“Ebbesmeyer’s goal is noble and fresh: to show how the flow of ocean debris around the world reveals ‘the music’ of the world’s oceans.”—New York Times Book ReviewThrough the fascinating stories of flotsam, one of the Earth’s greatest secrets is revealed. In Flotsametrics and the Floating World, maverick scientist Curtis Ebbesmeyer details how his obsession with floating garbage—from rubber ducks to discarded Nike sneakers—helped to revolutionize ocean science. Scientist an...

A Silent Spring for our era, this eloquent, urgent, fascinating book reveals how just 50 years of swift and dangerous oceanic change threatens the very existence of life on Earth. Legendary marine scientist Sylvia Earle portrays a planet teetering on the brink of irreversible environmental crisis. In recent decades we've learned more about the ocean than in all previous human history combined. But, even as our knowledge has exploded, so too has our power to upset the delicate balance of th...

Daniel Lenihan's Submerged shares thrilling true stories of underwater expeditions in "a gripping saga of archeological exploration" (#1 New York Times –bestselling author Clive Cussler).Experience a kaleidoscope of real-life underwater missions as revealed by the Founder and Chief of U.S. National Park Service Submerged Cultural Resources Unit (SCRU), ranging from ancient ruin...

When a farmer in Spain captured a two-headed snake in 2002, scientists wanted to study it. When National Geographic Daily News published a story about the discovery, people wanted to read all about it. More than a million people clicked on the site and kept coming back for more unbelievably true stories. An Internet sensation was born. Since then, more than 100 million individuals have clicked on stories put together by David Braun and his crack team of editors for National Geographic Dail...

National Geographic pairs gripping and gruesome stories of shark attacks with cutting edge research to illuminate a fascinating underwater world that few truly understand. Sharks are the world's most fascinating predators—capable of detecting a single drop of blood in 25 million drops of ocean and sensing electricity emitted by their prey. This ebook short takes readers deep into the realm of the very latest shark science, including new insights into the nature of shark attacks around the ...

"Intelligent and highly nuanced… This book may bring tears to your eyes." -- San Francisco ChronicleJournalist Jon Mooallem has watched his little daughter’s world overflow with animals butterfly pajamas, appliquéd owls—while the actual world she’s inheriting slides into a great storm of extinction. Half of all species could disappear by the end of the century, and scientists now concede that most of America’s endangered animals will survive only if conser...

While John McPhee was working on his previous book, Rising from the Plains, he happened to walk by the engineering building at the University of Wyoming, where words etched in limestone said: "Strive on--the control of Nature is won, not given." In the morning sunlight, that central phrase--"the control of nature"--seemed to sparkle with unintended ambiguity. Bilateral, symmetrical, it could with equal speed travel in opposite directions. For some years, he had been planning a boo...

A vivid, up-to-date tour of the Earth's last frontier, a remote and mysterious realm that nonetheless lies close to the heart of even the most land-locked reader.The sea covers seven-tenths of the Earth, but we have mapped only a small percentage of it. The sea contains millions of species of animals and plants, but we have identified only a few thousand of them. The sea controls our planet's climate, but we do not really understand how. The sea is still the frontier, and yet it se...

This is not just the story of one continent and how it formed, it is the tale of how our world came to be the way it is, and how it might become something else in the future. An understanding of the earth sciences is essential to understanding our place on this ball of rock, and Ghost Mountains and Vanished Continents, replete with fascinating information and anecdotes, both personal and geological, provides that understanding in a wonderfully readable form.Today we are altering our...

Scientists have identified Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver as the urban centers of what will be the biggest earthquake, also called a mega-quake, in the continental United States. A quake will happen--in fact it's actually overdue. The Cascadia subduction zone is 750 miles long, running along the Pacific coast from Northern California up to southern British Columbia. In this fascinating book, The Seattle Times science reporter Sandi Doughton introduces readers to the scientists w...

New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • A riveting narrative about the biggest earthquake in North American recorded history—the 1964 Alaska earthquake that demolished the city of Valdez and swept away the island village of Chenega—and the geologist who hunted for clues to explain how and why it took place.At 5:36 p.m. on March 27, 1964, a magnitude 9.2. earthquake—the second most powerful in world history—struck the young state of Alaska. The violent...

The MacArthur Genius and bestselling author tell the story of the ancient sea turtle and what its survival says about our future."Magnificent . . . A joyful, hopeful book. Safina gives us ample reasons to be enthralled by this astonishing ancient animal—and ample reasons to care." —Los Angeles TimesThough nature is indifferent to the struggles of her creatures, the human effect on them is often premeditated. The distressing decline...