Taxi drivers love to talk, and when astrobiologist Charles Cockell is their passenger, they love to talk about aliens. This humorous, insightful collection gathers essays inspired by conversations with cabbies, ranging over the possible nature of alien societies, the inevitability of life, and links between environmentalism and space exploration.
Archie Morningstar fights crime across the universe alongside his dad and Pockets the talking cat. In his sixth adventure, the space taxi navigation system goes down, stranding all the alien passengers on Earth! Will the team be able to find hiding spots for these otherworldly creatures before they're discovered, or will this be the end of the operation for good? Get ready for another exciting intergalactic adventure.
Archie Morningstar learns a big family secret and helps save the universe. All before breakfast! It's not every day a regular kid like Archie gets to wake up at midnight. But today is Take Your Kid to Work Day, and Archie is finally allowed to ride along in his dad's taxi cab. He has been waiting eight years, eight months, and eight days for this moment to arrive. But he's about to discover his dad is no ordinary cab driver...In fact, he drives an intergalactic space taxi! All night long, he shuttles aliens from one corner of the universe to another. And being a space taxi copilot is no easy task: Archie must steer them into wormholes, keep them from crashing into planets, deal with a very unusual cat...and save the universe from an evil mastermind! Space Taxi marks the debut of a brand new chapter book series from New York Times bestselling author Wendy Mass and teacher Michael Brawer, filled with humor, adventure, and plenty of science to impress your friends and teachers!
The story happens in the middle of the twenty-first century. An asteroid incident, which almost destroys Earth, leads to a series of thrilling events. And two men who are struggling in a desert island create a never-forgotten memory and the deepest friendship. Sam, a famous high scientific company CEO, and Mike (James), a top scientist from a very advanced planet of another universe, who lost his memory during an action to rescue Earth, step by step created a remarkable dream, the human being's first time travel to the real outer space to visit another advanced planet and discover the ideal planet. The story is thrilling and tortuous, especially during all the process. The love story about Mike and Kay and several other young couples from different planets proved a fact: that love is not only existing in the human beings on Earth but also existing in the universe. Also, Sam, Mike, and John, the three best friends, by hard work and creative activity, get in incredible results for the future. That advanced civilization and their representatives-UFOs-a magical and perfect description of advanced civilization from one thousand to ten thousand years later, absolutely attract all the readers who want to get an impression for the future. And after this book, the continuing five to six totally different but connected stories will inspire every reader to travel to other civilizations with them. So let's go with them, to communicate with these people from the future and another world.
1977. A New York cabbie, Mike Redolfo, is abducted by aliens to a planet on the brink of Armageddon. In another time and place, WW2 rages. Against the backdrop of the Holocaust, a mysterious man and his Jewish fiancée flee across Europe. How are these two men linked? Secrets from the past may tear apart the future of both worlds.
"In a raw seacoast cabin, a young woman watches her boyfriend go out with his brother, late one night, on a mysterious job she realizes she isn t supposed to know about. A man gets a call at work from his sister-in-law, saying that his wife and his daughter never made it to nursery school that day. A mother learns that her teenage daughter has told a teacher about problems in her parents marriage that were meant to be private problems the mother herself tries to ignore. McLaughlin conveys these characters so vividly that readers will feel they are experiencing real life. Often the stories turn on a single, fantastic moment of clarity after which nothing can be the same."--
A best-selling modern masterpiece in the author's home country of Egypt, Taxi consists of fifty-eight fictional monologues with Cairo taxi drivers that have been recreated from the author's own experience, taking the reader on a roller-coaster of emotions as bumpy and noisy as the city's potholed and chaotic streets. Described as an urban sociology, an ethnography, a classic of oral history - and a work of poetry in motion - it tells Herculean tales of the struggle for survival and dignity among Greater Cairo's 80,000 cab drivers.
Life would not exist without sensitive, or soft, matter. All biological structures depend on it, including red blood globules, lung fluid, and membranes. So do industrial emulsions, gels, plastics, liquid crystals, and granular materials. What makes sensitive matter so fascinating is its inherent versatility. Shape-shifting at the slightest provocation, whether a change in composition or environment, it leads a fugitive existence. Physicist Michel Mitov brings drama to molecular gastronomy (as when two irreconcilable materials are mixed to achieve the miracle of mayonnaise) and offers answers to everyday questions, such as how does paint dry on canvas, why does shampoo foam better when you "repeat, " and what allows for the controlled release of drugs? Along the way we meet a futurist cook, a scientist with a runaway imagination, and a penniless inventor named Goodyear who added sulfur to latex, quite possibly by accident, and created durable rubber. As Mitov demonstrates, even religious ritual is a lesson in the surprising science of sensitive matter. Thrice yearly, the reliquary of St. Januarius is carried down cobblestone streets from the Cathedral to the Church of St. Clare in Naples. If all goes as hoped--and since 1389 it often has--the dried blood contained in the reliquary's largest vial liquefies on reaching its destination, and Neapolitansare given a reaffirming symbol of renewal.
In the second book in this series, Archie, his dad, and Pockets fly to a planet in peril: someone is stealing the water from this underwater world! Can Archie and Pockets save the day? Archie Morningstar's dad drives a taxi through outer space! And with the help of a talking cat named Pockets, Archie and his dad help fight crime across the universe.
This fascinating overview of popular culture in the 1980s describes the decade of excess that resulted from the social, political, and economic conditions of the time, documenting why so many milestones in entertainment, arts, and technology occurred the 80s. Popular culture in the United States in the 1980s—as reflected in film, television, music, technology, and art—serves to illustrate the general feeling of American citizens during this decade that the sky was the limit, and the only thing better than "big" was "bigger." This title provides readers with an engaging, in-depth study of the 1980s and supplies the larger historical and social context of popular culture in an era when the extraordinary seemed normal and all the rules were being rewritten. The book's wide scope includes the concepts, fashions, foods, sports, television, movies, and music that became popular in the 1980s. Readers will see how specific elements of the decade, such as visual art and architecture, reflect the sense of change in the 1980s, often through excessive displays of expression that helped further movements into the avant-garde. The technological advances, entertainment developments, and "game changers" that were essential to establishing the popular culture of the decade are highlighted, as is the trend of how personal expression in the 80s began to penetrate a wider segment of American culture, spanning across all ages. The book also calls attention to the standout events and individuals who influenced society in the 1980s, with emphasis on the figures who intentionally used pop culture as an avenue for change as well as the influences from the 1980s that are still felt today.
