Investigative reporter Sasha Mendez gets the rare chance to confront a mysterious cult leader on live television and uncovers more than she could have ever imagined...

An advanced species with the ability to teleport at will seeks to claim our planet and its inhabitants for its own, but upon arriving they become hopelessly intoxicated from our atmosphere.

-Marcus is venturing out of his permanent shelter to check the day's traps and possibly hunt seals on the ice, when he discovers a nearly dead, young female whale researcher out on the ice alone and unconscious.After bringing her back from the frozen brink, she reveals some disturbing details of an armed takeover of her research facility, sounding like the earmarks of a terrorist attack, though nothing in the area is of any strategic or political value.Upon inspecting the s...

Thomas likes to watch, but his clandestine pastime brings him to witness a horrific crime, and he can't report it without exposing his own dirty secret. Is he just as guilty as the perpetrator for not acting or reporting it? The victim thinks so...

Enigmatic patches of light on the largest body in the asteroid belt, Ceres, now suspected to be the work of living organisms, prompts the first manned mission to another celestial body since the moon landing. However, the search for life outside of our planet is quickly eclipsed by something much bigger.

There may be life on other worlds. There may even be life on worlds close to our own. There are, without question, many unknown life forms right here on Earth, right now. Many of these are wiped out by our own actions long before they have the chance to be discovered.What secrets do they hold?There may be life forms on other worlds, maybe even on the moon. Will we find them, or will we trample over them like we have so many on our own world?

Humans have settled into the remains of the cities, leaving the outlying suburbs and rural areas to those afflicted by the parasite.A field biologist in another life, Mike has to find a way to break the parasite's life cycle, before the human species is erased from the planet.

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), one of the most influential of modern thinkers, is also one of the most misunderstood. Malthus' Essay on Population is a work that everyone cites but typically without having read it. This book offers a comprehensive and accurate exposition of his thought, integrating his better-known theory on population with his somewhat neglected analysis of economic development and social structure.In Petersen's Malthus both the general reade...

Official statistics about ethnicity in advanced societies are no better than those in less developed countries. An open industrial society is inherently fluid, and it is as hard to interpret social class and ethnic groups there as in a nearly static community. In consequence, the collection and interpretation of ethnic statistics is frequently a battleground where the groups being counted contest each element of every enumeration.William Petersen describes how ethnic identity is de...

To think that there are no other sentient beings in the universe borders on vanity.-To think that other sentient beings would be any less prone to violence and war than humans borders on naivety.-Collateral damage is a reality with any conflict.-What if there is undelivered ordinance... stray bullets... from distant, cosmic conflicts floating through space like wandering asteroids or long-period comets?-What if bystander Earth was the...

With the insight and clarity that mark all of Petersen's writings, Against the Stream brings together reflections of an unconventional demographer. Thirteen essays on various topics become a cohesive unit by virtue of the author's unique point of view, and the understanding of contemporary events he has gathered in his long mastery of demography is evident in this volume.In a brief introduction the author points out that the viewpoints he expresses in the volume are unorthodox. He covers a...

Problems associated with aggregation and classification are the underlying theme of this book. When data assembled from individuals are presented as group characteristics, this process has logical complications. Racial profiling and ethnic discrimination are obvious examples of the problem. Petersen's book analyzes in general how information from "persons" turns into statistics about specific "people." The book is divided into two parts covering population and ethnicity. The first two chap...