Best Science of Rivers
"The definitive work on the West's water crisis." ''When archaelogists from another planet sift through the bleached bones of our civilization, they may conclude that our temples were dams, says Reisner in this angry, exhaustive and gracefully written account of America's quest to turn the inhospitable, irredeemably dry West into a Garden of Eden…Not the first book on the subject, but one of the best.''. -- Kirkus Reviews ''[This] timely and important book should be required reading for all citizens.''. ''Masterful…Among the most influential environmental books published by an American since Silent Spring .''.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"This is a timeless work detailing the history of water wealth and distribution in the West."
"Man this book is encyclopedic, with all that implies."
"While the editing causes some revisiting of projects ant times, this book gives a clear picture of the technical, economic, political, and bureaucratic forces surrounding the largest group of public works in American history."
"I recommend this book to anyone wanting to understand the history of the water "crisis" or has the least bit of interest in our nation's history!"
"While the activities recounted in the book paved the way to agriculture and population growth (and clearly contributed to the rise of the United States as a world leader), the calculated and manipulative things people of the time did to drive "progress" were monumental and jaw-dropping in some cases."
"It is not a perfect work: the author occasionally allows his passion to overwhelm his recounting of the facts, and it detracts from both his case and the flow of the book."
"A really excellent dissertation on the history of US water and the institutions that control it."
"It's easy to call all cities in the American West "cancers", and state or imply how and how much the West should've been settled, based on 20/20 hindsight and without thought for where settlers could've gone if every inch West of the 100th meridian had been settled only by a very limited number of environmentally prophetic, conscientious stewards."
Since 1973, the US Army Corps of Engineers Control Complex at Old River has kept the Mississippi from jumping out of its historic channel and plunging through the Atchafalaya Basin to the Gulf of Mexico. By the time European colonists began to explore the Lower Mississippi Valley, a unique confluence of waterways had formed where the Red River joined the Mississippi, and the Atchafalaya River flowed out into the Atchafalaya Basin. James F. Barnett Jr., Natchez, Mississippi, is author of The Natchez Indians: A History to 1735 and Mississippi's American Indians , both published by University Press of Mississippi.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Fascinating prognostication that fits the facts past, present and even future!"
"Third of 3 books by Barrnett and all are very good."
"A number of years ago, I watched a documentary on television about the US Army Corps of Engineers, and their struggles to contain the Mississippi River. Armed with simulations, models, concrete, money and sheer determination, the Corps of Engineers is talked with stopping the change in the Mississippi. === The Good Stuff ===. * It seems like it should be a simple job- build a dam, and keep the Mississippi in its present river bed and flowing through New Orleans. And to further complicate matters, the Mississippi brings with it an incredible load of silt and mud, all of which can modify the river bed in unpredictable ways. James F. Barnett Jr. does a great job of explaining the complexities and consequences behind even minor changes to the river. For example, the current pathway to the Atchafalaya from the Mississippi is mostly the result of a 19th century attempt to remove a particularly nasty bend in the river. The city of New Orleans would be in a world of hurt if the lower Mississippi became a saltwater estuary, so it has an interest in keeping the river flow at a high level. * Barnett does a masterful job of explaining how these issues are interconnected, the politics and interest groups behind them, and the actual mechanics and unknown risks of tampering with the river."
"This is a layman's account of the attempts by engineers to fight against Mother Nature to control the Mississippi River, with emphasis on the attempts to keep the river from taking a new channel to the Gulf coast. There are basic empirical equations that relate flowrate, sediment load, channel slope, and channel dimensions of an alluvial river channel."
In Blue Mind, Wallace J. Nichols revolutionizes how we think about these questions, revealing the remarkable truth about the benefits of being in, on, under, or simply near water. His questions might easily be misinterpreted and he could get brushed off by quite a lot of people who don't give merit or attention to the information he's exploring. Yet, I believe the answers he finds--or just as importantly inspires others to find--will reinforce something that we already know instinctually, but sometimes just need a little bit of proof of, to feel that we're right. "Nichols insists on a more experiential brand ofactivism, encouraging individuals to encounter the oceans directly, inorder to build personal and emotional connections--to get their feet wet."
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"“...[W]ater provides the most profound shortcut to happiness out there.”. He explores our emotional ties to water, explains the technology of brain study, contemplates what happiness is and how it is evaluated, looks at the affect of the color blue and the other sensations of water. He explores the recreational use of water and the health benefits of water, including its therapeutic use for PTSD, drug addiction and autism. I know what it means if someone gives me a blue marble."
"I was intrigued with the concept and interested in reading more."
"Interesting book."
"I gave it to my adult children and they said it was great!"
"most of the book would be 5 star, but the science lesson in the first 3 chapters made me lose a little interest,however I would suggest that everyone should read it because it touches on a issue that we take for granted."
"Interesting premise, and thought provoking, but does not explore the subject as deeply as I hoped it would."
"Really felt like I related to this book a lot."
"In the beginning, a little too much about "mind" science and less about the lure of the water."
Best Mississippi Travel Guides
Along its banks and watershed 600,000 acres of public lands--wildlife management areas, national forest, wilderness areas, national wildlife refuges, Nature Conservancy preserves--ensure the creation of a tremendous natural river system. They ran rapids and explored swamps, dodged logjams and investigated possible pollution sources. The book gives the armchair explorer a vivid feeling of what it would be like to float this wonderful river and provides a wealth of information about what makes it special and the problems that threaten it. By kayak and canoe, this narrative of adventure along Americas last unaltered river system. * Provides a unique and appreciative travel narrative about the Pascagoula river system, one of the rare wild places left in North America.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I've floated and fished on several stretches of the Pascagoula, Chickasawhay and Leaf rivers and consider it my home river."
"This book gives local perspective and knowledge of navigating the waters of the Pascagoula River for Kayakers and those who would take their canoes to this water."
"The book was like new condition."
"This book literally took me on a trip down these wonderful waterways."
"Scott Williams and Ernest Herndon nailed it with this book."
Best Science of Prospecting & Mining
A New York Times bestseller, Deep Down Dark brings to haunting, tactile life the experience of being imprisoned inside a mountain of stone, the horror of being slowly consumed by hunger, and the spiritual and mystical elements that surrounded working in such a dangerous place. “Weaving together the drama of the miners' harrowing ordeal below ground with the anguish of families and rescuers on the surface, Tobar delivers a masterful account of exile and human longing, of triumph in the face of all odds. Taut with suspense and moments of tenderness and replete with a cast of unforgettable characters, Deep Down Dark ranks with the best of adventure literature. As Tobar works his way through each miner's recovery, the TV headlines recede from our memory, and a more delicate series of portraits emerges.” ― Noah Gallagher Shannon, The Washington Post. Whether the story is completely new to you, or if you were one of the millions glued to the news reports and wondering, will they make it--physically, emotionally, spiritually--you'll be greatly rewarded to learn how they did.” ― Mac McClelland, The New York Times Book Review. A novelist and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, [Tobar] combines a historian's eye for context with a gifted storyteller's ear for minor-key character traits . “If Dante's Inferno was a real place, it would look and feel like the subterranean fever dream Héctor Tobar describes in Deep Down Dark . Taking us into the post-apocalyptic landscape of Chile's Atacama Desert and guiding us through the labyrinthine hell of the world's most famous mine accident, Tobar's taut narrative plumbs the depths not only of the mine itself, but of the 33 trapped miners' hearts and souls as they fight for life, and reconcile themselves--first, to death, and then to the far more challenging task of surviving. “Héctor Tobar takes us so far down into the story and lives of the Chilean miners that his reconstruction of a workplace disaster becomes a riveting meditation on universal human themes. “In this masterful dissection of the 2010's dramatic sixty-nine day ordeal by thirty-three trapped Chilean miners, Héctor Tobar weaves a suspenseful narrative that moves back and forth between the waking nightmares of the buried men, and those of their families on the earth's surface. “It's almost hard to believe that Héctor Tobar wasn't himself one of the trapped Chilean miners, so vivid, immediate, terrifying, emotional, and convincing is his Homeric narration of this extraordinary incident. Deep Down Dark is a literary masterpiece of narrative journalism, surgical in its reconstruction, novelistic in its explorations of human personality and nuance. In a manner that feels spiritual, Tobar puts himself at the service of his story, and his fidelity to and unquenchable curiosity about every fact and detail generates unforgettable wonderment and awe.” ― Francisco Goldman. I know 2014 still has three months left to go, but I don’t expect to find anything I liked better than Héctor Tobar’s Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free. You know the story – 33 men were buried in a spectacular mine collapse, stayed underground for two months, and then were rescued, all of them unharmed. Henry Leyva's audiobook credits include reading Colin Harrison's The Havana Room , Michael Palmer's Fatal , Lawrence Block's Killing Castro , and John Grisham's The Testament as well as works from popular authors such as Nicholas Sparks and Phyllis Naylor.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"33 men: 69 days unimaginable but it happened in Chile in 2010. Until now it was one of those news stories we all remember but Hector Tobar has brought these men to live as human beings; fathers, brothers, husbands and sons. The truth about the conditions is as bad as one would imagine but to hear it told straight from the miners experiences is heart wrenching but also speaks to the human spirit and ones ability to survive even under the worst conditions. These men experienced a full gamete of emotions: hope, despair, loneliness, companionship, isolation, encouragement, depression."
"The book, a chronology of the events and a collection of portraits of the men both above and below ground, is the first of its kind, honoring an agreement the miners made to one another to tell their story only as a group. Tobar begins DEEP DOWN DARK with a description of the San José mine: a rocky, lifeless mountain situated in the Atacama Desert of Chile. Tobar, however, eagerly invites readers into this male-dominated world, exposing the dilapidation and ever-blowing dust of the mine and preparing them for the miners’ eerie descent into the depths of the earth. As they prepare to enter the mine shaft, Tobar handles their characters with great care, presenting them neither as heroes nor villains, but as regular men dealing with the monotony and banality of working life. Still, their personalities begin to shine --- from Mario Sepúlveda, nicknamed Perri (short for “Perrito,” or “small dog”) for his canine-like loyalty and aggression, to Yonni Barrios, a paunchy Romeo who moves between the homes of his wife and girlfriend depending on their moods. Tobar takes readers through the day, weaving personal details and stories seamlessly with the plot, distinguishing each of the 33 miners from one another with nicknames and humorous anecdotes. Others, like the young Bolivian immigrant Carlos Mamani, were terrified and took shelter in the Refuge, a fortified room within the mine stocked with basic medical supplies and enough food for about 15 men to survive for only a few days. His talent for pen portraits continues as he exposes the miners’ family members --- their dramas, fears and hopes --- accurately without feeling vulgar or voyeuristic. The owners of the San José appear to have completely given up, making the collapse a disaster of the people, uniting estranged families and unconnected citizens alike. It is at this point that they deliver their world famous message “Estamos bien en el refugio, los 33.” Though it seems that all will be well from now on, Tobar carefully details the dangers still present: the miners must learn to eat normally again, several of them have entered the early stages of kidney failure, and their hope is dwindling. Exposing the days of the miners post-contact is the greatest strength of Tobar’s book, as people worldwide focused only on the excitement of the men, rather than the agony of their time spent waiting for rescue even after contact was made. Tobar is quick to point out that their journey is not over, with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the pains of celebrity making their transitions even more difficult, but they are alive and stronger than ever before."
"I have absolutely no sense of how large or small their underground space was but just the thought of being buried alive scares most people, and these guys had to endure that situation, the longer time was while they were waiting to be drilled out."
Best Environmental Science
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. A New York Times 2016 Notable Book. National Best Seller. Named one of TIME magazine’s "100 Most Influential People". An Amazon Top 20 Best Book of 2016. A Washington Post Best Memoir of 2016. A TIME and Entertainment Weekly Best Book of 2016 An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime friendship; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see the natural world. Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which she’s studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Somehow she knows me: “the average person [who] cannot imagine himself staring at dirt for longer than the twenty seconds needed to pick up whatever object he just dropped.” And she doesn’t judge. Like life, for instance, and friendship and passion and love, for ideas, for work and for all living beings, including--shocker!--people. A tenured professor at the University of Hawaii, Jahren has built a career and a reputation in science by unearthing secrets hidden in fossilized plant life. Her work has resulted in at least 70 studies in dozens of journals, but it’s also given her a platform to talk about something else: widespread sexual harassment and discrimination in science. On her blog, in op-eds and in her new memoir, Lab Girl, Jahren wields her influence to call out a culture that has caused women to flee the field she so loves. I was drawn in from the start by the clarity and beauty of Jahren’s prose, whether she was examining the inner world of a seed, the ecosystem around the trunk of a tree, or recounting her own inspiring journey. They emerge from her memoir as much more than a bundle of biological processes, but beings with strange, secret lives, supported by astonishingly elegant machinery . In these pages you’ll find a renewed interest in the natural world, and notice things that have been hidden in plain sight. She writes: ‘Love and learning are similar, in that they can never be wasted.’ And neither is time spent reading this book.” —Lucie Green, The Guardian (UK). In [this] behind-the-scenes tour of science, we join her for misadventures and triumphs as she sets up three labs and conducts research in the Canadian Arctic, Ireland, Hawaii, and across the continental United States. Jahren spends the book teaching us that if we just look closely enough, we can see the opal lattice on a hackberry seed, the depths of loyalty in our closest friends, the wonder in a single leaf, and what we ourselves are supposed to become . She’s the type of scientist who cheerfully spends three seasons drilling through Arctic turf; between sessions of hard graft, her lab group takes road trips to see bizarre attractions, or attempts elaborate campfire cuisine. Lab Girl is the acutely personal account of the drive that propels people to the frontier of an academic discipline. Her eloquent rhapsodies about peerless soil samples, willow trees, and the tenacity of a cactus prompt a deeply inquisitive spirit in readers . Peppered with literary references to Genet, Beckett, Dickens and Thoreau, Jahren’s honest prose is insightful, eloquent, and funny, and she has a gift for explaining hard science in the most bewitching way . In the end, it’s easy to see the book as a love note—not just to plants, to science, and to the sweetness of discovery, but also to friendship and loyalty, to journeys big and small, to belonging and becoming.” —Kathleen Yale, Orion. “Jahren writes with such flair that a reviewer is tempted to just move out of the way and quote her; from the prologue on, a reader itches to call out fun facts to innocents nearby. Deft and flecked with humor, Lab Girl is also a hybrid—a scientist’s memoir of a quirky, gritty, fascinating life, punctuated by mesmerizing dispatches on botany . Snow’s two cultures [the sciences and the humanities] gives the book a bright spark, like playing tennis with an intriguing, ambidextrous friend. Her lab partner Bill, a sort of fraternal twin, carries the weight of emotional confederacy in the book . Like Robert Sapolsky’s A Primate’s Memoir or Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk , Lab Girl delivers the zing of a beautiful mind in nature.” —Karen R. Long, Seattle Times * “Sublime, entertaining . With good humor, plenty of science, scattered literary allusions and the occasional sarcastic zinger, Lab Girl is a memoir of a plant research scientist [that] illuminates both the science of the plant world and the ebb and flow of her personal life—her struggles to find professional success, love and family. Jahren emerges as a smart, practical, good-hearted woman who loves her work and also finds joy in her husband, young son and best friend, Bill.”—Bruce Jacobs, Shelf Awareness (starred). A pronounced oddball, a seeker of knowledge, and a trader of sardonic wisecracks, Bill is Jahren’s unfailing, unfussy sidekick; [he’s] never happier than when on the job, savoring the complexities of soil layers or scavenging secondhand equipment for the laboratories the two of them have built together . Jahren captures the ramshackle poetry of this friendship, whose loyalty is so deep and abiding that it forges a great love story, in spite of the utter absence of erotic interest in either party. Winning.” —Laura Miller, Slate “As a young girl growing up in Minnesota, Jahren spent her formative years in the labs of her father, a science teacher at the local community college. It is this literary upbringing fueled by science that heralds Jahren’s memoir as the beginning of a career along the lines of Annie Dillard or Diane Ackerman. In Lab Girl, she constructs her own life story— her struggling years as an undergraduate, the persistent sexist attitude of the scientific community, the constant lack of funds, her growing awareness of her bipolar disorder—with the attention to detail and respect for organic growth that has earned her increased recognition and funding in the later years of her career. Jahren, a geochemist, botanist and geobiologist, has spent the better part of the past two decades studying the secret lives of plants. It is full of pleasing turns of phrase, references to literary figures like Genet and Dickens, and a running botany allusion that punctuates the book’s biographical story. Most of all, it’s deeply personal, following Jahren’s battle with manic depression; a harrowing pregnancy; her unending struggle to secure funding in a quickly drying financial desert; and the loving platonic relationship she shares with her protégé and lab manager, Bill. Jahren’s work has taken her around the world, from the ancient forests of Norway and Denmark to the remote and treeless Arctic, and most recently to the lush gardens of Hawaii. Jahren’s aim is to make the reader appreciate the fascinations of studying flora, to infect us with the same enthusiasm that has driven her ever since she was a child hanging around in her father’s lab, falling hard for the sensuous allures of the slide rule. Jahren’s literary bent renders dense material digestible and lyrical, in fables that parallel personal history. Vladimir Nabokov once observed that ‘a writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.’ The geobiologist Hope Jahren possesses both in spades. Her new memoir is at once a thrilling account of her discovery of her vocation and a gifted teacher’s road map to the secret lives of plants—a book that, at its best, does for botany what Oliver Sacks’s essays did for neurology, what Stephen Jay Gould’s writings did for paleontology . She communicates the electric excitement of discovering something new—something no one ever knew or definitively proved before—and the grunt work involved in conducting studies and experiments: the days and weeks and months of watching and waiting and gathering data, the all-nighters, the repetitions, the detours, both serendipitous and unfruitful . Born and raised in a rural Minnesota town built around a meat-processing plant and defined mostly by its brutal winters and Scandinavian restraint, Jahren assumed that the grim endurance of her Norwegian-immigrant ancestors was her legacy. She did turn out to be tenacious, though not exactly in the way she had pictured: Long hours spent entertaining herself as a child in her physics-teacher father’s work space piqued Jahren’s interest in science, and her housewife mother’s unhappiness propelled her to pursue higher education all the way to a UC Berkeley Ph.D. Today, she’s an internationally renowned geobiologist with three Fulbrights, her own world-class laboratory, and a Wikipedia page longer and starrier than most U.S. senators’. But even more than that, it’s a fascinating portrait of her engagement with the natural world: she investigates everything from the secret life of cacti to the tiny miracles encoded in an acorn seed, studding her observations with memorable sentences . Jahren’s singular gift is her ability to convey the everyday wonder of her work: exploring the strange, beautiful universe of living things that endure and evolve and bloom all around us, if we bother to look. In Lab Girl , pioneering geobiologist Jahren limns her journey [from] insecure young scientist [to] medals and professional and personal fulfillment. But her prose reaches another dimension when she describes her remarkable relationship with a lab guy, an undergraduate loner named Bill. The research partners dig holes, gather soil samples, battle personal demons, and keep each other grounded. She’s an acute observer, prickly—and funny as hell.” —Elizabeth Royte, ELLE “Attentive to subtle signs of growth and change, geobiologist Jahren turns her gaze not only outward but also inward and finds wonder even in minutiae: the flourishing of a seed, an emotional efflorescence in her own psyche. ‘There I transformed from a girl into a scientist, just like Peter Parker becoming Spider-Man, only kind of backward,’ she writes.” —Jennifer Maloney, The Wall Street Journal, “The Hottest Spring Nonfiction Books”. “Jahren, a professor of geobiology, recounts her unfolding journey to discover ‘what it’s like to be a plant’ in this darkly humorous, emotionally raw, and exquisitely crafted memoir. Jahren, who ‘loves [her] calling to excess,’ describes the joy of working alone at night, the ‘multidimensional glory’ of a manic episode, scavenging jury-rigged equipment from a retiring colleague, or spontaneously road-tripping with students. For Jahren, a life in science yields the gratification of asking, knowing, and telling; for the reader, the joy is in hearing about the process as much as the results.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review). The author’s father was a science teacher who encouraged her play in the laboratory, and her mother was a student of English literature who nurtured her love of reading. Present throughout is her lab partner, a disaffected genius named Bill, whom she recruited when she was a graduate student and with whom she’s worked ever since. The author’s tenacity, hope, and gratitude are all evident as she and Bill chase the sweetness of discovery in the face of the harsh economic realities of the research scientist. “Hope Jahren’s Lab Girl burns with her love of science, teaching us the way great teachers can. In Lab Girl , pioneering geobiologist Jahren limns her journey [from] insecure young scientist [to] medals and professional and personal fulfillment. But her prose reaches another dimension when she describes her remarkable relationship with a lab guy, an undergraduate loner named Bill. The research partners dig holes, gather soil samples, battle personal demons, and keep each other grounded. She’s an acute observer, prickly—and funny as hell.” —Elizabeth Royte, ELLE “Attentive to subtle signs of growth and change, geobiologist Jahren turns her gaze not only outward but also inward and finds wonder even in minutiae: the flourishing of a seed, an emotional efflorescence in her own psyche. ‘Science has taught me that everything is more complicated than we first assume, and that being able to derive happiness from discovery is a recipe for a beautiful life.’” —Dawn Raffel, More. It’s not surprising that today we relegate those who speak the language of biology, chemistry or physics to a kind of rarified ghetto. The best moments describe observation in nature, which lead to a question, which in turn formulates a hypothesis, generates an experiment and, with luck, yields the ecstasy of discovery. What Lab Girl offers, beyond the pleasure of reading it, is the insight that science is built of small contributions, not masterstrokes like e=mc2.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Yet this book, which might better be considered a platonic love story to Bill, her long time lab partner, rather than a book about the life of a scientist, was tainted by the gleeful disdain that Jahren and Bill show for many other people. One day, Jahren does not heed multiple warnings and directs the graduate student driver to go straight into a snow storm. The student driver, understandably shaken, asks to be dropped off at the airport so she can fly home, but Jahren and Bill yell at her and refuse, calling her a quitter. Jahren and Bill enjoy giving their students a repetitive, meaningless task, like labeling hundreds of bottles, and then telling them that, sorry, they won't be using their work after all."
"I appreciate the way she incorporated her struggles with mental illness, women in science and university funding (which will make any tuition paying parent give a HARD look at the college they are paying to educate their child at) within the book but never came off as whiny or complaining."
"Her mental illness and relationship with her lab assistant (who likely has autism, but is able to make her botany research possible with his amazing ability to construct lab equipment and assist her in her field work) are themes throughout the book."
"This gave insight into the difficulties that women have gaining credibility in biology, no matter what degrees they have or what they have published."
"Jahren is a good writer and tells the personal story of her relationships with coworkers and the frustrations and the joys she found in her world of science."
"The interspersion of scientific facts in the recollection of a unique life experience made for an interesting and informative reading."
"If you love trees and plants and have a fondness of people who have a passion for science, you must read this book."
"Hoping against hope."
Best Natural Disasters
Isaac Cline was one of the era's new men, a scientist who believed he knew all there was to know about the motion of clouds and the behavior of storms. That August, a strange, prolonged heat wave gripped the nation and killed scores of people in New York and Chicago. As the bureau's forecasters assured the nation that all was calm in the Caribbean, Cuba's own weathermen fretted about ominous signs in the sky. Hundreds of people gathered at the beach to marvel at the fantastically tall waves and gorgeous pink sky, until the surf began ripping the city's beloved beachfront apart. In Galveston alone at least 6,000 people, possibly as many as 10,000, would lose their lives, a number far greater than the combined death toll of the Johnstown Flood and 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. As barometers plummet and wind gauges are plucked from their moorings, Larson (Lethal Passage) cuts cinematically from the eerie "eyewall" of the hurricane to the mundane hubbub of a lunchroom moments before it capitulates to the arriving winds, from the neat pirouette of Cline's house amid rising waters to the bridge of the steamship Pensacola, tossed like flotsam on the roiling seas. Major ad/promo; author tour; simultaneous Random House audio; foreign rights sold in Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan and the U.K. (Sept.). Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Larson is brilliant at presenting history as it can be: remarkable stories that are not a long list of "name/place/date" but an exploration of situation, connections, character, emotion, outcomes - fact, not fiction, with sources noted, of course - that draw one in and keep one immersed through to end."
"Not only because he’s an excellent and engaging writer, but he writes about historical episodes that are completely fascinating, like my book club’s recent read: Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History. “If there were a Pulitzer for bleak irony, however, it would go to the News for its Saturday-morning report on one of the most important local stories of the year—the Galveston count of the 1900 U.S. census, which the newspaper had first announced on Friday. I wasn’t expecting that much background, but it gives a more broader understanding of how big this storm was and the rippling effects. Dealing with a natural disaster is going to bring gut-wrenching facts (I did have to stop reading for a while after the part about the destruction of an orphanage and the lives lost, i.e. kids), but even with painful truths of the story, Larson is able to deliver without being overwhelming or too descriptive."
"In the case of Issac's storm in 1900, that hit Galveston, Texas, it was estimated to be close to a category 5. at that time the National Weather Service was a budding and infant service dependent on oral relays of information from ships at sea or island in the Caribbean, specifically Cuba and other smaller Islands. Because of both politics and funding issues the word "hurricane" was forbidden to be communicated because of the variable shifts in weather fronts. His name was Issac Cline and he sensed the coming storm but was on delicate territory in expressing the need for greater danger to the residents of Galveston whose topography was only about five feet above sea level and while local politicians talked about a sea wall because of previous storms, the idea was put into a bureaucratic filing drawer. Erik Larson lays out a compelling story based on his usual and extensive research and puts the reader into the minds of the characters in the book, which were all real people."
Best Geophysics
Geochemistry is essential reading for all earth science students, as well as for researchers and applied scientists who require an introduction to the essential theory of geochemistry, and a survey of its applications in the earth and environmental sciences.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"The field has progressed along with advances in computer (thermodynamic) modeling and incorporation of rigorous physics, and texts more than 15 years old are a bit dated."
"Very good text for understanding the basic principles of geochemistry."
"Great great book with good price."
"The book was delivered in a timely way in good condition."
"Only partially through the book but so far it is exactly what was expected."
"I like its approach, the foundation of its thermodynamic and the kinetic toolboxes before going into the geological details and applications, and in particular I clearly admire its dealing with isotope geochemistry since no modern textbook on geochemistry would be interesting if it did not deal with environmental stable and radiogenic isotopes involvement in geology and the environment. I strongly recommend this book to all serious students, professors and research workers in environmental sciences, geology, water resources, chemistry, thermodynamics, isotope hydrology and geochemistry and for sure to those who are permanently involved with the practical geochemistry studies and the associated engineering / environmental problems."
Best Mineralogy
A substance so valuable it served as currency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions. Kurlansky traces the history of salt's influences from prehistoric China and ancient Africa (in Egypt they made mummies using salt) to Europe (in 12th-century Provence, France, salt merchants built "a system of solar evaporation ponds") and the Americas, through chapters with intriguing titles like "A Discourse on Salt, Cadavers and Pungent Sauces." The book is populated with characters as diverse as frozen-food giant Clarence Birdseye; Gandhi, who broke the British salt law that forbade salt production in India because it outdid the British salt trade; and New York City's sturgeon king, Barney Greengrass. [For another book on the topic, see Pierre Laszlo's more esoteric Salt: Grain of Life, LJ 7/01; other recent micro-histories include Joseph Amato's Dust, Mort Rosenblum's Olive, and Tom Vanderbilt's The Sneaker Book.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"We forget how important salt was to our forebears, for one thing, and I hadn't realized how important it was to development."
"Detailed history of salt and the important role it his played in the history of the world."
"Kurlansky does a wonderful job of relating salt to history, so maybe it's history to salt."
"Interesting account of the history of salt production-- at first glance this may not seem all that interesting of a topic but the geography, world history, and culinary history from across the globe as well as the science itself of salt production will capture just about anyones imagination."
"A Fascinating exploration of a common place commodity that turns out to be not so common after all!"
"Take a pinch of Salt add the motivation of Homo sapiens and see what happens?"
"It made food taste better, melted ice, made water boil hotter, preserved mummies, stopped food from spoiling... * There were some interesting little facts and tidbits scattered throughout the book. I almost stopped reading it numerous times, but talked myself into plowing forward. There was no thesis or central topic to the book, and the author offered no analysis or integration between the various stories."
Best Limnology
With 40% new and expanded coverage, this text covers applied and basic aspects of limnology, now with more emphasis on wetlands and reservoirs than in the previous edition. Expanded coverage of the toxic effects of pharmaceuticals and endocrine disrupters as freshwater pollutants More on aquatic invertebrates, with more images and pictures of a broader range of organisms Expanded coverage of the functional roles of filterer feeding, scraping, and shredding organisms, and a new section on omnivores. In many ways, this textbook provides a really refreshing blend of ecological concepts as they apply to aquatic ecology, in addition to the basic knowledge of freshwater ecosystem organisms that a student would need to apply the concepts… We think that it is a successful, innovative and, for the most part, modern view of the study of inland waters. Over the years, Dodds has taught Limnology, Advanced Aquatic Ecology, Microbial Ecology, Principles of Biology, Conservation Biology, Environmental Problems, Origins of Life, Herbivory, Presentations in Ecology, Aquatic Ecology, Stream Ecology, Algal Identification, Algal Ecology, Bacteriology and Freshwater Biology. Dodds has grants from agencies including the National Science Foundation, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the United States Geological Survey, the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Dodds’ recent research has focused on Aquatic Ecology on Konza Prairie, Nitrogen Uptake Retention and Cycling in Stream Ecosystems, Quality and Quantity of Suspended Solids in Kansas Rivers, and Nutrients and Algae in Streams.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"For the most part, I really enjoyed using this book for class."
"It's a text that I like to page through for the literature, and often will lend to others looking for a freshwater perspective."
"Looks great, perfect condition and came right on time."
"book in good condition as advertised."
"This text does a great job of covering a lot of material in an approachable way."
"Regarding quality of the book- if you actually plan on opening and reading the book, the binding is awful."
"Poorly bound."
Best Geology
Bill Bryson's challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry and particle physics, and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. His aim is to help people like him, who rejected stale school textbooks and dry explanations, to appreciate how we have used science to understand the smallest particles and the unimaginably vast expanses of space. Though A Short History clocks in at a daunting 500-plus pages and covers the same material as every science book before it, it reads something like a particularly detailed novel (albeit without a plot). What follows is a brick of a volume summarizing moments both great and curious in the history of science, covering already well-trod territory in the fields of cosmology, astronomy, paleontology, geology, chemistry, physics and so on.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"This book surprised me in the amount of effort the author took to go through book after book of different sciences, both old and new, and proceeded to connect the dots into several cohesive stories about our home, planet Earth, and its residents."
"The gift recipient listened to the 5 CDs over several days and declared it very interesting."
"A fantastic and detailed, comprehensive book about nearly everything!"
"One of, if not the most thorough, entertaining, and delightful books of general science knowledge I've ever read."
"Bill Bryson can do no wrong and while doing no wrong he does it with style, understanding and great humor."
"It's hard not to love this book, and having it on c.d."
"This book is a bit outdated now but very entertaining and humorous!"
"Propping it up on pillows or sitting at a table with it flat on the surface are the only ways that this can be read for more than a few minutes -AND you will want to keep reading and reading."
Best Geography
Longitude is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest, and of Harrison's forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer. Dava Sobel's Longitude tells the story of how 18th-century scientist and clockmaker William Harrison solved one of the most perplexing problems of history--determining east-west location at sea.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"The Illustrated version of the book is so much more enjoyable when you can actually see the amazing clocks and detail that Harrison designed and built."
"Indeed I found myself moved by the descriptions of the story to go on the web looking up such terms as " the Grasshopper escapement" to try and gain a greater understanding of what Harrison really accomplished and the instruments the sailors of his time used for navigation."
"In this age of precise time being readily available on our wrist or cell phone it's hard to imagine ships running on the rocks due to inability to figure out where they were on the globe."
"Dava Sobel's clear and well-written book is a moving narrative of John Harrison's heroic dedication to developing a clock that would allow mariners to navigate with assurance that their longitudinal positions were accurate."
"Absolutely one of the best books I've read on nautical history in a very long time."
"I was aware of Harrison's solution to the problem of longitude, but I still found this book fascinating."
"This book brings the story to life and helps the reader understand what the problem was, and why a solution was so important. I did find that it bogged down with science in two spots, but they were so fleeting that it didn't bother me and I had no issue getting through those parts and comprehending them."
"Was recommended to me by a friend."
Best Earthquakes & Volcanoes
With a 100% chance of a mega-quake hitting the Pacific Northwest, this fascinating book reports on the scientists who are trying to understand when, where, and just how big THE BIG ONE will be. “More than just a dire warning about the “big one”…[ Full Rip 9.0 ] renders the remarkable story of how geologists and other scientists have pieced together evidence of an immense Northwest “megaquake”…[ Full Rip 9.0 ] may make you a little jittery (and cause you to re-evaluate your family’s earthquake readiness), but it is a captivating read even as it challenges long-held assumptions — including the firmness of the ground under your feet. The Seattle Times "Written by Seattle Times science writer Sandi Doughton, the book is a hard, fast and compelling look at the potential impact The Big One might have on us, and it documents the detective work being done by researchers who are trying to nail down the shifting tectonic structures below. " Seattle Times reporter Sandi Doughton draws the reader into in-depth science—science that says it’s a matter of if, not when, a big quake will strike—with vivid stories of the scientists behind the data. Seattle science reporter Sandi Doughton has written this alarming assessment of our region's seismic activity throughout history and uses the latest scientific research to speculate on what we might expect in the future." "In this fascinating book, The Seattle Times science reporter Sandi Doughton introduces readers to the scientists who are dedicated to understanding the way the earth moves and describes what patterns can be identified and how prepared (or not) people are. Sandi Doughton writes about science for The Seattle Times and has been a journalist for 20 years covering environment, science, health, and medicine.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Quick delivery, info on the big one coming good book."
"The author is a great science reporter."
"This subject is so fascinating, and this book is well written to draw the reader into the world of geoscience in the Pacific Northwest."
"It is only a matter of time until new technologies and geologist's brains develop new ways to track and to ultimately predict tectonic shifts."
"Very informative book; would recommend it for anyone interesting in earthquakes, etc.."
"My husband enjoyed reading this book immensely and it's contents were right in line with all the information that he has on the Cascadia fault and what will be happening."
"A wake up call to the inevitable seismic threat to the Pacific Northwest that concludes with information about needed preparations."
"Excellent book detailing the history and geology of the Cascadia Subduction Zone and the Pacific Northwest in general."