Author:
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9780858358218
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
This volume aims to answer readers' questions about venomous and equally dangerous non-venomous wildlife.

Author: Barbara Winter
Publisher: Interactive Publications
ISBN: 1921479841
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Who was "the most dangerous man in Australia" in the years before World War II? Was it the geologist who obtained nickel and molybdenite to prolong the life of Krupp guns and help "our dear F hrer" to win the next war? Or perhaps the journalist who took Japanese money in return for persuading politicians that the peace-loving Japanese were no threat to Australia? Or the Vichy French Consul-General who urged the Japanese to seize New Caledonia, while he threatened the lives of Free French supporters in Australia? These are some of the intriguing characters to be found in this book. Judge for yourself who deserves the distinction!

Author: Derek Lundy
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1616202475
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
Godforsaken Sea is the hair-raising account of the world's most demanding, dangerous, and deadly sailing race. Around the world, one sailor, one boat, no stops, no assistance. Author Derek Lundy's vivid book follows the field of the 1996 - 1997 Vendee Globe through the race's grueling four-month circumnavigation of the globe, most of it through the terror of the Southern Ocean. Lundy narrates the race through the eyes and experiences of sixteen sailors - fourteen men and two women - who embdoy the best and most eccentric aspects of our human condition. There's the gallant Brit who spends days beating back against the worst seas to save a fellow sailor; the Frenchman who bothers to salvage only a bottle of champagne from his broken and sinking boat; the sailor who comes to love the albatross that trails her for months, naming it Bernard; the sailor who calmly smokes a cigarette as his boat capsizes; and the Canadian who, hours before he disappears forever, dispatches this message: If you drag things out too long here, you're sure to come to grief. With the literary touch of Saint-Exupery and Conrad, Derek Lundy harnesses hurricane-force winds, six story waves, icebergs, and deafening noise. And he lays bare the spirit of the men and women who push themselves to the outer limits of human endeavor - even if it means never returning home.

Author: Leonhard Stejneger
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Birds
Languages : en
Pages : 950

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Author: Edward Drinker Cope
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Reptiles
Languages : en
Pages : 1396

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Author: Southwest Fisheries Center (U.S.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fisheries
Languages : en
Pages : 884

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Author: University of Sydney
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Medical sciences
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Author: Gerrit Smith Miller
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mammals
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Author: Roger Conant
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Reptiles
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description

Author: Ashley Montagu
Publisher: Read Books Ltd
ISBN: 1447495209
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
DR. ASHLEY MONTAGU’S book possesses two great merits rarely found in current discussions of human problems. Where most writers over-simplify, he insists on the principle of multiple and interlocking causation. And where most assume that “facts will speak for themselves,” he makes it clear that facts are mere ventriloquists’ dummies, and can be made to justify any course of action that appeals to the socially conditioned passions of the individuals concerned. These two truths are sufficiently obvious; but they are seldom recognized, for the good reason that they are very depressing. To recognize the first truth is to recognize the fact that there are no panaceas and that therefore most of the golden promises made by political reformers and revolutionaries are illusory. And to recognize the truth that facts do not speak for themselves, but only as man’s socially conditioned passions dictate, is to recognize that our current educational processes can do very little to ameliorate the state of the world. In the language of traditional theology (so much more realistic, in many respects, than the “liberal” philosophies which replaced it), most ignorance is voluntary and depends upon acts of the conscious or subconscious will. Thus, the fallacies underlying the propaganda of racial hatred are not recognized because, as Dr. Montagu points out, most people have a desire to act aggressively, and the members of other ethnic groups are convenient victims, whom one may attack with a good conscience. This desire to act aggressively has its origins in the largely unavoidable frustrations imposed upon the individual by the processes of early education and later adjustments to the social environment. Dr. Montagu might have added that aggressiveness pays a higher dividend in emotional satisfaction than does coöperation. Coöperation may produce a mild emotional glow; but the indulgence of aggressivness can be the equivalent of a drinking bout or sexual orgy. In our industrial societies, the goodness of life is measured in terms of the number and intensity of the excitements experienced. (Popular philosophy is moulded by, and finds expression in, the advertising pages of popular magazines. Significantly enough, the word that occurs more frequently in those pages than any other is “thrill.”) Like sex and alcohol, aggressiveness can give enormous thrills. Under existing social conditions, it is therefore easy to represent aggressiveness as good. Concerning the remedies for the social diseases he has so penetratingly diagnosed, Dr. Montagu says very little, except that they will have to consist in some process of education. But what process? It is to be hoped that he will answer this question at length in another work. ALDOUS HUXLEY