Books about Explosion from Amazon.com

Courageous Souls explores the premise that we are all eternal souls who plan our lives, including our greatest challenges, before we re born for purposes of spiritual growth. The book contains ten true stories of people who planned physical illness, having handicapped children, deafness, blindness, drug addiction, alcoholism, losing a loved one, and severe accidents. Because very different life challenges are often planned for similar reasons, readers who have not faced these specific challenges will nevertheless see themselves - and their motivations as a soul - in these stories. As readers come to realize that they themselves planned their lives, suffering that once seemed purposeless becomes imbued with deep meaning. Wisdom may be acquired in a more conscious manner; feelings of anger, guilt, blame, and victimization are healed and replaced by acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, and peace..
Price: $10.05 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In July 1995, San Jose Mercury-News reporter Gary Webb found the Big One--the blockbuster story every journalist secretly dreams about--without even looking for it. A simple phone call concerning an unexceptional pending drug trial turned into a massive conspiracy involving the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, L.A. and Bay Area crack cocaine dealers, and the Central Intelligence Agency. For several years during the 1980s, Webb discovered, Contra elements shuttled thousands of tons of cocaine into the United States, with the profits going toward the funding of Contra rebels attempting a counterrevolution in their Nicaraguan homeland. Even more chilling, Webb quickly realized, was that the massive drug-dealing operation had the implicit approval--and occasional outright support--of the CIA, the very organization entrusted to prevent illegal drugs from being brought into the United States.

Within the pages of Dark Alliance, Webb produces a massive amount of evidence that suggests that such a scenario did take place, and more disturbing evidence that the powers that be that allowed such an alliance are still determined to ruthlessly guard their secrets. Webb's research is impeccable--names, dates, places, and dollar amounts gather and mount with every page, eventually building a towering wall of evidence in support of his theories. After the original series of articles ran in the Mercury-News in late 1996, both Webb and his paper were so severely criticized by political commentators, government officials, and other members of the press that his own newspaper decided it best not to stand behind the series, in effect apologizing for the assertions and disavowing his work. Webb quit the paper in disgust in November 1997. His book serves as both a complex memoir of the time of the Contras and an indictment of the current state of America's press; Dark Alliance is as necessary and valuable as it is horrifying and grim. --Tjames Madison.
Price: $15.46 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Nobody but Philip K. Dick could so successfully combine SF comedy with the unease of reality gone wrong, shifting underfoot like quicksand Besides grisly ideas like funeral parlors where you swap gossip for the advice of the frozen dead, Ubik (1969) offers such deadpan farce as a moneyless character's attack on the robot apartment door that demands a five-cent toll:

"I'll sue you," the door said as the first screw fell out.

Joe Chip said, "I've never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it."

Chip works for Glen Runciter's anti-psi security agency, which hires out its talents to block telepathic snooping and paranormal dirty tricks. When its special team tackles a big job on the Moon, something goes terribly wrong. Runciter is killed, it seems--but messages from him now appear on toilet walls, traffic tickets, or product labels. Meanwhile, fragments of reality are timeslipping into past versions: Joe Chip's beloved stereo system reverts to a hand-cranked 78 player with bamboo needles. Why does Runciter's face appear on U.S. coins? Why the repeated ads for a hard-to-find universal panacea called Ubik ("safe when taken as directed")?

The true, chilling state of affairs slowly becomes clear, though the villain isn't who Joe Chip thinks. And this is Dick country, where final truths are never quite final and--with the help of Ubik--the reality/illusion balance can still be tilted the other way. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk.
Price: $7.25 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Burgess Shale of British Columbia "is the most precious and important of all fossil localities," writes Stephen Jay Gould. These 600-million-year-old rocks preserve the soft parts of a collection of animals unlike any other. Just how unlike is the subject of Gould's book.

Gould describes how the Burgess Shale fauna was discovered, reassembled, and analyzed in detail so clear that the reader actually gets some feeling for what paleobiologists do, in the field and in the lab. The many line drawings are unusually beautiful, and now can be compared to a wonderful collection of photographs in Fossils of the Burgess Shale by Derek Briggs, one of Gould's students.

Burgess Shale animals have been called a "paleontological Rorschach test," and not every geologist by any means agrees with Gould's thesis that they represent a "road not taken" in the history of life. Simon Conway Morris, one of the subjects of Wonderful Life, has expressed his disagreement in Crucible of Creation. Wonderful Life was published in 1989, and there has been an explosion of scientific interest in the pre-Cambrian and Cambrian periods, with radical new ideas fighting for dominance. But even though many scientists disagree with Gould about the radical oddity of the Burgess Shale animals, his argument that the history of life is profoundly contingent--as in the movie It's a Wonderful Life, from which this book takes its title--has become more accepted, in theories such as Ward and Brownlee's Rare Earth hypothesis. And Gould's loving, detailed exposition of the labor it took to understand the Burgess Shale remains one of the best explanations of scientific work around. --Mary Ellen Curtin.
Price: $9.56 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Authoritative, eye-popping, and massive, Art of Modern Rock is the first and last word on contemporary concert posters An art form that has grown hand-in-hand with the independent music scene, heralding small and large gigs alike, the posters have emerged from visually creative street-level notices to prized collectibles rendered in a variety of styles and media. Today's poster artists combine the expressive freedom pioneered in the poster revolution of the 1960s with the attitude and the do-it-yourself approach of the punk scene, creating an unprecedented surge of innovative poster production on an international scale. Featuring over 1,600 exemplary rock posters and flyers from over 200 international studios and artists, Art of Modern Rock is the long-anticipated sequel to coauthor Paul Grushkin's The Art of Rock. Profiles and quotes from the pioneers in the field and their emerging heirs share nearly 500 gloriously packed pages of poster after mind-blowing poster. As brash and colorful as the burgeoning scene it documents, Art of Modern Rock is the must-have book for music and poster fans and collectors..
Price: $43.26 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Churches will learn a biblically based method for sharing the Gospel along with motivating "on-the-job" training on how to share Christ and disciple new believers This expanded fourth edition features a new section on friendship evangelism and how to build a vision for worldwide discipline. Through this book, churches will experience what can take place when its leaders and members take seriously the command of Christ to equip the saints to do the work of ministry. Chapters include "Training Laymen for Evangelism," "A Presentation of the Gospel," and "The Proper Use of Testimony.".
Price: $9.13 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In barely a decade, the designer toy craze, which originated in Hong Kong, has taken the world by storm. Children and adults, celebrities and design aficionados now line up to pay anywhere from five dollars to thousands of dollars for these highly inventive designer creations.

I Am Plastic provides a colorful visual history of the phenomenon, which has energized not only the toy world but the global art community as well. Fashion designers, comic book artists, underground illustrators, graffiti and fine artists now lend their creativity to the task of coming up with innovative and striking new toy designs. Artists and toys featured in this stunning overview include Frank Kozik, Dalek, Gary Baseman, Bounty Hunter, Junko Mizuno, Jason Siu, Devilrobots, and Pete Fowler. .
Price: $21.41 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This 2nd Edition of the popular book, Speed Improvement for Young Athletes: How to Sprint Faster in Your Sport in 30 Workouts, includes practical training programs for age group athletes 9-19 in football, basketball, baseball and softball, soccer, lacrosse, rugby, field hockey, and tennis that will improve speed in short sprints after only 30 workouts. This down to earth book allows athletes, parents and coaches to take a "just do it" approach by quickly identifying individual weakness areas that are limiting speed and turning those areas into strengths. A more complete testing battery can still be done in one session. Chapters have been updated based on new research findings, 17 illustrations have been added, and a complete bibliography is provided to allow more in depth study. The playing speed of team sport athletes is sure to improve after following this program, developed by one of the world's leading authorities..
Price: $17.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Sudoku is still going strong! The tenth book in the series, Jumbo Sudoku Explosion covers 8 different puzzles and is for every Sudoku fan at every level. Included are over 250 brand-new puzzles to challenge and entertain those new to solving as well as die-hard fans.

Each puzzle is on an oversize grid and included are the regular puzzles plus Kakuro, Killer, Samurai, Overlap and more!.
Price: $7.72 [Notify me when price goes down.]