Volcanoes have fascinated—and terrified—people for ages. They have destroyed cities and ended civilizations. In this book, John Dvorak, the acclaimed author of Earthquake Storms, looks into the early years of volcanology and its "father," Thomas Jaggar. Jaggar was the youngest of five scientists to investigate the explosion of Mount Pelee in Martinique, which leveled the entire city of St. Pierre and killed its entire population in two minutes. This explosion changed scie...

The lives of millions will be changed after it breaks, and yet so few people understand it, or even realize it runs through their backyard. Dvorak reveals the San Andreas Fault's fascinating history—and its volatile future.It is a prominent geological feature that is almost impossible to see unless you know where to look. Hundreds of thousands of people drive across it every day. The San Andreas Fault is everywhere—and primed for a colossal quake. For decades scientists have warned...

Eclipses have stunned, frightened, emboldened, and mesmerized people for thousands of years. They were recorded on ancient turtle shells discovered in the Wastes of Yin in China, on clay tablets from Mesopotamia and on the Mayan "Dresden Codex." They are mentioned in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and at least eight times in the Bible. Columbus used them to trick people, while Renaissance painter Taddeo Gaddi was blinded by one. Sorcery was banished within the Catholic Church ...

Sarah was severely beaten by her abusive husband while she was pregnant with Amy. He was trying to kill the unwanted life inside her. Mother and baby survived, but Amy was born prematurely, weighing just over a pound. Grandma Liz, a midwife and an old country doctor, fought desperately to give little Amy the chance to live. Listening to that story always made Amy feel close to God. When Grandma Liz, Amy’s caretaker, suffered a stroke, she solicited help from her brother-in-law and his wife...

The Lost Tradition of Dvorák’s Operas: Myth, Music, and Nationalism examines Antonín Dvorák’s operas, specifically Jakobín and Rusalka, from a critical standpoint, focusing on such criteria as tonal structures, thematic material and motives, subject matter, Czech folklore and musical influences, textual language, nationalism, characters, compositional history, performance history, and reception. This research vindicates and validates Dvorák as an opera composer and shows him to be an overl...

In recent times, the Asia-Pacific region has far surpassed Europe in terms of reciprocal trade with the United States, and since the 1980s immigrants from Asia entering the United States have exceeded their counterparts from Europe, reversing a longstanding historical trend and making Asian Americans the country’s fastest growing racial group. What does transpacific history look like if the arc of the story is extended to the present?The essays in this volume offer answers to this ...

Christian communities today face enormous challenges in the new contexts and teachings that try to redefine what churches should be. Christians look to the New Testament for a pattern for the church, but the New Testament does not present a totally uniform picture of the structure, leadership, and sacraments practiced by first-century congregations. There was a unity of the Christian communities centered on the teaching that Jesus is the Christ, whom God has raised from the dead and has en...