Writing about a moth consumed by a candle flame, a girl burned in an airplane accident, and a baptism on a cold beach, Dillard bears witness to the violent incursions of the Absolute into the wreck of space and her vision of the power play of holy fire

Two spiritual prose poems precede more than twenty essays in which the author argues for the diversification of local economies, elucidates how art participates in our lives, and urges that humanity collectively seek harmony between human economy and nature

A study of the Burgess Shale, a sea bed 530 million years old, and attempts to tackle what the findings are and what it means

Explores the timeless question of how we know what we know by rethinking the paradoxes guiding our understanding in areas such as matter and antimatter, black holes and time travel

Explains different types of clouds

A clear, penetrating exposition of developments in physical science and mathematics brought about by non-Euclidean geometries, including in-depth coverage of the foundations of geometry, theory of time, other topics.

A guide to constellations, stars, and other celestial objects reveals the mythology surrounding the star groups and the star movement through the sky

Depicts the problems which ensue when a mining engineer, a resort developer, and a civil engineer alternately confront a militant conservationist

A vanishing way of life is captured in a study of the mountain folk of the Southern Appalachians

This is the fascinating story of the dream of a completely new aircraft, a hybrid of the plane and the rigid airship - huge, wingless, moving slowly through the lower sky. John McPhee chronicles the perhaps unfathomable perseverance of the aircraft's sucessive progenitors. This is the fascinating story of the dream of a completely new aircraft, a hybrid of the plane and the rigid airship - huge, wingless, moving slowly through the lower sky. John McPhee chronicles the perhaps unfathomable perseverance of the aircraft's sucessive progenitors.