Book Description
Understanding how we pinpoint the past is crucial to putting the present in perspective and planning for the future. Now, for the first time, journalist and geologist Chris Turney explains to the non-specialist exactly how archaeologists, paleontologists, and geologists tell the time. Each chapter explores one famous event or object from the past, walking readers step by step through the detective work used to determine when things happened. From the Ice Age to the pyramids, from human evolution to the Shroud of Turin, Turney reveals how written records, carbon, pollen, constellations, DNA sequencing, and more all play a part in solving the mystery of the true age of objects and events.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent story "connecting the dots" of time.......2007-01-09
Turney's book is a great easily read science book explaining how we know when historic and prehistoric events occurred. Each chapter stands alone on its own merits, describing how we know one particular fact, or how one particular measurement system works...but tie together to show how a multitude of different measures can describe events as recent as the 1300s and as distant as dinosaur extinctions 65 million years ago.
This book is great reading for the layman interested in how science works and how scientists can be confident about the chronology and timing of events deep in our past.
The only criticism is that it left me wanting more...I would have devoured a book twice as long!
An essential pick for college-level collections strong in scientific inquiry........2006-11-07
How does dating affect authenticity in identifying relics and linking historical facts? Eleven chapters each focus on a famous dating controversy, examining the procedures of dating, common methods used to date everything from tree rings to astronomical bodies, and common problems which involve dating. Discrepancies in evidence, forgeries, and misinterpretations are all covered in BONES, ROCKS AND STARS: THE SCIENCE OF WHEN THINGS HAPPENED, an essential pick for college-level collections strong in scientific inquiry.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
What Do We Know, and When Did We Know It?.......2006-10-29
"Bones, Rocks and Stars" is an engaging and wide-ranging romp through "the science of when things happened." Each chapter covers a single topic, such as how the calendar evolved, when King Arthur would have lived (if he existed), when the Santorini volcano erupted in the Mediterranean, when the Shroud of Turin was forged (pulling no punches there), when (and why) the earth experiences ice ages, and when (exactly) the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid impact. Turney's style is approachable, so even carbon 14 dating, the precession of the equinoxes, Milankovitch cycles and other challenging topics are clearly explained.
If you enjoy enlightening and surprising books like Malcolm Gladwell's "Tipping Point" and "Blink," Cordelia Fines' "A Mind of Its Own" and Michael Leavitt's "Freakonomics," you may find this little book to be an eye opening and entertaining look at how scientists have figured out when things happened.
Book Description
In this graceful collection, Howard Mansfield looks anew at the New England region he's called home for over twenty years. He studies the beautiful stonework of granite bridges with a local expert; contemplates the deserted second and third stories of the old mercantile buildings that populate New England's towns and cities; and considers the cemeteries and roadside shrines that punctuate the landscape. Each exploratory adventure is written with Mansfield's typical wit and passion in prose so smooth that the deeper questions he raises appear with startling poignancy. How do our local landmarks narrate the past? What is history? Should we — can we — preserve its artifacts for the future? A kind of elegy for the built environment and dying customs of New England life, these essays will challenge anyone's notions of home, history, and the future that jeopardizes both.
Customer Reviews:
A Treasure of Stories.......2007-06-06
The Bones of the Earth is a treasure of historical stories unique to New England that could be lost without writers like Howard Mansfield to keep them alive. His thoughtful account of traditions, landmarks and history reminds us all to document our own stories for future generations. Mansfield's humor and sense of irony in showing the strange contrasts we often don't see makes this a delightful book to read.
This is a great book.......2005-02-07
Howard Mansfield's The Bones of the Earth will make you see your surroundings in a whole different way. At a time that much of humankind stands at the verge of forgetting who and where we are, this book reminds us to honor the oldest landmarks, the sticks and stones by which we know home.
Amazon.com
French zoologist and geologist Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) is remembered largely for opposing pre-Darwinian theories of evolution and instead advancing his theory of catastrophism. When evolution took the fore, many of Cuvier's ideas were swept aside. Martin J. S. Rudwick makes a good case, in this edition of several of Cuvier's key papers, for restoring the scientist to currency; his ideas anticipated modern research in mass extinctions and what Stephen Jay Gould calls "punctuated equilibrium." This collection is especially interesting in tracing the formation of Cuvier's ideas on the fossil record--another idea we owe to him.
Book Description
French zoologist Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) helped form and bring credibility to geology and paleontology. Here Martin J. S. Rudwick provides the first modern translation of Cuvier's essential writings on fossils and catastrophes and links these translated texts together with his own insightful narrative and interpretive commentary.
"Martin Rudwick has done English-speaking science a considerable service by translating and commenting on Cuvier's work. . . . He guides us through Cuvier's most important writings, especially those which demonstrate his new technique of comparative anatomy."—Douglas Palmer, New Scientist
Customer Reviews:
An extremely important resource.......2007-01-20
In April 1796 Georges Cuvier read a paper he had written, entitled Memoir on the Species of Elephants, Both Living and Fossil, to the National Institute in France. Besides establishing that African and Indian elephants were different species, it established that mammoths were a separate species from any living elephant and therefore must be extinct. Thus for the first time establishing the fact of extinction. It is one of the foundation documents of paleontology, and of the 19th century catastrophist school of geology. An argument could be made that it is the most important publication in the history of the natural sciences prior to The Origin of Species. This book has the only English translation of a significant portion of it that I have ever been able to find and it is only one of several texts from Cuvier, Rudwick has translated for this book. Rudwick's comments accompaning the translated texts do a good job of placing them in their proper historical context. This book is obviously not for everyone, but anyone really interested in the historical development of the natural sciences, especially paleontology, zoology and geology will find it fascinating.
Average customer rating:
- Loved It
- Could have been a good one
- If I could time travel I would have warned myself....
- Ho hum
- Baffling! Not a light read.
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Bones of the Earth
Michael Swanwick
Manufacturer: HarperTorch
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ASIN: 0380812894
Release Date: 2003-02-25 |
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Paleontologist Richard Leyster is studying the dinosaur-fossil discovery of a lifetime when a stranger comes into his office with an ice cooler and an offer: a mysterious and dangerous job that pays no better than Leyster's beloved current position at the Smithsonian. He rejects the offer and the stranger departs, leaving the cooler. Leyster opens the cooler and finds the head of a just-slain stegosaur. It really is an offer he can't refuse: a job that will allow him to study living dinosaurs. But the stranger has disappeared, and Leyster has no idea where to find him.
Expanded from his Hugo Award-winning story "Scherzo with Tyrannosaur," Michael Swanwick's Bones of the Earth is a time-travel novel as exciting as Jurassic Park and far more intelligent. In addition to the Hugo, Michael Swanwick has won the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards. His previous books include the novels In the Drift, Vacuum Flowers, and Griffin's Egg, and his collections include Gravity's Angels, A Geography of Unknown Lands, and Moon Dogs, among others. --Cynthia Ward
Book Description
World-renowned paleontologist Richard Leyster's universe changedforever the day a stranger named Griffin walked into his office with a remarkable job offer . . . and an ice cooler containing the head of a freshly killed Stegosaurus. For Leyster and a select group of scientific colleagues an impossible fantasy has come true: the ability to study dinosaurs up close, in their own era and milieu. But tampering with time and paradox can have disastrous effects on the future and the past alike, breeding a violent new strain of fundamentalist terror -- and, worse still, encouraging brilliant rebels like Dr. Gertrude Salley to toy with the working mechanisms of natural law, no matter what the consequences. And when they concern the largest, most savage creatures that ever walked the Earth, the consequences may be too horrifying to imagine . . .
Customer Reviews:
Loved It.......2007-08-05
I purchased this book in a bundle from Amazon and it sat on my shelf for several months. For some reason it never rose to the top. Looking around for something this past week I pulled this one down, dusted it off, and read the first few pages. I was hooked. It was all I could do to put it down to get enough sleep for the next day.
If you are into dinosaurs, time travel, and think watching a bunch of scientists trapped in the mesozoic learn to survive is your idea of a good time, then this book is definitely for you.
Could have been a good one.......2006-12-31
A man walks into paleontologist Richard Leyster's office with a fresh Stegosaurus head and asks if he'd be interested in coming to work for him. Great start! Unfortunately, despite good action, so-so dialogue and an interesting story, it was weak in several parts. Frequently, characters speak Novelese, that special language reserved for fictional folks. A bigger problem is the integration of two unrelated plots. Plot I - Christian fundamentalists have a mole within the time travel organization trying to either plant evidence in support of creationism or kill the time travelers themselves. Plot II - discovering the inventors of time travel and more startling, why human beings were allowed to use it.
Plot I is a familiar, if dreary, one - dogmatic bad guys vs progress and science. I've lived in the buckle of the Bible Belt all my life and can count on one hand the number of folks I've encountered who think the Earth is only a few thousand years old. The author undermines all his talk about the silliness of creationism by having the characters ruminate about their own spiritual preferences (Christian). Plot II is a real winner, a real tour de force of inventiveness that unfolds at just the right pace.
Another subject, almost a plot in itself, is the issue of causal paradox, what it is, how it is caused, how it can exist and its consequences. One such paradox is the time travel "leader" known as the "Old Man". We learn that he is the same man (only older) who contacted our scientist at the beginning of the tale. Just as there are two plots, there are also two stories. Midway in the book, our hero and a band of intrepid scientists become trapped in the Mesozoic Era by our Creationist buddy. The story alternates between the past and the "current" time, Survivor vs CSI. The ending is really weak. A host of minor, unnecessary characters are introduced until our hero becomes simply one of the guys. It's a classic case of packing in too many people in such a tight space, a fault of many writers. A good love story rounds out the tale. My grade - B
If I could time travel I would have warned myself...........2006-06-18
So, you find yourself almost 400 pages into a book you are writing and you run short of ideas.
What do you do?
A. add some horrible time travel paradoxical ending or
B. have the main character hit by a semi as he crosses the street
Ho hum.......2006-06-17
After a tantalizing opening, this novel quickly deteriorates: The characters have no depth; the dino theories are ridiculous (T Rex domesticating and herding stegos and other herbivores, commandeering them by means of infrasound); the elaborate time hopping adds no new insights or ideas to the existing time travel literature; and the ending is a major cop-out.
Baffling! Not a light read........2006-04-26
Everyone has commented on how "complex" this book is. Well, it baffled me! I trudged through every chapter hoping it would get better. Instead I was bogged down in the mire of time travel that was taken as casually as changing one's socks(pop in, pop out). The same character was able to be in the same place at the same time & yet it was not a paradox. (How do you like your older self telling your younger self what to do?) It didn't seem to be leading anywhere. The only plot I understood was the creationist spy subplot. This book has a point in how far fanatics (of any kind) will go.
Other than that, I consider this book so tied in knots that I am disappointed to have to say it was a waste of time & money for me. Maybe Sci Fi readers would like it. :(
Book Description
Snatch some geology without technical bog-down with this copiously illustrated book. Learn how to read landscapes, cope with geologic hazards, and answer such questions as "Why are oceans salty?"
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The Bones of the Earth
Carol Jane Bangs
Manufacturer: New Directions Publishing Corporation
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ASIN: 0811208834 |
Book Description
The Regional Geography of Canada divides Canada into six geographic regions: Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Western Canada, Atlantic Canada, and the Territorial North. Each region has a particular regional geography, history, population, and a unique location. These factors have determined each region's character, set the direction for its development, and created a sense of place. In examining these themes, this text underscores the dynamic nature of Canada's regional geography.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent geographic study.......2003-04-28
Robert T. Bone's Regional Geography of Canada is a must for anyone who is interested in Canadian history or geography in general. It is very well organized and comprehensive. This book goes beyond what most of us think of when we hear the word "geography". It is not a book about maps, it is a book about how people live in Canada, why they live where they do, how their lives have impacted the land, and how the land has impacted their lives. It is a very interesting study and will make you think about how your own life is impacted by the environment around you... where ever you are!
Customer Reviews:
Wonderful story with lots of facts.......2005-10-22
This book is my son's favorite. After checking it out over and over from the library we bought it. We read it every night. This tale of a dinosaur and how his body becomes fossils is wonderfully written. This book has lots of great information, but with a cute story!
Customer Reviews:
my experience with Carlos Annocondia.......2006-05-08
I not only know carlos annocondia's teachings I personally have experienced the power of God coming from his ministry. I've been to those phony deliverance ministries where they tell you to confess all this stuff and try to cast so-called demons out of you and no real change happens in your life but the time I went to one of Carlos' crusades in PA changed my life and I'll never forget it! The whole night while he was preaching I felt very bad, full of anxiety, hatred, depression, confusion ect... I felt like I was crazy. He gave an alter call for those who wanted to be set free. I knew I had to go down there. When I went down I fell down under the power of God then this wierd feeling came over me. I started screaming and shaking. Ushers picked me up and carried me into the back room while I was screaming fear, fear the spirit of fear. This spirit was TERRIFIED of this kind of God's power I could feel it but at the same time I felt peace and knew everything would be o.k. To make a long story short the deliverance team prayed for me and the spirit left me and I felt a peace so great I could finally breathe again and sleep properly. This man Carlos is real deal and his anointing is true I know first hand.
Cult of personality. . ........2005-12-28
I was stunned by the audacity of this book, and chilled by the number of "5 star" reviews. I have seen this style of writing before . . . it is favored by various gurus who demand blind faith and unwavering supplication from legions of starry-eyed innocents in awe of their false wisdom. His ego knows no bounds, and he expects the reader to hang on his every word, believing it all without question. Rubbish.
I DO believe in the demonic, and I do believe that -- on rare occasions -- people CAN be demonically possessed (far more common is the phenomenon of attachment, influence, and parasitism by astral larvae, akishra, and earthbound spirits -- easily detached via a number of methods, including the Christian "deliverance"). I do NOT, however, believe that Annacondia is an honest or ethical man.
Annacondia presents himself, not as a "man of God", but rather as a godlike man. Over and over again we hear incredible testimonials to how great and powerful Annacondia is. Unlike other holy men, Annacondia does not humbly dismiss this praise and state that it is his God who should instead be praised, as he is simply a vessel for the power of God to work through . . . no, Annacondia basks in the glory of this undeserved praise, and hungers for more. Over and over again, he boasts of his *magickal* powers (given to him by God, no doubt!).
All evil spirits, including Satan himself, tremble before Annacondia and OBEY HIS EVERY COMMAND (and Annacondia can bestow this power upon those who choose to follow him!). Dozens of assassins sent to kill Annacondia (with sniper rifles, pistols, knives, and firebombs) not only found themselves unable to complete their mission, but actually repented, surrendered their weapons to him, and begged his forgiveness! Those who thieve from Annacondia are seemingly "bewitched" until the items are returned and forgiveness is granted! Does this sound like Christianity to you?
In addition to dozens of cases which seem profoundly unlikely -- even when compared to the most spectacular cases found in a large number of other books on the subject of possession and exorcism -- there are quite a few passages that are downright disturbing. Here is just one example: "A group of young girls came to the tent manifesting demons. We realized that there was a sexual spirit controlling them all. It seemed unreal to see this happening to girls eight to twelve years old. A sexual spirit possessed the oldest, who was twelve, and she controlled the other girls. They practiced lesbianism in their church's bathroom." (p. 182)
Even more disturbing was his endorsement of Leviticus 20:27, "A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads. These words are from the Bible; it's not me saying this -- it's God Himself." (p. 95)
Annacondia comes off in this book as a rather sleazy cross between financial empowerment guru Tony Robbins and alleged "miracle man" guru Sai Baba. His unabashed self-aggrandizement was, to me, even more offensive than the paranoid hatemongering of Rebecca Brown . . . at least she doen't seem to expect prostrate adoration!
Annacondia = Anaconda = "King of the Serpents" = demonic entity.
WARFARE.......2004-05-13
This is not a book that you can read and still be the same person. This is a book for the Christian that is tired of being just a church going Christian. You should be challenged to be moved out of your comfort zone and apply the principles taught in this easy to read book. It's true that signs will follow to those who have SURRENDERED their lives to Jesus, and this book will teach you how to SHAKE the heavens on earth.
Carlos Annacondia brings you into the tactics of spiritual warfare reinforced by the powerful testimonies from his campaigns in Argentina.
This is not simply a book but a WEAPON for those who believe in the POWER of the name of JESUS.
POWERFUL.......2003-02-21
This book is a powerful read. If you enjoy Benny Hinn, E.M Bounds, Lester Sumrall, Smith Wigglesworth, you will be delighted by this selection.
This book brings out some of the issues that as a Christian society we fail to partake, or not partake in for that matter.
The Lord said that those who believe these signs shall follow.
Are you a believer of the the Gospel of Jesus Christ? What then is stopping you from walking into hospitols and rebuking sicknesses off of the afflicted? What is stopping you from laying hands on those with no feet and proclaiming thier healing in Jesus name. Is your faith based on the Word? If so then you would have no doubt in these things coming to pass. The Lord tells us this plainly in His Word.
This book is a must read for those who hate the devil. Do you want to experience full power in the name of Jesus Christ? Read this book. It will inspire you, and maybe open your eyes on some topics that you have hidden away.
God Bless
Does this stuff really happen?.......2002-02-05
Depending on your belief system, this book could be quite an eye-opener. I say that because we in the American church have very little experience with demons. We run tidy little services with comfortable pews and sermons that keep us feeling good about ourselves. And by and large, we keep things at mostly an intellectual level. In this book, there is NONE of that. Satan and his demons are real ememies that we can fight by....well, you will have to read the book to find out how.
Books:
- Brooklyn Dreams
- Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
- Callahan's Lady
- Colors of the Mountain
- Dear Lillian: A Letter about the End of Life's Journey and the Beginning of Eternity
- Deluxe Player Character Sheets (Dungeon & Dragons Roleplaying Game: RPG Accessories)
- Desert to Dream: A Decade of Burning Man Photography
- Drakas!
- Earthcore
- Echoes of Earth
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Builder's Essentials: Plan Reading & Material Takeoff
- The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City
- New Media Art
- Staffordshire Terriers: American Staffordshire Terrier and Staffordshire Bull Terrier
- Robert Rauschenberg: Combines
- The Geochemistry of Natural Waters: Surface and Groundwater Environments
- Teaching Science for All Children
- Walks & Rambles on Cape Cod and the Islands: A Naturalist's Hiking Guide
- Pilgrim Princess : The Life of Princess Zinaida Volkonsky
- Robert Menzies' Forgotten People
Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth
Sex, Drugs and DNA: Science's Taboos Confronted
Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins
Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement
The Counter-Creationism Handbook
