Other books that might interest you

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  Computers - and Stuff!

  Owen Jones

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  The information in this ebook on various aspects of computers, peripherals and related subjects is organized into 21 chapters of about 500-600 words each. 
  I hope that it will interest those who are interested in computers, the Internet, peripherals, electronics and using them in a practical fashion. 
  As an added bonus, I am granting you permission to use the content on your own website or in your own blogs and newsletter, although it is better if you rewrite them in your own words first.

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  Marking Modern Times - A History...

  Alexis McCrossen

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  “Tells a story of a period when the quest for accurate timekeeping became an obsession in the US.” —Choice 
   
  The public spaces and buildings of the United States are home to many thousands of timepieces—bells, time balls, and clock faces—that tower over urban streets, peek out from lobbies, and gleam in store windows. And in the streets and squares beneath them, men, women, and children wear wristwatches of all kinds. Americans have decorated their homes with clocks and included them in their poetry, sermons, stories, and songs. And as political instruments, social tools, and cultural symbols, these personal and public timekeepers have enjoyed a broad currency in art, life, and culture. 
   
  In Marking Modern Times, Alexis McCrossen relates how the American preoccupation with time led people from across social classes to acquire watches and clocks. While noting the difficulties in regulating and synchronizing so many timepieces, McCrossen expands our understanding of the development of modern time discipline, delving into the ways we have standardized time and describing how timekeepers have served as political, social, and cultural tools in a society that doesn’t merely value time but regards access to time as a natural-born right, a privilege of being an American. 
   
  “A precise, acute, and well-measured monograph.” —Journal of Social History 
   
  “Important and engaging.” —Journal of American History 
   
  “ An innovative contribution on a key historical shift in modern life.” —Urban History 
   
  “An authoritative narrative of how and where time and timepieces were distributed in the period.” —Reviews in American History

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  Fevers Feuds and Diamonds -...

  Paul Farmer

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  In 2014, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea suffered the worst epidemic of Ebola in history. The brutal virus spread rapidly through a clinical desert, where basic health-care facilities were few and far between. Causing severe loss of life and economic disruption, the Ebola crisis was a major tragedy of modern medicine. But why did it happen, and what can we learn from it? Paul Farmer, the internationally renowned doctor and anthropologist, experienced the Ebola outbreak firsthand-Partners in Health, the organization he founded, was among the international responders. In Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds, he offers the first substantive account of this frightening, fast-moving episode and its implications. In vibrant prose, he tells the harrowing stories of Ebola victims while showing why the medical response was slow and insufficient. Rebutting misleading claims about the origins of Ebola and why it spread so rapidly, he traces West Africa’s chronic health failures back to centuries of exploitation and injustice. Under formal colonial rule, disease containment was a priority but care was not—and the region’s health-care woes worsened, with devastating consequences that Farmer traces up to the present.

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  Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical...

  Alexander von Humboldt

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  Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian geographer, naturalist, explorer, and influential proponent of romantic philosophy. Many consider him to be the last of the great polymaths. After his death in 1859, the scientific world began to divide into separate disciplines, each with its own knowledgeable but narrowly defined experts. Humboldt’s mind encompassed all that was then known of nature in one great whole. He could well be considered the father of modern ecology and earth studies. His great scientific and literary achievement was the multi-volume Cosmos, twenty years in the writing, in which he attempted to describe the known physical world. Humboldt’s lyrical style of writing influenced the subsequent genre of nature writing as well as many of the towering figures of the Romantic movement. This Librivox recording is of the Introduction to Cosmos. The Introduction gives a good measure of breadth of Humboldt’s mind and is a pleasure to read or hear because of its literary felicity. This reading omits the copious footnotes in favor of maintaining the flow of thought of the body of the text. Also included are the translator’s preface which contains a short biography of Humboldt as well as the author’s own preface.  - Summary by Wikipedia and david wales

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  The Western Front - Landscape...

  Stephen Miles

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  The Western Front has become, once again, and after 100 years, an important and increasingly popular tourist destination. The Centenary is already encouraging large numbers of visitors to engage with this highly poignant landscape of war and to commemorate the sacrifice and loss of a previous generation. Interest is also being sharpened in the places of war as battle-sites, trench-systems, bunkers and mine craters gain a clearer identity as war heritage. For the first time this book brings together the three strands of heritage, landscape and tourism to provide a fresh understanding of the multi-layered nature of the Western Front. The book approaches the area as a rich dynamic landscape which can be viewed in a startling variety of ways: historically, materially, culturally, and perceptually. To illustrate these two dominant interpretations of the regions landscape  commemorative and heritage  are highlighted and their relationship to tourism explored. Tourism is a lens through which these layers can be peeled away, and each understood and interacted with according to the individuals own knowledge, motivation, and degree of emotional engagement. Tourism is not regarded here as a passive phenomenon, but as an active agent that can determine, dictate and inscribe this evocative landscape.   The Western Front:  Heritage, Landscape and Tourism is a timely addition to our increasing interest in the First World War and the places where it was fought. It will be indispensable to those who seek a deeper understanding of the conflict from previously undervalued perspectives.

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  Plastiki

  David de Rothschild

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  “A modern-day spin on Thor Heyerdahl’s famous Kon-Tiki exploration . . . documents the 8,000-mile journey in all its hare-brained idealism.” —The Atlantic   Explorer, global green leader, and eco-TV host David de Rothschild recounts the extraordinary journey of the Plastiki, an innovative and mostly untested sixty-foot catamaran that floats on 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles. It was a voyage that took de Rothschild and a five-person crew 10,000 miles from the US to Australia, sailing through rarely traveled, dangerous waters, risking their lives to call attention to our fragile oceans. Their exploration included urgent study of ocean pollution, island nations threatened by rising seas, damaged coral reefs, and the acidifying ocean itself—and their discoveries are a call to action. Packed with exciting narrative, images, maps, journal entries, plans, and sketches, this is the only firsthand account of what may be the most important adventure of our time.  “Complete with stories of the inspirations for the project, as well as memories of the construction of the boat, and of course, the journey itself, Plastiki is the definitive tome about a project that captured imaginations across the globe.” —CNET

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