false 18208 0 0 175798 0618127445 9780618127443 7 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172437144m/175798.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172437144s/175798.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/175798.Water_The_Fate_of_Our_Most_Precious_Resource 3.88 34 18208 3.77 90 18 2000 3907137 0312365691 9780312365691 1 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3907137.The_End_Natural_Disasters_Manmade_Catastrophes_and_the_Future_of_Human_Survival 4.10 10 What is the fate of the world as we know it?

Tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, pandemics, cosmic radiation, gamma bursts from space, colliding comets, and asteroids—these things used to worry us from time to time, but now they have become the background noise of our culture. Are natural calamities indeed more probable, and more frequent, than they were? Are things getting worse? Are the boundaries between natural and human-caused calamities blurring? Are we part of the problem? If so, what can we do about it?

In The End, award-winning writer Marq de Villiers examines these questions at a time when there is an urgent need to understand the perils that confront us, to act in such a way as best we can for the inevitable disasters when they come.

We can do nothing about some natural calamities, but about others we can do a great deal. De Villiers helps us understand which is which, and lays out some provocative ideas for mitigating the damage all such calamities can inflict on us and our world.

The End is a brilliant and challenging look at what lies ahead, and at what we can do to influence our future. ]]> 18208 3.77 90 18 2008 35059 0802713726 9780802713728 2 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1168574463m/35059.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1168574463s/35059.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35059.Sahara_A_Natural_History 4.10 10
“If you traveled across the United States from Boston to San Diego, you still wouldn’t have crossed the Sahara,” writes de Villiers, painting a vivid picture of this most extraordinary place. He charts the course of Atlantic hurricanes, many of which are born in the Tibesti Mountains of northern Chad, and offers a fascinating disquisition on the physics of windblown sand and the formation of dunes. He chronicles the formation of the massive aquifers that lie beneath the desert, some filled with water that pre-dates the appearance of modern man on Earth. He marvels at the jagged mountains and at ancient cave paintings deep in the desert, which reveal that the Sahara was a verdant grassland 10,000 years ago—a cycle that has been repeated several times.

Woven through de Villiers’s story is a chronicle of the desert’s nations and people: the Berbers and Arabs of the north; its black African south, whose ancestors peopled the greatest empires of Old Africa; and the extraordinary nomads—the Moors, the Tuareg (the famous “blue men”), and the Tubu—who call the desert home today. Illuminated by the eloquent written testimonies of past travelers, Sahara is a glittering geographic tour conveying the majesty, mystery, and abundance of life in what the outside world thinks of as the Great Emptiness.
</div></div>]]> 18208 3.77 90 18 2002 250255 0802777406 9780802777409 2 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173135205m/250255.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173135205s/250255.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/250255.Sable_Island_The_Strange_Origins_and_Curious_History_of_a_Dune_Adrift_in_the_Atlantic 3.33 9
Sable Island—one hundred miles due east of Nova Scotia, in the midst of the worst weather in the North Atlantic—is a thirty mile-long sand dune, uninhabited except by a couple of government agents who maintain an outpost and by bands of wild horses that have populated the island for more than two hundred years. Yet this small place illuminates grand and global themes, both human and natural.

There is evidence that Sable may have been discovered as early as the fifteenth century, and it has been the subject of several failed colonization efforts by Portugal, France, the Basques, and even a group of prominent Bostonians, including the uncle of John Hancock. For centuries before lifesaving global positioning technology, Sable terrorized legions of mariners crossing from Europe to America—more than five hundred ships have been wrecked on its shores, fully ten disasters for every mile of coastline. Sable is constantly moving, its beaches disappearing and reappearing in storms, its very body in slow motion to the east. Because of this, it is a metaphor for the way the planet governs itself, because to appreciate Sable is to understand the workings of the great ocean currents, the winds and the North Atlantic gale, and the forces of entropy. Impressive in the array of its knowledge, Sable Island is a lyrical ode to one of nature’s wonders.</DIV></DIV>]]> 18208 3.77 90 18 19817 3.47 17 6 2004 1292114 0802714692 9780802714695 0 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182543869m/1292114.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182543869s/1292114.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1292114.Windswept_The_Story_of_Wind_and_Weather 3.33 6 Windswept is the story of humankind’s long struggle to understand wind and weather—from the wind gods of ancient times to early discoveries of the dynamics of air movement to high-tech schemes to control hurricanes. Marq de Villiers is equally adept at explaining the science of wind as he is at presenting dramatic personal stories of encounters with gales and storms. Running through his narrative is the dramatic story of Hurricane Ivan, the only storm on record to three times reach Category 5 status (sustaining winds greater than 155 miles per hour) in its path of death and destruction from the Sahara to North America, where it traveled from Texas to Newfoundland.

We have made great strides in understanding how wind affects weather, but much is left to learn about how global warming and pollution may impact the winds themselves. The stakes are high because, as Hurricane Katrina so vividly reminded us, anything that affects the winds eventually affects human life.
</div></div>]]> 18208 3.77 90 18 2006 1423230 0802714978 9780802714978 3 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1183478140m/1423230.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1183478140s/1423230.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1423230.Timbuktu_The_Sahara_s_Fabled_City_of_Gold 3.75 4
Founded in the early 1100s by Tuareg nomads who called their camp “Tin Buktu,” it became, within two centuries, a wealthy metropolis and a nexus of the trans-Saharan trade. Salt from the deep Sahara, gold from Ghana, and money from slave markets made it rich. In part because of its wealth, Timbuktu also became a center of Islamic learning and religion, boasting impressive schools and libraries that attracted scholars from Alexandria, Baghdad, Mecca, and Marrakech. The arts flourished, and Timbuktu gained near-mythic stature around the world, capturing the imagination of outsiders and ultimately attracting the attention of hostile sovereigns who sacked the city three times and plundered it half a dozen more. The ancient city was invaded by a Moroccan army in 1600, which began its long decline; since then it has been seized by Tuareg nomads and a variety of jihadists, in addition to enduring a terrible earthquake, several epidemics, and numerous famines. Perhaps no other city in the world has been as golden—and as deeply tarnished—as Timbuktu.

Using sources dating deep into Timbuktu’s fabled past, alongside interviews with Tuareg nomads and city residents and officials today, de Villiers and Hirtle have produced a spectacular portrait that brings the city back to life. </div></div>]]> 18208 3.77 90 18 19817 3.47 17 6 2007 32346 000255058X 9780002550581 1 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32346.The_Heartbreak_Grape_A_Journey_in_Search_of_the_Perfect_Pinot_Noir 3.50 2 "De Villiers embarked on a quest to learn more about an unknown vintner responsible for the superb wine he happened upon in upstate New York. His narrative introduces Josh Jensen, a wonderfully original personality and extraordinary wine maker, who produces California Pinot noir wines comparable to the fine French burgundies. De Villiers traces the history of the Calera vineyards from Jensen's grape-picking days in France to the purchase of limestone-rich California land for his vineyards--which was done in spite of prevailing opinion in the wine trade that the Pinot noir grapes could not be grown successfully in the U.S. This engrossing account has a real air of mystery about it and should have appeal for a broader audience than simply connoisseurs impressed with Jensen's prizewinning wines." Alice Joyce]]> 18208 3.77 90 18 1993 1757764 000215689X 9780002156899 0 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1187812938m/1757764.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1187812938s/1757764.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1757764.Down_the_Volga_in_a_Time_of_Troubles 5.00 1 18208 3.77 90 18 1991 1985078 0771026420 9780771026423 0 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1191358475m/1985078.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1191358475s/1985078.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1985078.Island_of_Wild_Horses 4.00 1 A Dune Adrift: The Strange Origins and Curious History of Sable Island is a spectacular book, which stands out in the sea of natural history like Sable Island stands out in the Atlantic. Balancing natural history, and the huge wealth of scientific explanation that accompanies it, with the human history of Sable Island--a sandy island 300 kilometres off the coast of Nova Scotia--is the authors' greatest accomplishment. In A Dune Adrift they turn seamlessly from intricate discussions of the tide and ocean currents to the human drama of the place: lurid tales and rumours of "sequestered lunatics," "hapless castaways," and "curious apparitions." Mystery after mystery keep the reader's attention riveted to this beautifully written and expertly balanced narrative: the storms, the ghost stories, the wrecks, the continued existence of a bank of sand in the middle of the wind-blasted Atlantic, and of course, the famous horses and their continued survival on their isolated island home. To explain these mysteries the authors present a huge amount of evidence with such deftness that the reader remains completely enthralled. Who would have thought that we could learn so much from the history of a sand dune? --William Newbigging]]> 18208 3.77 90 18 2004 1047457 0140102701 9780140102703 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1047457.White_Tribe_Dreaming_Apartheid_s_Bitter_Roots_as_Witnessed_8_Generations_Afrikaner_Family 4.00 1 18208 3.77 90 18 1989