"Journalist Adam Higginbotham's definitive, years-in-the-making account of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster--and a powerful investigation into how propaganda, secrecy, and myth have obscured the true story of one of the twentieth century's greatest disasters. Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering history's worst nuclear disaster. In the thirty years since then,...

"How many species are there across the globe? How much do all of the insects in the world collectively weigh? How far can animals travel? Steve Jenkins answers these questions and many more with numbers, images, innovation, and authoritative science in his latest work of illustrated nonfiction. Jenkins layers his signature cut-paper illustrations alongside computer graphics and a text that is teeming with fresh, unexpected, and accurate zoological...

Best-selling author Cass R. Sunstein examines how to avoid worst-case scenarios The world is increasingly confronted with new challenges related to climate change, globalization, disease, and technology. Governments are faced with having to decide how much risk is worth taking, how much destruction and death can be tolerated, and how much money should be invested in the hopes of avoiding catastrophe. Lacking full information, should decision-makers...

When a bizarre phenomenon causes the disappearances of people all over the world, Kevin Garvey struggles to help his neighbors heal while enduring the fanatical religious conversions of his wife and son. What if--whoosh, right now, with no explanation--a number of us simply vanished? Would some of us collapse? Would others of us go on, one foot in front of the other, as we did before the world turned upside down? That's what the bewildered citizens...

"This tour of real-world mathematical disasters reveals the importance of math in everyday life. All sorts of seemingly innocuous mathematical mistakes can have significant consequences. Exploring and explaining a litany of glitches, near misses, and mathematical mishaps involving the internet, big data, elections, street signs, lotteries, the Roman Empire, and an Olympic team, Matt Parker uncovers the ways math trips us up." --

On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds" and her captain, William Thomas Turner,...

Natural disasters bedevil our planet, and each appears to be a unique event. The author, a geologist shows how all disasters are connected. Humans persist in building centers of civilization in places of past disasters. We believe that our technology will protect us next time. Yet we rarely win these battles with the Earth because we do not understand natural disasters deeply enough. The author has two goals for her book. The first is to show how...

Whatever their ideology, presidents need to be prepared to deal with unexpected crises. Since 2001, numerous unpredictable crises, including terror attacks, massive storms, and an economic collapse, have shaken Americans to their core. Technology also provides mankind with increasingly powerful ways to wreak destruction President Obama and his team were taken aback by the sheer number of crises that a president needed to deal with, many of which do...

Mauriis the story of Rewi, a manhaunted by a past which threatens to engulf his future.The story is set among the colourful characters of a once thriving settlement, Te Mata, upon whom the encroachment by Europeans spells disaster. Now isolated by lack of numbers, time and distance, the remaining survivors form a tight-knit community which outsiders find impenetrable. Rewi's deceit forces him to become part of that community and his life is inextricably...

Taking readers beyond the clock, this fascinating book, filled with facts, figures, and infographs, explores what happens around the world in just twenty-four hours.--