Books about Earthling from Amazon.com

An off-beat introduction to the workings of electricity for people who wish Richard Brautigan and Kurt Vonnegut had teamed up to explain inductance and capacitance to them. Despite its title, it's not wild ranting pseudo-science to be dismissed by those with brains. Rather, Amdahl maintains that one need not understand quantum physics to grasp how electricity works in practical applications. To understand your toaster or your fax machine, it doesn't really matter whether there are electrons or not, and it's a lot easier and more fun to start with the toaster than with quarks and calculus. The book is mildly weird, often funny, always clear and easy to understand. It assumes the reader doesn't know a volt from a hole in the ground and gently leads him or her through integrated circuits, radio, oscillators and the basics of the digital revolution using examples that include green buffalo, microscopic beer parties, break-dancing chickens and naked Norwegian girls in rowboats. OK, it's more than mildly weird.

The book has been reprinted numerous times since 1991 and has achieved minor cult status. Reviewed and praised in dozens of electronics and educational magazines, it is used as a text by major corporations, colleges, high schools, military schools and trade schools. It has been studied by education programs at colleges across the United States. This book was making wise cracks in the corner before anyone thought of designing books for dummies and idiots; some say it helped to inspire that industry.

It may be the only "introduction to electronics books" with back cover comments by Dave Barry, Ray Bradbury, Clive Cussler, and George Garrett, as well as recomendations from Robert Hazen, Bob Mostafapour, Dr. Roger Young, Dr. Wayne Green, Scott Rundle, Brian Battles, Michelle Guido, Herb Reichert and Emil Venere. As Monitoring Times said, "Perhaps the best electronics book ever. If you'd like to learn about basic electronics but haven't been able to pull it off, get There Are No Electrons. Just trust us. Get the book.".
Price: $7.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Too often the term "sustainable living" carries ponderous overtones, as if only government policymakers or serious academics could understand the key ideas. Dr. Art's Guide to Planet Earth explains the Earth's cycles in a lively and colorful way that is comprehensible to Earthlings who are normal curious citizens of the planet, including students of all ages.
Providing a remarkably accessible introduction to the scientific discipline known as "systems theory," Dr. Art describes the three main components that comprise existence on Earth—matter, energy, and life. Next he explains the reciprocal loops that define "Earth's operating system"—matter cycles, energy flows, and life webs. The Earth continuously receives energy from the sun, which directly or indirectly fuels all our vital processes, then leaves the planet as heat that flows to outer space. Dr. Art celebrates the vast and intricate network of relationships that connect the planet's organisms with each other and with the cycles of matter and flows of energy. The book concludes with practical advice about what we can actually do to live in environmentally healthy communities.
The portrait of the planet presented here is one that provides a foundation for the world view of Chelsea Green's Beyond the Limits and Believing Cassandra. This is not "Sustainable Living for Dummies" or even "Sustainable Living Lite," but rather a colorful, entertaining, and memorable introduction to a subject we all need to understand better—how our planet works.
"Dr. Art" Sussman is a scientist and nationally acclaimed educator who teaches complex environmental concepts in ways that are meaningful, innovative, and fun. He has performed his "Environmental Medicine Show" for students and teachers throughout the country. Through Dr. Art's book, interactive show, and related Web sites, many more people will learn about the primary systems that govern a complex planet.
The Children's Book Council has selected the Chelsea Green publication Dr. Art's Guide to Planet Earth as an "Outstanding Science Trade Book for Children for 2001." This award is the result of a cooperative project between the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and the Children's Book Council. Dr. Art's Guide to Planet Earth was also highlighted as a "Selector's Choice," a designation for books to which the review panelists responded with particular enthusiasm. The Children's Book Council publishes the full list in the March 2001 issue of the NSTA publication "Science and Children," and displays copies of the selected books at meetings and conventions around the country..
Price: $14.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

WHEN "I DO" IS THE ONLY OPTION...

Susan Grant writes heroes to die for! --Susan Kearney, USA Today bestselling author

I loved this book! I can't rave about this novel enough. From an arranged marriage, to royal espionage, to saving Earth, this is not a book to be missed! - Sylvia Day, bestselling author of Pleasures of the Night

Susan Grant's sexiest story yet! -- Gena Showalter, bestselling author of The Nymph King

A sizzling cosmic romp! -- Angela Knight, USA Today bestselling author

Dang but Jared was a hot hero! Susan Grant is an author I sincerely wish I hadn't waited so long to discover! -- Shannon McKelden, author of Venus Envy

Charming, witty, and sexy as all get out! --Linnea Sinclair, RITA award-winning author of Games of Command

Susan Grant proves once again why she is Master of the Futuristic Genre. Jared and Keira's heat burn up the pages! --award-winning author Colby Hodge

Keira, warrior-queen of the galaxy, is as famous for her beauty as she is for avoiding marriage. But when an upstart little planet called Earth threatens her world with its fleet of spaceships, the fate of her people lies in her hands. She must bind herself to a barbarian from the rogue world--or face the destruction of her own!

Confirmed bachelor Jared Jasper knows that the trick Earth pulls on the alien invaders isn't a permanent solution. What they need is a peace treaty. It just never occurs to him that he will wind up on the bargaining table. Playing the pushover groom to a mouthy alien babe who knows how to use a plasma sword is not exactly his idea of fun. But with six billion people depending on him, he doesn't have much choice--sleep with the enemy...or bring on interstellar war..
Price: $3.20 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The quest for peace and joy in a difficult world drives Walker's poetry. Even the most difficult moments can be redeemed, she seems to be saying in the excellent "Good Night Willie Lee, I'll See you in the Morning " Walker has grown as a poet, so that much of the strongest material comes in the later work, especially the wistful "Poem at Thirty-Nine." Highly recommended..
Price: $1.93 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Alex stared at the red pocketknife shown to him by his daughter A pocketknife owned by somebody he hadn't seen in years...

-Children-

They met first in boarding school at age twelve. AlexFletcher, shy and scared. Darren Rust, always furiously scribbling away in a private journal. It was not an immediate friendship, but then one night Darren convinced his roommate to sneak off school grounds to see something glorious. There was a sleazy strip club, you see, and every once in a while the back door opened just long enough to maybe catch a quick glimpse... Though a bond was formed from their pre-pubescent interest in naked women, Darren had another interest. A morbid curiosity about death. A curiosity that turned into something much more sinister.

-Friends-

They crossed paths again in college and became the best of friends. But Darren wasn't just looking for a friend. He had dark, ghastly urges squirming around in his head, and he believed he saw the same things — the urge to hurt, the urge to kill — in Alex. He was looking for somebody who understood. A partner. But Alex could never become a monster. Not even when Darren tried to bring out his friend's most deeply buried feelings of rage. Not even when Darren tried to show him the euphoria of having that much power over another human being. It just couldn't happen...right?

-Enemies-

Now Alex has a wife and a daughter. And Darren is back. He's hiding. He's patient. His mind is twisted in the worst possible way.

And he's seeking a soul mate..
Price: $19.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

What will they look like? That is the question addressed in this wonderfully illustrated book for "earthlings" who want to explore beyond the cardboard aliens of television science fiction to find out what science says about our cosmic cousins from other planet--if they exist.

Author Terence Dickinson, an acclaimed astronomy writer, examines t! he picture we have absorbed from TV and movies about creatures from other planets, from the friendly visitor in E.T. to the savage creature in Alien and the gaggle of other-worldly folk from Star Trek and its clones. Dickinson then explains how the variety of environments in the universe could give rise to creature far more different from us than anything Hollywood's invented.

Through the talents of illustrator Adolf Schaller, one of the chief artists and Emmy-award winner from Carl Sagan's Cosmos television series, alien worlds come alive with plants, insects and animals never dreamed of before. Yet, Schaller's vision is based on sound assumptions about the gravity of each hypothetical planet, the type of star that it orbits and other factors that bring plausible alien environments to life. The book winds up with a look at "life as we don't know it," featuring creatures and entities that might have evolved from something other that carbon-based biology, the foundation of ! Earth life.

A unique blend of science and imagination, Extraterrestrials will compel anyone who has ever thought about what-and who-might be out there.

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Price: $79.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Internationally renowned artist Warren Neidich combines photography and performance art in Earthling , an eerie and humorous book of photographs based on his most recent body of work. Featuring an introduction by the well-known critic Barry Schwabsky and an interview with globetrotting curator, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Earthling offers insight into Neidich's original artwork. Often taken in caf,s and using newspapers and magazines altered by the artist, these photographs are taken straight from today's headlines..
Price: $15.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

From the author of the acclaimed novel THE SNOWMAN'S CHILDREN and the award-winning collection THE TWO SAMS comes American Morons, a new collection of dazzling and haunting tales...

Two traveling college students confront their disintegrating relationship and the new American reality in a breakdown lane along the Italian Superstrade. A woman chases the ghost of her neglectful father to a vanished amusement park at the end of the Long Beach pier. Two recently retired teachers learn just how much Los Angeles has taken from them.

In these atmospheric, wide-ranging, surprisingly playful, and deeply mournful stories, grandkids and widows, ice cream-truck drivers and judges, travelers and invalids all discover — and sometimes even survive — the everyday losses from which the most vengeful ghosts so often spring..
Price: $19.44 [Notify me when price goes down.]