The past few years have seen an incredible explosion in our knowledge of the universe. Since its 2009 launch, the Kepler satellite has discovered more than two thousand exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. More exoplanets are being discovered all the time, and even more remarkable than the sheer number of exoplanets is their variety.

In Exoplanets, astronomer Michael Summers and physicist James Trefil explore these remarkable recent discoveries: planets revolving around pulsars, planets made of diamond, planets that are mostly water, and numerous rogue planets wandering through the emptiness of space. This captivating book reveals the latest discoveries and argues that the incredible richness and complexity we are finding necessitates a change in our questions and mental paradigms. In short, we have to change how we think about the universe and our place in it, because it is stranger and more interesting than we could have imagined.

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We are on the brink of catastrophe and cutting emissions alone won’t be enough. There is a second crisis happening in our ecosystems. To tackle it, we should recognise that the natural world is not only priceless, but has measurable economic value. Restoring biodiversity aided by technological and financial innovation will unlock environmental protections and economic benefits.

The Case for Nature sets out with powerful clarity how protecting nature is both the right thing to do, and in our economic interests; how, taking a cue from a range of indigenous worldviews, nature must be woven into our modern societies, not set apart. Siddarth Shrikanth, an expert in green investing, introduces the pioneers of the nature-positive revolution, and gives us the tools to understand how we can work with, not against, our living planet.

Source: Amazon

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • The Economist • The Paris Review • Toronto Star  • GQ • The Times Literary Supplement • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews

It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible—food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation.

An argument that humanists have the tools—and the responsibility—to mobilize political power to tackle climate change

As climate catastrophes intensify, why do literary and cultural studies scholars so often remain committed to the separation of aesthetic study from the nitty-gritty of political change? In this thought-provoking book, Caroline Levine makes the case for an alternative view, arguing that humanists have the tools to mobilize political power—and the responsibility to use those tools to avert the worst impacts of global warming. Building on the theory developed in her award-winning book, Forms, Levine shows how formalist methods can be used in the fight for climate justice.

Countering scholars in the environmental humanities who embrace only “modest gestures of care”—and who seem to have moved directly to “mourning” our inevitable environmental losses—Levine argues that large-scale, practical environmental activism should be integral to humanists’ work. She identifies three major infrastructural forms crucial to sustaining collective life: routines, pathways, and enclosures. Crisscrossing between art works and public works—from urban transportation to television series and from food security programs to rhyming couplets—she considers which forms might support stability and predictability in the face of growing precarity. Finally, bridging the gap between academic and practical work, Levine offers a series of questions and exercises intended to guide readers into political action. The Activist Humanist provides an essential handbook for prospective activist-scholars.

The story behind the reckless promotion of economic growth despite its disastrous consequences for life on the planet.

The notion of ever-expanding economic growth has been promoted so relentlessly that growth is now entrenched as the natural objective of collective human effort. The public has been convinced that growth is the natural solution to virtually all social problemspoverty, debt, unemployment, and even the environmental degradation caused by the determined pursuit of growth. Meanwhile, warnings by scientists that we live on a finite planet that cannot sustain infinite economic expansion are ignored or even scorned. In Collision Course, Kerryn Higgs examines how society’s commitment to growth has marginalized scientific findings on the limits of growth, casting them as bogus predictions of imminent doom.

Higgs tells how in 1972, The Limits to Growthwritten by MIT researchers Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and William Behrens IIIfound that unimpeded economic growth was likely to collide with the realities of a finite planet within a century. Although the book’s arguments received positive responses initially, before long the dominant narrative of growth as panacea took over. Higgs explores the resistance to ideas about limits, tracing the propagandizing of free enterprise, the elevation of growth as the central objective of policy makers, the celebration of the magic of the market, and the ever-widening influence of corporate-funded think tanksa parallel academic universe dedicated to the dissemination of neoliberal principles and to the denial of health and environmental dangers from the effects of tobacco to global warming. More than forty years after The Limits to Growth, the idea that growth is essential continues to hold sway, despite the mounting evidence of its costsclimate destabilization, pollution, intensification of gross global inequalities, and depletion of the resources on which the modern economic edifice depends.

Source: Amazon

To understand the power of Geographical Information Systems and Geographical Positioning Systems today, it is essential to understand their background and history, and the needs they were designed to answer .This is the first comprehensive history of GIS for both practitioners and students.From GPS systems that help you find your destination in a rented car, to satellite imaging for locating new petroleum reserves, GIS technology is changing the world.

This book brings together for the first time the expert testimonies of the pioneers, key scientists and entrepreneurs who created the GIS field and made it what it is today. It covers both the raster and vector sides of GIS development. From remote sensing to PC-based systems; from Land Information Systems to defense applications, this is the definitive history of GIS.For all GIS and GPS professional practitioners, developers and students.

Source: Amazon Books