![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In vibrant historical detail, American Eclipse animates the fierce jockeying that came to dominate late nineteenth-century American astronomy, bringing to life the challenges faced by three of the most determined eclipse chasers who participated in this adventure. Acclaimed science journalist David Baron, long fascinated by eclipses, re-creates this epic tale of ambition, failure, and glory in a narrative that reveals as much about the historical trajectory of a striving young nation as it does about those scant three minutes when the blue sky blackened and stars appeared in mid-afternoon. This rare celestial event-a total solar eclipse-offered a priceless opportunity to solve some of the solar system’s most enduring riddles, and it prompted a clutch of enterprising scientists to brave the wild frontier in a grueling race to the Rocky Mountains. On a scorching July afternoon in 1878, at the dawn of the Gilded Age, the moon’s shadow descended on the American West, darkening skies from Montana Territory to Texas. Richly illustrated and meticulously researched, American Eclipse ultimately depicts a young nation that looked to the skies to reveal its towering ambition and expose its latent genius. Winner of the 2018 AIP Science Communication Award in Science Writing (Books) ![]()
0 Comments
![]() ![]() While Danny's situation is different than the one my brother was in, it was satisfying to write a sibling story with family love and forgiveness as its heart. The Butterfly Effect let me play out, in a different situation, two siblings responsible for one another as adults. Secondly, my brother died when I was too young to be able to help take care of him during his illness, so my whole life I've thought about the ways that siblings can take care of one another and be each other's support systems. I had to wonder what it would be like to work in a place like that (and so of course, like a normal person, I spent four years researching and writing about it ) ). First, I fell in love with Reiman Gardens, the botanical garden and butterfly conservatory, where this book ended up being partially set. First, I fell in love with Reiman Gardens, the botanical garden and butterfly cons …more The idea for The Butterfly Effect came from a few different things. ![]() Rachel Mans McKenny The idea for The Butterfly Effect came from a few different things. ![]() ![]() ![]() The story itself he wrote in the early 1930s, and it was eventually published because he lent it to the Rev. The Hobbit didn't go any further than that at the time, although in the following years he drew up Thrór's Map, outlining the geography of the tale. Auden that The Hobbit began in the late 1920s when he was marking School Certificate papers and wrote the words "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit" on the back of one of them. Tolkien recollected in a 1955 letter to W.H. ![]() ![]() Tolkien wrote The Hobbit (as well as the first two books of The Lord of the Rings) during his time as a Fellow and Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College of the University of Oxford in England. ![]() ![]() ![]() A storm threatens to interfere with Leo’s takeoff, a deadly entity makes itself known to the Final Six, and all questions the ISTC has been avoiding about the previous mission get answered in a terrifying way. ![]() ![]() With questions piling up, everything gets more dangerous the closer that the mission gets to Europa. And if Wagner’s hypothesis is right, it isn’t a possibility of coming in contact with extraterrestrial life on Europa-it’s a definite, and it’s up to Leo to find and warn Naomi and the crew. Greta Wagner, who promises to fly him to space where he can dock with Naomi’s ship. Leo, back on Earth, has been working with renegade scientist Dr. With just one shot at Jupiter’s moon, Naomi is determined to find out if there is dangerous alien life on Europa before she and her crew get there. The International Space Training Camp continues to dodge every question about its past failed mission, and Naomi is suspicious that not everything is as it seems on her own mission to Europa. It was hard enough for Naomi to leave Leo, a fellow Final Six contestant, behind on a dying Earth. Perfect for fans of The Illuminae Files and The 100, in this heart-racing sequel to The Final Six the teen astronauts must figure out the truth about Europa before it’s too late. ![]() ![]() ![]() These kinds of claims also ignore the power of organisations’ norms and culture in shaping how people behave (and who moves up the ladder). ![]() Prime the tests differently, offer payment in return for the correct identification of people’s emotional states from their body language, for example, and men perform no differently to women. ![]() A test of spatial ability? No.’Īnd to those who cite the countless tests which purport to show that women are more empathetic, better at reading body language than men, or that men are whizzes at puzzle solving, better at logical thinking than women, Fine pointed out that the tests themselves primed participants to adopt stereotypical gender roles. Classification skills (for example, “find all the small ones”)? No. Does a four-year-old’s skill at copying a block structure, understanding number facts and concepts, and counting and sorting increase with higher levels of amniotic testosterone? No, it decreases in girls, and has no relationship in boys. ![]() To those who claimed that the testosteronal surges during pregnancy, which affect the sex of a child, also shaped the male/female brain, Fine offered a detailed, scathing rebuke: ‘Does accuracy on a mental rotation test at age seven correlate with amniotic testosterone? No. ![]() ![]() ![]() By using the Platform and the Atome Services, you agree to be bound by these Terms and are deemed to have executed these Terms electronically. ![]() Please read these Terms of Service (“Terms”) carefully. ![]() ![]() As she struggles to sow the seeds of her freedom, love for the God of the Dead grows-a love that is both captivating and forbidden. The bet does more than expose Persephone's failure as a goddess, however. But nothing has ever intrigued him as much as the goddess offering him a bargain he can't resist.Īfter her encounter with Hades, Persephone finds herself in a contract with the God of the Dead, and his terms are impossible: Persephone must create life in the Underworld or lose her freedom forever. Hades, God of the Dead, has built a gambling empire in the mortal world and his favorite bets are rumored to be impossible. All of that changes when she sits down in a forbidden nightclub to play a hand of cards with a hypnotic and mysterious stranger. After moving to New Athens, she hoped to lead an unassuming life disguised as a mortal journalist. Since she was a little girl, flowers have only shriveled at her touch. Persephone is the Goddess of Spring in title only. Clair comes a dark and enthralling reimagining of the Hades and Persephone Greek myth. ![]() ![]() ![]() The way his character progresses in this book kind of reminds me of how Tommy’s character evolved in the early books. If anything he’s trippier than ever in this book. Oh, how could I omit this from my review? Mike doesn’t just land in this new world, he crashes there with an old Zombie Fallout favourite – John the Tripper. ![]() Also, I don’t think it’s going to be a spoiler to say that their paths cross? ![]() The chapters are pretty much a parallel story of both main characters and how they are dealing with being dropped into this new, strange world – I don’t think I’m creating any spoilers by saying that. Talbot was an old friend, but Jack was some new interloper, so this brought him into ‘my’ story quite well and filled in a bit more information about him. Actually it seemed odd at first, but worked really well. So one chapter would be Mike and the next chapter would be Jack. The chapters of the book are split into the story from each character. This is a collaboration between Mark Tufo and John O’Brien.Īs you know I’ve been a big fan of Mark Tufo books for a while, especially the Zombie Fallout series, so when I saw this I thought I’d better give it a read. ![]() ![]() ![]() Over the course of twenty years, Anne, Neely, and Jennifer get comprehensively screwed. And there’s Jennifer North, an actress who cheerfully admits to having no talent, but whose body is her primary asset. There’s her roommate, Neely O’Hara, a seventeen-year-old who’s already been a professional performer for a decade, and who finally gets her big break through Anne’s friendship. There’s Anne Welles, a refugee from emotionally frigid New England small-town life, devastatingly beautiful and seeking an existence as an employed woman on her own terms. If you don’t know the plot already (and I didn’t, having neither previously read it nor seen the film, released in 1967 and starring Sharon Tate), it revolves around three young women in New York City just after WWII. So there’s an obvious question, one that springs immediately to mind, regarding this reprint: is Valley of the Dolls a feminist book? It’s being republished by Virago Press, the imprint well known for championing women’s writing they publish, among others, Angela Carter, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Pym, and Margaret Atwood. ![]() Valley of the Dolls is 50 years old this year. “You’ve got to climb Mount Everest to reach the Valley of the Dolls.”
![]() ![]() ![]() He wanted more than anything the very things that it seemed he could never have-money, freedom, and power. MEN ARE MEN AND LIFE IS LIFE, AND WE MUST DEAL WITH THEM AS THEY ARE AND IF WE WANT TO CHANGE THEM, WE MUST DEAL WITH THEM IN THE FORM IN WHICH THEY EXIST.Īs a boy, Curtis Jackson (aka 50 Cent) had one dominant drive-ambition. THIS IS LIFE, NEW AND STRANGE STRANGE, BECAUSE WE FEAR IT NEW, BECAUSE WE HAVE KEPT OUR EYES TURNED FROM IT…. THE FIRMER YOUR GRASP ON REALITY, THE MORE POWER YOU WILL HAVE TO ALTER IT FOR YOUR PURPOSES. BY SEEING THROUGH PEOPLE’S MANIPULATIONS, YOU CAN TURN THEM AROUND. ![]() BY FOCUSING YOUR ATTENTION ON WHAT IS GOING ON AROUND YOU, YOU WILL GAIN A SHARP APPRECIATION FOR WHAT MAKES SOME PEOPLE ADVANCE AND OTHER FALL BEHIND. YOUR TASK IS TO RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO WISH IT WERE ALL DIFFERENT INSTEAD YOU MUST FEARLESSLY ACCEPT THESE CIRCUMSTANCES, EVEN EMBRACE THEM. THEY BRING ENDLESS BATTLES INTO YOUR LIFE. IT TAKES CONSTANT EFFORT TO CARVE A PLACE FOR YOURSELF IN THIS RUTHLESSLY COMPETITIVE WORLD AND HOLD ON TO IT. CHAPTER 1 See Things for What They Are-Intense Realism ![]() ![]() Or as Benny wonders in her own head as she grapples with her parents’ history: “This is who they have always been, an African American family of Caribbean origin, a clan of untold stories and half-charted cultures. There’s the face they present to their fellow characters in the novel, then there’s their true backstory, which often flips that public face on its head. It’s 382 pages of flash fiction to fill in those 53 years between Then and Now. ![]() It takes some getting used to at first, but you eventually settle into a rhythm and enjoy puzzling together what happens between each short snippet. ![]() The chapters come fast and furious after that. The debut novel of former journalist and short fiction writer Charmaine Wilkerson opens with a one-paragraph prologue called “Then/1965.” A man stands at the water’s edge, “waiting for his daughter’s body to wash ashore.” The next page is titled “Now/2018″ and we meet Byron and Benny, estranged siblings seeing each other for the first time in eight years at their mother’s funeral. “Black Cake” by Charmaine Wilkerson (Ballantine Books) Customer reviews 4.4 out of 5 stars 4.4 out of 5 14,934 global ratings Black Cake: A Novel b圜harmaine Wilkerson Write a review How customer reviews and ratings work Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them. ![]() ![]() This cover image released by Ballantine shows "Black Cake" by Charmaine Wilkerson. ![]() |