Other books that might interest you

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  Now or Never - Why We Must Act...

  Tim Flannery

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  In Now or Never, internationally acclaimed author Tim Flannery has written a book that is at once a forceful call to action to combat global warming and a deeply and often surprisingly pragmatic road map toward sustainability. 
  Utilizing the most up-to-the-minute data available, Flannery examines the environmental challenges we face and their potential solutions in both the big picture and in specific detail. This brilliant book explores everything from techniques for storing the carbon that dead plants release into the earth to the fragile balancing act between energy demands and food supply in India and China, from carbon-trading schemes in South America to a recent collaboration between a Danish wind-energy company and an automobile manufacturer that may produce a viable electric car and end the reign of big oil. Rather than looking backward to assign blame or weeping in despair, Flannery is looking forward in the belief that "a sense of hopelessness is just as great a danger to our future as the bankrupt philosophies of the recent past. Even world-weariness, a resignation to destruction, is profoundly inimical to sustainability, because its adherents believe that the fate of our planet is already sealed. If the British had thought that way in 1941, we might be living in a very different world." 
  Now or Never is a powerful, thought-provoking, and essential book that burns with Flannery's characteristic mix of passion, scientific precision, and "offhand interdisciplinary brilliance" (Entertainment Weekly).

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  Breaking the Heart Open - The...

  Tony Bates

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  Bestselling author and psychologist Tony Bates has spent his whole career examining and seeking to understand the lives of others. Here, he turns his therapeutic eye on himself and describes the events and people in his own life that have made him the insightful thinker and teacher that he is today.
  Tony recalls traumatic events in his childhood that reverberated throughout his life for many years and describes how, with therapy and time, he was eventually able to heal those internal wounds. He recounts the stories of people in pain that affected him most deeply and informed both the direction of his work and his philosophy as a psychologist.
  By interweaving his own life story with reflections on how psychology and society treat people with mental health vulnerabilities, Tony invites us to reflect with compassion on the meaning of emotional struggles in all our lives.
  'A searingly honest, lucid and inspiring account of a life, moving from deep childhood trauma to the hard-earned wisdom of a wounded healer. A compelling read and remarkable achievement.' Richard Kearney
  'I was moved by Tony's honesty; humbled by his courage; fascinated by the way he used psychology to make sense of his personal suffering; and inspired by the place he has arrived at this point in his life. Beautifully written, poetic in parts, Tony's book is a treasure trove of wisdom. Everyone should read it.' Alan Carr, PHD
  'What a generous gift, so typical of Tony, to those who need to know that in their loneliness or depression they are not alone' Dr Mary McAleese
  'This is an emotional read in which the psychologist bears their own soul and highlights why they are so skilled at their work' Niall Breslin

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  Search for Exoplanets The: The...

  Charles River Editors

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  While modern technology has helped astronomers view the furthest reaches of the Solar System, it has also allowed scientists to start discovering planets orbiting distant stars. To make it easier to assess the relative mass and size of the new planets being discovered, scientists give these measurements as multiples of those properties for either Jupiter or Earth. In other words, if the planet is the same mass as Jupiter, then this measure would be listed as 1.0 MJ. If it were three times the mass of Earth, then it would be listed as 3.0 MEarth. The sizes of exoplanets are frequently given by expressing their radii as multiples of Jupiter’s radius or as multiples of Earth’s radius, RJ and REarth, respectively.  
  	Of course, given the immense distances involved, detecting exoplanets has always been hard, even to this day. The variations of light that might be evidence of an exoplanet can be caused by other phenomena, and separating the false positives from the actual detections is part of the rigor required by modern planet hunters. For example, in July 1988, a Canadian team led by astronomers Bruce Campbell, Gordon Walker, and Stephenson Yang discovered persistent indications that a planet orbited the primary star in the Gamma Cephei system, 44.98 light-years (13.79 parsecs) from the Earth. Though the technique they used was successfully employed in many subsequent discoveries, the quality of their data was insufficient for others to verify as unequivocally the result of an extrasolar planet. For reasons of poor data quality, the claimed discovery of Gamma Cephei Ab was retracted in 1992.  
  	The first confirmed discovery of an exoplanet involved a system that surprised most planet hunters. While most astronomers had been looking to find planets orbiting stars in the main sequence (between infancy and old age) or in their old age (giant phase), the first confirmed planets were found to orbit a dead star.

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  Flight of the Diamond Smugglers...

  Matthew Gavin Frank

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  For nearly eighty years, a huge portion of coastal South Africa was closed off to the public. With many of its pits now deemed "overmined" and abandoned, American journalist Matthew Gavin Frank sets out across the infamous Diamond Coast to investigate an illicit trade that supplies a global market. Immediately, he became intrigued by the ingenious methods used in facilitating smuggling—particularly, the illegal act of sneaking carrier pigeons onto mine property, affixing diamonds to their feet, and sending them into the air.Entering Die Sperrgebiet ("The Forbidden Zone") is like entering an eerie ghost town, but Frank is surprised by the number of people willing—even eager—to talk with him. Soon he meets Msizi, a young diamond digger, and his pigeon, Bartholomew, who helps him steal diamonds. It's a deadly game: pigeons are shot on sight by mine security, and Msizi knows of smugglers who have disappeared because of their crimes.From the mining towns of Alexander Bay and Port Nolloth to Kleinzee's shores littered with shipwrecks, Frank investigates a long overlooked story. Weaving interviews with local diamond miners who raise pigeons in secret with harrowing anecdotes from former heads of security, environmental managers, and vigilante pigeon hunters, Frank reveals how these feathered bandits became outlaws in every mining town.

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  Apollo's Eye - A Cartographic...

  Denis Cosgrove

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  This award-winning science history explores our evolving image of the globe—and how it has shifted our relationship to the world. 
   
  Long before we had the ability to photograph the earth from space—to see our planet as it would be seen by the Greek god Apollo—images of the earth as a globe had captured popular imagination. In Apollo’s Eye, geographer Denis Cosgrove examines the historical implications for the West of conceiving and representing the earth as a globe: a unified, spherical body.  
   
  Cosgrove traces how ideas of globalism and globalization have shifted historically in relation to changing images of the earth, from antiquity to the Space Age. He connects the evolving image of a unified globe to politically powerful conceptions of human unity. 
   
  Winner of the Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Award in Geography & Earth Sciences

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  The Incredible Shrinking World...

  John Rafferty

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  John Rafferty of Encyclopædia Britannica discusses the polar bear, a mammal that is among the world's largest carnivores on land, and the threats to its survival. This is the second part of the Postcards from the 6th Mass Extinction audio series.

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