An unflinching look at the unique challenges posed by complex technologies we cannot afford to let fail—and why the remarkable achievements of civil aviation can help us understand those challenges. Nuclear reactors, deep-sea drilling platforms, deterrence infrastructures—these are all complex and formidable technologies with the potential to fail catastrophically. In Rational Accidents,…
"In this book, Jill Lindsey Harrison considers political conflicts over pesticide drift in California, using them to illuminate the broader problem and its potential solutions. The fact that pesticide pollution and illnesses associated with it disproportionately affect the poor and the powerless raises questions of environmental justice (and political injustice). Despite California's impressive…
A century of industrial development is the briefest of moments in the half billion years of the earth's evolution. And yet our current era has brought greater changes to the earth than any period in human history. The biosphere, the globe's life-giving envelope of air and climate, has been changed irreparably. In A World to Live In, the distinguished ecologist George Woodwell shows that the bio…
How power is wielded in environmental policy making at the state level, and how to redress the ingrained favoritism toward coal and electric utilities.OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
China's carbon dioxide emissions now outstrip those of other countries and its domestic air quality is severely degraded, especially in urban areas. Its sheer size and its growing, fossil-fuel-powered economy mean that China's economic and environmental policy choices will have an outsized effect on the global environmental future. This book offers an integrated analysis of China's economy, emi…
A philosophical guide to passengerhood, with reflections on time, space, existence, boredom, our sense of self, and our sense of the senses. While there are entire bookstore sections--and even entire bookstores--devoted to travel, there have been few books on the universal experience of being a passenger. With this book, philosopher Michael Marder fills the gap, offering a philosophical guide t…
"This is a book about how drones sense the world, and the imaginaries of communities they construct"--OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
"A historical and cultural study of astronomers' chairs, their design and function, and their connection to 19th-century concepts of race, class, gender, and power"--OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
Many environmental problems cross national boundaries and can be addressed only through international cooperation. In this book Robert Darst examines transnational efforts to promote environmental protection in the USSR and in five of its successor states--Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania--from the late 1960s to the present. The core of the book is a c…
John Templer has written the first theoretical, historical, and scientific analysis of one of the most basic and universal building elements: the stair. Together, these two volumes present a detailed study of stairs and ramps--the art and science of their design, their history, and their hazards.For the designer and the art and architectural historian, the first volume treats the fascinating hi…