Off-Camera Flash: Techniques for Digital Photographers


Neil van Niekerk - 2011
    Seeking to address the various challenges of off-camera lighting, professional photographers and advanced amateurs alike will find a range of confidence-building instruction, beginning with basic how’s and why’s of lighting for creative effect, the types of equipment available and instruction about their proper use, clear definitions of various technical concepts such as managing shutter speed and controlling flash exposure, using ambient light as well as natural sunlight during a shoot, and incorporating off-camera flash into a portrait session. Concluding this lesson plan is a look at five different real-life photo sessions, each employing a different flash technique. Here, photographers get a deeper understanding of each concept put into practice, marrying the elements of lighting with the natural elements presented by the shoot.

Victorian London: The Tale of a City 1840-1870


Liza Picard - 2005
    This period of mid-Victorian London covers a huge span: Victoria's wedding and the place of the royals in popular esteem; how the very poor lived, the underworld, prostitution, crime, prisons and transportation; the public utilities - Bazalgette on sewers and road design, Chadwick on pollution and sanitation; private charities - Peabody, Burdett Coutts - and workhouses; new terraced housing and transport, trains, omnibuses and the Underground; furniture and decor; families and the position of women; the prosperous middle classes and their new shops, e.g. Peter Jones, Harrods; entertaining and servants, food and drink; unlimited liability and bankruptcy; the rich, the marriage market, taxes and anti-semitism; the Empire, recruitment and press-gangs. The period begins with the closing of the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons and ends with the first (steam-operated) Underground trains and the first Gilbert & Sullivan.

God Needs To Go: Why Christian Beliefs Fail


J.D. Brucker - 2012
    It brings comfort, purpose, and sense of pride. These feelings mean so much to the Christian. But are these feelings justified? Do Christians have good reason to trust the truth of their beliefs? Author J. D. Brucker brings forth a short collection of arguments against Christian beliefs, exposing the falsehoods of the faith so many all around the world cherish.

100 Lost Rock Albums From The 1970s


Matthew Ingram - 2012
    From The Wire: "Matthew Ingram, aka Woebot, has published a book titled 100 Lost Rock Albums From The 1970s. The book takes in strands of metal, glam rock, French artists, punk and pub rock, and is released digitally as a self-published eBook via Amazon. Ingram says: 'Last year I started writing an article on the 100 Lost Rock Albums From The 1970s but it ballooned out of all proportions and I decided to turn it into an eBook.''Over time we have lost touch with the original character of the 70s. Using 'lost' records I've attempted to re-examinine the decade and redress what I see as imbalance. Beyond small reviews of a meticulously-selected 100 albums there's quite a lot of contemporary history, much theorising and lots of gags.'"

The Weather of the Pacific Northwest


Cliff Mass - 2008
    Local weather features dominate the meteorological landscape, from the Puget Sound convergence zone and wind surges along the Washington Coast, to gap winds through the Columbia Gorge and the "Banana Belt" of southern Oregon. This book is the first comprehensive and authoritative guide to Northwest weather that is directed to the general reader; helpful to boaters, hikers, and skiers; and valuable to expert meteorologists.In The Weather of the Pacific Northwest, University of Washington atmospheric scientist and popular radio commentator Cliff Mass unravels the intricacies of Northwest weather, from the mundane to the mystifying. By examining our legendary floods, snowstorms, and windstorms, and a wide variety of local weather features, Mass answers such interesting questions as:o Why does the Northwest have localized rain shadows?o What is the origin of the hurricane force winds that often buffet the region?o Why does the Northwest have so few thunderstorms?o What is the origin of the Pineapple Express?o Why do ferryboats sometimes seem to float above the water's surface?o Why is it so hard to predict Northwest weather?Mass brings together eyewitness accounts, historical records, and meteorological science to explain Pacific Northwest weather. He also considers possible local effects of global warming. The final chapters guide readers in interpreting the Northwest sky and in securing weather information on their own.

Titanic: The Most Complete Story Ever Told


Matthew Vollbrecht - 2012
    The perfect balance between a historical reference and a gripping novel, this book offers an accurate and up-to-date account of every aspect of the Titanic saga, from its inception and construction to its more recent discovery and its impact on society and culture. The author also examines what has changed since Titanic was built and speaks to the question of whether a similar disaster could ever happen again. Complete with photos and web links, this book is written in an informal style that is appropriate for anyone interested in the subject - even young readers.

The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World


Edward Dolnick - 2011
    A meld of history and science, this book is a group portrait of some of the greatest minds who ever lived as they wrestled with nature’s most sweeping mysteries. The answers they uncovered still hold the key to how we understand the world.At the end of the seventeenth century—an age of religious wars, plague, and the Great Fire of London—when most people saw the world as falling apart, these earliest scientists saw a world of perfect order. They declared that, chaotic as it looked, the universe was in fact as intricate and perfectly regulated as a clock. This was the tail end of Shakespeare’s century, when the natural land the supernatural still twined around each other. Disease was a punishment ordained by God, astronomy had not yet broken free from astrology, and the sky was filled with omens. It was a time when little was known and everything was new. These brilliant, ambitious, curious men believed in angels, alchemy, and the devil, and they also believed that the universe followed precise, mathematical laws—-a contradiction that tormented them and changed the course of history.The Clockwork Universe is the fascinating and compelling story of the bewildered geniuses of the Royal Society, the men who made the modern world.

The Great Train Robbery: Crime of the Century


Nick Russell-Pavier - 2013
    In the early hours of Thursday, August 8, 1963, at Sears Crossing near Cheddington in Buckinghamshire, £2.6 million (£45 million today) in unmarked £5, £1 and 10-shilling notes was stolen from the Glasgow to London mail train in a violent and daring raid which took forty-six minutes. Quickly dubbed "the Crime of the Century," it has captured the imagination of the public and the world's media for fifty years, taking its place in British folklore. Ronnie Biggs, Bruce Reynolds, and Buster Edwards became household names, and their accounts have fed the myths and legends of The Great Train Robbery. But what really happened? This definitive account dismantles the myths and strips away the sensational headlines to reveal a flawed, darker, and more complex story. The crime, the police investigation, the trial, two escapes from high-security prisons, and an establishment under siege are all laid bare in astonishing detail for an epic tale of crime and punishment. Fifty years later, here is the story set out in full for the first time—a true-life crime thriller, and also a vivid slice of British social history.

A Guide to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot


Liss Ross - 2012
    It includes a list of important people and important terms, and overall book summary, a chapter by chapter book summary as well as a supplemental essay.

A History of the World in 12 Maps


Jerry Brotton - 2012
    Starting with Ptolemy, "father of modern geography," and ending with satellite cartography, A History of the World in 12 Maps brings maps from classical Greece, Renaissance Europe, and the Islamic and Buddhist worlds to life and reveals their influence on how we—literally—look at our present world. As Brotton shows, the long road to our present geographical reality was rife with controversy, manipulation, and special interests trumping science. Through the centuries maps have been wielded to promote any number of imperial, religious, and economic agendas, and have represented the idiosyncratic and uneasy fusion of science and subjectivity. Brotton also conjures the worlds that produced these notable works of cartography and tells the stories of those who created, used, and misused them for their own ends.

The Faceless Villain: A Collection of the Eeriest Unsolved Murders of the 20th Century: Volume One


Jenny Ashford - 2017
    This volume is comprised of the years 1900 through 1959, and includes all of the best known cases of the period, as well as many more lesser-known murders, all presented in a compelling chronological narrative that takes the reader on a grisly journey through the blood-soaked avenues of early twentieth century crime. Featuring: The Peasenhall Murder. The Seal Chart Murder. The Atlanta Ripper. The Villisca Axe Murders. The Axeman of New Orleans. The Green Bicycle Case. Little Lord Fauntleroy. Hinterkaifeck Farm. The St. Aubin Street Massacre. The Wallace Case. The Atlas Vampire. The Brighton Trunk Crime. The Cleveland Torso Murderer. The Horror in Room 1046. Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm? The Pitchfork Murder. The Sodder Children. The Phantom Killer. The Black Dahlia. Somerton Man. The Grimes Sisters. The Boy in the Box. And Much More!

Fatal Passions


Adrian Vincent - 2016
     In trunks, under floorboards, in remote ravines — even in their own beds — the bodies of those for whom their lovers’ passion proved fatal have been found, and often through the stench of decay. One ingenious killer boiled down his wife’s remains in a vat at his sausage factory. Another throttled and incinerated a perfect stranger in order to stage his own death and thus escape the charge of bigamy. Then there were the lesbian schoolgirls who bludgeoned to death the mother of one of them with a brick in a stocking. Her crime: she had tried to keep them apart. Whilst one woman kept her lover in a secret attic for years until he shot her husband dead. A dark narrative, Adrian Vincent expertly brings together some of the world’s most notorious killer. In sixteen fascinating case histories, Fatal Passions tells the true stories of those who have literally loved someone to death. Praise for Adrian Vincent ‘A skilfully written account’ – Kirkus Reviews. Adrian Vincent worked in Fleet Street for twenty-seven years, becoming managing editor of IPC’s educational magazines. He is the author of many books on art and antiques, novels and true crime.

Amazing & Extraordinary Facts: Royal Family Life


Ruth Binney - 2012
    From difficult childhoods to fashion icons, from love matches to divorces, and from unrehearsed coronations to assassination attempts and untimely deaths.Curiosity about Britain’s rulers and their next of kin never seems to wane, and it is this compendium about the lives of the members of the Royal Family that makes this so utterly compelling.

Uncle John's Gigantic Bathroom Reader (Uncle John's Bathroom Reader #10 & 12)


Bathroom Readers' Institute - 2006
    Make that pretty huge. No, wait--it's GIGANTIC! Presenting Uncle John's Gigantic Bathroom Reader, featuring two of our best-selling and hard-to-find titles: Uncle John's Absolutely Absorbing Bathroom Reader and Uncle John's Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader, now bound together in this omnibus hardcover edition for your reading pleasure. Tipping the scales at more than 700 pages, this massive missive is guaranteed to boost your IQ! Packed with fun facts, tantalizing tidbits, and intriguing information, this is no book for the faint of heart. This gigantic volume has it all: entertainment, humor, forgotten history, science, origins of everyday things, strange lawsuits, and a great big pile of pop culture. So don't go to your throne alone -- take Uncle John with you!

Re:cyclists: 200 Years on Two Wheels


Michael Hutchinson - 2017
    The calls to ban it were more or less instant.Re:cyclists is the tale of what happened next, of how we have spent two centuries wheeling our way about town and country on bikes--or on two-wheeled things that vaguely resembled what we now call bikes. Michael Hutchinson picks his way through those 200 years, discovering how cycling became a kinky vaudeville act for Parisians, how it became an American business empire, and how it went on to find a unique home in the British Isles. He considers the penny-farthing riders exploring the abandoned and lonely coaching roads during the railway era, and the Victorian high-society cyclists of the 1890s bicycle craze--a time when no aristocratic house party was without bicycles and when the Prince of Wales used to give himself an illicit thrill on a weekday afternoon by watching the women's riding-school in the Royal Albert Hall.Re:cyclists looks at how cycling became the sport, the pastime and the social life of millions of ordinary people, how it grew and how it suffered through the 1960s and '70s, and how at the dawn of the twenty-first century it rose again, much changed but still ultimately just someone careering along on two wheels.