Paul Robbins

John G. Hintz

Sarah A. Moore

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Tennessee

Science

A Critical Introduction

Substantially updated for the second edition, this engaging and innovative introduction to the environment and society uses key theoretical approaches to explore familiar objects.

 * Features substantial revisions and updates for the second edition, including new chapters on E waste, mosquitoes and uranium, improved maps and graphics, new exercises, shorter theory chapters, and refocused sections on environmental solutions
 * Discusses topics such as population and scarcity, commodities, environmental ethics, risks and hazards, and political economy and applies them to objects like bottled water, tuna, and trees
 * Accessible for students, and accompanied by in-book and online resources including exercises and boxed discussions, an online test bank, notes, suggested reading, and website links for enhanced understanding
 * Offers additional online support for instructors, including suggested teaching models, PowerPoint slides for each chapter with full-color graphics, and supplementary images and teaching material

Environment and Society

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Richard Paul

Steven Moss

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

The First African Americans in the Space Program

The Space Age began just as the struggle for civil rights forced Americans to confront the long and bitter legacy of slavery, discrimination, and violence against African Americans. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson utilized the space program as an agent for social change, using federal equal employment opportunity laws to open workplaces at NASA and NASA contractors to African Americans while creating thousands of research and technology jobs in the Deep South to ameliorate poverty. We Could Not Fail tells the inspiring, largely unknown story of how shooting for the stars helped to overcome segregation on earth. Richard Paul and Steven Moss profile ten pioneer African American space workers whose stories illustrate the role NASA and the space program played in promoting civil rights. They recount how these technicians, mathematicians, engineers, and an astronaut candidate surmounted barriers to move, in some cases literally, from the cotton fields to the launching pad. The authors vividly describe what it was like to be the sole African American in a NASA work group and how these brave and determined men also helped to transform Southern society by integrating colleges, patenting new inventions, holding elective office, and reviving and governing defunct towns. Adding new names to the roster of civil rights heroes and a new chapter to the story of space exploration, We Could Not Fail demonstrates how African Americans broke the color barrier by competing successfully at the highest level of American intellectual and technological achievement.

We Could Not Fail

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Dale Allen Pfeiffer

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Oil, Food, and the Coming Crisis in Agriculture

Finds that the current methods of fossil-fuel based agriculture are not sustainable, and recommends the transition to localized agriculture.

Eating Fossil Fuels

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Simon Sharpe

We need to act five times faster to avoid dangerous climate change. As Greenland melts, Australia burns, and greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, we think we know who the villains are: oil companies, consumerism, weak political leaders. But what if the real blocks to progress are the ideas and institutions that are supposed to be helping us? Five Times Faster is an inside story from Simon Sharpe, who has spent ten years at the forefront of climate change policy and diplomacy. In our fight to avoid dangerous climate change, science is pulling its punches, diplomacy is picking the wrong battles, and economics has been fighting for the other side. This provocative and engaging book sets out how we should rethink our strategies and reorganise our efforts in the fields of science, economics, and diplomacy, so that we can act fast enough to stay safe.

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Rethinking the Science, Economics, and Diplomacy of Climate Change

Policy insider's compelling argument to reorganise our efforts in science, diplomacy, and economics to tackle climate change five times faster.

Five Times Faster

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The creation of memorials dedicated to the civil rights movement is a watershed event in the commemoration of southern and American history, an important reversal in the traditional invisibility of African Americans within the preservation movement. Collective memory, to be sure, is certainly about honoring the past--whether it is Martin Luther King Jr.s birthplace in Atlanta or the memorial to Rosa Parks in Montgomery--but it is also about the ongoing campaign for civil rights and the economic opportunities associated with heritage tourism.
Owen J. Dwyer and Derek H. Alderman use extensive archival research, personal interviews, and compelling photography to examine memorials as cultural landscapes, interpreting them in the context of the movements broader history and its current scene. In paying close attention to which stories, people, and places are remembered and which are forgotten, the authors present an unforgettable story.

As Dwyer and Alderman illustrate, there are reasons why memorials are not often located at the traditional core of civic space--City Hall, the Courthouse, or along Main Street--and location seriously affects their public impact. As the authors reveal, social and geographic marginalization has accompanied the creation and promotion of civil rights memorials, calling into question the relative progress that society has made in the time since the civil rights movement in America began.

Civil Rights Memorial and the Geography of Memory

Tara Westover

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

A Memoir

"An unforgettable memoir about a young girl who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University"--Amazon.com.

Educated

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Stephen Hawking

Updated and Expanded Edition

An illustrated, large-format edition of the best-seller has been expanded to encompass the remarkable advances that have occurred in science and technology over the past eight years, with a new chapter on Wormholes and Time Travel and more than 240 full-color, captioned illustrations. 100,000 first printing.

The Illustrated a Brief History of Time

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Christopher Kemp

The Neuroscience of Navigation

How the brain helps us to understand and navigate space—and why, sometimes, it doesn’t work the way it should. Inside our heads we carry around an infinite and endlessly unfolding map of the world. Navigation is one of the most ancient neural abilities we have—older than language. In Dark and Magical Places, Christopher Kemp embarks on a journey to discover the remarkable extent of what our minds can do. Fueled by his own spatial shortcomings, Kemp describes the brain regions that orient us in space and the specialized neurons that do it. Place cells. Grid cells. He examines how the brain plans routes, recognizes landmarks, and makes sure we leave a room through a door instead of trying to leave through a painting. From the secrets of supernavigators like the indigenous hunters of the Bolivian rainforest to the confusing environments inhabited by people with place blindness, Kemp charts the myriad ways in which we find our way and explains the cutting-edge neuroscience behind them. How did Neanderthals navigate? Why do even seasoned hikers stray from the trail? What spatial skills do we inherit from our parents? How can smartphones and our reliance on GPS devices impact our brains? In engaging, engrossing language, Kemp unravels the mysteries of navigating and links the brain’s complex functions to the effects that diseases like Alzheimer’s, types of amnesia, and traumatic brain injuries have on our perception of the world around us. A book for anyone who has ever felt compelled to venture off the beaten path, Dark and Magical Places is a stirring reminder of the beauty in losing yourself to your surroundings. And the beauty in understanding how our brains can guide us home.

Dark and Magical Places

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Robert Zubrin

How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens up a Future of Limitless Possibility

"A new space race has begun. But the rivals in this case are not superpowers but competing entrepreneurs. These daring pioneers are creating a revolution in spaceflight that promises to transform the near future. Astronautical engineer Robert Zubrin spells out the potential of these new developments in an engrossing narrative that is visionary yet grounded by a deep understanding of the practical challenges. Fueled by the combined expertise of the old aerospace industry and the talents of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, spaceflight is becoming cheaper. The new generation of space explorers has already achieved a major breakthrough by creating reusable rockets. Zubrin foresees more rapid innovation, including global travel from any point on Earth to another in an hour or less; orbital hotels; moon bases with incredible space observatories; human settlements on Mars, the asteroids, and the moons of the outer planets; and then, breaking all limits, pushing onward to the stars."--Publisher's website.

The Case for Space

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Rue Mapp

Stories and Visions of Black Joy in the Outdoors

"Nature Swagger presents thirty life-changing stories of self-discovery, courage, and healing in the natural world. Told through first-person narratives, essays, and poems, this uplifting collection celebrates the many ways that outdoor spaces offer Black people opportunities for personal empowerment, connection, and rejuvenation. Readers will immerse themselves in stories told from mountains, redwood forests, city parks, and far-off beaches: joining a woman on her courageous journey up Kilimanjaro, meeting a couple teaching the art of beekeeping in urban Detroit, and following a long-distance swim alongside a pod of dolphins-plus so much more. Interspersed are essays by author and celebrated outdoor leader, Rue Mapp, honoring the rich history and traditions surrounding Black people's relationship to the outdoors. Full of breathtaking photography and powerful storytelling, this boundary-breaking collection offers moments of profound beauty and insight, inviting every reader to forge their own meaningful and joyful relationship with the natural world"--

Nature Swagger

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Kristen Iversen

Growing up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats

Full Body Burden is a haunting work of narrative nonfiction about a young woman, Kristen Iversen, growing up in a small Colorado town close to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated "the most contaminated site in America." It's the story of a childhood and adolescence in the shadow of the Cold War, in a landscape at once startlingly beautiful and--unknown to those who lived there--tainted with invisible yet deadly particles of plutonium.

It's also a book about the destructive power of secrets--both family and government. Her father's hidden liquor bottles, the strange cancers in children in the neighborhood, the truth about what was made at Rocky Flats (cleaning supplies, her mother guessed)--best not to inquire too deeply into any of it.

But as Iversen grew older, she began to ask questions. She learned about the infamous 1969 Mother's Day fire, in which a few scraps of plutonium spontaneously ignited and--despite the desperate efforts of firefighters--came perilously close to a "criticality," the deadly blue flash that signals a nuclear chain reaction. Intense heat and radiation almost melted the roof, which nearly resulted in an explosion that would have had devastating consequences for the entire Denver metro area. Yet the only mention of the fire was on page 28 of the Rocky Mountain News, underneath a photo of the Pet of the Week. In her early thirties, Iversen even worked at Rocky Flats for a time, typing up memos in which accidents were always called "incidents."

And as this memoir unfolds, it reveals itself as a brilliant work of investigative journalism--a detailed and shocking account of the government's sustained attempt to conceal the effects of the toxic and radioactive waste released by Rocky Flats, and of local residents' vain attempts to seek justice in court. Here, too, are vivid portraits of former Rocky Flats workers--from the healthy, who regard their work at the plant with pride and patriotism, to the ill or dying, who battle for compensation for cancers they got on the job.

Based on extensive interviews, FBI and EPA documents, and class-action testimony, this taut, beautifully written book promises to have a very long half-life.

Full Body Burden

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Neil deGrasse Tyson

The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military

In this far- reaching foray into the millennia- long relationship between science and military power, acclaimed astrophysicist and author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry Neil deGrasse Tyson and Avis Lang examine how the methods and tools of astrophysics have been enlisted in the service of war. Spanning early celestial navigation to satellite- enabled warfare, Accessory to War is a richly researched and provocative examination of the intersection of science, technology, industry, and power that will introduce Tyson's millions of fans to yet another dimension of how the universe has shaped our lives and world. "Through ample research and nimble storytelling, Tyson and [Lang] trace the long and tangled relationship between state power and astronomy. . . . Deep and eloquent." -- Joshua Sokol, Washington Post "Fascinating. . . . The book's message rings like a wake- up call." -- Marcelo Gleiser, NPR

Accessory to War

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