Cindy Gold's novel about two tough girls growing up in New Mexico is sometimes scathingly funny, sometimes poignant, but always honest. Santa Fe is no place for a girl like Sylvie, a thirteen-year-old tomboy, introspective loner, and Kokopelli hater. When she meets Nola, an older girl with an unusual and very visible disability, Sylvie discovers it's impossible to stay in the shadows when her best friend draws stares wherever she goes. Each has made her own battle plan for thriving in the harsh environs of Santa Fe in the Sixties, with some plans decidedly more successful than others. Forget what you think you know about friendship, outsiders, sisterhood and The Land of Enchantment. Let Sylvie and Nola be your guides down Santa Fe's famously convoluted streets.
The lead set of poems started out simply enough. They were going to be a narrative in the style of Homer’s Odyssey with me as the lead character. I had opted for the army because my father and his family had wound up in the army all the way back to the revolution. Mother’s family had all been Quakers so their choices did not weigh too heavily. When I returned home, I had more sea time than did most of my ex-navy friends. I also found that, if you crave heroism, an army general hospital is probably not the best venue for the search. Marshalling the events of my adventure, it became clear that my story was closer to that of Odysseus’ crew than to that of Odysseus. You will recall that Odysseus always came up with a diamond from the bottom of the manure pile while his crew wound up under the pile. The urge to tell the story was still there and “Sailing” is the result. Not quite heroic but a bit of fun – in memory – when the rough edges have been worn off by time.
A riveting account of the only mutiny in the history of the United States Navy—a little-known event that cost three innocent young men their lives—part murder mystery, part courtroom drama, and as propulsive and dramatic as the bestselling novels of Patrick O’Brian. On December 16, 1842, the US brig-of-war Somers dropped anchor in Brooklyn Harbor at the end of a cruise intended to teach a group of adolescents the rudiments of naval life. But this seemingly harmless exercise ended in catastrophe. Commander Alexander Slidell Mackenzie came ashore saying he had narrowly prevented a mutiny that would have left him and his officers dead. Some of the thwarted mutineers were being held under guard, but three had been hanged: Boatswain’s Mate Samuel Cromwell, Seaman Elisha Small, and Acting Midshipman Philip Spencer, whose father was the secretary of war, John Spencer. Eighteen-year-old Philip Spencer, according to Mackenzie, had been the ringleader who encouraged the crew to seize the ship and become pirates, raping and pillaging their way across the old Spanish Main. And while the young man might have been a rebel fascinated by pirates, it soon became clear the order that condemned the three men had no legal basis. And worse, that perhaps a mutiny had never really occurred, and that the ship might instead have been seized by a creeping hysteria that ended in the sacrifice of three innocents. Months of accusations and counteraccusations were followed by a highly public court martial which put Mackenzie on trial for his life, and a storm of anti-Navy sentiment drew the attention of the leading writers of the day (Washington Irving thought Mackenzie a hero; James Fenimore Cooper damned him with a ferocity that still stings). But some good did come out of it: public disgust with Mackenzie’s training cruise gave birth to Annapolis, the place that within a century, would produce the greatest navy the world had ever known. Vividly told and filled with tense action based on court martial transcripts, Snow’s masterly account of this all-but-forgotten episode is naval history at its finest.
Alien Ocean immerses readers in worlds being newly explored by marine biologists, worlds usually out of sight and reach: the deep sea, the microscopic realm, and oceans beyond national boundaries. Working alongside scientists at sea and in labs in Monterey Bay, Hawai'i, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the Sargasso Sea and at undersea volcanoes in the eastern Pacific, Stefan Helmreich charts how revolutions in genomics, bioinformatics, and remote sensing have pressed marine biologists to see the sea as animated by its smallest inhabitants: marine microbes. Thriving in astonishingly extreme conditions, such microbes have become key figures in scientific and public debates about the origin of life, climate change, biotechnology, and even the possibility of life on other worlds. Alien Ocean immerses readers in worlds being newly explored by marine biologists, worlds usually out of sight and reach: the deep sea, the microscopic realm, and oceans beyond national boundaries. Working alongside scientists at sea and in labs in
A thrilling journey through the solar system that merges imagination with hard science. Imagine traveling to the far reaches of the solar system, pausing for close-up encounters with distant planets, moons, asteroids, and comets, accompanied by a congenial guide to the science behind what you see. What, for instance, would it be like to fly in Titan’s hazy atmosphere? To walk across the surface of Mercury? To feel the rumble of a volcano brewing on one of Jupiter's largest moons? In Daydreaming in the Solar System, John Moores and Jesse Rogerson bring that dream to virtual life. Through a combination of story and science they let readers know what such an otherworldly experience would actually look, feel, and even taste like. With data gathered over the decades by our robotic spacecraft, and with Michelle Parsons’s evocative illustrations, Moores and Rogerson boldly take you where no living being has gone before, along the way giving an engaging and accurate explanation of the science. Where Carl Sagan’s storied “spaceship of the imagination” provided a window to outer space, Daydreaming in the Solar System opens a door, inviting readers to step through and truly explore the strange new worlds of the solar system. Undertaking this interplanetary journey powered by hard science, there is no limit to where your daydreams can take you.
This volume reveals the wisdom we can learn from sailing, a sport that pits human skills against the elements, tests the mettle and is a rich source of valuable lessons in life. Unravels the philosophical mysteries behind one of the oldest organized human activities Features contributions from philosophers and academics as well as from sailors themselves Enriches appreciation of the sport by probing its meaning and value Brings to life the many applications of philosophy to sailing and the profound lessons it can teach us A thought-provoking read for sailors and philosophers alike
