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Why Taiwan matters : a short history of a small island that will dictate our future / by Brown, Kerry,1967-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Taiwan expert Kerry Brown sums up the history of Taiwan and the danger of a Chinese takeover in this succinct and authoritative book. When the bloody Chinese Civil War concluded in 1949, two Chinas were born. Mao's Communists won and took China's mainland; Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists fled to Taiwan island. Since then, China and Taiwan have drifted into being separate political and cultural entities. Taiwan is now a flourishing democracy and an economic success story: just one of its companies produces over 90 per cent of the semiconductors that power the world's economy. It is a free and vibrant society. For the United States and the West, the island is a bastion of freedom against China's assertive presence in the region. And yet China, increasingly bellicose under Xi Jinping, insists Taiwan is part of its territory and must be returned to it. Should China blockade the island and mount an invasion, it would set off a chain reaction that would pitch it against the US -- escalating a regional war into a global one. Taiwan is thus a geopolitical powder keg. Why Taiwan Matters helps us understand how and why we've arrived at this dangerous moment in history. With unparalleled access to Taiwan's political leaders and a deep understanding of the island's history and culture, Professor Kerry Brown provides a new reading of Taiwan, its twenty-three million people, and how they navigate being caught in this frightening geopolitical standoff. Why Taiwan Matters is the essential book for understanding Taiwan's unique story told in an accessible, expert and urgent way"--
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The end is always near : apocalyptic moments, from the Bronze Age collapse to nuclear near misses / by Carlin, Dan,1965-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.Do tough times create tougher people? Can humanity handle the power of its weapons without destroying itself? Will human technology or capabilities ever peak or regress? No one knows the answers to such questions, but no one asks them in a more interesting way than Dan Carlin. In The End is Always Near, Dan Carlin looks at questions and historical events that force us to consider what sounds like fantasy; that we might suffer the same fate that all previous eras did. Will our world ever become a ruin for future archaeologists to dig up and explore? The questions themselves are both philosophical and like something out of The Twilight Zone. Combining his trademark mix of storytelling, history and weirdness Dan Carlin connects the past and future in fascinating and colorful ways. At the same time the questions he asks us to consider involve the most important issue imaginable: human survival. From the collapse of the Bronze Age to the challenges of the nuclear era the issue has hung over humanity like a persistent Sword of Damocles. Inspired by his podcast, The End is Always Near challenges the way we look at the past and ourselves. In this absorbing compendium, Carlin embarks on a whole new set of stories and major cliffhangers that will keep readers enthralled. Idiosyncratic and erudite, offbeat yet profound, The End is Always Near examines issues that are rarely presented, and makes the past immediately relevant to our very turbulent present.
Subjects: Trivia and miscellanea.; Catastrophical, The; Catastrophical, The.; Civilization; Imaginary histories.; World history; World history.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The story of more : how we got to climate change and where to go from here / by Jahren, Hope,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."Hope Jahren is an award-winning geobiologist, a brilliant writer, and one of the seven billion people with whom we share this earth. The Story of More is her impassioned open letter to humanity as we stand at the crossroads of survival and extinction. Jahren celebrates the long history of our enterprising spirit--which has tamed wild crops, cured diseases, and sent us to the moon--but also shows how that spirit has created excesses that are quickly warming our planet to dangerous levels. In short, highly readable chapters, she takes us through the science behind the key inventions--from electric power to large-scale farming and automobiles--that, even as they help us, release untenable amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. She explains the current and projected consequences of greenhouse gases--from superstorms to rising sea levels--and shares the science-based tools that could help us fight back. At once an explainer on the mechanisms of warming and a capsule history of human development, The Story of More illuminates the link between our consumption habits and our endangered earth. It is the essential pocket primer on climate change that will leave an indelible impact on everyone who reads it."--
Subjects: Global warming.; Greenhouse gases; Climatic changes.; Technological innovations.; Consumption (Economics); Civilization, Modern;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Meet me in Atlantis : my obsessive quest to find the sunken city / by Adams, Mark,1967-;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The New York Times bestselling author of Turn Right at Machu Picchu sets out to uncover the truth behind the legendary lost city of Atlantis. A few years ago, Mark Adams made a strange discovery: Everything we know about the lost city of Atlantis comes from the work of one man, the Greek philosopher Plato. Then he made a second, stranger discovery: Amateur explorers are still actively searching for this sunken city all around the world, based entirely on the clues Plato left behind. Exposed to the Atlantis obsession, Adams decides to track down these people and determine why they believe it's possible to find the world's most famous lost city and whether any of their theories could prove or disprove its existence. He visits scientists who use cutting-edge technology to find legendary civilizations once thought to be fictional. He examines the numerical and musical codes hidden in Plato's writings, and with the help of some charismatic sleuths traces their roots back to Pythagoras, the sixth-century BC mathematician. He learns how ancient societies transmitted accounts of cataclysmic events--and how one might dig out the 'kernel of truth' in Plato's original tale. Meet Me in Atlantis is Adams's enthralling account of his quest to solve one of history's greatest mysteries; a travelogue that takes readers to fascinating locations to meet irresistible characters; and a deep, often humorous look at the human longing to rediscover a lost world"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Plato; Plato; Adams, Mark, 1967-; Atlantis (Legendary place); Explorers.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The future : a novel / by Alderman, Naomi,author.;
"The bestselling, award-winning author of The Power delivers a dazzling tour de force where a handful of friends plot a daring heist to save the world from the tech giants whose greed threatens life as we know it. When Martha Einkorn fled her father's isolated compound in Oregon, she never expected to find herself working for a powerful social media mogul hell-bent on controlling everything. Now, she's surrounded by mega-rich companies designing private weather, predictive analytics, and covert weaponry, while spouting technological prophecy. Martha may have left the cult, but if the apocalyptic warnings in her father's fox and rabbit sermon--once a parable to her--are starting to come true, how much future is actually left? Across the world, in a mall in Singapore, Lai Zhen, an internet-famous survivalist, flees from an assassin. She's cornered, desperate and--worst of all--might die without ever knowing what's going on. Suddenly, a remarkable piece of software appears on her phone telling her exactly how to escape. Who made it? What is it really for? And if those behind it can save her from danger, what do they want from her, and what else do they know about the future? Martha and Zhen's worlds are about to collide. An explosive chain of events is set in motion. While a few billionaires assured of their own safety lead the world to destruction, Martha's relentless drive and Zhen's insatiable curiosity could lead to something beautiful or the cataclysmic end of civilization. By turns thrilling, hilarious, tender, and always piercingly brilliant, The Future unfolds at a breakneck speed, highlighting how power corrupts the few who have it and what it means to stand up to them. The future is coming. The Future is here."--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Dystopian fiction.; Novels.; Billionaires; Conspiracies; End of the world; Future, The; Survival; Technology;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The spinning magnet : the force that created the modern world and could destroy it / by Mitchell, Alanna,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The magnetic North Pole will eventually trade places with the South Pole. Satellite evidence suggests to some scientists that the move has already begun, but most still think it won't happen for many decades. All agree that it has happened many times before and will happen again. But this time it will be different. It will be a very bad day for modern civilization. Award-winning science journalist Alanna Mitchell tells in The Spinning Magnet the fascinating history of one of the four fundamental physical forces in the universe, electro-magnetism. From investigations into magnetism in 13th century feudal France and the realization six hundred years later in the Victorian era that electricity and magnetism were essentially the same, to the discovery that the earth was itself a magnet, spinning in space with two poles and that those poles aperiodically reverse, this is an utterly engrossing narrative history of ideas and science that readers of Stephen Greenblatt and Sam Kean will love. But the recent finding that the Earth's magnetic force field is decaying ten times faster than previously thought, portending an imminent pole reversal, ultimately gives this story a spine tingling urgency. When the poles switch, a process that takes many years, the Earth is unprotected from solar radiation storms that would, among other things, wipe out all electromagnetic technology. No satellites, no internet, no smart phones--maybe no power grid at all. Such potentially cataclysmic solar storms are not unusual. The last one occurred in 2012 and we avoided returning to the dark ages only because the part of the sun that erupted happened to be facing away from the Earth. One leading US researcher is already drawing maps of the parts of the planet that would likely become uninhabitable."--
Subjects: Geomagnetism.; Magnetic pole.; Electromagnetism.; Civilization, Modern;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The knowledge : how to rebuild our world from scratch / by Dartnell, Lewis.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."How would you go about rebuilding a technological society from scratch? If our technological society collapsed tomorrow, perhaps from a viral pandemic or catastrophic asteroid impact, what would be the one book you would want to press into the hands of the postapocalyptic survivors? What crucial knowledge would they need to survive in the immediate aftermath and to rebuild civilization as quickly as possible-a guide for rebooting the world? Human knowledge is collective, distributed across the population. It has built on itself for centuries, becoming vast and increasingly specialized. Most of us are ignorant about the fundamental principles of the civilization that supports us, happily utilizing the latest-or even the most basic-technology without having the slightest idea of why it works or how it came to be. If you had to go back to absolute basics, like some sort of postcataclysmic Robinson Crusoe, would you know how to re-create an internal combustion engine, put together a microscope, get metals out of rock, accurately tell time, weave fibers into clothing, or even how to produce food for yourself? Regarded as one of the brightest young scientists of his generation, Lewis Dartnell proposes that the key to preserving civilization in an apocalyptic scenario is to provide a quickstart guide, adapted to cataclysmic circumstances. The Knowledge describes many of the modern technologies we employ, but first it explains the fundamentals upon which they are built. Every piece of technology rests on an enormous support network of other technologies, all interlinked and mutually dependent. You can't hope to build a radio, for example, without understanding how to acquire the raw materials it requires, as well as generate the electricity needed to run it. But Dartnell doesn't just provide specific information for starting over; he also reveals the greatest invention of them all-the phenomenal knowledge-generating machine that is the scientific method itself. This would allow survivors to learn technological advances not explicitly explored in The Knowledge as well as things we have yet to discover. The Knowledge is a brilliantly original guide to the fundamentals of science and how it built our modern world as well as a thought experiment about the very idea of scientific knowledge itself"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Discoveries in science; Knowledge, Theory of; Survival; Technology;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Terrestrial history : a novel / by Reed, Joe Mungo,author.;
Hannah is a fusion scientist working alone at a remote cottage off the coast of Scotland when she sees a figure making his way from the sea. It is a visitor from the future, a young man from a human settlement on Mars, traveling backwards through time to try to make a crucial intervention in the fate of our dying planet, and he needs Hannah's help. Laboring in the warmth of a Scottish summer, Hannah and the stranger are on the path towards a breakthrough--and then things go terribly wrong. Joe Mungo Reed's intricately crafted novel expands from this extraordinary event, drawing together the stories of four lives reckoning with what it means to take fate into their own hands, moving from the last days of civilization on Earth through the birth of another on Mars. Roban lives in the Colony, one of the first generation born to this sterile new outpost, where he is consumed by longing for the lost wonders of a home planet he never knew. Between Hannah and Roban, two generations, a father and a daughter, face an uncertain future in a world that is falling apart. Andrew is a politician running to be Scotland's First Minister. Andrew believes there is still time for the human spirit to triumph, if only he can persuade people to band together. For his starkly rationalist daughter Kenzie, this idealism doesn't offer the hard tools needed to keep the rising floods at bay. And so, she signs on to work for a company that would abandon Earth for the promise of a world beyond--in contravention of all Andrew stands for. In considering which concerns should guide us in a time of crisis--social, technological, or familial--and reckoning with the question of whether there is meaning to be found in the pursuit of salvation beyond success itself, Joe Mungo Reed has written a novel of elegiac wonder and beauty.
Subjects: Psychological fiction.; Time-travel fiction.; Novels.; Climatic changes; Families; Interpersonal relations; Space colonies; Time travel; Women scientists;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The royal trials / by Mbalia, Kwame.; Makonnen, Joel,Prince,1982-;
"Yared has traveled a long way to find his place in the universe. Light years, even. Though the battle of Addis Prime is over, the spacefaring Axum Empire is still fractured. The kingdom once gave their technology away free of charge, to better humankind. Now, having been missing for over a decade, they're returning to the planet where their galaxy-spanning civilization began--Earth. But they find the planet in disarray. Old Earth's atmosphere is a mess of junked shuttles and satellites. This is especially true of Debris Town, an orbital flotilla where poor spacefarers--left to rot by the Intergalactic Union that rose up in Axum's place--have taken to piracy to survive. Yared is set to speak at the opening of the Royal Trials, a competition of the best exo pilots in the Sol System. But on the day of his speech, the pirates launch an attack! The siege sets off a chain of events that will lead Yared into the depths of Old Earth--and the jaws of a cruel betrayal. There's more to the pirates--and Debris Town--than anyone saw coming"--Provided by publisher.LSC
Subjects: Science fiction.; Adventure fiction.; Imaginary wars and battles; Monsters; Augmented reality; Space pirates;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Signals - A Space Adventure. by Koldtiz, Gottfried,film director.; Müller, Alfred,actor.; Zharikov, Evgeniy,actor.; Mitic, Gojko,actor.; Karel, Irena,actor.; Ugowski, Karin,actor.; Pawlowski, Piotr,actor.; DEFA Film Library (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Alfred Müller, Evgeniy Zharikov, Gojko Mitic, Irena Karel, Karin Ugowski, Piotr PawlowskiOriginally produced by DEFA Film Library in 1970.In the mid-21st century, the research vessel Ikaros has disappeared in space. Commander Veikko of the spaceship Laika assembles a crew to search for the missing ship and its crew. As the team travels through the meteoroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, they receive strange radio signals shortly before discovering the empty wreck of the Ikaros. The signals seem to point to the existence of a foreign civilization and the crew is afraid of a potential threat. Nevertheless, Commander Veikko is convinced that a technologically proficient civilization must be advanced beyond hostility and aggression. A 6K digitization from the original 70mm negatives.Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Feature films.; Foreign films.; Motion pictures.; Science fiction.; Motion Pictures.; Motion pictures--Germany.; Action and adventure films.; Outer space.; Science fiction films.; Motion pictures--Europe.;
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Results 51 to 60 of 60 | « previous