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“The Starship and the Canoe is neither a wilderness survival manual nor a book of blueprints. It is another of those rare books impossible to define: the kind that seeks you in time. And you will know it, live it, and consult it thereafter simply by name.” --Chicago Sun-Times “Brower’s superbly written book clutches at one’s imagination.” --Publishers Weekly “In the tradition of Carl Sagan and John McPhee, a bracing cerebral voyage past intergalactic hoopla and backwoods retreats.” --Kirkus Reviews Originally published in 1978, The Starship and the Canoe is the remarkable story of a father and son: Freeman Dyson is a world-renowned astrophysicist who dreams of exploring the heavens and has designed a spaceship to take him there. His son George, a brilliant high school dropout, lives in a treehouse and is designing a giant kayak to explore the icy coastal wilderness of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. Author Kenneth Brower describes with stunning impact their lives and their visions of the world. It is a timeless tale framed by modern science, adventure, family, and the natural world.
"Project Orion describes one of the most awesome 'might have beens' (and may yet bes!) of the space age. This is essential reading for anyone interested in government bureaucracies and the military industrial complex." -Sir Arthur C. Clarke
Documents the innovations of a group of eccentric geniuses who developed computer code in the mid-20th century as part of mathematician Alan Turin's theoretical universal machine idea, exploring how their ideas led to such developments as digital television, modern genetics and the hydrogen bomb.
David Brower, "the Archdruid," as writer John McPhee called him, shaped the modern environmental movement. He directed or founded organizations including the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and the Earth Island Institute and staffed them with young activists whom he inspired with his passion for the land and whose lives he transformed by his belief in their capacity for greatness. In celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Brower's birth, his son Kenneth Brower interviewed nineteen environmental leaders, disciples, and friends about his father's impact on them personally as well as on the larger community. Amid tales of how David Brower pulled them from oblivion, sometimes drank them under the table, and often set them on courses for the rest of their lives, a nuanced portrait emerges not just of a complex man but of a movement still suffused with his spirit. Book jacket.
Century of Northwest wilderness skiing stories by noted expert 150 black-and-white and color photographs Celebrates the friluftsliv, or open-air living spirit, of backcountry skiing In Written in the Snows, renowned local skiing historian Lowell Skoog presents a definitive and visually rich history of the past century of Northwest ski culture, from stirring and colorful stories of wilderness exploration to the evolution of gear and technique. He traces the development of skiing in Washington from the late 1800s to the present, covering the beginnings of ski resorts and competitions, the importance of wild places in the Olympic and Cascade mountains (including Oregon's Mount Hood), and the friluftsliv, or open-air living spirit, of backcountry skiing. Skoog addresses how skiing has been shaped by larger social trends, including immigration, the Great Depression, war, economic growth, conservation, and the media. In turn, Northwest skiers have affected their region in ways that transcend the sport, producing local legends like Milnor Roberts, Olga Bolstad, Hans Otto Giese, Bill Maxwell, and more. While weaving his own impressions and experiences into the larger history, Skoog shows that skiing is far more than mere sport or recreation.
A lifetime of candid reflections from physicist Freeman Dyson, “an acute observer of personality and human foibles” (New York Times Book Review). Written between 1940 and the late 1970s, the postwar recollections of renowned physicist Freeman Dyson have been celebrated as an historic portrait of modern science and its greatest players, including Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, and Hans Bethe. Chronicling the stories of those who were engaged in solving some of the most challenging quandaries of twentieth-century physics, Dyson lends acute insight and profound observations to a life’s work spent chasing what Einstein called those “deep mysteries that Nature intends to keep for herself.” Whether reflecting on the drama of World War II, the moral dilemmas of nuclear development, the challenges of the space program, or the demands of raising six children, Dyson’s annotated letters reveal the voice of one “more creative than almost anyone else of his generation” (Kip Thorne). An illuminating work in these trying times, Maker of Patterns is an eyewitness account of the scientific discoveries that define our modern age.
In the award-winning tradition of "Seabiscuit" comes this riveting account of the magnificent orca whose movie stardom brought world attention to sea life in crisis, and his inspiring journey from captivity to freedom. 8-page color photo insert.
United in their natural form they are one, sharing all their memories, experiences, and lives. Apart they are six, the only existing members of their ancient race, a species with the ability to assume any form once they understand its essence. Their continued survival in a universe filled with races ready to destroy anyone perceived as different is based on the Rules. And first among those Rules is: Never reveal your true nature to another being. But when the youngest among them, Esen-alit-Quar, receives her first independent assignment to a world considered safe to explore, she stumbles into a trap no one could have anticipated. Her only means of escape lies in violating the First Rule. She reveals herself to a fellow captive―a human being/ While this mistake might not ordinarily prove fatal, the timing of the event could not be worse. For something new has finally made its way into the Universe, the Enemy of the Web, bringer of death to all forms of life. And the hunt it about to begin.
Caught in a web of her own making Esen-alit-Quar had violated the First Rule of her species when she revealed her existence to a human named Paul Ragem. And though both Paul and Esen had survived, others of Esen’s Web had not been so fortunate. Es could hardly believe that fifty years had passed since the terrifying events which had nearly cost her her life and which had forced Paul to give up everything a human treasured―family, friends, even his own identity―to protect the secret of her continued survival. In that time they had built a new life together out on the Fringe. They had a successful export company, friends and associates. Esen, now known as Esolesy Ki and wearing the form of a Lishcyn―a species rare enough in the Commonwealth and never seen in the Fringe―was perfectly content to remain on the world of Minas XII, leaving it to Paul to travel the starways on company business. Meanwhile she used their vast information resources to search for any signs that others of her kind had found their galaxy. What neither Es nor Paul could foresee was that a simple “vacation” trip would plunge the two of them into the heart of a diplomatic nightmare―and threaten to expose both Es and Paul to the hunters who had never been convinced of their destruction.
The bestselling, award-winning author of Bad Land takes us along the Inside Passage, 1,000 miles of often treacherous water, which he navigates solo in a 35-foot sailboat, offering captivating discourses on art, philosophy, and navigation and an unsparing narrative of personal loss. "A work of great beauty and inexhaustible fervor." —The Washington Post Book World With the same rigorous observation (natural and social), invigorating stylishness, and encyclopedic learning that he brought to his National Book Award-winning Bad Land, Jonathan Raban conducts readers along the Inside Passage from Seattle to Juneau. But Passage to Juneau also traverses a gulf of centuries and cultures: the immeasurable divide between the Northwest's Indians and its first European explorers—between its embattled fishermen and loggers and its pampered new class.