Download or read book Stories in Stone written by David B. Williams and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2019-08-19 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most people do not think to observe geology from the sidewalks of a major city, but all David B. Williams has to do is look at building stone in any urban center to find a range of rocks equal to any assembled by plate tectonics. In Stories in Stone, he takes you on explorations to find 3.5-billion-year-old rock that looks like swirled pink-and-black taffy, a gas station made of petrified wood, and a Florida fort that has withstood three hundred years of attacks and hurricanes, despite being made of a stone that has the consistency of a granola bar. Williams also weaves in the cultural history of stone, explaining why a white fossil-rich limestone from Indiana became the only building stone used in all fifty states; how in 1825, the construction of the Bunker Hill Monument led to America’s first commercial railroad; and why when the same kind of marble used by Michelangelo clad a Chicago skyscraper it warped so much after nineteen years that all 44,000 panels of it had to be replaced. This love letter to building stone brings to life the geology you can see in the structures of every city.
Download or read book The Heartless Stone written by Tom Zoellner and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-06-12 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An American Library Association Notable Book When he proposed to his girlfriend, Tom Zoellner gave what is expected of every American man--a diamond engagement ring. But when the relationship broke apart, he was left with a used diamond that began to haunt him. His obsession carried him around the globe; from the "blood diamond" rings of Africa; to the sweltering polishing factories of India; to mines above the Arctic Circle; to illegal diggings in Brazil; to the London headquarters of De Beers, the secretive global colossus that has dominated the industry for more than a century and permanently carved the phrase "A diamond is forever" on the psyche. An adventure story in the tradition of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, The Heartless Stone is a voyage into the cold heart of the world's most unyielding gem.
Download or read book S t p written by Robert Greenfield and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2009-04-28 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One of the greatest rock books ever written." -- GQ Thirty years ago, the Rolling Stones swept America, taking Exile on Main Street to Main Streets across the nation. Everyone held their breath to see what would happen; the Stones' previous U.S. tour had been a chaotic circus culminating in the infamous death of a fan at Altamont. And this tour (the "Stones Touring Party") was rumored to be wilder than ever: bigger shows in major arenas, with a far larger entourage and even more drugs. Robert Greenfield went along for the ride, and came away with a riveting insider's account, called by Ian Rankin "one of the greatest rock books ever written." The reality lived up to the rumor: take one part Lee Radziwill, a dash of Truman Capote, set the scene at Hef's Playboy mansion, and toss in the county jail for good measure. That was the Stones Touring Party, the ultimate rock 'n' roll band at the height of its spectacular depravity.
Download or read book Stepping Stones written by Christine Desdemaines-Hugon and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-19 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The next best thing to actually seeing the prehistoric cave art of southern Franc[e] . . . A rapturous guide through five major Ice Age sites” (Archaeology). The cave art of France’s Dordogne region is world-famous for the mythology and beauty of its remarkable drawings and paintings. These ancient images of lively bison, horses, and mammoths, as well as symbols of all kinds, are fascinating touchstones in the development of human culture, demonstrating how far humankind has come and reminding us of the ties that bind us across the ages. Over more than twenty-five years of teaching and research, Christine Desdemaines-Hugon has become an unrivaled expert in the cave art and artists of the Dordogne region. In Stepping-Stones she combines her expertise in both art and archaeology to convey an intimate understanding of the “cave experience.” Her keen insights communicate not only the incomparable artistic value of these works but also the near-spiritual impact of viewing them for oneself. Focusing on five fascinating sites, including the famed Font de Gaume and others that still remain open to the public, this book reveals striking similarities between art forms of the Paleolithic and works of modern artists and gives us a unique pathway toward understanding the culture of the Dordogne Paleolithic peoples and how it still touches our lives today. “Her vivid descriptions help readers visualize the Cro-Magnon man or woman painting the beautiful bison, horses, mammoths, and other symbols. [A] fine reading experience.” —Library Journal
Download or read book The Blue Stone written by Jimmy Liao and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2008-04-01 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From internationally renowned author and illustrator Jimmy Liao comes a new enchanting and evocative journey. Breathtaking illustrations and a haunting story take readers on a wondrous voyage around the world. A large, beautiful blue stone is discovered in a forest. It is cut in half, and one half stays in the forest while the other starts on a long and mystical journey through many places, many owners, and many transformations. It begins as a statue of an elephant, admired by museum goers, and then becomes a carved bird residing in an elderly woman's garden. It becomes a moon, a cat, a necklace, and more, until it finally returns to the forest. The Blue Stone is a powerful tale of different life paths and possibilities, a longing for home, and love.
Download or read book Journey to the Stone Country written by Alex Miller and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2003-09-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the sudden end of her marriage, Annabelle Beck returns from Melbourne to the sanctuary of her old family home in North Queensland. There she discovers that the former stockman, Bo Rennie, knows her from her childhood.
Download or read book Standing with Stones written by Rupert Soskin and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ireland.
Download or read book A Journey of Sea and Stone written by BALZER and published by Augsburg Fortress Publishers. This book was released on 2021 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Journey of Sea and Stone, spiritual director Tracy Balzer takes us along as she journeys to the revered Isle of Iona in Scotland. She carries with her key questions of the spiritual life: Where is God? Who am I? What can I offer the world? With Balzer as our guide, and through the storied history of Iona, we see that all sacred spaces can offer us a unique path to God.
Download or read book A Stone for Sascha written by Aaron Becker and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A girl grieves the loss of her dog in an achingly beautiful wordless epic from the Caldecott Honor–winning creator of Journey. This year’s summer vacation will be very different for a young girl and her family without Sascha, the beloved family dog, along for the ride. But a wistful walk along the beach to gather cool, polished stones becomes a brilliant turning point in the girl’s grief. There, at the edge of a vast ocean beneath an infinite sky, she uncovers, alongside the reader, a profound and joyous truth. In his first picture book following the conclusion of his best-selling Journey trilogy, Aaron Becker achieves a tremendous feat, connecting the private, personal loss of one child to a cycle spanning millennia — and delivering a stunningly layered tale that demands to be pored over again and again.
Download or read book Written in Stone written by Christopher Stevens and published by Pegasus Books. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Half the world’s population speaks a language that has evolved from a single, prehistoric mother tongue. A mother tongue first spoken in Stone Age times, on the steppes of central Eurasia 6,500 years ago. It was so effective that it flourished for two thousand years. It was a language that spread from the shores of the Black Sea across almost all of Europe and much of Asia. It is the genetic basis of everything we speak and write today—the DNA of language.Written in Stone combines detective work, mythology, ancient history, archaeology, the roots of society, technology and warfare, and the sheer fascination of words to explore that original mother tongue, sketching the connections woven throughout the immense vocabulary of English—with some surprising results.In snappy, lively and often very funny chapters, it uncovers the most influential and important words used by our Neolithic ancestors, and shows how they are still in constant use today—the building blocks of all our most common words and phrases.
Download or read book Written in Stone written by Chet Raymo and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the geological time changes that shaped the land from Maine to New Jersey.
Download or read book New Guinea written by and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Jungle of Stone written by William Carlsen and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-04-26 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed chronicle of the discovery of the legendary lost civilization of the Maya. Includes the history of the major Maya sites, including Palenque, Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Tuloom, Copan, and more. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Illustrated with a map and more than 100 images. In 1839, rumors of extraordinary yet baffling stone ruins buried within the unmapped jungles of Central America reached two of the world’s most intrepid travelers. Seized by the reports, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood—both already celebrated for their adventures in Egypt, the Holy Land, Greece, and Rome—sailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. What they found would upend the West’s understanding of human history. In the tradition of Lost City of Z and In the Kingdom of Ice, former San Francisco Chronicle journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist William Carlsen reveals the remarkable story of the discovery of the ancient Maya. Enduring disease, war, and the torments of nature and terrain, Stephens and Catherwood meticulously uncovered and documented the remains of an astonishing civilization that had flourished in the Americas at the same time as classic Greece and Rome—and had been its rival in art, architecture, and power. Their masterful book about the experience, written by Stephens and illustrated by Catherwood, became a sensation, hailed by Edgar Allan Poe as “perhaps the most interesting book of travel ever published” and recognized today as the birth of American archaeology. Most important, Stephens and Catherwood were the first to grasp the significance of the Maya remains, understanding that their antiquity and sophistication overturned the West’s assumptions about the development of civilization. By the time of the flowering of classical Greece (400 b.c.), the Maya were already constructing pyramids and temples around central plazas. Within a few hundred years the structures took on a monumental scale that required millions of man-hours of labor, and technical and organizational expertise. Over the next millennium, dozens of city-states evolved, each governed by powerful lords, some with populations larger than any city in Europe at the time, and connected by road-like causeways of crushed stone. The Maya developed a cohesive, unified cosmology, an array of common gods, a creation story, and a shared artistic and architectural vision. They created stucco and stone monuments and bas reliefs, sculpting figures and hieroglyphs with refined artistic skill. At their peak, an estimated ten million people occupied the Maya’s heartland on the Yucatan Peninsula, a region where only half a million now live. And yet by the time the Spanish reached the “New World,” the Maya had all but disappeared; they would remain a mystery for the next three hundred years. Today, the tables are turned: the Maya are justly famous, if sometimes misunderstood, while Stephens and Catherwood have been nearly forgotten. Based on Carlsen’s rigorous research and his own 1,500-mile journey throughout the Yucatan and Central America, Jungle of Stone is equally a thrilling adventure narrative and a revelatory work of history that corrects our understanding of Stephens, Catherwood, and the Maya themselves.
Download or read book A Grand Canyon Journey written by Peter Anderson and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 63 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the geology, evolution, and beauty of the Grand Canyon by leading the reader down the Bright Angel Trail.
Download or read book Stone Crossings written by L. L. Barkat and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2008-03-17 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grace. Sometimes it's hard to see. And even harder to receive. When you're hurt or angry or confused or doubtful, grace can seem as hard to grasp as sky. But actually, it's as real and solid as stones: tangible, weighty, something to hold on to, a way through streams of pain, shame, abuse. In these pages L.L. Barkat shares her own painful, powerful story with us. Weaving in truth from Scripture, words from other writers and stories of people who've come alongside her in her journey, she shows us the unexpected ways and places she's discovered grace: grace that has helped her open her heart to love, discover a way past fear, find freedom from shame. Her story will help you find the rock of God's grace in the midst of your own broken, hard places. And his grace will give you a new story to tell.
Download or read book Seeing Into Stone written by Kathy Park and published by Mercury Heartlink. This book was released on 2011-10 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in a ghost town in California's Mojave Desert, Seeing Into Stone: A Sculptor's Journey is a memoir about the author's struggle with flaws in her vision, her carvings and her new marriage as she searches for her identity as an artist. Through her fifteen-year apprenticeship with Gordon Newell, a wise and patient stone sculptor, she learns that carving stone and wood can be understood as a metaphor for life: go with the grain and not against it; trust that the form inside will emerge in its own good time; and realize that understanding comes slowly, chip by chip.
Download or read book The Book of Unconformities written by Hugh Raffles and published by Verse Chorus Press. This book was released on 2022-04-18 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of lnsectopedia, a powerful exploration of loss, grief, endurance, and the absences that permeate the present. Unconformities are gaps in the geological record, physical evidence of breaks in time. For Hugh Raffles, these holes in history are also fissures in feeling, knowledge, memory, and understanding. In this endlessly inventive, riveting book, Raffles enters these gaps, drawing together threads of geology, history, literature, philosophy, and ethnography to trace the intimate connections between personal loss and world historical events, and to reveal the force of absence at the core of contemporary life. Through deeply researched explorations of Neolithic stone circles, Icelandic lava, mica from a Nazi concentration camp, petrified whale blubber in Svalbard, the marble prized by Manhattan's Lenape, and a huge Greenlandic meteorite that arrived in New York City along with six Inuit adventurers in 1897, Raffles shows how unconformities unceasingly incite human imagination and investigation yet refuse to conform, heal, or disappear. A journey across eons and continents, The Book of Unconformities is also a journey through stone: this most solid, ancient, and enigmatic of materials, it turns out, is as lively, capricious, willful, and indifferent as time itself.
