For most of recorded history, this remarkably pliable and sturdy substance has proven invaluable: not only did the ancient Romans build their empire on mining copper but Christopher Columbus protected his ships from rot by lining their hulls with it. Today, the metal can be found in every house, car, airplane, cell phone, computer, and home appliance the world over, including in all the new, so-called green technologies. Yet the history of copper extraction and our present relationship with the metal are fraught with profound difficulties. Copper mining causes irrevocable damage to the Earth, releasing arsenic, cyanide, sulfuric acid, and other deadly pollutants into the air and water. And the mines themselves have significant effects on the economies and wellbeing of the communities where they are located. With Red Summer and Fools Rush In, Bill Carter has earned a reputation as an on-the-ground journalist adept at connecting the local elements of a story to its largest consequences. Carter does this again—and brilliantly—in Boom, Bust, Boom, exploring in an entertaining and fact-rich narrative the very human dimension of copper extraction and the colossal implications the industry has for every one of us. Starting in his own backyard in the old mining town of Bisbee, Arizona—where he discovers that the dirt in his garden contains double the acceptable level of arsenic—Bill Carter follows the story of copper to the controversial Grasberg copper mine in Indonesia; to the “ring” at the London Metal Exchange, where a select group of traders buy and sell enormous amounts of the metal; and to an Alaskan salmon run threatened by mining. Boom, Bust, Boom is a highly readable account—part social history, part mining-town exploration, and part environmental investigation. Page by page, Carter blends the personal and the international in a narrative that helps us understand the paradoxical relationship we have with a substance whose necessity to civilization costs the environment and the people who mine it dearly. The result is a work of first-rate journalism that fascinates on every level.

    When one of his release sites was raided by a golden eagle, he managed to save a peregrine chick, and decided to make an improbable two-thousand-mile trip with the surviving young falcon, Dolly. From the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico, following the autumnal migration of waterfowl, O'Brien taught her to hunt as a wild falcon would, in the hopes of releasing her into the natural world. The Rites of Autumn is the riveting account of their incredible journey. (51/2 X 81/4, 208 pages, map)

    And then, why couldn't they find the caldera or crater? Because, as an aerial photograph finally revealed, the caldera is 45 miles wide, encompassing all of Yellowstone. What will happen, in human terms, when it erupts? Greg Breining explores the shocking answer to this question and others in a scientific yet accessible look at the enormous natural disaster brewing beneath the surface of the United States. Yellowstone is one of the world's five "super volcanoes." When it erupts, much of the nation will be hit hard. Though historically Yellowstone has erupted about every 600,000 years, it has not done so for 630,000, meaning it is 30,000 years overdue. Starting with a scenario of what will happen when Yellowstone blows, this fascinating study describes how volcanoes function and includes a timeline of famous volcanic eruptions throughout history.

    Simply written yet comprehensive, this invaluable field guide will appeal to you whether you are a nature enthusiast or a botanist.

    For these beginning and intermediate enthusiasts, National Geographic Birding Essentials is a must. Comprehensive and authoritative, yet engaging and user-friendly, it teaches readers how to begin and improve their birding... what to look and listen for... and how to make sense of what they see and hear. A unique visual component shows actual field guide pages and how to read them, while another compares the same bird in photography versus artwork and explains how to use both for species identification. National Geographic's quality photography is a major highlight of the book, supplemented by pencil drawings and full-color maps to give the novice and intermediate birder a full range of visual information.Field Ornithologists Jonathan Alderfer and Jon Dunn have crafted a masterful guide, striking just the right balance of practical information and reader-friendly tone. Chapters discuss the pleasures of birding, equipment needed, how to read range maps, birds' physical features, how to identify birds, identification challenges, bird classification and suggested books and journals for building a fine birding library.National Geographic has established a stellar reputation among birders with our blockbuster Field Guide to the Birds of North America. The tradition continues as we serve an entry-level market that continually needs the helpful, up-to-the-minute information found in National Geographic Birding Essentials.

    These centuries gave birth to the basic concepts from which modern physics has evolved. In this first volume of his celebrated UNDERSTANDING PHYSICS, Isaac Asimov deals with this fascinating, momentous stage of scientific development with an authority and clarity that add further lustre to an eminent reputation. Demanding the minimum of specialized knowledge from his audience, he has produced a work that is the perfect supplement to the student’s formal textbook, as well as offering invaluable illumination to the general reader.

    November 2015 is the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s discovery of the General Theory of Relativity.Levenson, head of MIT’s Science Writing Program, tells the captivating, unusual, and nearly-forgotten backstory behind Einstein’s invention of the Theory of Relativity, which completely changed the course of science forever. For over 50 years before Einstein developed his theory, the world’s top astronomers spent countless hours and energy searching for a planet, which came to be named Vulcan, that had to exist, it was thought, given Isaac Newton’s theories of gravity. Indeed, in the two centuries since Newton’s death, his theory had essentially become accepted as fact. It took Einstein’s genius to realize the mystery of the missing planet wasn’t a problem of measurements or math but of Newton’s theory of gravity itself. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity proved that Vulcan did not and could not exist, and that the decades-long search for it had merely been a quirk of operating under the wrong set of assumptions about the universe. Thomas Levenson tells this unique story, one of the strangest episodes in the history of science, with elegant simplicity, fast-paced drama, and lively characters sure to capture the attention of a wide group of readers.

    It develops an understanding of function and evolution into the discussion of anatomy of the various systems.

    Sextant by David Barrie has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

    Its eruption in 1783 is one of history's great, untold natural disasters. Spewing out sun-blocking ash and then a poisonous fog for eight long months, the effects of the eruption lingered across the world for years. It caused the deaths of people as far away as the Nile and created catastrophic conditions throughout Europe.Island on Fire is the story not only of a single eruption but the people whose lives it changed, the dawn of modern volcanology, as well as the history—and potential—of other super-volcanoes like Laki around the world. And perhaps most pertinently, in the wake of the eruption of another Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, which closed European air space in 2010, acclaimed science writers Witze and Kanipe look at what might transpire should Laki erupt again in our lifetime.

    The 7 Keys to Success contains an important message – it is time for you to wake-up and start living the life you were born to live, and to do that, you need to acquire these seven important keys.By living the life you were born to lead, you will not only go on to achieve great success, you will also know that inner peace that comes from living a life that truly matters; one that actually makes a difference. So read this inspirational book today and begin to live your life on purpose.- Inspirational Stories- Instant Motivation- Find Your Life Purpose- Reach Your Goals- Change Your LifeStart your own personal journey and discover the true meaning of success today!

    

    Its effects on our view of life have been wide and deep. One of the most world-shaking books ever published, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, first appeared in print over 130 years ago, and it touched off a debate that rages to this day.Every modern evolutionist turns to Darwin's work again and again. Current controversies in the life sciences very often have as their starting point some vagueness in Darwin's writings or some question Darwin was unable to answer owing to the insufficient biological knowledge available during his time. Despite the intense study of Darwin's life and work, however, many of us cannot explain his theories (he had several separate ones) and the evidence and reasoning behind them, nor do we appreciate the modifications of the Darwinian paradigm that have kept it viable throughout the twentieth century.Who could elucidate the subtleties of Darwin's thought and that of his contemporaries and intellectual heirs--A. R. Wallace, T. H. Huxley, August Weismann, Asa Gray--better than Ernst Mayr, a man considered by many to be the greatest evolutionist of the century? In this gem of historical scholarship, Mayr has achieved a remarkable distillation of Charles Darwin's scientific thought and his enormous legacy to twentieth-century biology. Here we have an accessible account of the revolutionary ideas that Darwin thrust upon the world. Describing his treatise as "one long argument," Darwin definitively refuted the belief in the divine creation of each individual species, establishing in its place the concept that all of life descended from a common ancestor. He proposed the idea that humans were not the special products of creation but evolved according to principles that operate everywhere else in the living world; he upset current notions of a perfectly designed, benign natural world and substituted in their place the concept of a struggle for survival; and he introduced probability, chance, and uniqueness into scientific discourse.This is an important book for students, biologists, and general readers interested in the history of ideas--especially ideas that have radically altered our worldview. Here is a book by a grand master that spells out in simple terms the historical issues and presents the controversies in a manner that makes them understandable from a modern perspective.

    Unwitting humans create a zone of disturbance that scatters the wildlife. Respectful humans who heed the birds acquire an awareness that radically changes the dynamic. We are welcome in their habitat. The birds don't fly away. The larger animals don't race off. No longer hapless intruders, we now find, see, and engage the deer, the fox, the red-shouldered hawk—even the elusive, whispering wren.Deep bird language is an ancient discipline, perfected by Native peoples the world over. Finally, science is catching up. This groundbreaking book unites the indigenous knowledge, the latest research, and the author's own experience of four decades in the field to lead us toward a deeper connection to the animals and, in the end, a deeper connection to ourselves.

    Throughout these adventures, Rinella found himself contemplating his own place among the 14,000 years’ worth of buffalo hunters in North America, as well as the buffalo’s place in the American experience. At the time of the Revolutionary War, North America was home to approximately 40 million buffalo, the largest herd of big mammals on the planet, but by the mid-1890s only a few hundred remained. Now that the buffalo is on the verge of a dramatic ecological recovery across the West, Americans are faced with the challenge of how, and if, we can dare to share our land with a beast that is the embodiment of the American wilderness. American Buffalo is a narrative tale of Rinella’s hunt. But beyond that, it is the story of the many ways in which the buffalo has shaped our national identity. Rinella takes us across the continent in search of the buffalo’s past, present, and future: to the Bering Land Bridge, where scientists search for buffalo bones amid artifacts of the New World’s earliest human inhabitants; to buffalo jumps where Native Americans once ran buffalo over cliffs by the thousands; to the Detroit Carbon works, a “bone charcoal” plant that made fortunes in the late 1800s by turning millions of tons of buffalo bones into bone meal, black dye, and fine china; and even to an abattoir turned fashion mecca in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, where a depressed buffalo named Black Diamond met his fate after serving as the model for the American nickel. Rinella’s erudition and exuberance, combined with his gift for storytelling, make him the perfect guide for a book that combines outdoor adventure with a quirky blend of facts and observations about history, biology, and the natural world. Both a captivating narrative and a book of environmental and historical significance, American Buffalo tells us as much about ourselves as Americans as it does about the creature who perhaps best of all embodies the American ethos.