The World in a Grain

The World in a Grain PDF Author: Vince Beiser
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399576444
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
A finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award The gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world--sand--and the crucial role it plays in our lives. After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other--even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, is made from sand. From Egypt's pyramids to the Hubble telescope, from the world's tallest skyscraper to the sidewalk below it, from Chartres' stained-glass windows to your iPhone, sand shelters us, empowers us, engages us, and inspires us. It's the ingredient that makes possible our cities, our science, our lives--and our future. And, incredibly, we're running out of it. The World in a Grain is the compelling true story of the hugely important and diminishing natural resource that grows more essential every day, and of the people who mine it, sell it, build with it--and sometimes, even kill for it. It's also a provocative examination of the serious human and environmental costs incurred by our dependence on sand, which has received little public attention. Not all sand is created equal: Some of the easiest sand to get to is the least useful. Award-winning journalist Vince Beiser delves deep into this world, taking readers on a journey across the globe, from the United States to remote corners of India, China, and Dubai to explain why sand is so crucial to modern life. Along the way, readers encounter world-changing innovators, island-building entrepreneurs, desert fighters, and murderous sand pirates. The result is an entertaining and eye-opening work, one that is both unexpected and involving, rippling with fascinating detail and filled with surprising characters.

The World in a Grain

The World in a Grain PDF Author: Vince Beiser
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399576436
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Book Description
A finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award The gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world--sand--and the crucial role it plays in our lives. After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other--even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, is made from sand. From Egypt's pyramids to the Hubble telescope, from the world's tallest skyscraper to the sidewalk below it, from Chartres' stained-glass windows to your iPhone, sand shelters us, empowers us, engages us, and inspires us. It's the ingredient that makes possible our cities, our science, our lives--and our future. And, incredibly, we're running out of it. The World in a Grain is the compelling true story of the hugely important and diminishing natural resource that grows more essential every day, and of the people who mine it, sell it, build with it--and sometimes, even kill for it. It's also a provocative examination of the serious human and environmental costs incurred by our dependence on sand, which has received little public attention. Not all sand is created equal: Some of the easiest sand to get to is the least useful. Award-winning journalist Vince Beiser delves deep into this world, taking readers on a journey across the globe, from the United States to remote corners of India, China, and Dubai to explain why sand is so crucial to modern life. Along the way, readers encounter world-changing innovators, island-building entrepreneurs, desert fighters, and murderous sand pirates. The result is an entertaining and eye-opening work, one that is both unexpected and involving, rippling with fascinating detail and filled with surprising characters.

The World in a Grain

The World in a Grain PDF Author: Vince Beiser
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0399576444
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
A finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award The gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world--sand--and the crucial role it plays in our lives. After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other--even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, is made from sand. From Egypt's pyramids to the Hubble telescope, from the world's tallest skyscraper to the sidewalk below it, from Chartres' stained-glass windows to your iPhone, sand shelters us, empowers us, engages us, and inspires us. It's the ingredient that makes possible our cities, our science, our lives--and our future. And, incredibly, we're running out of it. The World in a Grain is the compelling true story of the hugely important and diminishing natural resource that grows more essential every day, and of the people who mine it, sell it, build with it--and sometimes, even kill for it. It's also a provocative examination of the serious human and environmental costs incurred by our dependence on sand, which has received little public attention. Not all sand is created equal: Some of the easiest sand to get to is the least useful. Award-winning journalist Vince Beiser delves deep into this world, taking readers on a journey across the globe, from the United States to remote corners of India, China, and Dubai to explain why sand is so crucial to modern life. Along the way, readers encounter world-changing innovators, island-building entrepreneurs, desert fighters, and murderous sand pirates. The result is an entertaining and eye-opening work, one that is both unexpected and involving, rippling with fascinating detail and filled with surprising characters.

The World in a Grain of Sand

The World in a Grain of Sand PDF Author: Nivedita Majumdar
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1788737466
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
Radical universalism vs postcolonial theory The World in a Grain of Sand offers a framework for reading literature from the global South that goes against the grain of dominant theories in cultural studies, especially, postcolonial theory. It critiques the valorization of the local in cultural theories typically accompanied by a rejection of universal categories - viewed as Eurocentric projections. But the privileging of the local usually amounts to an exercise in exoticization of the South. The book argues that the rejection of Eurocentric theories can be complemented by embracing another, richer and non-parochial form of universalism. Through readings of texts from India, Sri Lanka, Palestine and Egypt, the book shows that the fine grained engagement with culture, the mapping of ordinary lives not just as objects but subjects of their history, is embedded in much of postcolonial literature in a radical universalism - one that is rooted in local realities, but is able to unearth in them the needs, conflicts and desires that stretch across cultures and time. It is a universalism recognized by Marx and steeped in the spirit of anti-colonialism, but hostile to any whiff of exoticism.

A World in a Grain of Sand

A World in a Grain of Sand PDF Author: Mary Rose Barrington
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476621330
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Book Description
Many people around the world accept the possibility of telepathy or clairvoyance. Very rarely, however, has anyone been able to demonstrate these psychic faculties with enough accuracy and reliability to produce significant results in repeated experimentation. An exception to this was the Polish engineer and industrialist Stefan Ossowiecki. Ossowiecki (1877-1944) is perhaps the most gifted psychic ever to come under the scrutiny of researchers. He demonstrated a range and quality of clairvoyance that no one has exceeded, at least under experimental controls. Equally important, he was eager to learn more about his talent and allowed a variety of researchers to use him in experiments. Anecdotal accounts of his talent abounded, but it was the controlled observations of investigators in experiments conducted in Paris and Warsaw that confirmed his gift. For the first time, this book brings to English-speaking researchers and the public detailed accounts of the crucial experiments carried out with Ossowiecki, which produced compelling evidence of paranormal cognition.

A Grain of Sand

A Grain of Sand PDF Author: Patricia Kathleen Page
Publisher: Markham, Ont. : Fitzhenry & Whiteside
ISBN: 9781550418019
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 36

Book Description
Through poetry and art, the author and illustrator enter the magical mystical world of a child's imagination. Originally written for oratorio by composer Derek Holman and first performed in Toronto in celebration of the millennium.

A Grain of Rice

A Grain of Rice PDF Author: Helena Clare Pittman
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN: 1524765538
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 114

Book Description
Over 200,000 copies sold! Now with a newly refreshed design, this classic mathematical folktale tells the story of a clever farmer who outwits the Emperor of China and becomes the wealthiest man in the world—all starting with one grain of rice. When a humble farmer named Pong Lo asks for the hand of the Emperor’s beautiful daughter, the Emperor is enraged. Whoever heard of a peasant marrying a princess? But Pong Lo is wiser than the Emperor knows. And when he concocts a potion that saves the Princess’s life, the Emperor gladly offers him any reward he chooses—except the Princess. Pong Lo makes a surprising request. He asks for a single grain of rice, doubled every day for one hundred days. The baffled Emperor obliges—only to discover that if you’re as clever as Pong Lo, you can turn a single grain of rice into all the wealth and happiness in the world! A Bank Street Best Book of the Year for 9 to 12 Praise for A Grain of Rice: “Gracefully illustrated. . . . This original story set in fifteenth-century China will captivate readers and perhaps teach them a little about mathematics.” —Booklist “Clever and quietly told in simple, yet evocative language.” —Kirkus Reviews “Any young reader (with calculator handy) will enjoy the tale.” —Scientific American “[A] book that is wise and humorous, and one to be perused and savored.” —School Library Journal

Grain by Grain

Grain by Grain PDF Author: Bob Quinn
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610919955
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
"A compelling agricultural story skillfully told; environmentalists will eat it up." - Kirkus Reviews When Bob Quinn was a kid, a stranger at a county fair gave him a few kernels of an unusual grain. Little did he know, that grain would change his life. Years later, after finishing a PhD in plant biochemistry and returning to his family’s farm in Montana, Bob started experimenting with organic wheat. In the beginning, his concern wasn’t health or the environment; he just wanted to make a decent living and some chance encounters led him to organics. But as demand for organics grew, so too did Bob’s experiments. He discovered that through time-tested practices like cover cropping and crop rotation, he could produce successful yields—without pesticides. Regenerative organic farming allowed him to grow fruits and vegetables in cold, dry Montana, providing a source of local produce to families in his hometown. He even started producing his own renewable energy. And he learned that the grain he first tasted at the fair was actually a type of ancient wheat, one that was proven to lower inflammation rather than worsening it, as modern wheat does. Ultimately, Bob’s forays with organics turned into a multimillion dollar heirloom grain company, Kamut International. In Grain by Grain, Quinn and cowriter Liz Carlisle, author of Lentil Underground, show how his story can become the story of American agriculture. We don’t have to accept stagnating rural communities, degraded soil, or poor health. By following Bob’s example, we can grow a healthy future, grain by grain.

Oceans of Grain

Oceans of Grain PDF Author: Scott Reynolds Nelson
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541646452
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Book Description
An "incredibly timely" global history journeys from the Ukrainian steppe to the American prairie to show how grain built and toppled the world's largest empires (Financial Times). To understand the rise and fall of empires, we must follow the paths traveled by grain—along rivers, between ports, and across seas. In Oceans of Grain, historian Scott Reynolds Nelson reveals how the struggle to dominate these routes transformed the balance of world power. Early in the nineteenth century, imperial Russia fed much of Europe through the booming port of Odessa, on the Black Sea in Ukraine. But following the US Civil War, tons of American wheat began to flood across the Atlantic, and food prices plummeted. This cheap foreign grain spurred the rise of Germany and Italy, the decline of the Habsburgs and the Ottomans, and the European scramble for empire. It was a crucial factor in the outbreak of the First World War and the Russian Revolution. A powerful new interpretation, Oceans of Grain shows that amid the great powers’ rivalries, there was no greater power than control of grain.

View with a Grain of Sand

View with a Grain of Sand PDF Author: Wisława Szymborska
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156002165
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
From one of Europe's most prominent and celebrated poets, a collection remarkable for its graceful lyricism. With acute irony tempered by a generous curiosity, Szymborska documents life's improbability as well as its transient beauty to capture the wonder of existence. Preface by Mark Strand. Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, winners of the PEN Translation Prize.
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