Shlapentokh undertakes a dispassionate analysis of the ordinary functioning of the Soviet system from Stalin's death through the Soviet collapse and Russia's first post-communist decade. Without overlooking its repressive character, he treats the USSR as a "normal" system that employed both socialist and nationalist ideologies for the purposes of technological and military modernization, preservation of empire, and expansion of its geopolitical power. Foregoing the projection of Western norms and assumptions, he seeks to achieve a clearer understanding of a civilization that has perplexed its critics and its champions alike.
Fiske Word Power: The Exclusive System to Learn, Not Just Memorize, Essential Words
The Exclusive System to Learn-Not Just Memorize-Essential Words A powerful vocabulary opens a world of opportunity. Building your word power will help you write more effectively, communicate clearly, score higher on standardized tests like the SAT, ACT, or GRE, and be more confident and persuasive in everything you do. But in order to truly increase your vocabulary, you need a system that works. With most guides, you end up only memorizing the new words for a short time, often not even long enough to use them in tests. Fiske WordPower is different.
From the new set The Solar System, Mars explores the relationship between the Sun and Mars from the point of view of a planetary scientist. This title focuses on the universal unknowns and results of space missions, examines the role of Mars as a recorder of the formation of the solar system, and encourages a more complex understanding of the many sizes and types of bodies that orbit the Sun.
In 350 B.C.E., Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher, wrote that the Earth is the center of the solar system, and that all the other bodies in the solar system orbit the Earth while set into a complex series of spheres. However, in 1514 C.E., Nicolas Copernicus, a Prussian scientist and canon in the Catholic church, challenged these previous beliefs, theorizing that the center of the universe is not the Earth, but the Sun, that the distance from the Earth to the Sun is imperceptible compared to the distance to the stars, and that the apparent retrograde motion of the planets is due to observing them from the orbiting Earth. In a single, informative reference, "The Sun, Mercury, and Venus" discusses the innermost solar system and the importance of the Sun's energy on orbiting bodies. As the closest planet to the Sun, Mercury is the least visited of terrestrial planets and is difficult to see because it is always close to the Sun from the Earth's perspective. The Sun's brightness either damages instruments that attempt to see Mercury, or simply makes Mercury a dim and ill-resolved speck next to the limb of the Sun. This volume also covers the geological characteristics of Venus in relation to the Sun and the rest of the solar system. Perfect for those interested in understanding the science and history behind the exploration of these three celestial bodies, this volume puts a new spin on this exciting area of planetary science.
