glacier National Park has lost 100 glaciers in the last century; only 50 remain. Water supplies to hundreds of millions of people--from Peru to Pakistan--are threatened - HIGH TIDES: Islanders on the tiny South Pacific nation of Tuvalu are already leaving their homeland as rising sea levels engulf their atolls. Today 70 percent of the world's sandy shorelines are retreating; up to 90 percent of the beaches on the Eastern U.S. seaboard are eroding fast - CATASTROPHIC FLOODS: English villagers now talk about a "wet season" rather than a winter. Heavier rainfall is now falling across the global mid-latitudes, from the continental U.S. to Russia, sparking devastating floods on an ever more frequent basis.
My Big Toe
Book 1 of the MY Big TOE trilogy. My Big TOE, written by a nuclear physicist in the language contemporary culture, unifies science and philosophy, physics and metaphysics, mind and matter, purpose and meaning, the normal and the paranormal. The entirety of human experience (mind, body, and spirit) including both our objective and subjective worlds is brought together under one seamless scientific understanding. Book 1: Awakening - Section 1 provides a partial biography of the author that is pertinent to the subsequent creation of this trilogy. This brief look at the author's unique experience and credentials sheds some light upon the origins of this highly unusual work. Section 2 lays out and defines the basic conceptual building blocks needed to construct My Big TOE's conceptual foundation. It discusses the cultural beliefs that trap our thinking into a narrow and limited conceptualization of reality, defines the basics of Big Picture epistemology and ontology; logically infers the nature of time, space, and consciousness as well as describes the basic properties, purpose, and mechanics of our reality. Many of the concepts initiated in Section 2 are more fully explained in Book 2.
My Big Toe Inner
Book 3 of the MY Big TOE trilogy. My Big TOE, written by a nuclear physicist in the language contemporary culture, unifies science and philosophy, physics and metaphysics, mind and matter, purpose and meaning, the normal and the paranormal. The entirety of human experience (mind, body, and spirit) including both our objective and subjective worlds is brought together under one seamless scientific understanding. Book 3: Inner Workings - Section 5 presents the formal reality model in detail. In this section the mechanics of reality are explained. You will find out how the past present and future are formed, how they can be altered, and how you interact with the larger reality as an individuated unit of consciousness. Here you will find an explanation of inter and intra dimensional awareness and the theoretical possibilities of teleportation, time travel as a few of the more fun ramifications of this reality model are probed. Section 6 provides the wrap-up that puts everything discussed into an easily understood perspective. Additionally, Section 6 points out My Big TOE's relationship with contemporary science and philosophy. By demonstrating a close conceptual relationship between this TOE and some of the establishment's biggest scientific and philosophic intellectual guns, Section 6 integrates My Big TOE into traditional Western science and philosophy.
The Search for Life on Mars
Hidden beneath the sterile surface of Earth's neighboring planet may be the keys to unlocking the origins of life in the universe. An expert on extreme-life environments, Malcolm Walter argues that the best place to find evidence of life on Mars is out of reach of telescopes and space probes -- it's in the rocks and subsurface water of the Red Planet. In this engaging and authoritative book, Walter unveils his dramatic plan-already adopted by NASA -- for finding these elusive traces of life.
Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection
In 1973, Carl Sagan published The Cosmic Connection, a daring view of the universe, which rapidly became a classic work of popular science and inspired a generation of scientists and enthusiasts. This seminal work is reproduced here for a whole new generation to enjoy. In Sagan's typically lucid and lyrical style, he discusses many topics from astrophysics and solar system science, to colonization, terraforming and the search for extraterrestrials. Sagan conveys his own excitement and wonder, and relates the revelations of astronomy to the most profound human problems and concerns: issues that are just as valid today as they were thirty years ago. New to this edition are Freeman Dyson's comments on Sagan's vision and the importance of the work, Ann Druyan's assessment of Sagan's cultural significance as a champion of science, and David Morrison's discussion of the advances made since 1973 and what became of Sagan's predictions. Who knows what wonders this third millennium will reveal, but one thing is certain: Carl Sagan played a unique role in preparing us for them.
Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder
Biologist, humanist, and bestselling author Richard Dawkins deeply examines the inherent beauty within modern scientific discoveries. "If any recent writing about science is poetic, it is this" (The Wall Street Journal).Did Newton "unweave the rainbow" by reducing it to its prismatic colors, as Keats contended? Did he, in other words, diminish beauty? Far from it, says acclaimed scientist Richard Dawkins; Newton's unweaving is the key to much of modern astronomy and to the breathtaking poetry of modern cosmology. Mysteries don't lose their poetry because they are solved: the solution often is more beautiful than the puzzle, uncovering deeper mysteries. With the wit, insight, and spellbinding prose that have made him a bestselling author, Dawkins takes up the most important and compelling topics in modern science, from astronomy and genetics to language and virtual reality, combining them in a landmark statement of the human appetite for wonder. Unweaving the Rainbow is a brilliant assessment of what science is (and isn't), a tribute to science not because it is useful but because it is uplifting.
Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award: the "intensely exciting" story of a group of brilliant scientists who set out to answer the deepest questions about the origin of the universe and changed the course of physics and astronomy forever (Newsday). In southern California, nearly a half century ago, a small band of researchers -- equipped with a new 200-inch telescope and a faith born of scientific optimism -- embarked on the greatest intellectual adventure in the history of humankind: the search for the origin and fate of the universe. Their quest would eventually engulf all of physics and astronomy, leading not only to the discovery of quasars, black holes, and shadow matter but also to fame, controversy, and Nobel Prizes. Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos tells the story of the men and women who have taken eternity on their shoulders and stormed nature in search of answers to the deepest questions we know to ask. "Written with such wit and verve that it is hard not to zip through in one sitting." --Washington Post
The Life of the Cosmos
Lee Smolin offers a new theory of the universe that is at once elegant, comprehensive, and radically different from anything proposed before. Smolin posits that a process of self organization like that of biological evolution shapes the universe, as it develops and eventually reproduces through black holes, each of which may result in a new big bang and a new universe. Natural selection may guide the appearance of the laws of physics, favoring those universes which best reproduce. The result would be a cosmology according to which life is a natural consequence of the fundamental principles on which the universe has been built, and a science that would give us a picture of the universe in which, as the author writes, "the occurrence of novelty, indeed the perpetual birth of novelty, can be understood." Smolin is one of the leading cosmologists at work today, and he writes with an expertise and force of argument that will command attention throughout the world of physics. But it is the humanity and sharp clarity of his prose that offers access for the layperson to the mind bending space at the forefront of today's physics.
A Brief History of Time 時間簡史：從大爆炸到黑洞
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Published more than two decades ago to great critical acclaim and commercial success, A Brief History of Time has become a landmark volume in science writing. Stephen Hawking, one of the great minds of our time, explores such profound questions as: How did the universe begin--and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unending--or are there boundaries? Are there other dimensions in space? What will happen when it all ends? Told in language we all can understand, A Brief History of Time plunges into the exotic realms of black holes and quarks, of antimatter and "arrows of time," of the big bang and a bigger God--where the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected. With exciting images and profound imagination, Stephen Hawking brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of creation.
A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes 時間簡史：從大爆炸到黑洞
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A landmark volume in science writing by one of the great minds of our time, Stephen Hawking's book explores such profound questions as: How did the universe begin--and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unending--or are there boundaries? Are there other dimensions in space? What will happen when it all ends? Told in language we all can understand, A Brief History of Time plunges into the exotic realms of black holes and quarks, of antimatter and "arrows of time," of the big bang and a bigger God--where the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected. With exciting images and profound imagination, Stephen Hawking brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of creation.
Peterson First Guide to Clouds and Weather
This Peterson First guide contains easy-to-understand answers to questions about the weather, such as why the sky is blue, what makes it rain, and what causes rainbows. The book also features 116 color photographs that show how to identify clouds, with explanations of what each cloud type tells about the weather to come.
The Little Book of the Big Bang
Here is a concise, understandable guide for everyone who has long wondered what the cosmologists are talking about. Succinctly and simply, Craig Hogan explains what happened in the Big Bang (and how we know), why we think the universe is expanding, and what its fate may be. He explains such terms as "cosmic inflation", "cosmic background radiation," and "dark matter" and shows why they're important. Everyone who is mystified by news stories about the universe (and reports that "the Big Bang theory is in trouble") can get a quick, painless grounding in the basics from this entertaining little book.
Eclipse!
The most complete guide to viewing eclipses-including details on every solar and lunar eclipse through 2017 Want to observe the most fleeting eclipse phenomena, take dramatic photos, and keep a detailed record of the experience? Now you can be prepared. This comprehensive one-stop resource covers everything you need to know about solar and lunar eclipses-why they happen, how to view them, how to photograph them, even when and where they will occur through the year 2017. Here's where to turn for: * Detailed explanations of eclipse mechanics and dynamics, viewing techniques, and what to look for, both in the sky and all around you* Extended discussions of eclipse photography and videography-film selection and developing, filter requirements, special care of equipment, and more* Intriguing individual and group activities you can carry out during an eclipse to heighten your enjoyment and deepen your understanding of the event* Detailed maps and discussions on how and where to best view each eclipse, plus travel considerations, likely weather conditions, and equipment recommendations Whether you're a backyard astronomer, a dedicated eclipse chaser, or a teacher guiding students through their first eclipse experience, Eclipse! provides the in-depth, detailed, practical information you need to make the most of these thrilling celestial marvels of nature.
Mining the Sky
While we worry over the depletion of the earth's natural resources, the pollution of our planet, and the challenges presented by the earth's growing population, billions of dollars worth of metals, fuels, and life-sustaining substances await us in nearby space. In this visionary book, noted planetary scientist John S. Lewis explains how we can mine these precious metals from the asteroids, comets, and planets in our own solar system for use in space construction projects. And this is just one of the possibilities. Join John S. Lewis as he contemplates milking the moons of Mars for water and hollowing out asteroids for space-bound homesteaders-all while demonstrating the economic and technical feasibility of plans that were once considered pure fiction
Comet
What are these graceful visitors to our skies? We now know that they bring both life and death and teach us about our origins. Comet begins with a breathtaking journey through space astride a comet. Pulitzer Prize-winning astronomer Carl Sagan, author of Cosmos and Contact, and writer Ann Druyan explore the origin, nature, and future of comets, and the exotic myths and portents attached to them. The authors show how comets have spurred some of the great discoveries in the history of science and raise intriguing questions about these brilliant visitors from the interstellar dark. Were the fates of the dinosaurs and the origins of humans tied to the wanderings of a comet? Are comets the building blocks from which worlds are formed? Lavishly illustrated with photographs and specially commissioned full-color paintings, Comet is an enthralling adventure, indispensable for anyone who has ever gazed up at the heavens and wondered why.Praise for Comet "Simply the best." --The Times of London "Fascinating, evocative, inspiring." --The Washington Post "Comet humanizes science. A beautiful, interesting book." --United Press International "Masterful . . . science, poetry, and imagination." --The Atlanta Journal & Constitution
On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres
The Ptolemaic system of the universe, with the earth at the center, had held sway since antiquity as authoritative in philosophy, science, and church teaching. Following his observations of the heavenly bodies, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) abandoned the geocentric system for a heliocentric model, with the sun at the center. His remarkable work, On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres, stands as one of the greatest intellectual revolutions of all time, and profoundly influenced, among others, Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton.
Time, Space and Things
There are some wonderfully bizarre ideas in physics, and it seems a pity to keep them locked up in small boxes, available only to an esoteric coterie of key holders. Brian Ridley's book sets out to survey in simple, nonmathematical terms what physics has to say about the fundamental structure of the universe. He deals with all the basic concepts of modern physics: elementary particles, black holes, gravity, quantum theory, time, mass, relativity and energy; this new edition also includes coverage of more recently emerging ideas, including strings, imaginary time and chaos. Ridley's clear and witty account gives an exciting introduction to the nonspecialist while offering a fresh perspective to scientists themselves.
