Download or read book Draining the Sea written by Micheline Aharonian Marcom and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-03-13 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extraordinary new novel from the winner of the 2004 Lannan Literary Fellowship, 2005 PEN USA Literary Award for Fiction, and the 2006 Whiting Writers Award. "A new work of obsession, tragedy, and the unpredictable trajectories of the heart."(Cristina Garcia, author of Dreaming in Cuban) A powerful testament about the far-reaching effects of political brutality and lost love, Draining the Sea sifts through the incongruities of history and memory, unfurling inside the mind of a man who spends his days driving the streets of Los Angeles, racked by visions of the Guatemalan Civil War and, in particular, of Marta--a beautiful young prostitute who died violently in the midst of it. Unfortunately, her death is a tragedy in which he himself may have played a role.
Download or read book The Empty Ocean written by Richard Ellis and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2013-03-19 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Empty Ocean, acclaimed author and artist Richard Ellis tells the story of our continued plunder of life in the sea and weighs the chances for its recovery. Through fascinating portraits of a wide array of creatures, he introduces us to the many forms of sea life that humans have fished, hunted, and collected over the centuries, from charismatic whales and dolphins to the lowly menhaden, from sea turtles to cod, tuna, and coral. Rich in history, anecdote, and surprising fact, Richard Ellis’s descriptions bring to life the natural history of the various species, the threats they face, and the losses they have suffered. Killing has occurred on a truly stunning scale, with extinction all too often the result, leaving a once-teeming ocean greatly depleted. But the author also finds instances of hope and resilience, of species that have begun to make remarkable comebacks when given the opportunity. Written with passion and grace, and illustrated with Richard Ellis’s own drawings, The Empty Ocean brings to a wide audience a compelling view of the damage we have caused to life in the sea and what we can do about it. "
Download or read book The Human Shore written by John R. Gillis and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-10-17 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since before recorded history, people have congregated near water. But as growing populations around the globe continue to flow toward the coasts on an unprecedented scale and climate change raises water levels, our relationship to the sea has begun to take on new and potentially catastrophic dimensions. The latest generation of coastal dwellers lives largely in ignorance of the history of those who came before them, the natural environment, and the need to live sustainably on the world’s shores. Humanity has forgotten how to live with the oceans. In The Human Shore, a magisterial account of 100,000 years of seaside civilization, John R. Gillis recovers the coastal experience from its origins among the people who dwelled along the African shore to the bustle and glitz of today’s megacities and beach resorts. He takes readers from discussion of the possible coastal location of the Garden of Eden to the ancient communities that have existed along beaches, bays, and bayous since the beginning of human society to the crucial role played by coasts during the age of discovery and empire. An account of the mass movement of whole populations to the coasts in the last half-century brings the story of coastal life into the present. Along the way, Gillis addresses humankind’s changing relationship to the sea from an environmental perspective, laying out the history of the making and remaking of coastal landscapes—the creation of ports, the draining of wetlands, the introduction and extinction of marine animals, and the invention of the beach—while giving us a global understanding of our relationship to the water. Learned and deeply personal, The Human Shore is more than a history: it is the story of a space that has been central to the attitudes, plans, and existence of those who live and dream at land’s end.
Download or read book What If written by Randall Munroe and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2014 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the creator of the wildly popular webcomic xkcd, hilarious and informative answers to important questions you probably never thought to ask Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have an enormous, dedicated following, as do his deeply researched answers to his fans' strangest questions. The queries he receives range from merely odd to downright diabolical: - What if I took a swim in a spent-nuclear-fuel pool? - Could you build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns? - What if a Richter 15 earthquake hit New York City? - Are fire tornadoes possible? His responses are masterpieces of clarity and wit, gleefully and accurately explaining everything from the relativistic effects of a baseball pitched at near the speed of light to the many horrible ways you could die while building a periodic table out of all the actual elements. The book features new and never-before-answered questions, along with the most popular answers from the xkcd website. What If? is an informative feast for xkcd fans and anyone who loves to ponder the hypothetical.
Download or read book Drinking the Sea at Gaza written by Amira Hass and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1993, Amira Aass, a young Israeli reporter, drove to Gaza to cover a story - and stayed, the first journalist to live in the grim Palestinian enclave so feared and despised by most Israelis that, in the local idiom, "Go to Gaza" is another way to say "Go to hell." Now, in a work of calm power and painful clarity, Hass reflects on what she has seen in Gaza's gutted streets and destitute refugee camps. Drinking the Sea at Gaza maps the zones of ordinary Palestinian life. From her friends, Hass learns the secrets of slipping across sealed borders and stealing through night streets emptied by curfews. She shares Gaza's early euphoria over the peace process and its subsequent despair as hope gives way to unrelenting hardship. But even as Hass charts the griefs and humiliations of the Palestinians, she offers a remarkable portrait of a people not brutalized but eloquent, spiritually resilient, bleakly funny, and morally courageous. Full of testimonies and stories, facts and impressions, Drinking the Sea at Gaza makes an urgent claim on our humanity. Beautiful, haunting, and profound, it will stand with the great works of wartime reportage, from Michael Herr's Dispatches to Rian Malan's My Traitor's Heart.
Download or read book Between Land and Sea written by Christopher L. Pastore and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-13 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christopher Pastore traces how Narragansett Bay’s ecology shaped the contours of European habitation, trade, and resource use, and how littoral settlers in turn, over two centuries, transformed a marshy fractal of water and earth into a clearly defined coastline, which proved less able to absorb the blows of human initiative and natural variation.
Download or read book Haroun and the Sea of Stories written by Salman Rushdie and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-04-23 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It all begins with a letter. Fall in love with Penguin Drop Caps, a new series of twenty-six collectible and hardcover editions, each with a type cover showcasing a gorgeously illustrated letter of the alphabet. In a design collaboration between Jessica Hische and Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley, the series features unique cover art by Hische, a superstar in the world of type design and illustration, whose work has appeared everywhere from Tiffany & Co. to Wes Anderson's recent film Moonrise Kingdom to Penguin's own bestsellers Committed and Rules of Civility. With exclusive designs that have never before appeared on Hische's hugely popular Daily Drop Cap blog, the Penguin Drop Caps series debuted with an 'A' for Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, a 'B' for Charlotte Brönte's Jane Eyre, and a 'C' for Willa Cather's My Ántonia. It continues with more perennial classics, perfect to give as elegant gifts or to showcase on your own shelves. R is for Rushdie. Set in an exotic Eastern landscape peopled by magicians and fantastic talking animals, Salman Rushdie’s classic children’s novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories inhabits the same imaginative space as Gulliver’s Travels, Alice in Wonderland, and The Wizard of Oz. Haroun, a 12-year-old boy sets out on an adventure to restore the poisoned source of the sea of stories. On the way, he encounters many foes, all intent on draining the sea of all its storytelling powers.
Download or read book The Dance of Air and Sea written by Arnold H. Taylor and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-02-24 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can the tiny plankton in the sea just off Western Europe be affected by changes 6000 km away on the other side of the North Atlantic Ocean? How can a slight rise in the temperature of the surface of the Pacific Ocean have a devastating impact on amphibian life in Costa Rica? Living populations across the globe are connected by great swayings of the world's atmosphere and oceans, the largest of which is El Nino. For almost half a century, the numbers of some of the smallest animals in the North Sea have gone up and down as the Gulf Stream has moved north and south 4000 miles away at the coast of the USA. This connection has happened because the weather patterns over the North Atlantic are intertwined by a phenomenon first described by a Danish missionary in the eighteenth century, the North Atlantic Oscillation. In The Dance of Air and Sea Arnold Taylor focuses on the large-scale dynamics of the world's climate, looking at how the atmosphere and oceans interact, and the ways in which ecosystems in water and on land respond to changes in weather. He tells stories of how discoveries were made, and the scientists who made them; and he considers the crucial issues of how the discoveries aid our response to global warming.
Download or read book Texas Aquatic Science written by Rudolph A. Rosen and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-29 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classroom resource provides clear, concise scientific information in an understandable and enjoyable way about water and aquatic life. Spanning the hydrologic cycle from rain to watersheds, aquifers to springs, rivers to estuaries, ample illustrations promote understanding of important concepts and clarify major ideas. Aquatic science is covered comprehensively, with relevant principles of chemistry, physics, geology, geography, ecology, and biology included throughout the text. Emphasizing water sustainability and conservation, the book tells us what we can do personally to conserve for the future and presents job and volunteer opportunities in the hope that some students will pursue careers in aquatic science. Texas Aquatic Science, originally developed as part of a multi-faceted education project for middle and high school students, can also be used at the college level for non-science majors, in the home-school environment, and by anyone who educates kids about nature and water. To learn more about The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, sponsors of this book's series, please click here.
Download or read book Oil in the Sea III written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2003-03-14 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the early 1970s, experts have recognized that petroleum pollutants were being discharged in marine waters worldwide, from oil spills, vessel operations, and land-based sources. Public attention to oil spills has forced improvements. Still, a considerable amount of oil is discharged yearly into sensitive coastal environments. Oil in the Sea provides the best available estimate of oil pollutant discharge into marine waters, including an evaluation of the methods for assessing petroleum load and a discussion about the concerns these loads represent. Featuring close-up looks at the Exxon Valdez spill and other notable events, the book identifies important research questions and makes recommendations for better analysis ofâ€"and more effective measures againstâ€"pollutant discharge. The book discusses: Inputâ€"where the discharges come from, including the role of two-stroke engines used on recreational craft. Behavior or fateâ€"how oil is affected by processes such as evaporation as it moves through the marine environment. Effectsâ€"what we know about the effects of petroleum hydrocarbons on marine organisms and ecosystems. Providing a needed update on a problem of international importance, this book will be of interest to energy policy makers, industry officials and managers, engineers and researchers, and advocates for the marine environment.
Download or read book The Logic of Violence in Civil War written by Stathis N. Kalyvas and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-05-01 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By analytically decoupling war and violence, this book explores the causes and dynamics of violence in civil war. Against the prevailing view that such violence is an instance of impenetrable madness, the book demonstrates that there is logic to it and that it has much less to do with collective emotions, ideologies, and cultures than currently believed. Kalyvas specifies a novel theory of selective violence: it is jointly produced by political actors seeking information and individual civilians trying to avoid the worst but also grabbing what opportunities their predicament affords them. Violence, he finds, is never a simple reflection of the optimal strategy of its users; its profoundly interactive character defeats simple maximization logics while producing surprising outcomes, such as relative nonviolence in the 'frontlines' of civil war.
Download or read book Bodies of Water written by Astrida Neimanis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Water is the element that, more than any other, ties human beings in to the world around them – from the oceans that surround us to the water that makes up most of our bodies. Exploring the cultural and philosophical implications of this fact, Bodies of Water develops an innovative new mode of posthuman feminist phenomenology that understands our bodies as being fundamentally part of the natural world and not separate from or privileged to it. Building on the works by Luce Irigaray, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze, Astrida Neimanis's book is a landmark study that brings a new feminist perspective to bear on ideas of embodiment and ecological ethics in the posthuman critical moment.
Download or read book War and Genocide written by Martin Shaw and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-01-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive introduction to the study of war and genocide presents a disturbing case that the potential for slaughter is deeply rooted in the political, economic, social and ideological relations of the modern world. Most accounts of war and genocide treat them as separate phenomena. This book thoroughly examines the links between these two most inhuman of human activities. It shows that the generally legitimate business of war and the monstrous crime of genocide are closely related. This is not just because genocide usually occurs in the midst of war, but because genocide is a form of war directed against civilian populations. The book shows how fine the line has been, in modern history, between ‘degenerate war’ involving the mass destruction of civilian populations, and ‘genocide’, the deliberate destruction of civilian groups as such. Written by one of the foremost sociological writers on war, War and Genocide has four main features: an original argument about the meaning and causes of mass killing in the modern world; a guide to the main intellectual resources – military, political and social theories – necessary to understand war and genocide; summaries of the main historical episodes of slaughter, from the trenches of the First World War to the Nazi Holocaust and the killing fields of Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda; practical guides to further reading, courses and websites. This book examines war and genocide together with their opposites, peace and justice. It looks at them from the standpoint of victims as well as perpetrators. It is an important book for anyone wanting to understand – and overcome – the continuing salience of destructive forces in modern society.
Download or read book Running Out written by Lucas Bessire and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the National Book Award An intimate reckoning with aquifer depletion in America's heartland The Ogallala aquifer has nourished life on the American Great Plains for millennia. But less than a century of unsustainable irrigation farming has taxed much of the aquifer beyond repair. The imminent depletion of the Ogallala and other aquifers around the world is a defining planetary crisis of our times. Running Out offers a uniquely personal account of aquifer depletion and the deeper layers through which it gains meaning and force. Anthropologist Lucas Bessire journeyed back to western Kansas, where five generations of his family lived as irrigation farmers and ranchers, to try to make sense of this vital resource and its loss. His search for water across the drying High Plains brings the reader face to face with the stark realities of industrial agriculture, eroding democratic norms, and surreal interpretations of a looming disaster. Yet the destination is far from predictable, as the book seeks to move beyond the words and genres through which destruction is often known. Instead, this journey into the morass of eradication offers a series of unexpected discoveries about what it means to inherit the troubled legacies of the past and how we can take responsibility for a more inclusive, sustainable future. An urgent and unsettling meditation on environmental change, Running Out is a revelatory account of family, complicity, loss, and what it means to find your way back home.
Download or read book The Great Marsh written by Doug Stewart and published by . This book was released on 2007-03-27 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning photographer Dorothy Monnelly captures the yet-unspoiled beauty of one of the last natural ecosystems in the Northeast. In this collection of 57 large format, black and white photographs, the salt marsh is a solemn force rendered dramatically with crisp scans of Monnelly's original gelatin silver prints. As a native of Ipswich, Massachusetts, Monnelly executes her work with a familiarity and grace evocative of Ansel Adams. Her work is described in the forward by Jeanne Adams, director of the Ansel Adams Trust as capturing the marsh's "amazing sculptural quality." "Between Land and Sea" is grounded with an essay by journalist Doug Stewart, a regular contributor to "Smithsonian" and other magazines. Stewart's words provide a rich context for the images, as well as a strong case for preserving the marshlands. "Standing in an upland clearing overlooking a vast prairie of marsh grass, you can easily believe that a salt marsh is the closest thing a landscape comes to eternity. Even the Grand Canyon is eroding, after all, but a healthy salt marsh is renewed with each rising tide." Monnelly's book is indispensable to those who are conscious of the threat to our planet's sustainability. 57 black and white illustrations.
Download or read book Sea Level Rise for the Coasts of California Oregon and Washington written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tide gauges show that global sea level has risen about 7 inches during the 20th century, and recent satellite data show that the rate of sea-level rise is accelerating. As Earth warms, sea levels are rising mainly because ocean water expands as it warms; and water from melting glaciers and ice sheets is flowing into the ocean. Sea-level rise poses enormous risks to the valuable infrastructure, development, and wetlands that line much of the 1,600 mile shoreline of California, Oregon, and Washington. As those states seek to incorporate projections of sea-level rise into coastal planning, they asked the National Research Council to make independent projections of sea-level rise along their coasts for the years 2030, 2050, and 2100, taking into account regional factors that affect sea level. Sea-Level Rise for the Coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington: Past, Present, and Future explains that sea level along the U.S. west coast is affected by a number of factors. These include: climate patterns such as the El Niño, effects from the melting of modern and ancient ice sheets, and geologic processes, such as plate tectonics. Regional projections for California, Oregon, and Washington show a sharp distinction at Cape Mendocino in northern California. South of that point, sea-level rise is expected to be very close to global projections. However, projections are lower north of Cape Mendocino because the land is being pushed upward as the ocean plate moves under the continental plate along the Cascadia Subduction Zone. However, an earthquake magnitude 8 or larger, which occurs in the region every few hundred to 1,000 years, would cause the land to drop and sea level to suddenly rise.
Download or read book When Broken Glass Floats Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge written by Chanrithy Him and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2001-04-17 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A gut-wrenching story told with honesty, restraint, and dignity." —Ha Jin, National Book Award-winning author of Waiting Chanrithy Him felt compelled to tell of surviving life under the Khmer Rouge in a way "worthy of the suffering which I endured as a child." In a mesmerizing story, Chanrithy Him vividly recounts her trek through the hell of the "killing fields." She gives us a child's-eye view of a Cambodia where rudimentary labor camps for both adults and children are the norm and modern technology no longer exists. Death becomes a companion in the camps, along with illness. Yet through the terror, the members of Chanrithy's family remain loyal to one another, and she and her siblings who survive will find redeemed lives in America. A Finalist for the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize.
