Showing results for "Science Fiction Confidential" in Environment

Completely off-the-wall, It's a Plot is a fascinating geographical and historical journey around Britain. The Tibetans have the Book of the Dead. This is Ann Treneman's Book of the Dead Interesting. The Times writer, best known for her hilarious parliamentary sketches, has branched out - to graveyards. In this riveting book - part travelogue, part biography, part social history - she takes you to the best graves in Britain.

The Origin of Species sold out on the first day of its publication in 1859. It is the major book of the 19th century and one of the most readable and accessible of the great revolutionary works of the scientific imagination. Though, in fact, little read, most people know what it says—at least they think they do. The Origin of Species was the first mature and persuasive work to explain how species change through the process of natural selection. Upon its publication, the book began to transform attitudes about society and religion.

This scientific writing, which was considered to be the groundwork of evolutionary biology, presented the theory that species developed over a line of originations through a method of natural selection. It imparted evidence that the variety of life resulted from a common descent via a branching model of evolution.

This is the story of a generation, shaped by the 60s, that has reached its time of reckoning, and of a man who must uncover the secrets of his father's past before he can live and love in the present. Mitch Rozier has spent half of his 50 years writing an environmental column for an alternative West coast paper. Now he finds himself back under his father's roof. Sisters Lexa and Mariah McCaskill wrestle with the past that has driven them away from domesticity:

In 1865 a broken Admiral Robert FitzRoy locked himself in his dressing room and cut his throat. His grand meteorological project had failed. Yet only a decade later, FitzRoy’s storm-warning system and ‘forecasts’ would return, the model for what we use today. In an age when a storm at sea was evidence of God’s great wrath, 19th-century meteorologists had to fight against convention and religious dogma.

An epic struggle over land, water, and power is erupting in the American West and the halls of Washington, DC. It began when a 4,000-square-mile area of Arizona desert called Black Mesa was divided between the Hopi and Navajo tribes. To the outside world, it was a land struggle between two fractious Indian tribes; to political insiders and energy corporations, it was a divide-and-conquer play for the 21 billion tons of coal beneath Black Mesa. Today, that coal powers cheap electricity for Los Angeles, a new water aqueduct into Phoenix, and the neon dazzle of Las Vegas.

The sixth "mass extinction event" in the history of planet Earth is currently under way, with over two hundred species dying off every day. The cause of this seismic event is also the source of the single biggest threat to human life: our own inventions. But for all our talk about sea levels and biotechnology, do we really know what our future will actually look like? Will our immune systems be attacked by so-called super bugs, always evolving, and more easily spread than ever? Will the disappearance of numerous species cripple the biosphere?

From the purple grasses of August, to the yellow elms of October, to the scarlet oak leaves of November, Henry David Thoreau casts his eye on the brilliant colors of autumn and guides us on a journey through the season's bounty. In this classic essay, first published in 1862, Thoreau delights in fall's foliage and reveals both a practical and philosophical understanding of the changing environment.

By 2084, global warming has proven worse than even the worst-case projections of scientists at the turn of the century. No country and no individual has escaped. Through interviews, this book of oral history captures the effects of the Great Warming on various countries and individuals, as reported in the year 2084.

Charlie's Mailbox is a lyrical and poetic tale told through the eyes of Charlie, a lonely girl who stumbles upon an old mailbox and the power of dreams.