Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait

Author: Bathsheba Demuth
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393635171
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
A groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between capitalism, communism, and Arctic ecology since the dawn of the industrial age. Whales and walruses, caribou and fox, gold and oil: through the stories of these animals and resources, Bathsheba Demuth reveals how people have turned ecological wealth in a remote region into economic growth and state power for more than 150 years. The first-ever comprehensive history of Beringia, the Arctic land and waters stretching from Russia to Canada, Floating Coast breaks away from familiar narratives to provide a fresh and fascinating perspective on an overlooked landscape. The unforgiving territory along the Bering Strait had long been home to humans—the Inupiat and Yupik in Alaska, and the Yupik and Chukchi in Russia—before Americans and Europeans arrived with revolutionary ideas for progress. Rapidly, these frigid lands and waters became the site of an ongoing experiment: How, under conditions of extreme scarcity, would the great modern ideologies of capitalism and communism control and manage the resources they craved? Drawing on her own experience living with and interviewing indigenous people in the region, as well as from archival sources, Demuth shows how the social, the political, and the environmental clashed in this liminal space. Through the lens of the natural world, she views human life and economics as fundamentally about cycles of energy, bringing a fresh and visionary spin to the writing of human history. Floating Coast is a profoundly resonant tale of the dynamic changes and unforeseen consequences that immense human needs and ambitions have brought, and will continue to bring, to a finite planet.

Floating Underwater

Author: Tracy Shawn
Publisher: Turbulent Muse Publishing
ISBN: 1736664913
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
Part psychological fiction and part mystical fiction with a dash of magical realism, Floating Underwater follows a woman’s astonishing journey through the extraordinary and, ultimately, to her own self-actualization and power. Fearful that her lifelong premonitions not only predict the future but can also change its very course, Paloma Leary is devastated when her latest vision predicting a third miscarriage comes true. Falling into a mystifying world of increasingly bizarre phenomena, including a psychic connection with her mysterious neighbor, out-of-body experiences, and visits from her long-dead mother, Paloma grows desperate for answers. She is also desperate to start a family. But when a life-changing vision reveals a tragic secret from the past, Paloma learns to accept her gifts and embraces a far different future than she ever could have imagined.

The Floating World

Author: C. Morgan Babst
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1616207639
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
“Set in New Orleans, this important and powerful novel follows the Boisdoré family . . . in the months after Katrina. A profound, moving and authentically detailed picture of the storm’s emotional impact on those who lived through it.” —People In this dazzling debut about family, home, and grief, C. Morgan Babst takes readers into the heart of Hurricane Katrina and the life of a great city. As the storm is fast approaching the Louisiana coast, Cora Boisdoré refuses to leave the city. Her parents, Joe Boisdoré, an artist descended from freed slaves who became the city’s preeminent furniture makers, and his white “Uptown” wife, Dr. Tess Eshleman, are forced to evacuate without her, setting off a chain of events that leaves their marriage in shambles and Cora catatonic—the victim or perpetrator of some violence mysterious even to herself. This mystery is at the center of Babst’s haunting and profound novel. Cora’s sister, Del, returns to New Orleans from the successful life she built in New York City to find her hometown in ruins and her family deeply alienated from one another. As Del attempts to figure out what happened to her sister, she must also reckon with the racial history of the city and the trauma of a disaster that was not, in fact, some random act of God but an avoidable tragedy visited on New Orleans’s most vulnerable citizens. Separately and together, each member of the Boisdoré clan must find the strength to remake home in a city forever changed. The Floating World is the Katrina story that needed to be told—one with a piercing, unforgettable loveliness and a vivid, intimate understanding of this particular place and its tangled past.

Noah's Floating Animal Park

Author: Janine Suter
Publisher: New Leaf Publishing Group
ISBN: 9780890515761
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40

Book Description
This book reveals biblical truth to children on Noah and the Flood, the full-color visuals and brilliant rhymes bring the account alive!

Floating Worlds

Author: Cecelia Holland
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497619807
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 769

Book Description
In the far future, an Earth-born woman must negotiate with a fearsome mutant race: “On a par with Ursula LeGuin or Arthur C. Clarke” (Chicago Tribune). Two thousand years into the future, runaway pollution has made the earth uninhabitable except in giant biodomes. The society is an anarchy, with disputes mediated through the Machiavellian Committee for the Revolution. Mars, Venus, and the moon support flourishing colonies of various political stripes. On the fringes of the solar system, in the gas planets, a strange, new, violent kind of human has evolved. In this unstable system, the anarchist Paula Mendoza, an agent of the Committee, works to make peace and ultimately protect her people in a catastrophic clash of worlds that destroys the order she knows.

438 Days

Author: Jonathan Franklin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501116290
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
The miraculous account of the man who survived alone and adrift at sea longer than anyone in recorded history. For fourteen months, Alvarenga survived constant shark attacks. He learned to catch fish with his bare hands. He built a fish net from a pair of empty plastic bottles. Taking apart the outboard motor, he fashioned a huge fishhook. Using fish vertebrae as needles, he stitched together his own clothes. Based on dozens of hours of interviews with Alvarenga and interviews with his colleagues, search and rescue officials, the medical team that saved his life and the remote islanders who nursed him back to health, this is an epic tale of survival. Print run 75,000.

Seasteading

Author: Joe Quirk
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 145169928X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Book Description
In these “thought-provoking visions of the future” (The Wall Street Journal), Joe Quirk and Patri Friedman of the Seasteading Institute explain how ocean cities can solve many of our environmental, technological, and civic problems, and introduce the visionaries and pioneers who are now making seasteading a reality. Our planet has been suffering from serious environmental problems and their social and political consequences. But imagine a vast new source of sustainable and renewable energy that would also bring more equitable economies. A previously untapped source of farming that could produce significant new sources of nutrition. Future societies where people could choose the communities they want to live in, free from the restrictions of conventional citizenship. This extraordinary vision of our near future as imagined in Seasteading attracted the powerful support of Silicon Valley’s Peter Thiel—and it may be drawing close to reality. Facing growing environmental threats, French Polynesia has already signed on to build some of the world’s first seasteads. Joe Quirk and Patri Friedman show us how cities built on floating platforms in the ocean will work, and they profile some of the visionaries who are implementing basic concepts of seasteading today. An entrepreneur’s dream, these floating cities will become laboratories for innovation and creativity. Seasteading “offers hope for a future when life on land has grown grim” (Kirkus Reviews), proving the adage that yesterday’s science fiction is tomorrow’s science fact.

The Floating Island

Author:
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780765347725
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Book Description
Entries from the long-lost journal of Ven, a Nain youth, relate his adventures as he faces pirates and is rescued by a mermaid and a kindly sea captain who sends Ven to an inn, where he encounters fairies, ghosts, and other strange boarders.

The Floating Field

Author: Scott Riley
Publisher: Millbrook Press ™
ISBN: 1728427371
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 43

Book Description
On the island of Koh Panyee, in a village built on stilts, there is no open space. How will a group of Thai boys play soccer? After watching the World Cup on television, a group of Thai boys is inspired to form their own team. But on the island of Koh Panyee, in a village built on stilts, there is no open space. The boys can play only twice a month on a sandbar when the tide is low enough. Everything changes when the teens join together to build their very own floating soccer field. This inspiring true story by debut author Scott Riley is gorgeously illustrated by Nguyen Quang and Kim Lien. Perfect for fans of stories about sports, beating seemingly impossible odds, and places and cultures not often shown in picture books. "A compelling book for football [soccer] fans and readers seeking examples of ingenuity."—starred, Publishers Weekly

Seattle's Floating Homes

Author: Erin Feeney
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 073859542X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 130

Book Description
Seattle's floating homes community began as a population of unregulated and inexpensive industrial houses in the late 1800s, yet it has evolved to become some of the most sought-after real estate in Seattle today. Little has been shared about this intimate and unique community that is characterized by eclectic architecture, diverse individuals, and a strong sense of community. It is hard to imagine Seattle without its floating homes, but there was a period of time when the community was considered undesirable and was almost driven from the city shores. This book explores the community history of floating homes in Seattle, tales from life on the dock, and the ongoing challenges of being a fringe neighborhood in the urban context of the city.