How new forms of energy transformed every aspect of American life in a span of 50 years, from 1876 to 1929—and how it seeded our current polarization.The era of reform. The Gilded Age. The Progressive Era. What historians often divide into discrete eras was one period of profound change: a massive, multipronged energy transition. Oil, gas, and electricity were woven into a culture that had to heal sectional differences after the Civil War, absorb an enormous influx...

A reconception of the sublime to include experiences of disaster, war, outer space, virtual reality, and the Anthropocene.We experience the sublime—overwhelming amazement and exhilaration—in at least seven different forms. Gazing from the top of a mountain at a majestic vista is not the same thing as looking at a city from the observation deck of a skyscraper; looking at images constructed from Hubble Space Telescope data is not the same as living through a powerfu...

How conflicting ideas of nature threaten to fracture America's identity.Amber waves of grain, purple mountain majesties: American invest much of their national identity in sites of natural beauty. And yet American lands today are torn by conflicts over science, religion, identity, and politics. Creationists believe that the Biblical flood carved landscapes less than 10,000 years ago; environmentalists protest pipelines; Western states argue that the federal governm...

Discusses in nontechnical language ten central questions about technology that illuminate what technology is and why it matters.Technology matters, writes David Nye, because it is inseparable from being human. We have used tools for more than 100,000 years, and their central purpose has not always been to provide necessities. People excel at using old tools to solve new problems and at inventing new tools for more elegant solutions to old tasks. Perhaps this is bec...

From the Model T to today's "lean manufacturing": the assembly line as crucial, yet controversial, agent of social and economic transformation.The mechanized assembly line was invented in 1913 and has been in continuous operation ever since. It is the most familiar form of mass production. Both praised as a boon to workers and condemned for exploiting them, it has been celebrated and satirized. (We can still picture Chaplin's little tramp trying to keep up with a f...

Blackouts—whether they result from military planning, network failure, human error, or terrorism—offer snapshots of electricity's increasingly central role in American society.Where were you when the lights went out? At home during a thunderstorm? During the Great Northeastern Blackout of 1965? In California when rolling blackouts hit in 2000? In 2003, when a cascading power failure left fifty million people without electricity? We often remember vividly our time i...

Nye uses energy as a touchstone to examine the lives of ordinary people engaged in normal activities.How did the United States become the world's largest consumer of energy? David Nye shows that this is less a question about the development of technology than it is a question about the development of culture. In Consuming Power, Nye uses energy as a touchstone to examine the lives of ordinary people engaged in normal activities. He looks at how these activ...

A concise overview of this multidisciplinary field, presenting key concepts, central issues, and current research, along with concrete examples and case studies.The emergence of the environmental humanities as an academic discipline early in the twenty-first century reflects the growing conviction that environmental problems cannot be solved by science and technology alone. This book offers a concise overview of this new multidisciplinary field, presenting concepts...

全球化時代，沒有人可以不懂國際關係！中美貿易戰開打、英國脫歐、北韓核威脅**…**每天在看、必須要懂的國際關係知識，這本就讓你融會貫通！享譽全球哈佛教授教你商界菁英、世界公民不能不修的國際關係學分國際關係領域最知名學者×最經典著作首度引進繁中版20世紀上半葉發生兩次世界大戰；20世紀下半葉，則歷經冷戰、區域戰爭以及核戰威脅，為什麼這些衝突會發生？21世紀這類衝突還會再度爆發嗎？日益增強的經濟和生態相互依賴、跨國制度和國際制度的發展、民主價值觀念的傳播會不會帶來新的世界秩序？全球化和資訊革命又將如何影響國際政治？這些...

Cognition Switch: An Artefact for the Transmission of New IdeasIssue #2: January 2019Featuring Ideas by:Michael Shermer, Peter Staudenmaier, Sabine Hossenfelder, Kate Raworth, Benjamin G Martin, Noah Charney, David Wengrow, Kimberley Brownlee, Tali Sharot, Robert Simpson, Thea Bechshoft, Martin Rees, Jon Butterworth, Bill Nye, Huw Price, and Henry Cowles

SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY, HUMORThe Unidentified Funny Objects series delivers an annual dose of funny, zany, and unusual science fiction and fantasy stories. All-new fiction from the genre's top voices!* Superheroes mired in government bureaucracy.* Cat cat-burglars.* Grandmotherly golems.* Literal-minded self-driving cars.* Evil overlords retired in Florida.* Indifferent aliens.

SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY, HUMOR* Aztec Astronauts* Punster Prophets* Apocalyptic Apps* Cantankerous Cryptids* and the Duck KnightFifth annual volume of the Unidentified Funny Objects anthology series features eighteen lighthearted science fiction and fantasy tales from the masters of the genre.Read about planetary adoptions, secret agent princesses, alien cooking reality shows, rigged elections, magical insurance agents, and much more.