Rising from the Plains is John McPhee's third book on geology and geologists. Following Basin and Range and In Suspect Terrain, it continues to present a cross section of North America along the fortieth parallel--a series gathering under the overall title Annals of the Former World.

One Saturday morning in February 1972, an impoundment dam owned by the Pittston Coal Company burst, sending a 130 million gallon, 25 foot tidal wave of water, sludge, and debris crashing into southern West Virginia's Buffalo Creek hollow. It was one of the deadliest floods in U.S. history. 125 people were killed instantly, more than 1,000 were injured, and over 4,000 were suddenly homeless. Instead of accepting the small settlements offered by the coal company's insurance offices, a few hundred of the survivors banded together to sue. This is the story of their triumph over incredible odds and corporate irresponsibility, as told by Gerald M. Stern, who as a young lawyer and took on the case and won.

"From the Trade Paperback edition."

The questions he poses about the relationship between technical change and political power are pressing ones that can no longer be ignored, and identifying them is perhaps the most a nascent 'philosophy of technology' can expect to achieve at the present time.--David Dickson, New York Times Book Review

Describes how fractals were discovered, explains their unique properties, and discusses the mathematical foundation of fractals.

Analytical mechanics is, of course, a topic of perennial interest and usefulness in physics and engineering, a discipline that boasts not only many practical applications, but much inherent mathematical beauty. Unlike many standard textbooks on advanced mechanics, however, this present text eschews a primarily technical and formalistic treatment in favor of a fundamental, historical, philosophical approach. As the author remarks, there is a tremendous treasure of philosophical meaning behind the great theories of Euler and Lagrange, Hamilton, Jacobi, and other mathematical thinkers.
Well-written, authoritative, and scholarly, this classic treatise begins with an introduction to the variational principles of mechanics including the procedures of Euler, Lagrange, and Hamilton.
Ideal for a two-semester graduate course, the book includes a variety of problems, carefully chosen to familiarize the student with new concepts and to illuminate the general principles involved. Moreover, it offers excellent grounding for the student of mathematics, engineering, or physics who does not intend to specialize in mechanics, but wants a thorough grasp of the underlying principles.
The late Professor Lanczos (Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies) was a well-known physicist and educator who brought a superb pedagogical sense and profound grasp of the principles of mechanics to this work, now available for the first time in an inexpensive Dover paperback edition. His book will be welcomed by students, physicists, engineers, mathematicians, and anyone interested in a clear masterly exposition of this all-important discipline.

Pieces of the Frame is a gathering of memorable writings by one of the greatest journalists and storytellers of our time. They take the reader from the backwoods roads of Georgia, to the high altitude of Ruidoso Downs in New Mexico; from the social decay of Atlantic City, to Scotland, where a pilgrimage for art's sake leads to a surprising encounter with history on a hilltop with a view of a fifth of the entire country. McPhee's writing is more than informative; these are stories, artful and full of character, that make compelling reading. They play with and against one another, so that Pieces of the Frame is distinguished as much by its unity as by its variety. Subjects familiar to McPhee's readers--sports, Scotland, conservation--are treated here with intimacy and a sense of the writer at work.

First published over 40 years ago, this work has achieved the status of a classic among introductory texts on mechanics. Den Hartog is known for his lively, discursive and often witty presentations of all the fundamental material of both statics and dynamics (and considerable more advanced material) in new, original ways that provide students with insights into mechanical relationships that other books do not always succeed in conveying. On the other hand, the work is so replete with engineering applications and actual design problems that it is as valuable as a reference to the practicing engineer as it is as a text or refresher for the general engineering student.
Mechanics is not a heavy book, despite the amount of material it covers and the clarity and exactness with which it treats this material. It is undoubtedly one of the most readable texts in the field. More than 550 drawings and diagrams in the regular text and in the highly praised 112-page section of problems and answers further contribute to its lucidity and value. The emphasis is consistently on illuminating fundamental principles and in showing how they are embodied in a high number of real engineering and design problems concerning trusses, loaded cables, beams, jacks, hoists, brakes, cantilevers, springs, balances, pendulums, projectiles, cranks, linkages, propellers, turbines, fly ball engine governors, hydraulic couplings, anti-roll devices, gyroscopes, and hundreds of other mechanical systems and devices.
Chapters cover Discrete Coplanar Forces, Conditions of Equilibrium, Distributed Forces, Trusses and Cables, Beams, Friction, Space Forces, The Method of Work, Kinematics of a Point, Dynamics of a Particle, Kinematics of Plane Motion, Moments of Inertia, Dynamics of Plane Motion, Work and Energy, Impulse and Momentum, Relative Motion, and Gyroscopes. Particularly in the last two chapters, Den Hartog provides advanced material not usual in introductory texts. Very thoroughly recommended to all those anxious to improve their real understanding of the principles of mechanics. -- Mechanical World.
Index. List of equations. 334 problems, all with answers. Over 550 diagrams and drawings.

In the spring of 1983 Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by. One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s. As it interweaves these narratives of dying and accommodation, Refuge transforms tragedy into a document of renewal and spiritual grace, resulting in a work that has become a classic.