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Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium (Americana Ser.)
by Carl SaganIn the final book of his astonishing career, Carl Sagan brilliantly examines the burning questions of our lives, our world, and the universe around us. These luminous, entertaining essays travel both the vastness of the cosmos and the intimacy of the human mind, posing such fascinating questions as how did the universe originate and how will it end, and how can we meld science and compassion to meet the challenges of the coming century? Here, too, is a rare, private glimpse of Sagan's thoughts about love, death, and God as he struggled with fatal disease. Ever forward-looking and vibrant with the sparkle of his unquenchable curiosity, Billions & Billions is a testament to one of the great scientific minds of our day.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
by Carl Sagan Ann DruyanIn Cosmos, the late astronomer Carl Sagan cast his gaze over the magnificent mystery of the Universe and made it accessible to millions of people around the world. Now in this stunning sequel, Carl Sagan completes his revolutionary journey through space and time.<P> Future generations will look back on our epoch as the time when the human race finally broke into a radically new frontier--space. In Pale Blue Dot Sagan traces the spellbinding history of our launch into the cosmos and assesses the future that looms before us as we move out into our own solar system and on to distant galaxies beyond. The exploration and eventual settlement of other worlds is neither a fantasy nor luxury, insists Sagan, but rather a necessary condition for the survival of the human race.
The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
by Carl SaganDr. 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.<P><P> Pulitzer Prize Winner
Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science
by Carl SaganCarl Sagan, writer and scientist, returns from the frontier to tell us about how the world works. In his delightfully down-to-earth style, he explores and explains a mind-boggling future of intelligent robots, extraterrestrial life and its consquences, and other provocative, fascinating quandries of the future that we want to see today.From the Paperback edition.
Cosmos
by Carl SaganThis visually stunning book with over 250 full-color illustrations, many of them never before published, is based on Carl Sagan's thirteen-part television series. <P><P>Told with Sagan's remarkable ability to make scientific ideas both comprehensible and exciting, Cosmos is about science in its broadest human context, how science and civilization grew up together. <P><P>The book also explores spacecraft missions of discovery of the nearby planets, the research in the Library of ancient Alexandria, the human brain, Egyptian hieroglyphics, the origin of life, the death of the Sun, the evolution of galaxies and the origins of matter, suns and worlds. <P><P>Sagan retraces the fifteen billion years of cos-mic evolution that have transformed matter into life and consciousness, enabling the Cosmos to wonder about itself. He considers the latest findings on life elsewhere and how we might communicate with the beings of other worlds. <P><P>Cosmos is the story of our long journey of discovery and the forces and individuals who helped to shape modern science, including Democritus, Hypatia, Kepler, Newton, Huygens, Champollion, Lowell and Humason. <P><P> Sagan looks at our planet from an extra-terrestrial vantage point and sees a blue jewel-like world, inhabited by a lifeform that is just beginning to discover its own unity and to ven-ture into the vast ocean of space.
Stupid Movie Lines: The 776 Dumbest Things Ever Uttered on the Silver Screen
by Ross Petras Kathryn PetrasThe creme de la crud of screen history "War! War! That's all you think of, Dick Plantagenet! You burner! You pillager!" --Virginia Mayo as Lady Edith to George Sanders in King Richard and the Crusaders (1954) "Visits? That would indicate visitors. " --Army captain learning of alien visits in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) "When I'm sitting here with you, I don't even think about the slime people. " --Hero to heroine in The Slime People (1962) "Suck the coffin mushroom now. " --The Ultimate Vampire (1991) "This is bad. " --Leonardo DiCaprio as the you-know-what hits the you-know-what in Titanic (1997)
Man and His Symbols (Picador Bks.)
by Carl Gustav JungIllustrated throughout with revealing images, this is the first and only work in which the world-famous Swiss psychologist explains to the layperson his enormously influential theory of symbolism as revealed in dreams.From the Paperback edition.
Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths
by Karen ArmstrongBONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Karen Armstrong's Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life.Venerated for millennia by three faiths, torn by irreconcilable conflict, conquered, rebuilt, and mourned for again and again, Jerusalem is a sacred city whose very sacredness has engendered terrible tragedy. In this fascinating volume, Karen Armstrong, author of the highly praised A History of God, traces the history of how Jews, Christians, and Muslims have all laid claim to Jerusalem as their holy place, and how three radically different concepts of holiness have shaped and scarred the city for thousands of years.Armstrong unfolds a complex story of spiritual upheaval and political transformation--from King David's capital to an administrative outpost of the Roman Empire, from the cosmopolitan city sanctified by Christ to the spiritual center conquered and glorified by Muslims, from the gleaming prize of European Crusaders to the bullet-ridden symbol of the present-day Arab-Israeli conflict. Written with grace and clarity, the product of years of meticulous research, Jerusalem combines the pageant of history with the profundity of searching spiritual analysis. Like Karen Armstrong's A History of God, Jerusalem is a book for the ages.
Practicing History: Selected Essays
by Barbara W. TuchmanFrom thoughtful pieces on the historian's role to striking insights into America's past and present to trenchant observations on the international scene, Barbara W. Tuchman looks at history in a unique way and draws lessons from what she sees. Here is a splendid body of work, the story of a lifetime spent "practicing history."
Speed Cleaning
by Jeff CampbellClean your entire house in 42 minutes with the Clean Team's unbeatable system that makes every move count.NOTE: This edition does not include illustrations.
Aromatherapy: A Complete Guide to the Healing Art [An Essential Oils Book]
by Kathi Keville Mindy GreenA comprehensive guide to using essential oils in health, beauty, and well-being. Aromatherapy offers countless uses, from cosmetics to therapeutics for balancing body, mind, and spirit. Drawing on 75 combined years of experience in botanical therapies, Keville and Green update their complete guide with the latest information for aromatherapy practitioners and students, providing an invaluable resource that includes more than 90 formulas for using essential oils in health and first aid, skin and hair care, massage, relaxation, and more.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Spontaneous Healing
by Andrew WeilThe body can heal itself. Spontaneous healing is not a miracle but a fact of biology--the result of the natural healing system that each one of us is born with. Drawing on fascinating case histories as well as medical techniques from around the world, Dr. Andrew Weil shows how spontaneous healing has worked to resolve life-threatening diseases, severe trauma, and chronic pain. Weil then outlines an eight-week program in which you'll discover:- The truth about spontaneous healing and how it interacts with the mind- The foods, vitamins, supplements, and tonic herbs that will help you enhance your innate healing powers- Advice on how to avoid environmental toxins and reduce stress- The strengths and weaknesses of conventional and alternative treatments- Natural methods to ameliorate common kinds of illnessesAnd much more!From the Paperback edition.
Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers' Manual
by Rita Mae BrownFrom the best-selling author of Rubyfruit Jungle and Bingo, here is a writers' manual as provocative, frank, and funny as her fiction. Unlike most writers' guides, this one had as much to do with how writers live as with mastering the tools of their trade. Rita Mae Brown begins with a very personal account of her own career, from her days as a young poet who had written a novel no publisher wanted to take a chance on, right up to her recent adventures as a Hollywood screenwriter. In a sassy style that makes her outspoken advice as entertaining as it is useful, she provides straight talk about paying the rent while maintaining the energy to write; and dealing with agents, publishers, critics, and the publicity circus; about pursuing journalism, academia, or screen-writing; and about rejecting the Hemingway myth of the hard-living, hard-drinking genius. In addition Brown, a former teacher or writing, offers a serious examination of the writer's tool--language, plotting, characters, symbolism--plus exercises to sharpen the ear for dialogue, and a fascinating, annotated reading list of important works from the seventh century to the late twentieth.
The Book That Changed My Life: Interviews with National Book Award Winners and Finalists
by Neil Baldwin Diane OsenEvery reader can name at least one book that changed his or her life--and many more beloved titles will surely come to mind as well. In The Book That Changed My Life, fifteen of America's most influential authors discuss their own special literary choices. These unique interviews with National Book Award winners and finalists offer new insights into the many ways in which the experience of reading shapes the act of writing. Robert Stone on Joseph Conrad's Victory, Cynthia Ozick on Henry James's Washington Square, Charles Johnson on Jack London's The Sea-Wolf--each approaches the question of literary influence, while offering rich and wonderful revelations about his or her own writing career. James Carroll, Don DeLillo, E. L. Doctorow, Diane Johnson, Philip Levine, David Levering Lewis, Barry Lopez, David McCullough, Alice McDermott, Grace Paley, Linda Pastan, and Katherine Paterson are the other distinguished contributors to this collection of informed, insightful interviews.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Me and the Measure of Things
by Joan SweeneyThe energetic narrator of Me Counting Time and Me on the Map is back, this time introducing young readers to the units of measure. What’s the difference between a cup and an ounce? What gets measured in bushels and when do you use a scale? Easy-to-understand text and playful corresponding illustrations teach children the differences between wet and dry measurements, weight, size, and length. And all information is conveyed in a unique kid’s-eye perspective, using everyday objects and situations. Me and the Measure of Things makes measurement fun–and comprehensible!
To the Manner Born
by Thomas BlaikieYour friends neglect to RSVP to your party invitation . . . co-workers munch their pungent meals near your office . . . pedestrians shout into their cell phones and practically knock you to the pavement.Wishing that friends, family, colleagues, and oblivious strangers would mind their manners is lovely, but what about your own? You don't mean to be rude, but in today's carefree, high-tech, fast-paced world, how are you supposed to know what to do?Thankfully, Englishman Thomas Blaikie's witty and insightful guide will help you steer through this minefield of uncertainty and back onto the path toward civility-without a lot of fuss and bother. No need to worry about the proper way to eat soup or which is the salad fork. What Blaikie teaches you is more important: how and when to drop in on a friend, how to turn down suitors graciously, how to "move on" at a party, how to end a text-message conversation that's gone on just a bit too long, and how to cope with myriad other twenty-first-century social traumas.Always positive and cheerful, To the Manner Born offers commonsense, practical solutions. And if you don't like someone else's manners, yes, you really should try to do something about it-in the nicest way possible, of course. "Thomas Blaikie is the perfect guide through the treacherous minefield of contemporary social mores: witty, amusingly abstruse, stylish and most importantly knowledgeable." -Will Self, author of Cock and Bull"If everyone followed the rules of this book, well, I would certainly go out more. It is packed with good sense, sharp observation, and genuine helpfulness."-Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots & LeavesFrom the Hardcover edition.
How to Get Your Dog to Do What You Want: A Loving Approach to Unleashing Your Dog's Astonishing Potential
by Warren Eckstein Andrea EcksteinWhy settle for anything less than a best friend? Every dog wants to perform -- and deservedly gain your love and affection. With Warren Eckstein's expert guidance, you can forget about frustration and disobedience, and enjoy years with a loyal, alert, and very happy dog! Here are wonderful insights, witty observations, and step-by-step advice for:* Communicating with your dog* Hassle-free housebreaking*The training ABCs -- from sitting to heeling and beyond* Diet, grooming, exercise and dentistry tips* Coping with canine old age* And much, much more!"Too bad Warren isn't a marriage counselor! If only he could do for husbands what he does for dogs!" Kathie Lee GiffordFrom the Trade Paperback edition.
To the Ends of the Earth
by Paul Theroux"Travel writing at its best."THE HOUSTON POSTAuthor and travel writer Paul Theroux does what no one else can: he travels to the isolated, unusual, and fascinating spots of the world, and creates an elegy to them that makes readers feel they are traveling with him. Evocative, breathtaking, intriguing, here is the armchair traveler's guide to the sites of the world he makes us feel we know.From the Paperback edition.
Indoor Pollution
by Steve CoffelWe all know there are health hazards in the air outside, but this powerful new book warns that we aren't safe within our homes or offices either. The most comprehensive work available on this pressing issue covers publicized pollutants like asbestos, radon, and cigarette smoke, as well as the secret contaminants in our heating, electrical, and plumbing systems.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Change of Life: The Menopause Handbook
by Susan Flamholtz TrienChange of Life: The Menopause Handbook is the most complete and compassionate guide to your body's physical and emotional change.
Talk Talk Talk: Decoding the Mysteries of Speech
by Jay IngramWith a mixture of erudition and humor, Canadian radio personality Jay Ingram discusses the sociology of talking: the dynamics of conversation, men and women's different propensities for interrupting, and even the proper use of "you know." But he also delves into the mystery-riddled physiology of talking. While we now know that certain areas of the brain seem to control specific aspects of speech--from articulating words to creating meaningful sentences--how do scientists explain the extraordinary case of the young stroke victim who lost only the words for fruits and vegetables? Is it possible that the ability to talk is actually encoded in our genes, as some scientists believe?From the language roots of North America to the speech differences between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, from modern children creating whole new languages in one generation to Freudian slips, from talking to yourself to speaking in tongues, Talk, Talk, Talk covers the gamut of humankind's most enigmatic and intriguing skill. Impeccably researched, lively and accessible, Talk, Talk, Talk is a book you won't be able to keep quiet about.
Red-Tails in Love
by Marie WinnMarie Winn is our guide into a secret world, a true wilderness in the heart of a city. The scene is New York's Central Park, but the rich natural history that emerges here--the loons, raccoons, woodpeckers, owls, and hundreds of visiting songbirds--will appeal to wildlife lovers everywhere. At its heart is the saga of the Fifth Avenue hawks, which begins as a love story and develops into a full-fledged mystery.At the outset of our journey we meet the Regulars, a small band of nature lovers who devote themselves to the park and its wildlife. As they watch Pale Male, a remarkable young red-tailed hawk, woo and win his first mate, they are soon transformed into addicted hawk-watchers. From a bench at the park's model-boat pond they observe the hawks building a nest in an astonishing spot--a high ledge of a Fifth Avenue building three floors above Mary Tyler Moore's apartment and across the street from Woody Allen's.The drama of the Fifth Avenue hawks--hunting, courting, mating, and striving against great odds to raise a family in their unprecedented nest site--is alternately hilarious and heartbreaking. Red-Tails in Love will delight and inspire readers for years to come.From the Hardcover edition.
On Writing: Women Writing On Photography From The 1850s To The Present
by Eudora WeltyEudora Welty was one of the twentieth century's greatest literary figures. For as long as students have been studying her fiction as literature, writers have been looking to her to answer the profound questions of what makes a story good, a novel successful, a writer an artist. On Writing presents the answers in seven concise chapters discussing the subjects most important to the narrative craft, and which every fiction writer should know, such as place, voice, memory, and language. But even more important is what Welty calls "the mystery" of fiction writing--how the writer assembles language and ideas to create a work of art.Originally part of her larger work The Eye of the Story but never before published in a stand-alone volume, On Writing is a handbook every fiction writer, whether novice or master, should keep within arm's reach. Like The Elements of Style, On Writing is concise and fundamental, authoritative and timeless--as was Eudora Welty herself.From the Hardcover edition.
The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression
by Gary FaiginArtists love this book, the definitive guide to capturing facial expressions. In a carefully organized, easy-to-use format, author Gary Faigin shows readers the expressions created by individual facial muscles, then draws them together in a section devoted to the six basic human emotions: sadness, anger, joy, fear, disgust, and surprise. Each emotion is shown in steadily increasing intensity, and Faigin's detailed renderings are supplemented by clear explanatory text, additional sketches, and finished work. An appendix includes yawning, wincing, and other physical reactions. Want to create portraits that capture the real person? Want to draw convincing illustrations? Want to show the range of human emotion in your artwork? Get The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression!From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Musician's Guide to the Road: A Survival Handbook & All-Access Backstage Pass to Touring
by Susan VoelzAn all-access pass to what goes on backstage, onstage, and on the way to the stage. What's a tour bus like? What are the band members saying to each other on stage? Exactly how much sex, how many drugs, how much rock 'n' roll are we talking here? The Musician's Guide to the Road answers all these questions and many, many, many more. Both a valuable primer designed to prepare young musicians for life on the road and an entertaining memoir of the touring life written by a seasoned musician, this is the book that reveals the scene behind the scenes. Chapters focus on preparing to tour, touring by van and bus, the day of the show, the afternoon before the show, the night of the show, and the morning after, life on the road, and the end of the road.From the Trade Paperback edition.