Cynthia Barnett does it by telling us the stories of the amazing personalities behind our water wars, the stunning contradictions that allow the wettest state to have the most watered lawns, and the thorough research that makes her conclusions inescapable. Barnett has established herself as one of Florida’s best journalists and Mirage is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of the state.”—Mary Ellen Klas, Capital Bureau Chief, Miami Herald “Mirage is the finest general study to date of the freshwater-supply crisis in Florida. Well-meaning villains abound in Cynthia Barnett’s story, but so too do heroes, such as Arthur R. Marshall Jr., Nathaniel Reed, and Marjorie Harris Carr. The author’s research is as thorough as her prose is graceful. Drinking water is the new oil. Get used to it.”—Michael Gannon, Distinguished Professor of history, University of Florida, and author of Florida: A Short History “With lively prose and a journalist’s eye for a good story, Cynthia Barnett offers a sobering account of water scarcity problems facing Florida—one of our wettest states—and the rest of the East Coast. Drawing on lessons learned from the American West, Mirage uses the lens of cultural attitudes about water use and misuse to plead for reform. Sure to engage and fascinate as it informs.”—Robert Glennon, Morris K. Udall Professor of Law and Public Policy, University of Arizona, and author of Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s Fresh Waters Part investigative journalism, part environmental history, Mirage reveals how the eastern half of the nation—historically so wet that early settlers predicted it would never even need irrigation—has squandered so much of its abundant freshwater that it now faces shortages and conflicts once unique to the arid West. Florida’s parched swamps and supersized residential developments set the stage in the first book to call attention to the steady disappearance of freshwater in the American East, from water-diversion threats in the Great Lakes to tapped-out freshwater aquifers along the Atlantic seaboard. Told through a colorful cast of characters including Walt Disney, Jeb Bush and Texas oilman Boone Pickens, Mirage ferries the reader through the key water-supply issues facing America and the globe: water wars, the politics of development, inequities in the price of water, the bottled-water industry, privatization, and new-water-supply schemes. From its calamitous opening scene of a sinkhole swallowing a house in Florida to its concluding meditation on the relationship between water and the American character, Mirage is a compelling and timely portrait of the use and abuse of freshwater in an era of rapidly vanishing natural resources.

    It covered jazz, of course, but it also included Davis’s ruminations on race, politics and culture. Fascinated, Hef sent the writer—future Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Alex Haley, an unknown at the time—back to glean even more opinion and insight from Davis. The resulting exchange, published in the September 1962 issue, became the first official Playboy Interview and kicked off a remarkable run of public inquisition that continues today—and that has featured just about every cultural titan of the last half century.To celebrate the Interview’s 50th anniversary, the editors of Playboy have culled 50 of its most (in)famous Interviews and will publish them over the course of 50 weekdays (from September 4, 2012 to November 12, 2012) via Amazon’s Kindle Direct platform. Here is the interview with the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand from the March 1964 issue.

    In the four main sections of the book, Stein tells the stories of the mathematical thinkers who discerned some of the most fundamental aspects of our universe. From their successes and failures, delusions, and even duels, the trajectories of their innovations—and their impact on society—are traced in this fascinating narrative. Quantum mechanics, space-time, chaos theory and the workings of complex systems, and the impossibility of a "perfect" democracy are all here. Stein's book is both mind-bending and practical, as he explains the best way for a salesman to plan a trip, examines why any thought you could have is imbedded in the number π , and—perhaps most importantly—answers one of the modern world's toughest questions: why the garage can never get your car repaired on time.Friendly, entertaining, and fun, How Math Explains the World is the first book by one of California's most popular math teachers, a veteran of both "math for poets" and Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies. And it's perfect for any reader wanting to know how math makes both science and the world tick.

    It took a year to accumulate enough so that one could actually see it. Now there is so much that we don't know what to do to get rid of it. We have created a monster.The history of plutonium is as strange as the element itself. When scientists began looking for it, they did so simply in the spirit of inquiry, not certain whether there were still spots to fill on the periodic table. But the discovery of fission made it clear that this still-hypothetical element would be more than just a scientific curiosity?it could be a powerful nuclear weapon.As it turned out, it is good for almost nothing else. Plutonium's nuclear potential put it at the heart of the World War II arms race?the Russians found out about it through espionage, the Germans through independent research, and everybody wanted some. Now, nearly everyone has some?the United States alone has about 47 metric tons?but it has almost no uses besides warmongering. How did the product of scientific curiosity become such a dangerous burden?In his new history of this complex and dangerous element, noted physicist Jeremy Bernstein describes the steps that were taken to transform plutonium from a laboratory novelty into the nuclear weapon that destroyed Nagasaki. This is the first book to weave together the many strands of plutonium's story, explaining not only the science but the people involved.

    The book also provides a balanced presentation of time-varying and static fields, preparingstudents for employment in today's industrial and manufacturing sectors. Streamlined to facilitate student understanding, this edition features worked examples in every chapter that explain how to use the theory presented in the text to solve different kinds of problems. Numerical methods, including MATLAB and vector analysis, are also included to help students analyzesituations that they are likely to encounter in industry practice. Elements of Electromagnetics, Fifth Edition, is designed for introductory undergraduate courses in electromagnetics.

    From the simple (How does soap know what's dirt? How do magnets work? Why do batteries die?) to the more complex (Why does evaporation have a cooling effect? Where does uranium get its energy?), this book makes science more understandable and fun. Author Robert Wolke provides definitive and easy-to-comprehend explanations for things that we take for granted, like the illumination behind neon signs and the mysteries of beverage carbonation. Wolke also dares readers to explore and conduct their own experiments with food, kitchen utensils, and common household products. This fifteenth anniversary edition of his bestselling popular science classic has been completely revised and expanded.

    Dozens of livelyarticles explore such well-known molecules as water, oxygen, and glass; versatile plastics like polypropylene, polystyrene, and polyurethane; even elements from hell such as Sarin (a lethal nerve gas). With no formulas, equations, or molecular diagrams to baffle the non-expert, each piece blendshistory, science, and anecdote, with many intriguing facts added to the mix.The world of chemistry has never been made as entertaining, writes Nobel Prize-winning chemist Roald Hoffmann. Indeed, this book will fascinate everyone curious about the chemicals in the foods we eat, the clothes we wear, and the air we breathe.

    Drawing on cutting-edge science, they begin at the limits of the observable universe, a scale spanning 10^27 meters--about 93 billion light-years. And they end in the subatomic realm, at 10^-35 meters, where the fabric of space-time itself confounds all known rules of physics. In between are galaxies, stars and planets, oceans and continents, plants and animals, microorganisms, atoms, and much, much more. Stops along the way--all enlivened by Scharf's sparkling prose and his original insights into the nature of our universe--include the brilliant core of the Milky Way, the surface of a rogue planet, the back of an elephant, and a sea of jostling quarks.The Zoomable Universe is packed with more than 100 original illustrations and infographics that will captivate readers of every age. It is a whimsical celebration of discovery, a testament to our astounding ability to see beyond our own vantage point and chart a course from the farthest reaches of the cosmos to its subatomic depths--in short, a must-have for the shelves of all explorers.

    But these are not the only scars that have resolutely refused to heal. Shortly afterwards, Colonel Mitchell Havilland sacrificed himself on a Falklands hillside in an act of characteristic - but baffling - heroism. When Julia comes home from China fifteen years later, it is to a place of ghosts. Whilst she awaits the outcome of the enquiry that seems destined to end her short but spectacular career in military intelligence, Julia is drawn back across the landscape of the past, to find that it is not just the tortured image of her much-loved father that returns to haunt her. Everything she has ever believed in and lived for has suddenly been called into question, and unless she confronts her demons, she will not survive. For there have been other deaths, and the dead will not sleep... At once a race-against-the-clock thriller and a complex psychological drama where the memories of the past conflict with knowledge of the present, The Sleep of the Dead is a stunning read on any level and more than confirms Tom Bradby as one of this country's foremost thriller writers. Praise for Shadow Dancer: 'Quite exceptional...Tom Bradby succeeds in creating real characters. Far too many novels take refuge in cliché and caricature - Bradby refuses to. The language, the tension, the fear - all are portrayed vividly and correctly...A taut, compelling story of love and torn loyalties'Daily Telegraph 'A remarkable first novel...Bradby handles the tension with skill to produce a gripping tale'The Times 'The best book on the northern conflict since Harry's Game...An excellent read on any level. It scores heavily as a thriller and as an accurate unblinking look at what is happening right now'Irish Independent

    Early in his career, he came up against the Soviet Union's deadliest agent three times, finally killing the man in a flooded tunnel beneath the ruins of a castle in Portugal.Years have passed. The Russian's brother, Kurshin, a Spetsnaz operator twenty-five years younger than McGarvey, vows revenge. He and McGarvey are both shadowmen--living between the real world, and the world of the deep cover spy and assassin. To get McGarvey's attention, Kurshin desecrates the grave of the American's wife. McGarvey pits himself against the Russian--the man of vast experience versus the bold young man who believes he is invincible. The mano a mano begins at Arlington Cemetery and moves across Europe, from the baccarat tables of Monte Carlo to the same the Portuguese castle where the Russian's brother was killed so many years ago. Only one shadowman will be left standing.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    This book addresses questions such as: can we define technology? Does technology shape us, or do we shape it? Is technology inevitable or unpredictable?

    One island, two unique societies (Norse and Inuit). Only one of these societies would succeed--the other would fail. But how? With his trademark accessibility and comprehensiveness, Diamond documents how environmental damage, climate change, loss of friendly contacts and the rise of hostile ones, and the unique political, economic, and social settings of prehistoric Greenland combine to demonstrate exactly why and how societies choose to fail or succeed. Jared Diamond's latest book, "The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?," is available from Viking.

    The New Physics tells us that they are not, and in the process, blurs the line between science and science fiction. Here are six accessible essays by those who walk that line, moving ever further out in discovering the patterns of nature, aimed at readers who share their fascination with the deepest mysteries of the universe.• Richard Price: "An Introduction to Spacetime Physics"• Stephen Hawking: "Chronology Protection"• Igor Novikov: "Can We Change the Past?"• Kip S. Thorne: "Speculations about the Future"• Timothy Ferris: "On the Popularization of Science"• Alan Lightman: "The Physicist as Novelist"

    You'll discover how the sun shines, why light is both a wave and a particle, the certainty of the Uncertainty Principle, Schrodinger's Cat, Einstein's spooky action, how to build a quantum computer, and why quantum mechanics drives even its experts completely crazy. 'Jim Al-Khalili has done an admirable job of condensing the ideas of quantum physics from Max Planck to the possibilities of quantum computers into brisk, straightforward English' The Times

    In 1905 an unknown 26-year-old clerk at the Swiss Patent Office, who had supposedly failed math in school, burst on to the scientific scene and swept away the hidebound theories of the day. The clerk, Albert Einstein, introduced a new and unexpected understanding of the universe and launched the two great revolutions of twentieth-century physics, relativity and quantum mechanics. The obscure origin and wide-ranging brilliance of the work recalled Isaac Newton’s “annus mirabilis” (miracle year) of 1666, when as a 23-year-old seeking safety at his family manor from an outbreak of the plague, he invented calculus and laid the foundations for his theory of gravity. Like Newton, Einstein quickly became a scientific icon--the image of genius and, according to Time magazine, the Person of the Century.The actual story is much more interesting. Einstein himself once remarked that “science as something coming into being ... is just as subjectively, psychologically conditioned as are all other human endeavors.” In this profile, the historian of science L. Randles Lagerstrom takes you behind the myth and into the very human life of the young Einstein. From family rifts and girlfriend troubles to financial hardships and jobless anxieties, Einstein’s early years were typical of many young persons. And yet in the midst of it all, he also saw his way through to profound scientific insights. Drawing upon correspondence from Einstein, his family, and his friends, Lagerstrom brings to life the young Einstein and enables the reader to come away with a fuller and more appreciative understanding of Einstein the person and the origins of his revolutionary ideas.About the cover image: While walking to work six days a week as a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland, Einstein would pass by the famous "Zytglogge" tower and its astronomical clocks. The daily juxtaposition was fitting, as the relative nature of time and clock synchronization would be one of his revolutionary discoveries in the miracle year of 1905.