Other books that might interest you

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  Life on a Young Planet - The...

  Andrew H. Knoll

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  Australopithecines, dinosaurs, trilobites—such fossils conjure up images of lost worlds filled with vanished organisms. But in the full history of life, ancient animals, even the trilobites, form only the half-billion-year tip of a nearly four-billion-year iceberg. Andrew Knoll explores the deep history of life from its origins on a young planet to the incredible Cambrian explosion, presenting a compelling new explanation for the emergence of biological novelty.The very latest discoveries in paleontology—many of them made by the author and his students—are integrated with emerging insights from molecular biology and earth system science to forge a broad understanding of how the biological diversity that surrounds us came to be. Moving from Siberia to Namibia to the Bahamas, Knoll shows how life and environment have evolved together through Earth's history.Listeners go into the field to confront fossils, enter the lab to discern the inner workings of cells, and alight on Mars to ask how our terrestrial experience can guide exploration for life beyond our planet. Along the way, Knoll brings us up-to-date on some of science's hottest questions, from the oldest fossils and claims of life beyond the Earth to the hypothesis of global glaciation and Knoll's own unifying concept of "permissive ecology."

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  Outward Leg

  Tristan Jones

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  After seven years ashore and after having his left leg amputated, Tristan Jones decided to return to the sea. He began to piece together Operation Star and found the perfect vessel in a 36-foot trimaran. In October 1983, Jones and his only crew member, Wally Rediske, set out in Outward Leg from San Diego, intending to circumnavigate the world from west to east by sail.The book is the exciting story of Tristan's preparation for this major seagoing event and the chronicle of half of it. Tristan sailed down the western coast of Central America through the Panama Canal to a small Colombian town. There he had to fight for survival among hostile natives, drug dealers, and uncooperative port officers. He went on to Venezuela, Aruba, and the Dominican Republic during its 1984 revolution. Finally he reached New York and crossed the Atlantic to return to St. Katharine's Dock in London where he began his seagoing life thirty years before.

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  The Indisputable Existence of...

  Hannah Fry, Thomas Oléron Evans

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  Two merry mathematicians explore the geometry of gift-wrapping, board game theory, and much more in this hilarious holiday treat. 
   
  How do you apply game theory to select who should be on your Christmas shopping list? What equations should you use to decorate the Christmas tree? Will calculations show Santa is getting steadily thinner—shimmying up and down chimneys for a whole night—or fatter—as he munches on cookies and milk in billions of houses across the world? 
   
  In The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus, distinguished mathematicians Hannah Fry and Thomas Oléron Evans demonstrate, with eminently readable clarity, how applied mathematics are so thoroughly interwoven throughout our everyday lives by explaining mathematical concepts through one very merry motif: Christmas. In their quest to provide mathematical proof for the existence of Santa, the authors take readers on a festive journey through a traditional holiday season, wherein every activity, from wrapping presents to playing board games to cooking the perfect turkey, is painstakingly and hilariously analyzed. Because who hasn’t always wondered how to set up a mathematically perfect Secret Santa?  
   
  Lighthearted and diverting with Christmasy diagrams, sketches and graphs, equations, Markov chains, and matrices, The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus brightens up the bleak midwinter with a stockingful of mathematical marvels.

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  Seven Days that Divide the World...

  John C. Lennox

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  Now revised and updated--John Lennox's acclaimed method of reading and interpreting the first chapters of Genesis without discounting either science or Scripture.  
  What did the writer of Genesis mean by "the first day?" Are the seven days in Genesis 1 a literal week or a series of time periods? If I believe that the earth is 4.5 billion years old as cosmologists believe, am I denying the authority of Scripture? 
  With examples from history, a brief but thorough exploration of the major interpretations, and a look into the particular significance of the creation of human beings, Lennox suggests that Christians can heed modern scientific knowledge while staying faithful to the biblical narrative. He moves beyond a simple response to the controversy, insisting that Genesis teaches us far more about the God of Jesus Christ and about God's intention for creation than it does about the age of the earth. 
  With this book, Lennox offers a careful and accessible introduction to a scientifically-savvy, theologically-astute, and Scripturally faithful interpretation of Genesis. 
  Since its publication in 2011, this book has enabled many readers to see that the major controversy with which it engages can be resolved without compromising commitment to the authority of Scripture. In this newly revised and expanded edition, John clarifies his arguments, responds to comments and critiques of the past decade since its first publication. In particular, he describes some of the history up to modern times of Jewish scholarly interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative as well as spelling out in more detail the breadth of views in the Great Tradition of interpretation due to the early Church Fathers. He shows that, contrary to what many people think, much of the difficulty with understanding the biblical texts does not arise from modern science but from attempting to elucidate the texts in their own right.

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  Resilience Thinking - Sustaining...

  Brian Walker, David Salt

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  Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems, and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet's well-being. The response from most quarters has been for "more of the same" that created the situation in the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency. 
  "Resilience thinking" offers a different way of understanding the world and a new approach to managing resources. It embraces human and natural systems as complex entities continually adapting through cycles of change, and seeks to understand the qualities of a system that must be maintained or enhanced in order to achieve sustainability. It explains why greater efficiency by itself cannot solve resource problems and offers a constructive alternative that opens up options rather than closing them down. 
  In Resilience Thinking, scientist Brian Walker and science writer David Salt present an accessible introduction to the emerging paradigm of resilience. The book arose out of appeals from colleagues in science and industry for a plainly written account of what resilience is all about and how a resilience approach differs from current practices. Rather than complicated theory, the book offers a conceptual overview along with five case studies of resilience thinking in the real world.

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  Black Death at the Golden Gate -...

  David K. Randall

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  A spine-chilling saga of virulent racism, human folly, and the ultimate triumph of scientific progress. 
   
  For Chinese immigrant Wong Chut King, surviving in San Francisco meant a life in the shadows. His passing on March 6, 1900, would have been unremarkable if a city health officer hadn't noticed a swollen black lymph node on his groin - a sign of bubonic plague. Empowered by racist pseudoscience, officials rushed to quarantine Chinatown while doctors examined Wong's tissue for telltale bacteria. If the devastating disease was not contained, San Francisco would become the American epicenter of an outbreak that had already claimed 10 million lives worldwide. 
   
  To local press, railroad barons, and elected officials, such a possibility was inconceivable - or inconvenient. As they mounted a cover-up to obscure the threat, it fell to federal health officer Rupert Blue to save a city that refused to be rescued. 
   
  In the tradition of Erik Larson and Steven Johnson, best-selling author David K. Randall spins a spellbinding account of Blue's race to understand the disease and contain its spread - the only hope of saving San Francisco, and the nation, from a gruesome fate.

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