Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004, edited by Steven Pinker, is another "provocative and thoroughly enjoyable [collection] from start to finish" (Publishers Weekly). Here is the best and newest on science and nature: the psychology of suicide terrorism, desperate measures in surgery, the weird world of octopuses, Sex Week at Yale, the linguistics of click languages, the worst news about cloning, and much more.

One of America's most versatile writers, author of bestselling biographies such as Steve Jobs and Benjamin Franklin , has assembled a gallery of portraits of (mostly) Americans that celebreate genius, talent, and versatility, and traces his own education as a writer and biographer. In this collection of essays, the brilliant, acclaimed biographer Walter Isaacson reflects on lessons to be learned from Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, and other interesting characters he has chronicled both as biographer and journalist. The people he writes about have an awesome intelligence, but that is not the secret to their success. They had qualities that were even more rare, such as imagination and true curiousity. Isaacson also reflects on how he became a writer, the lessons he learned from various people he met, and the challenges for journalism in the digital age. He also offers loving tributes to his hometown of New Orleans, which offers many of the ingredients for a creative culture, and to the Louisiana novelist Walker Percy, who was an early mentor. In an anecdotal and personal way, Isaacson describes the joys of writing and the way that tales about the lives of fascinating people can enlighten our own lives.

Title: The Dead Sea: or, notes and observations made during a Journey to Palestine in 1856-7, on M. De Sauley's supposed discovery of the Cities of the Plain [published in his "Voyage autour de la Mer Morte, etc."] ... Illustrated with photographs.Publisher: British Library, Historical Print EditionsThe British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is one of the world's largest research libraries holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats: books, journals, newspapers, sound recordings, patents, maps, stamps, prints and much more. Its collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial additional collections of manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 300 BC.The GEOLOGY collection includes books from the British Library digitised by Microsoft. The works in this collection contain a number of maps, charts, and tables from the 16th to the 19th centuries documenting geological features of the natural world. Also contained are textbooks and early scientific studies that catalogue and chronicle the human stance toward water and land use. Readers will further enjoy early historical maps of rivers and shorelines demonstrating the artistry of journeymen, cartographers, and illustrators. ++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ British Library Isaacs, Albert Augustus; Caignart de Saulcy, Louis F licien Joseph; 1857. 8 . 10075.d.9.