In this extraordinary feat of nature writing, we meet ants who harvest crops, raise insects as livestock, build roadways and bridges, embark on nuptial flights, and make war.

    From the tenth to the fifteenth centuries the earth experienced a rise in surface temperature that changed climate worldwide—a preview of today's global warming. In some areas, including Western Europe, longer summers brought bountiful harvests and population growth that led to cultural flowering. In the Arctic, Inuit and Norse sailors made cultural connections across thousands of miles as they traded precious iron goods. Polynesian sailors, riding new wind patterns, were able to settle the remotest islands on earth. But in many parts of the world, the warm centuries brought drought and famine. Elaborate societies in western and central America collapsed, and the vast building complexes of Chaco Canyon and the Mayan Yucatan were left empty.As he did in his bestselling The Little Ice Age, anthropologist and historian Brian Fagan reveals how subtle changes in the environment had far-reaching effects on human life, in a narrative that sweeps from the Arctic ice cap to the Sahara to the Indian Ocean. The history of the Great Warming of a half millennium ago suggests that we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives today—and our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the "silent elephant in the room."Learn more at www.brianfagan.com.Brian Fagan discusses The Great Warming on The Daily Show with John Stewart.PRAISE for The Great Warming:"This is not only World History at its best, sweeping across all of humankind with a coherent vision, but also a feat of imagination and massive research. If Fagan has given the medieval period throughout the globe a new dimension, he has at the same time issued an irrefutable warning about climate change that is deeply troubling."—Theodore Rabb, author of The Last Days of the Renaissance"Climate has been making history for a very long time, though historians have rarely paid much attention to it. But as it turns out, a few less inches of rain, a change in temperature of just a degree or two can make all the difference in how human events unfold. The Great Warming demonstrates that although human beings make history, they very definitely do not make it under circumstances of their own choosing.”—Ted Steinberg, author of Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History and American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn

    This book not only examines content creation and the concepts behind development, but it also give readers a background on the evolution of game development and how it has become what it is today. GAME DEVELOPMENT ESSENTIALS also includes chapters on project management, development team roles and responsibilities, development cycle, marketing, maintenance, and the future of game development. With the same engaging writing style and examples that made the first two editions so popular, this new edition features all the latest games and game technology. Coverage of new game-related technology, development techniques, and the latest research in the field make this an invaluable resource for anyone entering the exciting, competitive, ever-changing world of game development.

    I have taught these simple processes to men and women all over the world, and recently over a thousand men and women of all religious affiliations attended a special class in Los Angeles where I presented the highlights of what is offered in the pages of this book. Many came from distances of two hundred miles for each class lesson. The special features of this book will appeal to you because they show you why oftentimes you get the opposite of what you prayed for and reveal to you the reasons why. People have asked me in all parts of the world and thousands of times, ?Why is it I have prayed and prayed and got no answer?? In this book you will find the reasons for this common complaint. The many ways of impressing the subconscious mind and getting the right answers make this an extraordinarily valuable book and an ever present help in time of trouble.

    For outsiders, Pyrrus usually means a quick and painful death, but DinAlt is fleeing the crooked casino masters of Cassylia - where he just broke the bank. But DinAlt is not prepared for the hellish Pyrrus, where every living thing seems bent on exterminating mankind.In DEATHWORLD 2 (originally published as THE ETHICAL ENGINEER), Jason DinAlt finds himself on a hostile, barbarian planet where technology and civilization have almost disappeared. Using his skills, DinAlt literally reinvents the wheel in his quest to escape and return to his friends on Pyrrus.

    

    It provides a concise and relevant treatment of inorganic chemistry and is written with such clarity that it is undoubtedly among the easiest to read of its competitors." Content "Atomic structure and the Periodic table Introduction to bonding The ionic bond The covalent bond The metallic bond General properties of the elements Coordination compounds Hydrogen and the hydrides Group 1 - The alkali metals The chlor-alkali industry Group 2 - The alkaline earth elements The group 13 elements The group 14 elements The group 15 elements Group 16 - the chalcogens Group 17 - the halogens Group 18 - the noble gases An introduction to the transition elements Group 3 - The scandium group Group 4 - The titanium group Group 5 - The vanadium group Group 6 - The chromium group Group 7 - The manganese group Group 8 - The iron group Group 9 - The cobalt group Group 10 - The nickel Group. Group 11 - The copper group: Coinage metals. Group 12 - The zinc group The lanthanide series. The actinides."

    Then, in the 20th century, an incredible turnaround took place. Conservationists outlawed commercial hunting, created wildlife sanctuaries, transplanted isolated species to restored habitats and imposed regulations on hunters and trappers. Over decades, they slowly nursed many wild populations back to health.            But after the Second World War something happened that conservationists hadn’t foreseen: sprawl. People moved first into suburbs on urban edges, and then kept moving out across a landscape once occupied by family farms. By 2000, a majority of Americans lived in neither cities nor country but in that vast in-between. Much of sprawl has plenty of trees and its human residents offer up more and better amenities than many wild creatures can find in the wild: plenty of food, water, hiding places, and protection from predators with guns. The result is a mix of people and wildlife that should be an animal-lover’s dream-come-true but often turns into a sprawl-dweller’s nightmare.Nature Wars offers an eye-opening look at how  Americans lost touch with the natural landscape, spending 90 percent of their time indoors where nature arrives via television, films and digital screens in which wild creatures often behave like people or cuddly pets.  All the while our well-meaning efforts to protect animals allowed wild populations to burgeon out of control, causing damage costing billions, degrading ecosystems, and touching off disputes that polarized communities, setting neighbor against neighbor. Deeply researched, eloquently written, counterintuitive and often humorous Nature Wars will be the definitive book on how we created this unintended mess.

    Equally remarkable, she did it solo, on a bike cobbled together from used parts. Her panniers were recycled buckets. In Bicycling with Butterflies, Dykman recounts her incredible journey and the dramatic ups and downs of the nearly nine-month odyssey. We’re beside her as she navigates unmapped roads in foreign countries, checks roadside milkweed for monarch eggs, and shares her passion with eager schoolchildren, skeptical bar patrons, and unimpressed border officials. We also meet some of the ardent monarch stewards who supported her efforts, from citizen scientists and researchers to farmers and high-rise city dwellers. With both humor and humility, Dykman offers a compelling story, confirming the urgency of saving the threatened monarch migration—and the other threatened systems of nature that affect the survival of us all.

    We start counting our fingers and toes and end up balancing checkbooks and calculating risk. So powerful is the appeal of numbers that many people ascribe to them a mystical significance. Other numbers go beyond the supernatural, working to explain our universe and how it behaves. In Cosmic Numbers, mathematics professor James D. Stein traces the discovery, evolution, and interrelationships of the numbers that define our world. Everyone knows about the speed of light and absolute zero, but numbers like Boltzmann’s constant and the Chandrasekhar limit are not as well known, and they do far more than one might imagine: They tell us how this world began and what the future holds. Much more than a gee-whiz collection of facts and figures, Cosmic Numbers illuminates why particular numbers are so important—both to the scientist and to the rest of us.

    The story spans more than forty years, following the fate of a magnificent sand dune on Lake Michigan and the people who care about it. Author and narrator Heather Shumaker shares the remarkable untold stories behind protecting land and creating new nature preserves. Written in a compelling narrative style, the book is intended in part as a case study for landscape-level conservation and documents the challenges of integrating economic livelihoods into conservation and what it really means to "preserve" land over time.This is the story of a small band of determined townspeople and how far they went to save beloved land and endangered species from the grip of a powerful corporation. Saving Arcadia is a narrative with roots as deep as the trees the community is trying to save, something set in motion before the author was even born. And yet, Shumaker gives a human face to the changing nature of land conservation in the twenty-first century. Throughout this chronicle we meet people like Elaine, a nineteen-year-old farm wife; Dori, a lakeside innkeeper; and Glen, the director of the local land trust. Together with hundreds of others they cross cultural barriers and learn to help one another in an effort to win back the six-thousand-acre landscape taken over by Consumers Power that is now facing grave devastation. The result is a triumph of community that includes working farms, local businesses, summer visitors, year-round residents, and a network of land stewards.A work of creative nonfiction, Saving Arcadia is the adventurous tale of everyday people fighting to reclaim the land that has been in their family for generations. It explores ideas about nature and community, and anyone from scholars of ecology and conservation biology to readers of naturalist writing can gain from Arcadia's story.

    It has distinctive circular or semicircular creamy white markings on the face around the eyes, reminiscent of spectacles.Stephen Fry: Large, unwieldy and with a distinctive bent nose and characteristic rumbling tones. Wide-buttocked from hours of sitting at writing desks and on barstools.It has been a personal mission of Stephen Fry’s to draw the world’s attention to this endangered species. A BBC television programme of Fry’s Peru trip was broadcast on New Year’s Day 2002, and a follow-up programme was made when he went back to Peru and helped to rescue a mate for the first young bear. This is his diary of the experience. It is packed with beautiful colour pictures of Stephen, bears and Peru and it is, of course, wildly funny. Stephen Fry is set to become the Diane Fossey of the bear world.All author proceeds will go to “Bear Rescue.”

    Called orca by some, and killer whales by others, these mysterious animals have become part of Ingrid's life. She has got to know many orca by sight and calls them her friends. Her experiences with orca challenge their fearsome reputation: she gets into the water with them, watches them hunt, and communicates in any way she can. Ingrid is the only orca researcher working in the South Pacific. This book details her fascinating discoveries, as well as telling her own personal story and describing her amazing adventures.

    Line drawings and black-and-white photographs.

    These secrets will help you get great salary raises, get selected in a job interview, & even get a promotion easily. Here are the closely-guarded secrets that will be revealed in this never-before disclosure. Career Secret # 1: Why would you be fired? Can you avoid the dreaded Pink Slip? And why the most-beloved perk 'Work From Home' is the surest ticket out of the company? For the first time ever, you will be taken behind the scenes of a mass-firing (multiple layoffs). You will understand what prompts a company to fire its loyal employees (this means you). And the biggest insider secret... if you are Working from Home, why you will get laid off in the next few months. You will also learn how to protect your job & make yourself almost 'fire'proof. Career Secret # 2: Job sites are utterly useless Sick and tired of job hunting? Learn why job sites are utterly useless & where you need to focus your energies for a job search. This one strategy will increase your probability of getting a job from a measly 1% to a stunning 60%. Career Secret # 3: Your experience or skills doesn't matter in an Interview! Did you know that your experience or skills doesn't count for the hiring manager? What is the recruiter really looking for? It's this one little thing... Career Secret # 4: Your manager doesn't care what you did the whole year Are you surprised? Or did I confirm what you already suspected? Is everything you are doing in your job, all in vain? Not yet. This secret will tell you how to get on your manager's radar. Career Secret # 5: Appraisal ratings and increments are your manager's headache. Here's how to force your manager to give you a fat paycheck. There is a ton of information on salary negotiation during a job interview. What about salary negotiation during a performance review? This secret will tell you the simplest & easiest way to rate your own performance. And how to make an epic presentation that will force your manager to grudgingly give you a great rating & an excellent salary raise.