This concise introductory text provides a complete overview of biodiversity - what it is, how it arose, its distribution, why it is important, human impact upon it, and what should be done to maintain it. It is a timely overview of the serious attempts made to quantify and describe biodiversity in a scientific way.
Verbal Hygiene discusses the use and abuse of language and questions what makes it good and bad, or right and wrong. Cameron examines the practices through which people try to both clean up language and regulate its use in attempts to make it functionally, aesthetically and morally "better.
Amarna Sunset: Nefertiti, Tutankhamun, Ay, Horemheb, and the Egyptian Counter-Reformation
This new study, drawing on the latest research, tells the story of the decline and fall of the pharaoh Akhenaten’s religious revolution in the fourteenth century BC. Beginning at the regime’s high-point in his Year 12, it traces the subsequent collapse that saw the deaths of many of the king’s loved ones, his attempts to guarantee the revolution through co-rulers, and the last frenzied assault on the god Amun.
Ronson's finely written book strikes a perfect balance between curiosity, incredulity, and humor. His characters are each more bizarre than the last, and Ronson does a wonderful job of depicting the colorful quirks they reveal in their often-comical meetings. Through a charming guile, he manages to elicit many strange and amazing revelations. Ronson meets a general who is frustrated in his frequent attempts to walk through walls. One source says the U.S. military has deployed psychic assassins to the Middle East to hunt down Al Qaeda suspects. Entertaining and disturbing.
Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, the third Roman Emperor, is better known by another name: Caligula, a name synonymous with decadence, cruelty and madness. His reign was marked by excess, huge building projects, the largest gladiatorial battles Rome was ever to see - men and animals killed in their hundreds - conspiracies, assassination attempts and sexual scandal. Rufus as a young slave grows up far from the corruption of the imperial court.
