In this provocative, startling book, Robert D. Kaplan, the bestselling author of Monsoon and Balkan Ghosts, offers a revelatory new prism through which to view global upheavals and to understand what lies ahead for continents and countries around the world. In The Revenge of Geography, Kaplan builds on the insights, discoveries, and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene. Kaplan traces the history of the world’s hot spots by examining their climates, topographies, and proximities to other embattled lands. The Russian steppe’s pitiless climate and limited vegetation bred hard and cruel men bent on destruction, for example, while Nazi geopoliticians distorted geopolitics entirely, calculating that space on the globe used by the British Empire and the Soviet Union could be swallowed by a greater German homeland. Kaplan then applies the lessons learned to the present crises in Europe, Russia, China, the Indian subcontinent, Turkey, Iran, and the Arab Middle East. The result is a holistic interpretation of the next cycle of conflict throughout Eurasia. Remarkably, the future can be understood in the context of temperature, land allotment, and other physical certainties: China, able to feed only 23 percent of its people from land that is only 7 percent arable, has sought energy, minerals, and metals from such brutal regimes as Burma, Iran, and Zimbabwe, putting it in moral conflict with the United States. Afghanistan’s porous borders will keep it the principal invasion route into India, and a vital rear base for Pakistan, India’s main enemy. Iran will exploit the advantage of being the only country that straddles both energy-producing areas of the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. Finally, Kaplan posits that the United States might rue engaging in far-flung conflicts with Iraq and Afghanistan

In this engaging study of the physical world, Asimov explores the natural scientific phenomena that people question on a daily basis. Unabridged selections. 4 cassettes. *****COPY SAYS UNABRIDGED SELECTIONS*****

From the bestselling author of The Clockwork Universe and The Writing of the Gods , an “utterly delightful…hugely entertaining” ( Air Mail ) book about the eccentric Victorians who discovered dinosaur bones, leading to a whole new understanding of human history. In the early 1800s the natural world was a safe and cozy place, or so people believed. But then a twelve-year-old farm boy in Massachusetts stumbled on a row of fossilized three-toed footprints the size of dinner plates—the first dinosaur tracks ever found. Soon, in England, scientists unearthed enormous bones that reached as high as a man’s head. Outside of myths and fairy tales, no one had even imagined that creatures like three-toed giants had once lumbered across the land—nor dreamed that they could all have vanished, hundreds of millions years ago. In Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party , celebrated storyteller and historian Edward Dolnick leads us through a compelling true adventure as the paleontologists of the early 19th century puzzled their way through the fossil record to create the story of dinosaurs we know today. The tale begins with Mary Anning, a poor, uneducated woman who had a sixth sense for finding fossils buried deep inside cliffs; moves to William Buckland, an eccentric geologist who filled his home with specimens and famously pieced together a prehistoric scene from the fossil record inside a cave; and then on to the controversial Richard Owen, the era’s best-known scientist, and the one who coined the term “dinosaur.” “Exuberant” ( Kirkus Reviews ), entertaining, erudite, and featuring an unconventional cast of characters, Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party tells the story of how the accidental discovery of prehistoric creatures upended humanity’s understanding of the world and its own place within it.

"From a Nobel Prize-winning pioneer in environmental economics, an innovative account of how and why "green thinking" could cure many of the world's most serious problems-from global warming to pandemics Solving the world's biggest problems-from climate catastrophe and pandemics to wildfires and corporate malfeasance-requires, more than anything else, coming up with new ways to manage the powerful interactions that surround us. For carbon emissions and other environmental damage, this means ensuring that those responsible pay their full costs rather than continuing to pass them along to others, including future generations. In The Spirit of Green, Nobel Prize-winning economist William Nordhaus describes a new way of green thinking that would help us overcome our biggest challenges without sacrificing economic prosperity, in large part by accounting for the spillover costs of economic collisions. In a discussion that ranges from the history of the environmental movement to the Green New Deal, Nordhaus explains how the spirit of green thinking provides a compelling and hopeful new perspective on modern life. At the heart of green thinking is a recognition that the globalized world is shaped not by isolated individuals but rather by innumerable interactions inside and outside the economy. He shows how rethinking economic efficiency, sustainability, politics, profits, taxes, individual ethics, corporate social responsibility, finance, and more would improve the effectiveness and equity of our society. And he offers specific solutions-on how to price carbon, how to pursue low-carbon technologies, how to design an efficient tax system, and how to foster international cooperation through climate clubs. The result is a groundbreaking new vision of how we can have our environment and our economy too"--

"In 1950, mathematician-philosopher Norbert Wiener ended this classic book on the place of machines in society with a warning: "We shall never receive the right answers to our questions unless we ask the right questions.... The hour is very late, and the choice of good and evil knocks at our door." Wiener, the founder of the science of cybernetics--the study of the relationship between computers and the human nervous system--was widely mislabeled as an advocate for the automation of human life. As The Human Use for Human Beings reveals, his vision was much more complex and interesting, and is more relevant in today's world of AI than anyone could have anticipated. In his new introduction, Brian Christian aptly calls Wiener the "progenitor of contemporary AI-safety discourse." Wiener hoped that machines would release people from relentless and repetitive drudgery to achieve more creative pursuits, yet he anticipated the danger of dehumanizing and displacement. His pioneering views on the human-machine relationship as a "communicative process" are only more crucial now, as we carry in our pockets AI devices that we can literally speak to. His prescient warnings illuminate our contemporary relationships with language, art, and even social media. The Human Use of Human Beings examines the implications of cybernetics for education, law, language, science, technology, as Wiener anticipates the enormous impact--in effect, a third industrial revolution--that the computer has had on our lives."-- Provided by publisher

Explore the groundbreaking theories that redefined our understanding of the universe in "The Principle of Relativity," featuring seminal works by Albert Einstein and Hermann Minkowski. This essential collection delves into the revolutionary concepts of relativity, space-time, and their profound impact on the world of physics. A cornerstone of scientific thought, this volume presents Einstein's original papers alongside Minkowski's pivotal contributions, providing direct access to the genesis of these paradigm-shifting ideas. Journey through the essays that laid the foundation for modern physics and continue to inspire scientists and thinkers today. "The Principle of Relativity" offers a unique glimpse into the history of science, showcasing the intellectual journey that reshaped our comprehension of gravity, motion, and the very fabric of reality. A timeless resource for anyone interested in the profound implications of relativity and its enduring legacy. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

A modern updating, by the current King of Rock and Roll, of the work widely regarded as "The Oldest Military Treatise in the World." This revision of the landmark work brings a present-day focus to the principles of strategy, tactics, maneuvering, communication, and supplies discussed in Sun Tzu's classic.

A "skillful and literate" ( New York Times Book Review ) biography of the persecuted genius who helped create the modern computer. To solve one of the great mathematical problems of his day, Alan Turing proposed an imaginary computer. Then, attempting to break a Nazi code during World War II, he successfully designed and built one, thus ensuring the Allied victory. Turing became a champion of artificial intelligence, but his work was cut short. As an openly gay man at a time when homosexuality was illegal in England, he was convicted and forced to undergo a humiliating "treatment" that may have led to his suicide. With a novelist's sensitivity, David Leavitt portrays Turing in all his humanity?his eccentricities, his brilliance, his fatal candor?and elegantly explains his work and its implications.

To most graph theorists there are two outstanding landmarks in the history of their subject. One is Euler's solution of the Konigsberg Bridges Problem, dated 1736, and the other is the appearance of Denes Konig's textbook in 1936. "From Konigsberg to Konig's book" sings the poetess, "So runs the graphic tale . . . " [10]. There were earlier books that took note of graph theory. Veb len's Analysis Situs, published in 1931, is about general combinato rial topology. But its first two chapters, on "Linear graphs" and "Two-Dimensional Complexes," are almost exclusively concerned with the territory still explored by graph theorists. Rouse Ball's Mathematical Recreations and Essays told, usually without proofs, of the major graph-theoretical advances ofthe nineteenth century, of the Five Colour Theorem, of Petersen's Theorem on I-factors, and of Cayley's enumerations of trees. It was Rouse Ball's book that kindled my own graph-theoretical enthusiasm. The graph-theoretical papers of Hassler Whitney, published in 1931-1933, would have made an excellent textbook in English had they been collected and published as such. But the honour of presenting Graph Theory to the mathe matical world as a subject in its own right, with its own textbook, belongs to Denes Konig. Low was the prestige of Graph Theory in the Dirty Thirties. It is still remembered, with resentment now shading into amuse ment, how one mathematician scorned it as "The slums of Topol ogy.""

How do we understand the world? While some look to the heavens for intelligent design, others argue that it is determined by information encoded in DNA. Science serves as an important activity for uncovering the processes and operations of nature, but it is also immersed in a social context where ideology influences the questions we ask and how we approach the material world. Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on the Coevolution of Nature and Society breaks from the confirms of determinism, offering a dialectical analysis for comprehending a dynamic social and natural world. In Biology Under the Influence , Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins provide a devastating critique of genetic determinism and reductionism within science while exploring a broad range of issues including the nature of science, biology, evolution, the environment, pubic health, and dialectics, They dismantle the ideology that attempts to naturalize social inequalities, unveil the alienation of science and nature, and illustrate how a dialectical position serves as a basis for grappling with historical developments and a world characterized by change. Biology Under the Influence brings together the illuminating essays of two prominent scientists who work to demystify and empower the public's understanding of science and nature.

Now a major motion picture starring Drew Barrymore, Ted Danson, Kristen Bell, Tim Blake Nelson, John Krasinski, and Vinessa Shaw—an account of the dramatic rescue of three gray whales trapped under the ice in Alaska in 1988. Set in Cold War–era 1988, Freeing the Whales tells the real story behind the remarkable, bizarre, and oftentimes uproarious event that mesmerized the world for weeks. On October 7, an Inuit hunter near Barrow, Alaska, found three California Gray whales imprisoned in the Arctic ice. In the past, as was nature's way, trapped whales always died. Not this time. Tom Rose, who was covering the event for a Japanese TV station, compellingly describes how oil company executives, environmental activists, Inupiat people, small business people, and the U.S. military boldly worked together to rescue the whales. He also tells the stories of some of the more than 150 international journalists who brought the story to the world's attention. The rescue was followed by millions of people around the world as Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev joined the forces of their two nations to help free the whales.

"People like myself, who truly feel at home in several countries, are not strictly at home anywhere," writes Abraham Pais, one of the world's leading theoretical physicists, near the beginning of this engrossing chronicle of his life on two continents. The author of an immensely popular biography of Einstein, Subtle Is the Lord, Pais writes engagingly for a general audience. His "tale" describes his period of hiding in Nazi-occupied Holland (he ended the war in a Gestapo prison) and his life in America, particularly at the newly organized Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, then directed by the brilliant and controversial physicist Robert Oppenheimer. Pais tells fascinating stories about Oppenheimer, Einstein, Bohr, Sakharov, Dirac, Heisenberg, and von Neumann, as well as about nonscientists like Chaim Weizmann, George Kennan, Erwin Panofsky, and Pablo Casals. His enthusiasm about science and life in general pervades a book that is partly a memoir, partly a travel commentary, and partly a history of science. Pais's charming recollections of his years as a university student become somber with the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. He was presented with an unusual deadline for his graduate work: a German decree that July 14, 1941, would be the final date on which Dutch Jews could be granted a doctoral degree. Pais received the degree, only to be forced into hiding from the Nazis in 1943, practically next door to Anne Frank. After the war, he went to the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen to work with Niels Bohr. 1946 began his years at the Institute for Advanced Study, where he worked first as a Fellow and then as a Professor until his move to Rockefeller University in 1963. Combining his understanding of disparate social and political worlds, Pais comments just as insightfully on Oppenheimer's ordeals during the McCarthy era as he does on his own and his European colleagues' struggles during World War II. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Two world-renowned scientists present an audacious new vision of the cosmos that “steals the thunder from the Big Bang theory.” — Wall Street JournalThe Big Bang theory—widely regarded as the leading explanation for the origin of the universe—posits that space and time sprang into being about 14 billion years ago in a hot, expanding fireball of nearly infinite density. Over the last three decades the theory has been repeatedly revised to address such issues as how galaxies and stars first formed and why the expansion of the universe is speeding up today. Furthermore, an explanation has yet to be found for what caused the Big Bang in the first place.In Endless Universe , Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok, both distinguished theoretical physicists, present a bold new cosmology. Steinhardt and Turok “contend that what we think of as the moment of creation was simply part of an infinite cycle of titanic collisions between our universe and a parallel world” ( Discover ). They recount the remarkable developments in astronomy, particle physics, and superstring theory that form the basis for their groundbreaking “Cyclic Universe” theory. According to this theory, the Big Bang was not the beginning of time but the bridge to a past filled with endlessly repeating cycles of evolution, each accompanied by the creation of new matter and the formation of new galaxies, stars, and planets.Endless Universe provides answers to longstanding problems with the Big Bang model, while offering a provocative new view of both the past and the future of the cosmos. It is a “theory that could solve the cosmic mystery” ( USA Today ).

The growth in recent years of Soviet political involvement and military presence in the Mediterranean/Middle East region poses a serious challenge to the security of NATO's southern flank. Among other aims, the Soviets hope to reduce Western, especially American, influence in the area; counter and/or neutralize the U.S. strategic posture; and bring to fruition the historic Russian drive for open access through the Turkish Straits. General Gurkan argues that Moscow's strategy is to shift pressure from the relatively stable central region of NATO to the flanks in a multiple pronged southern thrust.

Commemorating Morton Deutsch's 95th birthday, this book presents ten major texts by this highly respected social psychologist on war and peace. This second volume presents Deutsch in his role as a leading social science activist on issues of war and peace - writing papers, making speeches and participating in demonstrations. After serving in the U.S. Air Force during World War II and being awarded two Distinguished Flying Cross medals, as a psychologist he was determined to work for a more peaceful world. Influenced by Kurt Lewin, who believed that nothing was as practical as a good theory, Deutsch pursued theoretical work on such issues as cooperation-competition, conflict resolution and social justice with regard to issues of war and peace. As President of the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict and Violence, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and the International Society of Political Psychology, he helped to foster social science efforts to make for a more peaceful world.

"This is an insider's view, and Raskin offers readers insights into a hidden California. The impact of his book is to return culture to agriculture in a state dominated by agribusiness."--Gerald Haslam, author of The Great Central Valley: California's Heartland "Jonah Raskin has lived and taught in this area for well over thirty years and has the credibility to write about the evolution of farming here. His book is a magical mixture of journalism and memoir. I loved his interviews with local farmers and growers. He explores the questions that we all are asking about our relationship to food and what it means to eat locally, who grows it, and will they be able to continue to do so."--Ianthe Brautigan, author of You Can't Catch Death: A Daughter's Memoir "'Think global, buy local' takes on new meaning in this intriguing synthesis of memoir and reportage on the slow and local food movements."--Peter Laufer, author of Wetback Nation and The Dangerous World of Butterflies "Anyone wanting to know what it's like to live in the paradise that is Sonoma County must read Field Days . Jonah Raskin brings this blessed region and its communities of environmental champions vividly to life."--Jeff Cox, author of The Organic Cook's Bible and The Organic Food Shopper's Guide "In Jonah Raskin's wonderfully observant ramble through Sonoma County's farms, orchards, and vineyards, it becomes abundantly clear that American farming has not been killed off by agribusiness, or the Department of Agriculture's call to 'get big or get out'. With Raskin we meet a rich community of amazing people who have stayed on the land, or gone back to it, sharing a new kind of ecologically informed consciousness about our intimate connections to the land and the people who work it. Anybody who reads this book, wherever they live, will gain a new appreciation of this new generation of farmers. Thanks to them, we're learning to eat well--a basic necessity in the hard times ahead."--Ernest Callenbach, author of Ecotopia "In Field Days , Jonah Raskin becomes the George Plimpton of organic farming. Instead of getting out on the playing field to measure his stuff against pro athletes, he toils long days beside farm workers. Soulful and always curious, Raskin traces the tradition of responsible farming practices in Northern California, and explores the meaning of living locally."--Bart Schneider, author of The Man in the Blizzard

Since independence, the political institutions of many African states have undergone a process of consolidation and subsequent deterioration. Constrained by external economic dependency and an acute scarcity of economic and technical resources, state officials have demonstrated a diminished capacity to regulate their societies. Public policies are agreed upon but ineffectively implemented by the weak institutions of the state. Although scholars have analyzed the various facets of state-building in detail, little systematic attention has been given to the issue of the decline of the state and mechanisms to cope with state ineffectiveness in Africa. This book focuses especially on the character of the postcolonial state in Africa, the nature of and reasons for state deterioration, and the mechanisms and policies for coping with state malfunction. Scholars from Africa, the United States, Europe, and the Middle East combine a broad understanding of African political processes with expertise on specific regions. Their analytic and comparative perspective provides a comprehensive and timely treatment of this vital and heretofore neglected theme in African politics.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

"A major figure argues that the creation of bioethics was dependent on the rise of the post-WWII liberal democratic order and muses on the fate of the field, should that order fall"-- Provided by publisher.

Virtually undeveloped one hundred years ago, Israel, the promised "land of milk and honey," is in ecological disarray. In this gripping book, Alon Tal provides--for the first time ever--a history of environmentalism in Israel, interviewing hundreds of experts and activists who have made it their mission to keep the country's remarkable development sustainable amid a century of political and cultural turmoil.The modern Zionist vision began as a quest to redeem a land that bore the cumulative effects of two thousand years of foreign domination and neglect. Since then, Israel has suffered from its success. A tenfold increase in population and standard of living has polluted the air. The deserts have bloomed but groundwater has become contaminated. Urban sprawl threatens to pave over much of the country's breathtaking landscape. Yet there is hope. Tal's account considers the ecological and tactical lessons that emerge from dozens of cases of environmental mishaps, from habitat loss to river reclamation. Pollution in a Promised Land argues that the priorities and strategies of Israeli environmental advocates must address issues beyond traditional green agendas.