Bilateral, symmetrical, it could with equal speed travel in opposite directions. For some years, he had been planning a book about places in the world where people have been engaged in all-out battles with nature, about (in the words of the book itself) "any struggle against natural forces--heroic or venal, rash or well advised--when human beings conscript themselves to fight against the earth, to take what is not given, to rout the destroying enemy, to surround the base of Mt. Olympus demanding and expecting the surrender of the gods." His interest had first been sparked when he went into the Atchafalaya--the largest river swamp in North America--and had learned that virtually all of its waters were metered and rationed by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' project called Old River Control.In the natural cycles of the Mississippi's deltaic plain, the time had come for the Mississippi to change course, to shift its mouth more than a hundred miles and go down the Atchafalaya, one of its distributary branches. The United States could not afford that--for New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and all the industries that lie between would be cut off from river commerce with the rest of the nation. At a place called Old River, the Corps therefore had built a great fortress--part dam, part valve--to restrain the flow of the Atchafalaya and compel the Mississippi to stay where it is.In Iceland, in 1973, an island split open without warning and huge volumes of lava began moving in the direction of a harbor scarcely half a mile away. It was not only Iceland's premier fishing port (accounting for a large percentage of Iceland's export economy) but it was also the only harbor along the nation's southern coast. As the lava threatened to fill the harbor and wipe it out, a physicist named Thorbjorn Sigurgeirsson suggested a way to fight against the flowing red rock--initiating an all-out endeavor unique in human history. On the big island of Hawaii, one of the world's two must eruptive hot spots, people are not unmindful of the Icelandic example. McPhee went to Hawaii to talk with them and to walk beside the edges of a molten lake and incandescent rivers.Some of the more expensive real estate in Los Angeles is up against mountains that are rising and disintegrating as rapidly as any in the world. After a complex coincidence of natural events, boulders will flow out of these mountains like fish eggs, mixed with mud, sand, and smaller rocks in a cascading mass known as debris flow. Plucking up trees and cars, bursting through doors and windows, filling up houses to their eaves, debris flows threaten the lives of people living in and near Los Angeles' famous canyons. At extraordinary expense the city has built a hundred and fifty stadium-like basins in a daring effort to catch the debris.Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking in his vivid depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those who would attempt to wrest control from her--stubborn, often ingenious, and always arresting characters.

    This edition expands its scope as a conveniently arranged petroleum fluids reference book for the practicing petroleum engineer and an authoritative college text.

    These mummies, their ecology, and their preservation are the subject of this compelling book by paleontologist Dale Guthrie. The 1979 find of a frozen, extinct steppe bison in an Alaskan gold mine allowed him to undertake the first scientific excavation of an Ice Age mummy in North America and to test theories about these enigmatic frozen fauna. The 36,000-year-old bison mummy, coated with blue mineral crystals, was dubbed "Blue Babe." Guthrie conveys the excitement of its excavation and shows how he made use of evidence from living animals, other Pleistocene mummies, Paleolithic art, and geological data. With photographs and scores of detailed drawings, he takes the reader through the excavation and subsequent detective work, analyzing the animal's carcass and its surroundings, the circumstances of its death, its appearance in life, the landscape it inhabited, and the processes of preservation by freezing. His examination shows that Blue Babe died in early winter, falling prey to lions that inhabited the Arctic during the Pleistocene era. Guthrie uses information gleaned from his study of Blue Babe to provide a broad picture of bison evolutionary history and ecology, including speculations on the interactions of bison and Ice Age peoples. His description of the Mammoth Steppe as a cold, dry, grassy plain is based on an entirely new way of reading the fossil record.

    Expanded sections include those on the formation of oceanic crust, the variety of passive continental margins and the nature of convection in the mantle, and a new chapter draws together the material on continental rifts and sedimentary basins.Written by very eminent authors. Fred Vine was one of the pioneers of plate tectonic theory.Careful balance between geology and geophysics.New section of full colour plates.Addition of a new chapter drawing together the coverage of continental rifts and sedimentary basins.Expanded coverage, particularly of deep seismic reflection, hot spots and petrogenesis.

    Raymo, trace the Northeast across geological history to reveal the dynamic forces that have shaped the landscape. In vivid prose, the book presents colliding continents, disappearing oceans, movements of glaciers and other significant events. 28 maps and cross-sections; 15 line illustrations.

    Color and B/W photos highlight collecting areas and the specimens found there.

    Based on the premise that pictures can more clearly convey certain kinds of information, these dictionaries present a list of vocabulary relating to a subject together with a picture illustrating that subject. Each double-page spread links the words by number to the picture situation drawn from everyday life; 384 sections cover a broad range of subjects in the fields of science, medicine, technology, industry, commerce, and arts and leisure, including astronomy, automobiles, swimming, supermarkets, nuclear energy, nightclubs, and much more. Both English and foreign words appear on the same page for easy use. The dictionaries also provide fully alphabetized indices in both languages which refer the reader not only to the various subjects and contexts in which a word is used, but also to the correct translation and vocabulary of the entire subject. An essential reference for general readers, students, translators, travelers, and business people, The Oxford-Duden Pictorial Dictionaries serves as an invaluable supplement to other foreign language guides. The new editions featured below have been completely updated and revised to include the most recent innovations in science and technology and to offer increased coverage of all major fields of reference.

    Sund's aerial odyssey takes him the length and breadth of Washington, from the headwaters of the Columbia to the towering seastacks of the Olympic Peninsula.Leading Washington writer and historian Murray Morgan tells the fascinating stories behind these photographs, of the courage and vision of hardy pioneers who tamed the wild Columbia, cultivated the rich farmlands of the Eastern Washington, and crossed the mighty Cascades to bring industry and commerce to America's Northwest Pacific seaboard.Over Washington is a companion to the hour long television documentary, videotape and series of short features produced by KCTS 9, the leading PBS station serving the Northwest.

    This introduction to metamorphic petrology is part of a series which sets out to provide concise textbooks covering material that would commonly constitute a course unit in a geology or earth sciences degree, and which is designed to be international in scope.

    A great resource book for paleontologists.