"By the author of the bestseller Everest: Mountain Without Mercy, this chronicle of the iconic first American expedition to Mt. Everest in May 1963--published to coincide with the climb's 50th anniversary--combines riveting adventure, a perceptive analysis of its dark and terrifying historical context, and unprecedented revelations about its secret motivation. /b> n the midst of the Cold War, against the backdrop of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the space race with the Soviet Union, and the quagmire of the Vietnam War, a band of iconoclastic, independent-minded American mountaineers set off for Mt. Everest, aiming to restore America's confidence and optimism. Their objective is to reach the summit while conducting scientific research, but which route will they take? And, mysteriously, who wants the results of the scientific tests, and for what purpose? The Vast Unknown is, on one level, a harrowing, character-driven account of the climb itself and its legendary team of alternately inspiring, troubled, and tragic climbers who suffer injuries, a near mutiny, and death on the mountain. It is also an examination of the profound sway the expedition had over the Ame
Five short storiesThe vast unknown: a teenager who is forced to help another to flee the country.The infernal packet: a boy agrees to deliver a packet for a friend and has a hellish time doing so.Terror in the trees: a girl goes to meet someone she contacted over the internet and whom she believes can help her with her schoolwork; then she gets a shock.The way to the void: two children go for a hike and enter a forbidden area; due to circumstances beyond their control they end up far from home in a remote area.Children of the narrow boat: three children are on holiday on a boat on the canal.
The vast unknown is a short story about a teenager who is forced to help another to flee the country, The infernal packet is a short story about a boy who agrees to deliver a packet but has a hellish time doing so, Terror in the trees is a short story about a child who goes to collect some material from someone she contacted over the internet and receives an unexpected shock, The way to the void is a short story about two children who go for a ramble in the country and circumstances land them in an unknown place. Children of the narrow boat is a short story about three children who have a holiday boating on a canal. The hour of vengeance is a short story about the effect that two mysterious strangers have on some local people who have reasons to be worried about their past.
There have been 277 years that the children of the Israelites have been living without a leader like Moses and Joshua. Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, “Look, you are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.” But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” So Samuel prayed to the Lord God. And the Lord God said to Samuel, “Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected ME, that I should not reign over them. According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt, even to this day with which they have forsaken ME and served other gods so they are doing to you also. Now therefore, heed their voice. However, you shall solemnly forewarn them and show them the behavior of the king who will reign over them.”
“The poems make us feel our tangled nature…always caught within the tensions between light and dark, these poems trace out the modern path through heartbreak and shaken beliefs towards affirmation of life. They will give you inspiration.” —Glen A. Mazis, author of The River Bends in Time.
The first-ever biography of wilderness preservationist Ernest Oberholtzer, environmental pioneer, explorer, and caretaker of Minnesota and Ontario's boundary waters region.
Long one of nature's most fascinating phenomena, magnetism was once the subject of many superstitions. Magnets were thought useful to thieves, effective as a love potion or as a cure for gout or spasms. They could remove sorcery from women and put demons to flight and even reconcile married couples. It was said that a lodestone pickled in the salt of sucking fish had the power to attract gold. Today, these beliefs have been put aside, but magnetism is no less remarkable for our modern understanding of it. In Hidden Attraction, Gerrit L. Verschuur, a noted astronomer and National Book Award nominee for The Invisible Universe, traces the history of our fascination with magnetism, from the first discovery of magnets in Greece, to state-of-the-art theories that see magnetism as a basic force in the universe. The book begins with the early debunking of superstitions by Peter Peregrinus (Pierre de Maricourt), whom Roger Bacon hailed as one of the world's first experimental scientists (Perigrinus held that "experience rather than argument is the basis of certainty in science"). Verschuur discusses William Gilbert, who confronted the multitude of superstitions about lodestones in De Magnete, widely regarded as the first true work of modern science, in which Gilbert reported his greatest insight: that the earth itself was magnetic. We also meet Hans Christian Oersted, who demonstrated that an electric current could influence a magnet (Oersted did this for the first time during a public lecture) and Andre-Marie Ampere, who showed that a current actually produced magnetism. Verschuur also examines the pioneering experiments and theoretical breakthroughs of Faraday and Maxwell and Zeeman (who demonstrated the relationship between light and magnetism), and he includes many lively stories of discovery, such as the use of frogs by Galvani and Volta, and Hertz's accidental discovery of radio waves. Along the way, we learn many interesting scientific facts, perhaps the most remarkable of which is that lodestones are made by bacteria (a sediment organism known as GS-15 eats iron, converting ferric oxide to magnetite and, over billions of years, forming the magnetite layers in iron formations). Boasting many informative illustrations, this is an adventure of the mind, using the specific phenomenon of magnetism to show how we have moved from an era of superstitions to one in which the Theory of Everything looms on the horizon.
On February 20, 1963, a team of nineteen Americans embarked on the first expedition that would combine high-altitude climbing with scientific research. The primary objective of the six scientists on the team—who procured funding by appealing to the military and political applications of their work—was to study how severe stress at high altitudes affected human behavior. The expedition would land the first American on the summit of Mount Everest nearly three years after a successful (though widely disputed) Chinese ascent. At the height of the Cold War, this struggle for the Himalaya turned Everest into both a contested political space and a remote, unpredictable laboratory. The US expedition promised to resurrect American heroism, embodied in a show of physical strength and skill that, when combined with scientific expertise, would dominate international rivals on the frontiers of territorial exploration. It propelled mountaineers, scientists, and their test subjects 29,029 feet above sea level, the highest point of Chinese-occupied Tibet. There they faced hostile conditions that challenged and ultimately compromised standard research protocols, yielding results that were too exceptional to be generalized to other environments. With this book, Philip W. Clements offers a nuanced exploration of the impact of extremity on the production of scientific knowledge and the role of masculinity and nationalism in scientific inquiry.
A compilation of selected verses selected by the author Gregory Wm. Gunn composed between the years 1981 through 2016. It covers the complete gamut of free, blank, unrestricted, and rhyming verse.
