An explanation of waves and how they are formed, in layman's terms.

    Distinguished by the foremost voices and publications—among them Pulitzer Prize-winner Amy Harmon, Nobel Prize–winner Al Gore, and award-winning and bestselling author Oliver Sacks—this anthology is a comprehensive overview of our most advanced and most relevant scientific inquiries.

    The most trusted sources in the auto industry have called its Model S the most advanced, safest and best-performing car ever built - and it doesn’t use a drop of gasoline. Tesla has changed the way the public perceives electric vehicles, and inspired the major automakers to revive their own dormant efforts to sell EVs. However, even amidst the avalanche of media coverage that followed the triumph of the Model S, few have grasped the true significance of what is happening. Tesla has redefined the automobile, sparked a new wave of innovation comparable to the internet and mobile computing revolutions, and unleashed forces that will transform not just the auto industry, but every aspect of society. The Tesla story is one part of an ongoing tide of change driven by the use of information technology to eliminate “friction” such as geographic distance, middlemen and outdated regulations. Tesla is simply applying the new order to the auto industry, but the automobile is such a pervasive influence in our lives that redefining how it is designed, built, driven and sold will have sweeping effects in unexpected areas. Just as Tesla built the Model S as an electric vehicle “from the ground up,” it has taken an outsider’s approach to the way it markets its cars. Its direct sales model has drawn legal challenges from entrenched auto dealers, who fear that their outdated business model will be destroyed. Its systems approach to the software and electronics in its cars has highlighted how far behind the technological times the major automakers are. It’s easy to see why readers find Tesla irresistible. CEO Elon Musk is a superstar entrepreneur, a “nauseatingly pro-US” immigrant and the leader of two other cutting-edge companies. Tesla dares to challenge the establishment behemoths and, so far at least, has handily beaten them at their own game. In this history of the 21st century’s most exciting startup, Charles Morris begins with a brief history of EVs and a biography of Tesla’s driving force, Elon Musk. He then details the history of the company, told in the words of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who made it happen. There are many fascinating stories here: Martin Eberhard’s realization that there were many like himself, who loved fast cars but wanted to help the environment and bring about the post-oil age; the freewheeling first days, reminiscent of the early internet era; the incredible ingenuity of the team who built the Roadster; Tesla’s near-death experience and miraculous resurrection; the spiteful split between the company’s larger-than-life leaders; the gloves-off battles with hostile media such as Top Gear and the New York Times; and the media’s ironic about-face when the magnificent Model S won the industry’s highest honors, and naysayers became cheerleaders overnight. And the story is just beginning: Tesla has breathtakingly ambitious plans for the future.This book was updated May 1, 2015 to include the latest on the Gigafactory and the D package.

    But after being named the conference’s top defensive player his junior season, the budding star was sidelined by a persistent, debilitating pain in his left leg.After months of tests, Herzlich received a shocking diagnosis: He had Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare bone cancer. Doctors put his odds of survival as low as fifteen percent—and no one thought he would be able to run, much less play, again. Then Herzlich learned of a radical alternative treatment that would give him the best chance to regain his strength and maybe even play football again. He had a choice to make, one that would allow him the chance to return to the game he loved, but it came at the risk of his life.Herzlich relied on family, friends, faith, and deep wells of determination to help him through treatment, and his drastic plan worked. Not only could he run, but he was stronger than ever physically, and mentally ready to battle his way to a spot on an NFL roster. When he was passed over by all 32 teams in the draft, he dug deeper and continued his training, winning a spot in the Giants’ training camp, and eventually, on the team.Mark Herzlich fought a battle against cancer, against statistics, and some days against himself. Told with candor and raw emotion, this is a story for anyone who has ever fought to beat the odds, for anyone who has ever been told that what they are about to attempt is next to impossible.Herzlich’s story embodies powerful lessons about what can be achieved through persistence and belief, and he serves as living proof that overcoming the impossible is only the beginning.With a foreword by New York Giants head coach Tom Coughlin

    A fascination for running in high places was born – a fascination that would direct him to Scotland. Running and racing, Jonny became the mountainside silhouette that first inspired him. His exploits inevitably led to Scotland’s supreme test of hill running: Ramsay’s Round, a daunting 60-mile circuit of twenty-four mountains, climbing the equivalent height of Mount Everest and culminating on Ben Nevis, to be completed within twenty-four hours. While Ramsay’s Round demands extraordinary endurance, the challenge is underpinned by simplicity and tradition, in a sport largely untainted by commercialism. The Mountains are Calling is the story of that sport in Scotland, charting its evolution over half a century, heralding its characters and the culture that has grown around them, ultimately capturing the irresistible appeal of running in high places.

    Taken by Collingwood at pick 58 in the 2001 ‘super draft’, no one saw a future Brownlow medallist but the scruffy kid knew how to get the ball. Right from the start he made two things clear: he didn’t like training and his mates and social life came first. Swan made front page news in 2003, and faced the sack after playing only three senior games. The infamous Collingwood Rat Pack took him under their wing, he thrived under Mick Malthouse’s coaching, and grew into a talented and nerveless big-occasion player with an incredible mix of power and speed. Off the field, his tattoos, deadpan delivery, transgressions and blunt refusal to become an AFL robot meant he was often used as clickbait.Despite mastering the art of appearing not to care about anything, in Dane Swan: My Story, Swan – for the first time – reveals the pride that drove him to succeed, his loyalty to family, mates and the club that gave him many last chances, and how he worked hard, his way. He takes us inside the highs of the premiership, and through the tumultuous years of the transition from Malthouse to Nathan Buckley. Footy might be only a game, but it’s one hell of a ride with Dane Swan.There’s no one like him at all in this day and age.Nick MaxwellOne of the greatest players in the history of this club. He marched to the beat of his own drum, always, off the ground more so than on it, but I always liked the fact that he was an individual. And whatever he was doing, it worked.Eddie McGuireThe bigger the game, the more turned on he was, and that became evident at the peak of his career because he played his best footy on the biggest stages.Nathan BuckleyWhat made Swanny so good? It was talent, hard work and mental toughness to be that consistent.Ben JohnsonIt was quite extraordinary the way that he just got on with it. He loved winning, he loved the challenge and underneath it, he is a very proud person.Mick MalthouseAbout the author: Dane Swan played 258 games for Collingwood Football Club. He achieved the ultimate team success as a premiership player, and his haul of individual awards is impressive: a Brownlow Medal, three Copeland Trophies, five All Australians, an AFLCA Most Valuable Player award, a Jim Stynes Medal, a couple of Anzac Medals, as well as a swag of top-three finishes in many awards. His unbelievably consistent output meant he averaged 26.85 disposals across 15 seasons, second only to Greg ‘Diesel’ Williams. Swan’s career came to an untimely end in round 1 of 2016. He is acknowledged as one of the best modern midfielders and a one-of-a-kind champion of the competition.

    

    This book considers many of those ideas and presents a new solution why three is the magic number.

    Whether he's explaining what goes through a ballplayer's mind when he faces a fastball in the chapter "My Face Was Crushed by a Bowling Ball Going 90mph", detailing bizarre rituals and superstitions performed by some of baseball's greatest players, or taking us into the locker room to see what transpires in the clubhouse of a Major League team, Kurkjian's tales are at times hilarious, other times horrifying, yet always entertaining.Kurkjian has spoken to some of the greatest ballplayers ever over the years and they have revealed details about themselves and the game they love with a candor that readers won't find anywhere else. Filled with anecdotes and fascinating insight, this is an essential book for baseball fans or anyone curious about America's pastime.

    In doing so, the authors synthesize information from astronomy, biology, and paleontology, and apply it to what we know about the rise of life on Earth and to what could possibly happen elsewhere in the universe. Everyone who has been thrilled by the recent discoveries of extrasolar planets and the indications of life on Mars and the Jovian moon Europa will be fascinated by Rare Earth, and its implications for those who look to the heavens for companionship.

    Jenkinson takes readers through Ruth's 1921 season, in which his pattern of battled balls would have accounted for more than 100 home runs in today's ballparks and under today's rules. Yet, 1921 is just tip of the iceberg, for Jenkinson's research reveals that during an era of mammoth field dimensions Ruth hit more 450-plus-feet shots than anybody in history, and the conclusions one can draw are mind boggling.

    The Tour is home to rowdy, randy young men often drunk with money and fame; fueled by alcohol and adrenaline, they barnstorm from town to town like rock stars, with all the attendant excesses. And in each player's shadow is his faithful caddie -- performing a thankless six-figure job that comes with all the security of a handshake deal. The PGA Tour offers fabulous rewards, but its good life does not come without a price. In Bud, Sweat, and Tees, Alan Shipnuck takes a no-holds-barred look at modern professional golf. Rich Beem, the hero of our story, joined the Tour as the most clueless of rookies, a logo-free rube only a couple of years removed from the straight world, where he made seven dollars an hour hawking cell phones. Beem took his winnings from big-money matches all across the state of Texas and scraped together enough to go out on Tour, but as he would quickly find out, getting to the big leagues is only half the battle. The fun-loving Beem, more likely to pound beers than range balls, first struggled to fit in among the country-club brats who populate the pro golf scene, and then had to fight to survive the cutthroat competition and crushing self-doubt. Staying true to his girl back home would prove equally challenging.Meanwhile, Steve Duplantis, the one-time golden boy of the Tour's caddie ranks, was enduring his own tribulations. At the tender age of twenty-one Duplantis began packing for Jim Furyk, and together they reached the pinnacle of the golf world, from Ryder Cup dustups to near misses at the Masters. But like Beem, Duplantis has a taste for thewild life, which helps explain how he wound up as a single dad, trying to balance the demands of fatherhood with the siren song of the road -- a juggling act that eventually cost him his lucrative job on Furyk's bag. Fate brought Duplantis and Beem together, and in their first tournament, the Kemper Open, they pulled off one of the most improbable triumphs in golf history.What happens next, at this unlikely intersection of lives and careers? How does a lifelong underdog like Beem handle overnight fame and fortune? Would Duplantis make good on this second chance and turn his career, and maybe his life, around? And would Beem and Duplantis's partnership survive the course of a turbulent season chock full of enough misadventures to land them in a Scottish jail?"Bud, Sweat, and Tees" is a sometimes bawdy, often hilarious, and always unpredictable account of a strange and magical year in the lives, on and off the course, of golfer and caddie. An exciting and often poignant story, it stands as the best insider's sports book since Jim Bouton's Ball Four, and marks Alan Shipnuck as a writer of extraordinary promise.

    

    In this masterfully written and brilliantly informed work of scientific history and explanation, Dr. Thorne, the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech, leads his readers through an elegant, always human, tapestry of interlocking themes, coming finally to a uniquely informed answer to the great question: what principles control our universe and why do physicists think they know the things they think they know? Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time has been one of the greatest best-sellers in publishing history. Anyone who struggled with that book will find here a more slowly paced but equally mind-stretching experience, with the added fascination of a rich historical and human component.

    Properly understood, they can tell us how the teams we root for could employ better strategies, put more effective players on the field, and win more games. The revolution in baseball statistics that began in the 1970s is a controversial subject that professionals and fans alike argue over without end. Despite this fundamental change in the way we watch and understand the sport, no one has written the book that reveals, across every area of strategy and management, how the best practitioners of statistical analysis in baseball-people like Bill James, Billy Beane, and Theo Epstein-think about numbers and the game. Baseball Between the Numbers is that book. In separate chapters covering every aspect of the game, from hitting, pitching, and fielding to roster construction and the scouting and drafting of players, the experts at Baseball Prospectus examine the subtle, hidden aspects of the game, bring them out into the open, and show us how our favorite teams could win more games. This is a book that every fan, every follower of sports radio, every fantasy player, every coach, and every player, at every level, can learn from and enjoy.