Download or read book A Planet of Viruses written by Carl Zimmer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For years, scientists have been warning us that a pandemic was all but inevitable. Now it's here, and the rest of us have a lot to learn. Fortunately, science writer Carl Zimmer is here to guide us. In this compact volume, he tells the story of how the smallest living things known to science can bring an entire planet of people to a halt--and what we can learn from how we've defeated them in the past. Planet of Viruses covers such threats as Ebola, MERS, and chikungunya virus; tells about recent scientific discoveries, such as a hundred-million-year-old virus that infected the common ancestor of armadillos, elephants, and humans; and shares new findings that show why climate change may lead to even deadlier outbreaks. Zimmer’s lucid explanations and fascinating stories demonstrate how deeply humans and viruses are intertwined. Viruses helped give rise to the first life-forms, are responsible for many of our most devastating diseases, and will continue to control our fate for centuries. Thoroughly readable, and, for all its honesty about the threats, as reassuring as it is frightening, A Planet of Viruses is a fascinating tour of a world we all need to better understand.

Download or read book Sun of Suns written by Karl Schroeder and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2007-07-31 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young man seeks vengeance against the man who killed his parents in this action-packed science fiction thriller series opener. It is the distant future. The world known as Virga is a fullerene balloon three thousand kilometers in diameter, filled with air, water, and aimlessly floating chunks of rock. The humans who live in this vast environment must build their own fusion suns and “towns” that are in the shape of enormous wood and rope wheels that are spun for gravity. Young, fit, bitter, and friendless, Hayden Griffin is a very dangerous man. He’s come to the city of Rush in the nation of Slipstream with one thing in mind: to take murderous revenge for the deaths of his parents six years ago. His target is Admiral Chaison Fanning, head of the fleet of Slipstream, which conquered Hayden’s nation of Aerie years ago. And the fact that Hayden’s spent his adolescence living with pirates doesn’t bode well for Fanning’s chances . . .

Download or read book The Urge written by Carl Erik Fisher and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and The Boston Globe An authoritative, illuminating, and deeply humane history of addiction—a phenomenon that remains baffling and deeply misunderstood despite having touched countless lives—by an addiction psychiatrist striving to understand his own family and himself “Carl Erik Fisher’s The Urge is the best-written and most incisive book I’ve read on the history of addiction. In the midst of an overdose crisis that grows worse by the hour and has vexed America for centuries, Fisher has given us the best prescription of all: understanding. He seamlessly blends a gripping historical narrative with memoir that doesn’t self-aggrandize; the result is a full-throated argument against blaming people with substance use disorder. The Urge is a propulsive tour de force that is as healing as it is enjoyable to read.” —Beth Macy, author of Dopesick Even after a decades-long opioid overdose crisis, intense controversy still rages over the fundamental nature of addiction and the best way to treat it. With uncommon empathy and erudition, Carl Erik Fisher draws on his own experience as a clinician, researcher, and alcoholic in recovery as he traces the history of a phenomenon that, centuries on, we hardly appear closer to understanding—let alone addressing effectively. As a psychiatrist-in-training fresh from medical school, Fisher was soon face-to-face with his own addiction crisis, one that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of the condition that had plagued his family for generations, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that the current quagmire is only the latest iteration of a centuries-old story: humans have struggled to define, treat, and control addictive behavior for most of recorded history, including well before the advent of modern science and medicine. A rich, sweeping account that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and public policy, The Urge illuminates the extent to which the story of addiction has persistently reflected broader questions of what it means to be human and care for one another. Fisher introduces us to the people who have endeavored to address this complex condition through the ages: physicians and politicians, activists and artists, researchers and writers, and of course the legions of people who have struggled with their own addictions. He also examines the treatments and strategies that have produced hope and relief for many people with addiction, himself included. Only by reckoning with our history of addiction, he argues—our successes and our failures—can we light the way forward for those whose lives remain threatened by its hold. The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician’s urgent call for a more expansive, nuanced, and compassionate view of one of society’s most intractable challenges.

Download or read book Squeeze Me written by Carl Hiaasen and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “If you could use some wild escapism right now, Hiaasen is your guy.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times From the author of Skinny Dip and Razor Girl, a hilarious, New York Times best-selling novel of social and political intrigues, set against the glittering backdrop of Florida’s gold coast. It's the height of the Palm Beach charity ball season: for every disease or cause, there's a reason for the local luminaries to eat (minimally), drink (maximally), and be seen. But when a prominent high-society dowager suddenly vanishes during a swank gala, and is later found dead in a concrete grave, panic and chaos erupt. Kiki Pew was notable not just for her wealth and her jewels--she was an ardent fan of the Winter White House resident just down the road, and a founding member of the POTUSSIES, a group of women dedicated to supporting their President. Never one to miss an opportunity to play to his base, the President immediately declares that Kiki was the victim of rampaging immigrant hordes. This, it turns out, is far from the truth. The truth might just lie in the middle of the highway, where a bizarre discovery brings the First Lady's motorcade to a grinding halt (followed by some grinding between the First Lady and a love-struck Secret Service agent). Enter Angie Armstrong, wildlife wrangler extraordinaire, who arrives at her own conclusions after she is summoned to the posh island to deal with a mysterious and impolite influx of huge, hungry pythons . . . Carl Hiaasen can brighten even the darkest of days and Squeeze Me is pure, unadulterated Hiaasen. Irreverent, ingenious, and highly entertaining, Squeeze Me perfectly captures the absurdity of our times.

Download or read book The Snow Queen written by Leonora Loveman and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Milk Reporter written by and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Scent of Empires written by Karl Schlögel and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can a drop of perfume tell the story of the twentieth century? Can a smell bear the traces of history? What can we learn about the history of the twentieth century by examining the fate of perfumes? In this remarkable book, Karl Schlögel unravels the interconnected histories of two of the world’s most celebrated perfumes. In tsarist Russia, two French perfumers – Ernest Beaux and Auguste Michel – developed related fragrances honouring Catherine the Great for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. During the Russian Revolution and Civil War, Beaux fled Russia and took the formula for his perfume with him to France, where he sought to adapt it to his new French circumstances. He presented Coco Chanel with a series of ten fragrance samples in his laboratory and, after smelling each, she chose number five – the scent that would later go by the name Chanel No. 5. Meanwhile, as the perfume industry was being revived in Soviet Russia, Auguste Michel used his original fragrance to create Red Moscow for the tenth anniversary of the Revolution. Piecing together the intertwined histories of these two famous perfumes, which shared a common origin, Schlögel tells a surprising story of power, intrigue and betrayal that offers an altogether unique perspective on the turbulent events and high politics of the twentieth century. This brilliant account of perfume and politics in twentieth-century Europe will be of interest to a wide general readership.

Download or read book The Mongol Conquests written by Carl Fredrik Sverdrup and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2017-05-04 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A scholarly, detailed history of how the Mongols created the greatest landlocked empire in history” (Midwest Book Review). The Mongols created the greatest landlocked empire known to history. It was an empire created and sustained by means of conquest. Initially an insignificant tribal leader, Genghis Khan gradually increased his power, overcoming one rival after another. After he had subjugated all tribes of Inner Asia, he struck southward into China and later attacked distant Khwarizm in the Near East. Sübe’etei continued to make significant conquests after Genghis Khan died, conquering central China and leading a large force into the heart of Europe. Between them, Genghis Khan and Sube’etei directed more than 40 campaigns, fought more than 60 battles, and conquered all lands from Korea in the east to Hungary and Poland in the west. This book offers a detailed narrative of the military operations of these two leaders, based on early Mongolian, Chinese, Near Eastern, and European sources. Making full use of Chinese sourced not translated properly into any European language, the account offer details never before given in English works. Detailed maps showing the operations support the text. Many conventional wisdom views of the Mongols, such as their use of terror as a deliberate strategy, or their excellence at siege warfare, are shown to be incorrect. This is a major contribution to our knowledge of the Mongols and their way of warfare. “History is littered with great leaders leading great armies and conquering large swathes of the world—Attila the Hun, Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire . . . but none perhaps as staggering as that of Genghis Khan. I have never heard of Sube’etei, I’m ashamed to say, until now, in this excellent book by Carl Fredrik Sverdrup. Asian history has never particularly appealed to me, but this is big history, and the author’s style makes it compelling and readable.” —Books Monthly “This is a very valuable addition to the literature on the Mongol conquests, giving us a much clearer idea of the detailed course of their campaigns, the world in which they took place, and the methods used to win them.” —History of War

Download or read book Carl W Peters written by Richard H. Love and published by University Rochester Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 960 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout his life Peters depicted the ordinary places and people of America. From Rochester to Rockport, Peters made an amazingly coherent group of fascinating, masterful American pictures.

Download or read book Eminent Domain written by Carl Neville and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Socialist Utopia of the People's Republic of Britain a routine criminal investigation spirals out of control with world-shattering consequences. The Cold War ended thirty years ago, the Communists have won in Europe and the world has settled into two blocks divided by a silicon curtain, The Partition. The tranquil backwater of the People's Republic of Britain is due to host an international sporting event, the Games, and celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the country becoming a republic. When the organiser of the Games dies suddenly and his office is broken into, Barrow, the retired security operative enlisted to investigate, is drawn into a conspiracy that has implications not only for him and his team of young and inexperienced assistants, but for their entire way of life. How is the American research student Julia Verona implicated? Is some kind of attack being planned? Who is really in command of the operation? Is there a double agent within the PRBs security apparatus? What is the significance of the reclusive novelist Vernon Crane? Fusing the trappings of a literary thriller with experimental style, Eminent Domain explores the art, culture, politics, personalities, conflicts, loves and losses of a range of boldly realised characters in a Utopian world radically different to our own but recognizably the way that things, at one time, might have been. A kaleidoscopic satire of our present moment, Eminent Domain is both a dark thriller and a radical neo-modernist experiment that probes at the limits of Utopia, a formally dazzling reimagining of the political novel in which lives, worlds and even realities collide to devastating effect.

Download or read book They Came but Could Not Conquer written by Diane J. Purvis and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Between Threats and War written by Micah Zenko and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Between Threats and War: U.S. Discrete Military Operations in the Post-Cold War World, author Micah Zenko presents a new concept to capture and illuminate the phenomenon: "Discrete Military Operations."

Download or read book End of History and the Last Man written by Francis Fukuyama and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006-03-01 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since its first publication in 1992, the New York Times bestselling The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. "Profoundly realistic and important...supremely timely and cogent...the first book to fully fathom the depth and range of the changes now sweeping through the world." —The Washington Post Book World Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.

Download or read book Our Lady of Guadalupe written by Carl Anderson and published by Image. This book was released on 2009-08-04 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly a decade after Spain's conquest of Mexico, the future of Christianity on the American continent was very much in doubt. Confronted with a hostile colonial government and Native Americans wary of conversion, the newly-appointed bishop-elect of Mexico wrote to tell the King of Spain that, unless there was a miracle, the continent would be lost. Between December 9 and December 12, 1531, that miracle happened, and it forever changed the future of the continent. It was then that the Virgin Mary famously appeared to a Native American Christian convert on a hilltop outside of what is now Mexico City. The image she left imprinted on his cloak or tilma has puzzled scientists for centuries, and yet Our Lady of Gudalupe’s place in history is profound. A continent that just months before the apparitions seemed completely lost to Christianity suddenly and inexplicably embraced it by the millions. Our Lady of Guadalupe's message of love replaced the institutionalized violence of the Aztec culture, and built a bridge between two worlds — the old and the new — that were just ten years earlier engaged in brutal warfare. Today, Our Lady of Guadalupe continues to inspire the devotion of millions. From Canada to Argentina — and even beyond the Americas — one finds great devotion to her, and great appreciation for her message of love, unity and hope. Today reproductions of the Virgin’s miraculous image can be seen throughout North and South America, in churches and homes, on billboards and even clothing apparel. Her shrine in Mexico City, where the miraculous image is housed to this day, is one of the most visited in the world. In Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love, Anderson & Chavez trace the history of Our Lady of Guadalupe from the sixteenth century to the present discuss of how her message was and continues to be an important catalyst for religious and cultural transformation. Looking at Our Lady of Guadalupe as a model of the Church and Juan Diego as a model for all Christians who seek to answer Christ's call of conversion and witness, the authors explore the changing face of the Catholic Church in North, Central, and South America, and they show how Our Lady of Guadalupe's message was not only historically significant, but how it speaks to contemporary issues confronting the American continents and people today.

Download or read book Pale Blue Dot written by Carl Sagan and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2011-07-06 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Fascinating . . . memorable . . . revealing . . . perhaps the best of Carl Sagan’s books.”—The Washington Post Book World (front page review) In Cosmos, the late astronomer Carl Sagan cast his gaze over the magnificent mystery of the Universe and made it accessible to millions of people around the world. Now in this stunning sequel, Carl Sagan completes his revolutionary journey through space and time. Future generations will look back on our epoch as the time when the human race finally broke into a radically new frontier—space. In Pale Blue Dot, Sagan traces the spellbinding history of our launch into the cosmos and assesses the future that looms before us as we move out into our own solar system and on to distant galaxies beyond. The exploration and eventual settlement of other worlds is neither a fantasy nor luxury, insists Sagan, but rather a necessary condition for the survival of the human race. “Takes readers far beyond Cosmos . . . Sagan sees humanity’s future in the stars.”—Chicago Tribune

Download or read book Conscience and Courage written by John Hawkins and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henri Termeer was one of the first of a pioneering group of business executives who built a disparate group of fledgling companies into a biotech industry that has driven decades of therapeutic innovation. During a 28-year career at Genzyme, including 26 years as CEO, he created a process of drug development that for the first time was patient-centered. He also helped forge biotech's public policy agenda and inspired a generation of entrepreneurs to take on large and important challenges. An extraordinary number of today's biotech leaders were directly mentored by Termeer. His own leadership was iconoclastic: He broke rules and took risks, setting ambitious goals and finding novel ways to reach them. In doing so he transformed an industry and brought hope to patients with a range of diseases previously deemed too rare to justify the investment needed to support the development of specific therapies. In Conscience and Courage, John Hawkins, an insightful analyst of healthcare leaders, reveals the philosophy, principles, methods, and habits of a prominent and successful CEO who defied convention to create an investor-owned global enterprise that put people before profits and improved the lives of thousands of forgotten patients.

Download or read book So Cold a Sky written by Karl Bohnak and published by Karl Bohnak. This book was released on 2006 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: