Uncentering the Earth

Uncentering the Earth PDF Author: William T. Vollmann
Publisher: W W Norton & Company Incorporated
ISBN: 9780393329186
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
An analysis of the astronomer's pivotal sixteenth-century work traces how his challenge to beliefs about an Earth-centric solar system had a profound influence on the ways in which humanity understands itself and the universe.

Uncentering the Earth

Uncentering the Earth PDF Author: William T. Vollmann
Publisher: W W Norton & Company Incorporated
ISBN: 9780393329186
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
An analysis of the astronomer's pivotal sixteenth-century work traces how his challenge to beliefs about an Earth-centric solar system had a profound influence on the ways in which humanity understands itself and the universe.

Earth

Earth PDF Author: Frank H. T. Rhodes
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801466202
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
"It's impossible to grasp the whole planet or integrate all the descriptions of it. But because we live here, we have to try. This is not just an artistic compulsion or an existential yearning, still less an academic exercise. It's a survival issue. This is the only planet we have. We're stuck here, and we don't own the place—it would be the height of arrogance to assume that we do. We're tenants here, not owners, but we're tenants with hope for a long-term tenancy. We want to extend our lease just as far as we can."—from Earth: A Tenant's Manual In Earth: A Tenant's Manual, the distinguished geologist Frank H. T. Rhodes, President Emeritus of Cornell University, provides a sweeping, accessible, and deeply informed guide to the home we all share, showing us how we might best preserve the Earth's livability for ourselves and future generations. Rhodes begins by setting the scene for our active planet and explaining how its location and composition determine how the Earth works and why it teems with life. He emphasizes the changes that are of concern to us today, from earthquakes to climate change and the clashes over the energy resources needed for the Earth's exploding population. He concludes with an extended exploration of humanity's prospects on a complex, protean, and ultimately finite world. It is not a question of whether the planet is sustainable; the challenge facing life on Earth—and the life of the Earth—is whether an expanding and high-consumption species like ours is sustainable. Only new resources, new priorities, new policies and, most of all, new knowledge, can reverse the damage that humanity is doing to our home—and ourselves. A sustainable human future, Rhodes concludes in this eloquent, sobering, but ultimately optimistic book, will require a sense of responsible stewardship, for we are not owners of this planet; we are tenants. Surveying the systems, large and small, that govern Earth's processes and influence its changes, Rhodes addresses the negative consequences of human activities for the health of its regulatory systems but offers practical suggestions as to how we might effect repairs, or at least limit further damage to our home.

The Uninhabitable Earth

The Uninhabitable Earth PDF Author: David Wallace-Wells
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 052557672X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • The Economist • The Paris Review • Toronto Star • GQ • The Times Literary Supplement • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible—food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. An “epoch-defining book” (The Guardian) and “this generation’s Silent Spring” (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it—the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today’s. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD “The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.”—Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times “Riveting. . . . Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wells’s outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too.”—The Economist “Potent and evocative. . . . Wallace-Wells has resolved to offer something other than the standard narrative of climate change. . . . He avoids the ‘eerily banal language of climatology’ in favor of lush, rolling prose.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times “The book has potential to be this generation’s Silent Spring.”—The Washington Post “The Uninhabitable Earth, which has become a best seller, taps into the underlying emotion of the day: fear. . . . I encourage people to read this book.”—Alan Weisman, The New York Review of Books

The Earth Moves: Galileo and the Roman Inquisition (Great Discoveries)

The Earth Moves: Galileo and the Roman Inquisition (Great Discoveries) PDF Author: Dan Hofstadter
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393071316
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
A cogent portrayal of a turning point in the evolution of the freedom of thought and the beginnings of modern science. Celebrated, controversial, condemned, Galileo Galilei is a seminal figure in the history of science. Both Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein credit him as the first modern scientist. His 1633 trial before the Holy Office of the Inquisition is the prime drama in the history of the conflict between science and religion. Galileo was then sixty-nine years old and the most venerated scientist in Italy. Although subscribing to an anti-literalist view of the Bible, as per Saint Augustine, Galileo considered himself a believing Catholic. Playing to his own strengths—a deep knowledge of Italy, a longstanding interest in Renaissance and Baroque lore—Dan Hofstadter explains this apparent paradox and limns this historic moment in the widest cultural context, portraying Galileo as both humanist and scientist, deeply versed in philosophy and poetry, on easy terms with musicians, writers, and painters.

Copernicus' Secret

Copernicus' Secret PDF Author: Jack Repcheck
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 074328951X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Nicolaus Copernicus gave the world perhaps the most important scientific insight of the modern age, the theory that the earth and the other planets revolve around the sun. He was also the first to proclaim that the earth rotates on its axis once every twenty-four hours. His theory was truly radical: during his lifetime nearly everyone believed that a perfectly still earth rested in the middle of the cosmos, where all the heavenly bodies revolved around it. One of the transcendent geniuses of the early Renaissance, Copernicus was also a flawed and conflicted person. A cleric who lived during the tumultuous years of the early Reformation, he may have been sympathetic to the teachings of the Lutherans. Although he had taken a vow of celibacy, he kept at least one mistress. Supremely confident intellectually, he hesitated to disseminate his work among other scholars. It fact, he kept his astronomical work a secret, revealing it to only a few intimates, and the manuscript containing his revolutionary theory, which he refined for at least twenty years, remained "hidden among my things." It is unlikely that Copernicus' masterwork would ever have been published if not for a young mathematics professor named Georg Joachim Rheticus. He had heard of Copernicus' ideas, and with his imagination on fire he journeyed hundreds of miles to a land where, as a Lutheran, he was forbidden to travel. Rheticus' meeting with Copernicus in a small cathedral town in northern Poland proved to be one of the most important encounters in history. Copernicus' Secretrecreates the life and world of the scientific genius whose work revolutionized astronomy and altered our understanding of our place in the world. It tells the surprising, little-known story behind the dawn of the scientific age.

Outside, America

Outside, America PDF Author: Hikaru Fujii
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441122524
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
The idea of the "outside" as a space of freedom has always been central in the literature of the United States. This concept still remains active in contemporary American fiction; however, its function is being significantly changed. Outside, America argues that, among contemporary American novelists, a shift of focus to the temporal dimension is taking place. No longer a spatial movement, the quest for the outside now seeks to reach the idea of time as a force of difference, a la Deleuze, by which the current subjectivity is transformed. In other words, the concept is taking a "temporal turn." Discussing eight novelists, including Don DeLillo, Richard Powers, Paul Theroux, and Annie Proulx, each of whose works describe forces of given identities—masculine identity, historical temporality, and power, etc.—which block quests for the outside, Fujii shows how the outside in these texts ceases to be a spatial idea. With due attention to critical and social contexts, the book aims to reveal a profound shift in contemporary American fiction.

The Elements in the Medieval World

The Elements in the Medieval World PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004712437
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
The fourteen chapters and poem of this volume reflect the centrality of the element Earth in medieval thought and life, a centrality inherited from classical antiquity, and fundamental too in Judaeo-Christian and Islamic traditions. The chapters also reflect the multifarious nature of the ways that Earth was experienced and understood in the Middle Ages. Contributors are Sophie E.D. Abrahams, Daniel Anlezark, Marilina Cesario, Catherine Clarke, James Davis, Stephen J. Davis, Virginia Iommi Echeverría, Andrew Fear, Danielle B. Joyner, Hugh Magennis, Francesco Marzella, Tom C.B. McLeish, Patrick Naeve, Bernard O’Donoghue, Sinéad O’Sullivan, Alexandra Paddock, Elisa Ramazzina, Hannah E. Smithson, Sigbjørn O. Sønnesyn, Sinéad O’Sullivan, and Margaret Tedford.

The Sun and the Earth

The Sun and the Earth PDF Author: Rebecca Stefoff
Publisher: Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 162712523X
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 51

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Book Description
We say that the sun "rises" in the morning and "sets" at night, but is it really moving? Readers will learn about the long, sometimes dangerous struggle to discover whether the sun revolves around Earth, or Earth around the sun, and find out what scientists now know about our planet's place in the universe.

Against the Day

Against the Day PDF Author: Thomas Pynchon
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101594667
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1541

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Book Description
“[Pynchon's] funniest and arguably his most accessible novel.” —The New York Times Book Review “Raunchy, funny, digressive, brilliant.” —USA Today “Rich and sweeping, wild and thrilling.” —The Boston Globe Spanning the era between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, and constantly moving between locations across the globe (and to a few places not strictly speaking on the map at all), Against the Day unfolds with a phantasmagoria of characters that includes anarchists, balloonists, drug enthusiasts, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, spies, and hired guns. As an era of uncertainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them.

Help! For Writers

Help! For Writers PDF Author: Roy Peter Clark
Publisher: Little, Brown Spark
ISBN: 0316192759
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
The craft of writing offers countless potential problems: The story is too long; the story's too short; revising presents a huge hurdle; writer's block is rearing its ugly head. In Help! For Writers, Roy Peter Clark presents an "owner's manual" for writers, outlining the seven steps of the writing process, and addressing the 21 most urgent problems that writers face. In his trademark engaging and entertaining style, Clark offers ten short solutions to each problem. Out of ideas? Read posters, billboards, and graffiti. Can't bear to edit yourself? Watch the deleted scenes feature of a DVD, and ask yourself why those scenes were left on the cutting-room floor. Help! For Writers offers 210 strategies to guide writers to success.