Blank Spots on the Map

Author: Trevor Paglen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101011491
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Book Description
Welcome to a top-level clearance world that doesn't exist...Now with updated material for the paperback edition. This is the adventurous, insightful, and often chilling story of a road trip through a shadow nation of state secrets, clandestine military bases, black sites, hidden laboratories, and top-secret agencies that make up what insiders call the "black world." Here, geographer and provocateur Trevor Paglen knocks on the doors of CIA prisons, stakes out a covert air base in Nevada from a mountaintop 30 miles away, dissects the Defense Department's multibillion dollar "black" budget, and interviews those who live on the edges of these blank spots. Whether Paglen reports from a hotel room in Vegas, a secret prison in Kabul, or a trailer in Shoshone Indian territory, he is impassioned, rigorous, relentless-and delivers eye-opening details.

Blank Spots on the Map

Author: Trevor Paglen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780525951018
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Book Description
A geography scholar and artist recounts his research into ungoverned regions of the world where the military conducts some of its most clandestine operations, in an account that includes coverage of his investigation into a covert site in Nevada near where a construction worker was poisoned by toxic chemicals. 25,000 first printing.

The Last Empty Places

Author: Peter Stark
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
ISBN: 1680516434
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 459

Book Description
". . . intriguing, both a solid refresher on our savage colonial history and a smart rumination on what it means to get lost. ― Outside First time in paperback, ebook, and audio editions Part travel adventure, part history, part exploration Features four specific "blank spots" from across the country and delves into our human relationships with place In The Last Empty Places, bestselling author Peter Stark takes the reader to four of the most remote, wild, and unpopulated areas of the United States outside of Alaska and mainly not part of protected wilderness: the rivers and forests of Northern Maine; the rugged, unpopulated region of Western Pennsylvania that lies only a short distance from the East’s big cities; the haunting canyons of Central New Mexico; and the vast, arid basins of Southeast Oregon. Stark discovers that the places he visits are only "blank" in terms of a lack of recorded history. In fact, each place holds layers of history, meaning, and intrinsic value and is far from being blank. He also finds that each region has played an important role in shaping our American idea of wilderness through the influential "natural philosophers" who visited these places and wrote about their experiences--Henry David Thoreau, William Bartram, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold. It’s a fascinating look at the value of nature, the ways humans use and approach it, and what it means to seek out empty places in today’s world.

I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed By Me

Author: Trevor Paglen
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 193555414X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Book Description
Updated with New Information and Additional Patches They’re on the shoulders of all military personnel: patches showing what a soldier’s unit does. But what if that’s top secret? “A glimpse of [the Pentagon’s] dark world through a revealing lens—patches—the kind worn on military uniforms. . . The book offers not only clues into the nature of the secret programs, but also a glimpse of zealous male bonding among the presumed elite of the military-industrial complex. The patches often feel like fraternity pranks gone ballistic.” —William Broad, The New York Times I COULD TELL YOU. . . is a bestselling collection of more than seventy military patches representing secret government projects. Here author/photographer/investigator Trevor Paglen explores classified weapons projects and intelligence operations by scrutinizing their own imagery and jargon, disclosing new facts about important military units, which are here known by peculiar names (“Goat Suckers,” “Grim Reapers,” “Tastes Like Chicken”) and illustrated with occult symbols and ridiculous cartoons. The precisely photographed patches—worn by military personnel working on classified missions, such as those at the legendary Area 51—reveal much about a strange and eerie world about which little was previously known. “A fresh approach to secret government.” —Steven Aftergood, The Federation of American Scientists “An impressive collection.” —Justin Rood, ABC News “A fascinating set of shoulder patches.” —Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report “I was fascinated... [Paglen] has assembled about 40 colorful patch insignia from secret, military ‘black’ programs that are hardly ever discussed in public. He has plenty of regalia from the real denizens of Area 51.” —Alex Beam, The Boston Globe

Maphead

Author: Ken Jennings
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439167184
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
Traces the history of mapmaking while offering insight into the role of cartography in human civilization and sharing anecdotes about the cultural arenas frequented by map enthusiasts.

Last Breath

Author: Peter Stark
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345449525
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Book Description
Sudden, extreme deaths have always fascinated us-- and now more than ever as athletes and travelers rise to the challenges of high-risk sports and journeys on the edge. In this spellbinding book, veteran travel and outdoor sports writer Peter Stark reenacts the dramas of what happens inside our bodies, our minds, and our souls when we push ourselves to the absolute limits of human endurance. Combining the adrenaline high of extreme sports with the startling facts of physiological reality, Stark narrates a series of outdoor adventure stories in which thrill can cross the line to mortal peril. Each death or brush with death is at once a suspense story, a cautionary tale, and a medical thriller. Stark describes in unforgettable detail exactly what goes through the mind of a cross-country skier as his body temperature plummets-- apathy at ninety-one degrees, stupor at ninety. He puts us inside the body of a doomed kayaker tumbling helplessly underwater for two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes. He conjures up the physiology of a snowboarder frantically trying not to panic as he consumes the tiny pocket of air trapped around his face under thousands of pounds of snow. These are among the dire situations that Stark transforms into harrowing accounts of how our bodies react to trauma, how reflexes and instinct compel us to fight back, and how, why, and when we let go of our will to live. In an increasingly tamed and homogenized world, risk is not only a means of escape but a path to spirituality. As Peter Stark writes, "You must try to understand death intimately and prepare yourself for death in order to live a full and satisfying life." In this fascinating, informative book, Stark reveals exactly what we’re getting ourselves into when we choose to live-- and die-- at the extremes of endurance.

Torture Taxi

Author: Trevor Paglen
Publisher: Icon Books Company
ISBN: 9781840468304
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
This is an investigative journalism in the mould of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. This is an incredible story of shadowy CIA kidnappings followed by imprisonment and torture. The secret may be out, but the horror remains in this original expose of extraordinary rendition. This is the incredible story of how the CIA's darkest secret of the War on Terror - the 'extraordinary rendition' programme - was exposed. It's no longer a secret: since 9/11, the CIA has quietly kidnapped more than a hundred people and detained them at prisons throughout the world. Often, the detainees are tortured or disappear entirely. Now infamous, the 'extraordinary rendition' programme is a key part of the largest clandestine operation since the end of the Cold War. In this shocking book, an award-winning investigative journalist and a 'military geographer' explore the programme in journeys around the world: to suburban Massachusetts to profile a CIA front company supplying the agency with planes; to North Carolina to track down the pilots; to the San Francisco suburbs to study with a planespotter who monitors the CIA's movements; and to Afghanistan, where they visit the notorious Salt Pit prison and interview released Afghan detainees. The kidnappings have not stopped. On the contrary, the rendition programme has been formalised, colluding with the military when necessary, and constantly changing its cover to remain hidden from sight. This is a chilling looking at the logistics of torture which shows how far Bush is prepared to go in the 'war on terror'.

Minn of the Mississippi

Author:
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780395273999
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 92

Book Description
Follows the adventures of Minn, a three-legged snapping turtle, as she slowly makes her way from her birthplace at the headwaters of the Mississippi River to the mouth of river on the Gulf of Mexico.

The Last Pictures

Author: Trevor Paglen
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520954297
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
Human civilizations' longest lasting artifacts are not the great Pyramids of Giza, nor the cave paintings at Lascaux, but the communications satellites that circle our planet. In a stationary orbit above the equator, the satellites that broadcast our TV signals, route our phone calls, and process our credit card transactions experience no atmospheric drag. Their inert hulls will continue to drift around Earth until the Sun expands into a red giant and engulfs them about 4.5 billion years from now. The Last Pictures, co-published by Creative Time Books, is rooted in the premise that these communications satellites will ultimately become the cultural and material ruins of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, far outlasting anything else humans have created. Inspired in part by ancient cave paintings, nuclear waste warning signs, and Carl Sagan's Golden Records of the 1970s, artist/geographer and MacArthur "Genius" Fellow Trevor Paglen has developed a collection of one hundred images that will be etched onto an ultra-archival, golden silicon disc. The disc, commissioned by Creative Time, will then be sent into orbit onboard the Echostar XVI satellite in September 2012, as both a time capsule and a message to the future. The selection of 100 images, which are the centerpiece of the book, was influenced by four years of interviews with leading scientists, philosophers, anthropologists, and artists about the contradictions that characterize contemporary civilizations. Consequently, The Last Pictures engages some of the most profound questions of the human experience, provoking discourse about communication, deep time, and the economic, environmental, and social uncertainties that define our historical moment. Copub: Creative Time Books

Danger Calling

Author: Peb Jackson
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 1441213139
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 166

Book Description
Available in both an adult and a youth edition, Danger Calling features 16 true stories that take readers on a high-adrenaline ride--from the depths of the sea to the top of Mount Everest and everywhere in between--and pose provocative questions that move men and teen boys forward in their lives and faith. Danger Calling challenges readers to discover if they are truly living out God's game plan for their lives: Would you stop to help a climber in the "death zone" on Everest? What is your source of strength in a crisis? Could you lead others into battle knowing some are likely to die? To what challenge is God summoning you right now? Each story thrills and engages. Each set of questions challenges readers to discover who they are, where they stand in their faith, and whether God is calling them to a life of greater risks and deeper meaning. The youth edition contains a combination of eight stories of youth adventures, as well as eight from the adult version. Both books are perfect for small group use and include study questions with each chapter.