The Green and the Black: America's Energy Revolution and What It Might Mean for You and the World


Gary Sernovitz - 2016
    The prototypical New York liberal, he is also an oil man - a fact his left-leaning friends let slide until the word "fracking" entered popular parlance. "How can you frack?" they suddenly demanded, aghast. But for Sernovitz, the real question is, "How can we not?"Fracking has become a four letter word; an effigy to be burned by anyone who claims to care about the environment. But most people don't know what it means. For the first time in one book, Sernovitz explains the reality of fracking: how it can be made safer; how the oil business works; how a small change in extraction techniques shocked our assumptions about fueling the future. When we criticize fracking, what we're really criticizing is the shale revolution. And while we're right to question the safety of drilling for natural gas, we're wrong to ignore all the good that gas enables. If we lived in a perfect world, our lives would run cleanly on wind and solar power. But we live in this world, and this world needs fossil fuels.The Green and the Black bridges the gap in America's energy education and clears up the most critical controversies. It introduces readers to shale as the "Internet of oil," using lively wit and firsthand knowledge to persuasively demonstrate that fracking, when done correctly - safely, with respect for the surrounding environment - is the sustainable way to harness the benefits of the resources we have.

Cayenne Pepper Cures (Miracle Healers from the Kitchen)


Sharon Daniels - 2012
    It is more powerful than any other." - Dr. Richard Schulze, Medical Herbalist from herbdoc.com.Hats off to you! You've just plunged into a wealth of information that hardly any professional doctors have a clue about. Get ready to relish in the brilliance of the kitchen miracle that surgeons shun and doctors disgrace.A sea of unknown, unrevealed information awaits you. This book will act as your guide, so that you will soon be able to harness the full power of cayenne - the herb I once took for granted, and the herb that I now owe my health.Everyone out there seems to be promoting good health. Well, that's great. Good health is something that needs to be promoted. You need herbs, not drugs. You need nature, not synthetics. You need to use the proven, natural, side-affect-free healers that the earth is full of, not the clear, cold liquids that scientists processed through a test tube.If I had the time, I'd drive from house to house, shaking people out of their beds and telling them to wake up to the miracles of cayenne. But I can't, so I've got the next best thing.This report, which I've been compiling for a while, is brimming with the fiery brilliance of cayenne and all that I've found out about it.For example, cayenne has been known to cure 17 big diseases. It has been known to stop a heart attack in a matter of minutes. It can sharpen your vision better than the most powerful contact lenses available. It can expand your arteries like anything, giving the blood room to really flow and travel everywhere, from your arms (giving you strength) to your brain (giving you better brainpower). It can cure arthritis and much, much more.If your heart can't pump enough blood to a certain area, take cayenne pepper.Because if you're on prescription medications, you could take up to a year (or more!) to heal. But if you take cayenne, you could cut it down to a month or two.Did you know that if you take garlic in the right proportions, you can bring your blood pressure back to normal in three months?Well, if you add cayenne, you could cut that down to three days.Cayenne can unclog your kidneys and your sinuses, allow you to breathe freely and restore broken, bleeding gums to normal. Cayenne, in short, is a kitchen miracle.I owe my health to cayenne. I hope that by reading this report, you soon will too.To your health,Sharon Daniels

The History Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained


R.G. Grant - 2010
    One hundred crystal-clear articles explore the Law Code of Hammurabi, the Renaissance, the American Revolution, World War II, and much, much more, bringing the events and people of history to life.As part of DK's award-winning Big Ideas Simply Explained series, The History Book uses infographics and images to explain key ideas and themes. Biographies of key leaders, thinkers, and warriors, from Julius Caesar to Barack Obama, offer insight into their lives and further historical insight into these world-changing episodes.The History Book makes the past 4,000 years of history accessible and provides enlightenment on the forces that shaped the world as we know it today, for students and history buffs alike.Series Overview: Big Ideas Simply Explained series uses creative design and innovative graphics, along with straightforward and engaging writing, to make complex subjects easier to understand. These award-winning books provide just the information needed for students, families, or anyone interested in concise, thought-provoking refreshers on a single subject.Reviews:"[The Big Ideas Simply Explained books] are beautifully illustrated with shadow-like cartoons that break down even the most difficult concepts so they are easier to grasp. These step-by-step diagrams are an incredibly clever learning device to include, especially for visual learners." - Examiner.com"The visual layout promotes browsing with illustrations, pull quotes, and simple mind maps to explain concepts quickly." - Library Journal"Accessible guide to the great thinkers." - School Library Journal"Clever and engaging." - Booklist

The Vinyl Dialogues: Stories behind memorable albums of the 1970s as told by the artists


Mike Morsch - 2014
    The Vinyl Dialogues offers the stories behind 31 of the top albums of the 70s, including backstories behind the albums, the songs, and the artists. It was the 1970s: Big hair, bell-bottomed pants, Elvis sideburns and puka shell necklaces. The drugs, the freedom, the Me Generation, the lime green leisure suits. And then there was the music and how it defined a generation. The birth of Philly soul, the Jersey Shore Sound and disco. It's all there in "The Vinyl Dialogues," as told by the artists who lived and made Rock and Roll history throughout the decade.Throw in a little political intrigue - The Guess Who being asked not to play its biggest hit, "American Woman," at a White House appearance and Brewer and Shipley being called political subversives and making President Nixon's infamous "enemies list" - and "The Vinyl Dialogues offers a first-hand snapshot of a country in transition, hung over from the massive cultural changes of the 1960s and ready to dress outrageously and to shake its collective booty. All seen through the eyes, recollections and perspectives of the artists who lived it and made all that great music on all those great albums.

Hemingway's Hurricane


Phil Scott - 2005
    Keys residents boarded up their shacks under an ominous sky and sank their skiffs in the mangroves. Atlantic tarpon raced between the Keys to the relative safety of the Gulf of Mexico. In Key West, Ernest Hemingway secured his stone house and his 38-foot boat Pilar against the oncoming storm. And yet, through the long Labor Day Weekend of 1935, the superintendents of three government work camps in the Florida Keys, which housed more than 600 World War I veterans building a highway across the islands, did virtually nothing to evacuate the men in their charge.In Hemingway's Hurricane, author Phil Scott chronicles the days of calamity when the low-lying Upper Florida Keys were stripped bare and submerged by the most powerful hurricane ever to hit the United States. From eyewitness accounts and depositions, he reconstructs the events in each camp as the hurricane made landfall—the terror, bravery, and sacrifices of men left to fend for themselves. He also explores why the train promised from Miami arrived too late to evacuate the men, and why those who tried to escape in their own vehicles were turned back by the National Guard. And he reveals Hemingway's horror when the novelist arrived in his boat two days after the storm to aid the veterans, only to discover that more than 250 had died in the storm, some sand-blasted by fierce winds, others skewered by flying timbers, and many simply blown out to sea.Ernest Hemingway's very public outrage over so many needless deaths spurred a congressional investigation that was widely dismissed as a whitewash. It was also a key factor in landing Hemingway on an FBI watch list, which contributed to his suicide twenty-six years later. In Hemingway's Hurricane, the Depression, bureaucratic failure, the cast-aside soldiers of an earlier war, a great novelist, and a killing storm come together in an American tragedy.The Final BlowThey were the forgotten members of the Lost Generation, traumatized veterans of the Great War who had struggled for years to claw their way back into the American Dream. Described by one journalist as "shell-shocked, Depression-shocked, and whiskey-shocked," they grasped for one last chance at redemption under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Six hundred of them were shuffled off to the Florida Keys to build a highway to Key West. On Labor Day Weekend 1935, the most intense hurricane ever to strike the U.S. took aim on their flimsy shacks, and the two men responsible for evacuating the veterans from harm's way waited too long.After the storm, Ernest Hemingway took his boat from his home in Key West to aid the veterans in the Upper Keys. But he found few survivors among the wreckage and bloated corpses, and his public cries of outrage bound him forever to the storm."Hemingway's Hurricane brilliantly and compellingly captures the events surrounding the 1935 storm, showing how human factors compounded the awful force of sky and sea."

Myths & Legends: An Illustrated Guide to Their Origins and Meanings


Philip Wilkinson - 1999
    Their narratives, themes, and characters address and provide answers to eternal questions: where do we come from, how do we live, what do we believe in? This fascinating book explores the major myths and legends across the world, from Classical mythology to Eastern beliefs, and from American legends to African folk tales. The stories are retold in compelling detail, while key aspects of each myth are considered: their meaning, purpose, and power; the main characters; and their importance to modern culture.Special illustrations and photographs combine with informative text, family trees, and a focus on themes such as creation, death, and the afterlife. From Gilgamesh to Quetzalcoatl, Heracles to Pan Gu, Myths and Legends provides a full and captivating reference guide to the worlds of mythical beings, mortal heroes, and immortal gods.

The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers


Michael Newton - 1990
    From Jack the Ripper to Ted Bundy, the encyclopedia gives readers an overview of what is undoubtedly the most macabre and fascinating branch of crime and modern criminology.

The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism


Fritjof Capra - 1975
    

Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer


Roy Peter Clark - 2006
    "You need tools, not rules." His book distills decades of experience into 50 tools that will help any writer become more fluent and effective. WRITING TOOLS covers everything from the most basic ("Tool 5: Watch those adverbs") to the more complex ("Tool 34: Turn your notebook into a camera") and provides more than 200 examples from literature and journalism to illustrate the concepts. For students, aspiring novelists, and writers of memos, e-mails, PowerPoint presentations, and love letters, here are 50 indispensable, memorable, and usable tools. "Pull out a favorite novel or short story, and read it with the guidance of Clark's ideas. . . . Readers will find new worlds in familiar places. And writers will be inspired to pick up their pens." -Boston Globe"For all the aspiring writers out there-whether you're writing a novel or a technical report-a respected scholar pulls back the curtain on the art." -Atlanta Journal-Constitution"This is a useful tool for writers at all levels of experience, and it's entertainingly written, with plenty of helpful examples." -Booklist

Bad Astronomy


Philip Plait - 2002
    Plait created his popular web site: http://www.badastronomy.com/index.html, to debunk bad astronomy in popular culture. This website proved popular, which led to this first book by Plait, that carries on from the website and in a detailed and clear fashion criticises and disproves popular myths and misconceptions relating to astronomy, and promotes science as a means of explaining the skies. The work describes 24 common astronomical fallacies, including the beliefs that the Coriolis effect determines the direction that water drains in a bathtub, and that planetary alignments can cause disaster on Earth. The author sharply and convincingly dismisses astrology, creationism, and UFO sightings, and explains the principles behind basic general concepts (the Big Bang, why the sky is blue, etc.).

Reality is Not What it Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity


Carlo Rovelli - 2014
    Here he explains how our image of the world has changed throughout centuries. Fom Aristotle to Albert Einstein, Michael Faraday to the Higgs boson, he takes us on a wondrous journey to show us that beyond our ever-changing idea of reality is a whole new world that has yet to be discovered.

The Story of England


Michael Wood - 2010
    It has a church, some pubs, the Grand Union Canal, a First World War Memorial - and many centuries of recorded history. In the thirteenth century the village was bought by William de Merton, who later founded Merton College, Oxford, with the result that documents covering 750 years of village history are lodged at the college. Building on this unique archive, and enlisting the help of the current inhabitants of Kibworth, with a village-wide archeological dig, with the first complete DNA profile of an English village and with use of local materials like family memorabilia, Michael Wood tells the extraordinary story of one English community over fifteen centuries, from the moment that the Roman Emperor Honorius sent his famous letter in 410 advising the English to look to their own defences to the village as it is today. The story of Kibworth is the story of England itself, a 'Who Do You Think You Are?' for the entire nation. It is the subject of a six-part BBC tv series to be shown in autumn 2010.

Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science-and the World


Rachel Swaby - 2015
    In 2013, the New York Times published an obituary for Yvonne Brill. It began: “She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job, and took eight years off from work to raise three children.” It wasn’t until the second paragraph that readers discovered why the Times had devoted several hundred words to her life: Brill was a brilliant rocket scientist who invented a propulsion system to keep communications satellites in orbit, and had recently been awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Among the questions the obituary—and consequent outcry—prompted were, Who are the role models for today’s female scientists, and where can we find the stories that cast them in their true light?      Headstrong delivers a powerful, global, and engaging response. Covering Nobel Prize winners and major innovators, as well as lesser-known but hugely significant scientists who influence our every day, Rachel Swaby’s vibrant profiles span centuries of courageous thinkers and illustrate how each one’s ideas developed, from their first moment of scientific engagement through the research and discovery for which they’re best known. This fascinating tour reveals these 52 women at their best—while encouraging and inspiring a new generation of girls to put on their lab coats.

The Perfection Point: Sport Science Predicts the Fastest Man, the Highest Jump, and the Limits of Athletic Performance


John Brenkus - 2010
    The Perfection Point is ideal for sports fans interested in the scientific basis of athletic excellence and a fascinating read for science fans interested in the physics of sports.

National Audubon Society Field Guide to California: Regional Guide: Birds, Animals, Trees, Wildflowers, Insects, Weather, Nature Pre Serves, and More


Peter Alden - 1998
    The most comprehensive field guide available to the flora and fauna of California--a portable, essential companion for visitors and residents alike--from the go-to reference source for over 18 million nature lovers.This compact volume contains:An easy-to-use field guide for identifying 1,000 of the state's wildflowers, trees, mushrooms, mosses, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, butterflies, mammals, and much more;A complete overview of California's natural history, covering geology, wildlife habitats, ecology, fossils, rocks and minerals, clouds and weather patterns and night sky;An extensive sampling of the area's best parks, preserves, beaches, forests, islands, and wildlife sanctuaries, with detailed descriptions and visitor information for 50 sites and notes on dozens of others.The guide is packed with visual information -- the 1,500 full-color images include more than 1,300 photographs, 14 maps, and 16 night-sky charts, as well as 150 drawings explaining everything from geological processes to the basic features of different plants and animals.