Masterpieces Of The Earth

With pages of spectacular photographs, this book pays homage to the powerful forces that shape our planet--fire, ice, water, and wind--revealing extraordinary landscapes and breathtaking geological features. These images, of geysers spewing scalding water, glaciers chiseling out the mountainsides, and red-hot molten lava exploding, demonstrate how Earth's appearance resulted from the incessant, powerful activity of nature and climate change. The portrait that emerges from this exceptional journey captures a living, endlessly changing, world.

Excerpt from Little Masterpieces of Science: The Skies and the Earth Anne Not only has man been winning knowl edge oi her in a thousand fields of exploration, ex periment and philosophy, but each of the myriad strands in her skein is traced as subtly bound to every other in ways unimaginable to the most piercing intellects of eras past. Some of the finest of Pope's verse was inspired in the garden he loved to pace, but how much more he would see around him there were he living now! He would find the whole scheme of heavens and earth implicated in that garden's beauty. Its soil telling of forces of storm and heat and chemic war, all at work, in time too extended for compu tation, to grind primeval rock to fertility. He would see the incomparable tints of every flower conferred by diverse elements aflame in an orb a celestial diameter away; elements akin to the fiower's own substance. Other indebtedness would be detected in the tribes oi* buzzing insects surrounding each blossom, insects, which, while sipping a flower, lend vital aid in continu ing its race. No hue or scent here without its use in enticement of this winged ministry 2 And were the poet's garden only various enough in its tenantry, he might count among his flowers many strictly conforming to the mould of their insect visitors. Wheresoever he might turn his eye in the whole realm of Nature he would see it fuller, richer; its every province more intimately interlaced than when he penned his eloquent Essay on Man. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

A study of the frescos painted by Tiepolo for the Prince Bishop of Wurzburg between 1750 and 1753. The book provides a history of fresco painting and discusses the intricacies, iconography and importance of each scene at Wurzburg, and its development from

The collection of natural mineral crystals housed at the Houston Museum of Natural Science is the finest and best known in the world. Now the treasures of this singular collection are shown in resplendent photographs that will seduce both the connoisseur of beauty and the student of natural history.

For almost ten thousand years, unbaked earth has been used to build remarkable structures, from simple dwellings to palaces, temples, and fortresses both grand and durable. Jean Dethier spent fifty years researching this landmark global survey, which spans five continents and 250 sites. The Art of Earth Architecture demonstrates the wide-ranging applications and sustainability of this building material, while presenting a manifesto for its ecological significance. Featuring raw-earth masterpieces, monumental structures, and little known works, the book includes the temples and palaces of Mesopotamia, the Great Wall of China, large-scale urban developments in Tenochtitlan in Mexico, the medinas of Morocco, and housing in Marrakech and Bogota. This definitive reference features many UNESCO World Heritage sites and contains essays on the historical, technical, and cultural aspects of raw-earth construction from twenty experts in the field, as well as hundreds of photographs, illustrations, and architectural drawings.