The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850 Specifications

“Climate change is the ignored player on the historical stage,” writes archeologist Brian Fagan. But it shouldn’t be, not if we know what’s good for us. We can’t judge what future climate change will mean unless we know something about its effects in the past: “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” And Fagan’s story of the last thousand years, centered on the “Little Ice Age,” reminds us of what we could end up repeating: flood, fire, and famine–acts of God exacerbated by acts of man.

For all that he takes a broad–a very broad–view of European history, Fagan’s writing is laced with human faces, fascinating anecdotes, and a gift for the telling detail that makes history live, very much in the style of Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror. When Fagan talks about the voyages of Basque fishermen to American shores (probably landing before Columbus sailed), he puts in the taste of dried cod and the terrifying suddenness of fogs on the Grand Banks. The Great Fire of London, what it was like when the Dutch dikes broke, the Irish Potato Famine, the year without a summer, ice fairs on the Thames, and volcanoes in the South Pacific–Fagan makes history a ripping yarn in which we are all actors, on a stage that has always been changing. –Mary Ellen Curtin

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Tactical Pistol Shooting: Your Guide to Tactics & Techniques that Work Review

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Let me just say at the outset that this book is worth buying if for nothing else it will save you hundreds of dollars in wasted ammo at the range. (As a caveat to revolver shooters, this book focuses on semi-automatic pistols, so you might want to go a different direction if that is your weapon of choice. That said, the techniques discussed are applicable to revolvers with the exception of grip.) I found the sections on stance, grip, sight picture, trigger pull, reloading, and jam clearing to be well worth the purchase. I applied the author’s suggestion regarding dry fire drills and immediately figured out my trigger pull issues the next time out to the range. There is also a whole list of drills at the end of the book to do. So from a basic pistol marksmanship standpoint, this is a fine reference and is well photographed. I wouldn’t have minded some overhead diagrams on certain techniques (for example, a line like “orient to your dominant eye” is confusing without a diagram, i.e. orient how?), but that is a small quible.

Beyond the basic shooting aspect of this book I found the sections on “tactics” or “combat mind set” to be lacking. Not because the philosophy wasn’t valid, but because most topics were discussed merely in bullet points or lists in simple declarative terms. Perhaps all of those topics are too vast to be compiled in any one book, and this presents itself as a primer or introduction to those ideas, but for a book that purports to be a guide to these techniques, I expected a little more background. For example, threat conditions were discussed, but merely in terms of “definition” and when someone should be at one of those conditions, not in any detail on what one does in those situations, i.e., a “tactic.” Another example would be drawing from a concealed holster, the draw technique is discussed but not the finer points of concealment, concealment choices, etc. Also, I expected to see chapters on house/room clearing, and how to index a threat situation. This is another area where declaratively the author states that you must “index your threats” to choose your target, but goes into no greater detail on how one would do that, i.e., a tip, an anecdote or two.

Tactical Pistol Shooting: Your Guide to Tactics & Techniques that Work Overview

The essential reference for the beginning shooter, Tactical Pistol Shooting, 2nd edition, provides a thorough introduction to the use of tactical pistols. Readers get instruction in defense mindsets, pistol terms, shooting fundamentals and shooting positions, emphasis on important safety precautions and lawful personal defense. Readers will also find advanced techniques, training drills and complicated shooting environments. More than 350 detailed, step-by-step, color photos clearly illustrate the techniques shooters will master to become more adept with a tactical pistol. Appendices include a discussion of shooting standards, equipment supplies listings, progress worksheets and more.

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Who Are We? (The Ringing Cedars, Book 5) Review

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Each book in this series has brought me more hope for our planet through the children. I am so excited to hear that Book 6, The Book of Kin has just been translated in English and released this week.
My gratitude and enthusiasm, Sheila Davis, retired educator

Who Are We? (The Ringing Cedars, Book 5) Feature

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Who Are We? (The Ringing Cedars, Book 5) Overview

“Who are we?,” the fifth book of the Ringing Cedars Series, describes the author’s search for real-life ‘proofs’ of Anastasia’s vision presented in the previous volumes. Finding these proofs and taking stock of ongoing global environmental destruction, Vladimir Megre describes further practical steps for putting Anastasia’s vision into practice. Full of beautiful realistic images of a new way of living in co-operation with the Earth and each other, this book also highlights the role of children in making us aware of the precariousness of the present situation and in leading the global transition toward a happy, violence-free society.

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Outwitting Squirrels: 101 Cunning Stratagems to Reduce Dramatically the Egregious Misappropriation of Seed from Your Birdfeeder by Squirrels Review

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After the squirrels took over my backyard, car, and washroom, I bought this book to figure out how to take back the mean streets from these evil rodents. Unluckily for me, however, they noticed it when they were reading my mail and now they’re after me… I had to move to an unknown Eastern European country just to escape them. Hopefully they won’t figure out the combination to my wall safe back home, get enough money to buy plane tickets, and follow me here… that would make them flying squirrels, I suppose. Who would have guessed that squirrels could chew through five metres of lead?

Outwitting Squirrels: 101 Cunning Stratagems to Reduce Dramatically the Egregious Misappropriation of Seed from Your Birdfeeder by Squirrels Overview

From spooker poles and Perrier bottles to water bombs and cayenne pepper, Bill Adler, Jr., has tried every conceivable method to rid his backyard of these fluffy gluttonous rodents. Revised and even craftier than the first edition, which sold over 100,000 copies, this new revision contains humorous advice on keeping squirrels out of the flowerbeds and bird feeders.

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Into the Wild Review

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A fascinating psychological portrait of solo wanderer Chris McCandless who died alone in Alaska in 1992. The author draws parallels between Chris’s exploits and his own odyssey: climbing the Devil’s Claw in Alaska–solo, after 3 nearly life-ending attempts. The account notes the conflict that sometimes occurs between fathers and sons, the derring-do of specific young men such as John Muir who shared characteristics with Chris; and in particular, connects McCandless to these threads. Time and perspective change continually in the tale which covers a period of about 4 years. Krakauer skillfully weaves in McCandless’s journal notes, the underlinings in his books, and the letters he wrote friends he made on the road.
Krakauer wrote several articles for various outdoor magazines soon after McCandless’s body was found in the Alaskan wilderness. Most interpreted the death as the result of poor planning and McCandless’s having made key miscalculations. Later, Krakauer adopted a more sympathetic interpretation. McCandless had already demonstrated his ability to live off the land for extended periods of time.
I was struck by the tragic character of this story. Chris had adopted the name Alexander Supertramp when he began his travels shortly after graduating from Emory University. He left his parents without a word of his plans; he disappeared without leaving a trace. He wrote a check to Oxfam for the remainder of his education trust fund (a cool 24K) and adopted the life of a wanderer deeply critical of the system. Although they hired a private investigator, Walt and Billy McCandless were never able to locate their son. Krakauer believes Chris had learned some ugly family secrets a year or so before his graduation and was never able to forgive his father. The irony of the book is that a secret so ugly his parents never told it, is now available to the public in a book that was apparently written with the cooperation of the McCandlesses.

Into the Wild Feature

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Into the Wild Overview

The dramatic story of Chris McCandless, a young man who embarked on a solo journey into the wilds of Alaska and whose body was discovered four months later, explores the fascinating allure that the wilderness has for the American imagination. 35,000 first printing. Tour.

Into the Wild Specifications

What would possess a gifted young man recently graduated from college to literally walk away from his life? Noted outdoor writer and mountaineer Jon Krakauer tackles that question in his reporting on Chris McCandless, whose emaciated body was found in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness in 1992.

Described by friends and relatives as smart, literate, compassionate, and funny, did McCandless simply read too much Thoreau and Jack London and lose sight of the dangers of heading into the wilderness alone? Krakauer, whose own adventures have taken him to the perilous heights of Everest, provides some answers by exploring the pull the outdoors, seductive yet often dangerous, has had on his own life.

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Powerboat Handling Illustrated: How to Make Your Boat Do Exactly What You Want It to Do Review

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Book is a treasure trove of information for new and experienced boaters. It is also for the foundation for two boater education classes. Buying the book here allowed me to read about the material prior to taking the USCGA training class. This improved my learning during class, and it lowered the cost of my class since I already had the book.

Powerboat Handling Illustrated: How to Make Your Boat Do Exactly What You Want It to Do Feature

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Powerboat Handling Illustrated: How to Make Your Boat Do Exactly What You Want It to Do Overview

From docking to surviving storm waves, everything you need to know before you hit the water

Using hundreds of illustrations and photos, Powerboat Handling Illustrated shows you step-by-step how to do tasks such as docking, trimming, wave handling, and close-quarters maneuvering. These maneuvers are adapted to different types of boats under various conditions.

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The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One Review

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In this book, “The World is Blue”, Dr. Sylvia Earle, the National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, uses the analogy that Life is like a PC and human beings are wantonly destroying various components in the PC, without realizing that the PC could crash as a result.

If Life is a PC, then humans represent the CPU that is overheating the PC even as it is frying various components on the motherboard. The scary part is that the applications running on just two of the seven cores in the CPU are responsible for most of the overheating and the component frying, since most consumption is occurring due to the top 2 billion of the nearly 7 billion people on the planet. To make matters worse, Bill Gates is dedicating B of his money along with B from Warren Buffett in order to boot up the same applications on the other five cores in the CPU. One would think that he would spend some of that money to swap out the software on the problem cores, but…

Bill Gates has been crashing PCs for a living. This time, it is serious!

In the case of Life, the crashed PC might take about 10 million years to reboot, going by the last 5 major crashes that have occurred. The last crash was when the dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago. The rebooted PC will most likely be powered by a brand new CPU, just as the dinosaurs were replaced by mammals and eventually, humans. Therefore, it is a good idea for humans to change the software on the problem cores to prevent all that overheating and component-frying before the Life PC crashes.

Despite the hype on the publicity blurbs, in my opinion, Dr. Earle’s book is not the “Silent Spring” of our generation. You won’t catch Rachel Carson recommending that humans confine their DDT spraying over 70% of the earth’s surface, in the vain hope that the other 30% will clean up the resulting mess.

The Earth has been sending all sorts of signals that it cannot support even 2 billion human ultissimo predators, to use Dr. Earle’s characterization. It is not right for her to criticize the Japanese and Norwegian predilection for whale meat, while defending the American appetite for beef. Yes, there are a billion odd cows on the planet while there are only a few thousand whales left, but all those cows didn’t materialize in natural ecosystems. While the Americans may not have eaten all the mountain lions, the Indians may not have eaten all the tigers and the Chinese may not have eaten all the giant Pandas, they might as well all have done so. They certainly caused the habitat losses that has resulted in the near extinction of these magnificent animals through their appetite for beef, milk and pork, respectively.

Therefore, it doesn’t make sense for Dr. Earle to claim that humans can somehow optimize the Earth’s photosynthetic bounty through careful resource management, and thus make the earth sustainably support 9 billion human ultissimo predators in the future. I wouldn’t think so. At least, not a chance as predators.

It would seem that there is no way of stopping the Life PC from crashing without changing the software in those two problem CPU cores and before it infects the other cores. The new software should have sound power management to prevent overheating and must respect the roles of all the components in the PC to ensure that they don’t get fried. That requires a spiritual awakening among the top 2 billion human consumers worldwide, which cannot be achieved by reserving 30% of the ocean as marine sanctuaries, while encouraging depredation on the remaining 70% of the high seas.

Despite these reservations, Dr. Earle makes an important contribution by bringing to light human impact on the ocean, for which I highly recommend this book. However, I wish the editors had done a better job of fact-checking the statistics in the book. On page 10, does the ocean really occupy just 331,441 square kilometers of the surface area of the Earth? Wikipedia says that it is ~361 million square kilometers.

The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One Feature

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The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One Overview

A Silent Spring for our era, this eloquent, urgent, fascinating book reveals how just 50 years of swift and dangerous oceanic change threatens the very existence of life on Earth. Legendary marine scientist Sylvia Earle portrays a planet teetering on the brink of irreversible environmental crisis.

In recent decades we’ve learned more about the ocean than in all previous human history combined. But, even as our knowledge has exploded, so too has our power to upset the delicate balance of this complex organism. Modern overexploitation has driven many species to the verge of extinction, from tiny but indispensable biota to magnificent creatures like tuna, swordfish, and great whales. Since the mid-20th century about half our coral reefs have died or suffered sharp decline; hundreds of oxygen-deprived “dead zones” blight our coastal waters; and toxic pollutants afflict every level of the food chain.

Fortunately, there is reason for hope, but what we do—or fail to do—in the next ten years may well resonate for the next ten thousand. The ultimate goal, Earle argues passionately and persuasively, is to find responsible, renewable strategies that safeguard the natural systems that sustain us. The first step is to understand and act upon the wise message of this accessible, insightful, and compelling book.

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Introduction to Environmental Geology (4th Edition) Review

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I was completely satisfied with my recent purchase. my textbook came sooner than expected and was in excellent condition. I will definitely order my textbooks online next semester, it saved me a ton of money!

Introduction to Environmental Geology (4th Edition) Overview

For courses in Environmental Geology taken by introductory, non-science majors. Also appropriate for Physical Geology courses emphasizing an environmental perspective. As the human population increases, many decisions concerning our use of natural resources will determine our standard of living and the quality of our environment. This text helps non-science majors develop an understanding of how geology and humanity interface. Ed Keller-the author who first defined the environmental geology course-focuses on five fundamental concepts of environmental geology: Human Population Growth, Sustainability, Earth as a System, Hazardous Earth Processes, and Scientific Knowledge and Values. These concepts are introduced at the outset of the text, integrated throughout, and revisited at the end of each chapter. Included with every text, the Hazard City CD-ROM gives instructors meaningful, easy-to-assign, and easy-to-grade assignments based on the idealized town of Hazard City.

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Our Mutual Friend (New Oxford Illustrated Dickens) Review

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The last completed novel by Dickens is also one of the darkest and, in my opinion, one of the best. The plot, as usual, is too dense and complex to be treatd here in detail. The story centers around one John Harmon, back from abroad to claim the inheritance from his deceased, horrible, and miser of a father. For reasons that are never explained (one of the several loose ends of the book), Old Harmon had set the condition that, in order for his son to receive the inheritance, he must marry a young, poor girl called Bella Wilfer, whom young Harmon had never met. One night, a guy whose trade was to recover things -and bodies- from the fetid Thames, along with his daughter, finds a corpse, which is later identified as that of John Harmon. Mysterious characters appear to have an interest in the affair, but the fact is that, missing the first-choice heir, the fortune must go to the Boffins, long time employees of Old Harmon. By the way, Old Harmon’s source of fortune is a very strange one: he was a Dustman, apparently someone who trades in garbage and other discarded objects. The Boffins are an old, childless, good, charming, and ignorant couple. Feeling sorry for the death of beloved Johnny, and owing to a sense of reparation, they practically adopt Bella Wilfer. They also hire as their secretary an old tenant of the Wilfers, the mysterious John Rokesmith, who falls in love with the arrogant and pretentious Bella.

What follows is a mad, symphonic, convoluted tale of ambition, corruption, passion, crime, and revenge, as well as of confused identities. All in a tone of farce and black -but very funny- humor. Dickens paints his very own London, dark, wet, fetid, inhuman. The characters travel up and down the Thames, through St. James, the Temple, the City, etc., crossing time and again the dangerous river. They come and go all the time. The two young ladies, Bella and Lizzie Hexam, the daughter of the man who first recovered the body, are subject to mad passions, especially the latter. There are dozens of subplots, all worth reading. Dickens mocks just about every kind of people in London: business, politics, social habits. Most characters are mean and ridiculous. The vividness of the situations is witness to the enormous creative powers of this great writer.

Thre are too many characters to sketch them all here, but some memorable ones are: Miss Jenny Wren (“I know your tricks and your manners”), the dolls’ dressmaker, smart, cynical, penetrating, beautiful and handicapped, as well as her pathetic drunkard of a father. Silas Wegg, “a man of letters and with a wooden leg”, a sinister rascal who tries to dispossess the Boffins through blackmail, and his associate, Mr. Venus, embalmer and taxidermist, always sitting in his dark parlour, surrounded by phaetuses in bottles. Bradley Headstone, who literally gets crazy about Lizzie. Rogue Riderhood, the common criminal of the Thames. The most outrageous one is an usurer, a petulant and despicable pseudo-dandy called Fascination Fledgeby.

It’s true: in contrast with most great writers of the XIX Century, Dickens does not create human beings. He creates cartoons. In fact, at least for me, some passages of the novel are more easily imagined as cartoons than as people. But, as Anthony Burgess put it, “Language and morality add dimensions to his cartoons and turn them into literature”. This is an enormously funny book, well worth your dedication through its many pages. Some people criticize him for leaving subplots open and for not tying it all up close circle. Who cares, his power with words is extraordinary and his landscape of characters unforgettable.

Our Mutual Friend (New Oxford Illustrated Dickens) Overview

Charles Dickens’s last completed novel tells the story of a young man who must marry a stranger in order to win his inheritance. Wanting to learn the lady’s nature, John Harmon fakes his own death and takes on a new identity. As the complexities of the deceit are revealed, Dickens gives us his most profoundly cynical, yet brilliantly funny, insight into the corruption of wealth on human nature. 40 illustrations.

Our Mutual Friend (New Oxford Illustrated Dickens) Specifications

Our Mutual Friend was the last novel Charles Dickens completed and is, arguably, his darkest and most complex. The basic plot is vintage Dickens: an inheritance up for grabs, a murder, a rocky romance or two, plenty of skullduggery, and a host of unforgettable secondary characters. But in this final outing the author’s heroes are more flawed, his villains more sympathetic, and the story as a whole more harrowing and less sentimental. The mood is set in the opening scene in which a riverman, Gaffer Hexam, and his daughter Lizzie troll the Thames searching for drowned men whose pockets Gaffer will rifle before turning the body over to the authorities. On this particular night Gaffer finds a corpse that is later identified as that of John Harmon, who was returning from abroad to claim a large fortune when he was apparently murdered and thrown into the river.

Harmon’s death is the catalyst for everything else that happens in the novel. It seems the fortune was left to the young man on the condition that he marry a girl he’d never met, Bella Wilfer. His death, however, brings a new heir onto the scene, Nicodemus Boffin, the kind-hearted but low-born assistant to Harmon’s father. Boffin and his wife adopt young Bella, who is determined to marry money, and also hire a mysterious young secretary, John Rokesmith, who takes an uncommon interest in their ward. Not content with just one plot, Dickens throws in a secondary love story featuring the riverman’s daughter, Lizzie Hexam; a dissolute young upper-class lawyer, Eugene Wrayburn; and his rival, the headmaster Bradley Headstone. Dark as the novel is, Dickens is careful to leaven it with secondary characters who are as funny as they are menacing–blackmailing Silas Wegg and his accomplice Mr. Venus, the avaricious Lammles, and self-centered Charlie Hexam. Our Mutual Friend is one of Dickens’s most satisfying novels, and a fitting denouement to his prolific career. –Alix Wilber

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The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence Review

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Carl Sagan died in 1996, a loss to us all. But his resonances linger.

He might not agree with me on that — because after all he was a hard-nosed scientist — but one of his resonances intersected my thoughts the other day and wouldn’t leave me alone. I reflexively Googled the list of usual suspects and homed in on his 1977 The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence.

Google. It’s fascinating how the mind works these days in concert with the internet’s near-instantaneous, finger-tip access to information. What’s more fascinating is that the internet wasn’t around — at least in its public form — thirty-some years ago when Sagan wrote this book.

Sometimes — as Santyana observed — it’s useful to look at the past. Sometimes, it’s just fun.

First, the context of the past… When this book was published in 1977, I was an environmental engineer, working for a nuclear utility, seven years out of Vietnam and six years out of graduate school. Sagan was a renowned scientist at the time, a well-known leading-edge thinker and popularizer of science. I admired not only his ability to distill science to a level understandable to the layperson, but also his stern advocacy of scientific method and skeptical inquiry. So I bought the book, read it, enjoyed it.

Then I put the book in the attic.

Fast-forward to the present… The resonance had to do with computer games. I was watching my grandson play one. Sagan had talked about games, I remembered, in the context of their potential for human development. I had an attic-cleanout going on at the time and — lo and behold — suddenly there’s the book in my hand. Another resonance, maybe. Faded red cover, yellowed pages, a paperback. I found what I was looking for pretty quickly: toward the end of the book Sagan observes that Pong and Space War “suggest a gradual elaboration of computer graphics so that we gain an experiential and intuitive understanding of the laws of physics”. I went back to watch my grandson play — on a high-def screen, with enormous processing power in a tiny chip, mind you — and reflected that “elaboration” of the graphics over thirty years hasn’t been exactly “gradual”. Not sure what game my grandson was playing, or what if any potential he was developing, but one thing was clear: the kid had a fine intuitive appreciation of physics. I didn’t play; he would’ve wiped me out in thirty seconds.

Another resonance as I thumbed through this old book: Sagan talks about “extrasomatic” (i.e., outside the body) extensions of the human brain. He has an interesting chart that plots the number of bits of information that can be stored in the brains of various organisms. Mammals, and modern humans in particular, have the greatest capacity. But if you were to include the bits of information available to humans outside their brains — in libraries and similar cultural sources — Sagan points out that human capacity would be completely off his chart. Which brings us back to Google (or other search engines or computer databases or even the digital world in general)… think about it: something you were trying to recall, or maybe figure out, is now just a mouse-click away. And that capability is accelerating. Is that edifying? Enlightening? Enabling? Frightening? Or all of these?

But computer gaming and extrasomatic brain extensions are really just little off-hand slices of this still-topical book. Sagan talks both broadly and deeply about the many fascinating aspects of the evolution of human intelligence. He speaks of the development of the physical brain; for example the early neocortex and its adaptation to increase survival skills. But he also covers more subtle non-physical influences on evolving intelligence, for example cultural feedback paths such as introspection. I was particularly struck by his observation that “the richest, most intricate and most profound of these [introspections] were called myths”. He goes on to agree with the Roman historian Salustius’ definition of myths as “things which never happened but always are”. Now that’s clearly another resonance, because as a writer (with my daughter) of metaphysical sci-fi, we’re always trying to tap into fundamental myths and recast them in the trappings of modern science and technology.

So, I really enjoyed looking back, re-reading this book, comparing it to the present. I was struck again by the approachability of the man’s writing, the depth of his knowledge, his humanity. Some fascinating speculations here, by a masterful communicator. Thank you, Dr. Sagan.

~Denning
(aka Lee Denning, author of Monkey Trap and Hiding Hand)
Hiding Hand

The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence Feature

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The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence Overview

Dr. Carl Sagan takes us on a great reading adventure, offering his vivid and startling insight into the brain of man and beast, the origin of human intelligence, the function of our most haunting legends–and their amazing links to recent discoveries.
“A history of the human brain from the big bang, fifteen billion years ago, to the day before yesterday…It’s a delight.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES

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