The Ends Of The World

One of Vox’s Most Important Books of the Decade New York Times Editors' Choice 2017 Forbes Top 10 Best Environment, Climate, and Conservation Book of 2017 As new groundbreaking research suggests that climate change played a major role in the most extreme catastrophes in the planet's history, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen takes us on a wild ride through the planet's five mass extinctions and, in the process, offers us a glimpse of our increasingly dangerous future Our world has ended five times: it has been broiled, frozen, poison-gassed, smothered, and pelted by asteroids. In The Ends of the World, Peter Brannen dives into deep time, exploring Earth’s past dead ends, and in the process, offers us a glimpse of our possible future. Many scientists now believe that the climate shifts of the twenty-first century have analogs in these five extinctions. Using the visible clues these devastations have left behind in the fossil record, The Ends of the World takes us inside “scenes of the crime,” from South Africa to the New York Palisades, to tell the story of each extinction. Brannen examines the fossil record—which is rife with creatures like dragonflies the size of sea gulls and guillotine-mouthed fish—and introduces us to the researchers on the front lines who, using the forensic tools of modern science, are piecing together what really happened at the crime scenes of the Earth’s biggest whodunits. Part road trip, part history, and part cautionary tale, The Ends of the World takes us on a tour of the ways that our planet has clawed itself back from the grave, and casts our future in a completely new light.

Five times our world has stood on the brink of Armageddon. It 's been scorched, frozen, poison-gassed, smothered and pelted by asteroids. We are very lucky to be alive - Over the past decade there has been a revolution in our understanding of global apocalypses. Armed with new technology, scientists have uncovered a myriad of clues in the fossil record about what caused these catastrophes a record rife with weird and wonderful creatures like dragonflies the size of seagulls and fishes with guillotines for mouths. Diving into deep time, The Ends of the World reveals how these near extinctions gave rise to our modern world and gives us a terrifying glimpse of what may lie ahead.

The end of the world is a seemingly interminable topic Ð at least, of course, until it happens. Environmental catastrophe and planetary apocalypse are subjects of enduring fascination and, as ethnographic studies show, human cultures have approached them in very different ways. Indeed, in the face of the growing perception of the dire effects of global warming, some of these visions have been given a new lease on life. Information and analyses concerning the human causes and the catastrophic consequences of the planetary ‘crisis’ have been accumulating at an ever-increasing rate, mobilising popular opinion as well as academic reflection. In this book, philosopher Déborah Danowski and anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro offer a bold overview and interpretation of these current discourses on ‘the end of the world’, reading them as thought experiments on the decline of the West’s anthropological adventure Ð that is, as attempts, though not necessarily intentional ones, at inventing a mythology that is adequate to the present. This work has important implications for the future development of ecological practices and it will appeal to a broad audience interested in contemporary anthropology, philosophy, and environmentalism.

Account of the Transglobe Expedition, 1979-1982, led by Ranulph Fiennes. This was the first expedition to circumnavigate the earth via both poles.

The thrilling conclusion to the romantic adventure series that TeenVogue.com calls, a "Da Vinci Code-style thriller for teens." Power balances on a knife's edge. Destiny is uncertain. And love is the most terrifying thing of all. The Circle of Twelve is not who Avery though they were. Neither is Avery. Her mother is dead. Betrayal and attraction and history have tangled the strings that bind her, Jack, and Stellan. And now, Avery and her friends must put aside their own problems and focus on putting a stop to the most dangerous conspiracy of all . . . From London to Russia to Egypt, from the chill of underground crypts to the flash of paparazzi cameras, Avery West will finally have to confront whether her fate means salvation--or destruction.

What a rare mushroom can teach us about sustaining life on a fragile planet Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world—and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: what manages to live in the ruins we have made? A tale of diversity within our damaged landscapes, The Mushroom at the End of the World follows one of the strangest commodity chains of our times to explore the unexpected corners of capitalism. Here, we witness the varied and peculiar worlds of matsutake commerce: the worlds of Japanese gourmets, capitalist traders, Hmong jungle fighters, industrial forests, Yi Chinese goat herders, Finnish nature guides, and more. These companions also lead us into fungal ecologies and forest histories to better understand the promise of cohabitation in a time of massive human destruction. By investigating one of the world's most sought-after fungi, The Mushroom at the End of the World presents an original examination into the relation between capitalist destruction and collaborative survival within multispecies landscapes, the prerequisite for continuing life on earth.

Do you need a little adventure in your life? Could you use a laugh with a helping of inspiration? Then strap your boots on with this amazing travelogue as Malcolm Hunter, a born storyteller, journeys with Jesus across East and North Africa among the nomadic peoples of the Sahara and beyond. Jesus is always on the move. The question is: If we follow Him, where will we end up? An expert on nomadic peoples, Malcolm Hunter shares stories from a lifetime of working in some of the world’s most remote, colorful, and neglected communities. In the early 1960s Malcolm and his wife, Jean, arrived in Ethiopia with only their professional skills—medicine and engineering—and a desire to show God’s love to those in need. Over the next forty years God would lead them across Africa, through lush hills and scorched bush, to a dozen people groups who hadn’t heard the gospel. Wherever the Hunters went, they found that God had been there first. This book is full of astonishing true accounts of Jesus preparing the world’s least reached peoples to encounter Him. Visions, dreams, miracles, shocking customs, and even human blunders and tragedies—God used all these and more to open a way to share the good news. Honest, hopeful, and never far from laughter, Malcolm invites us to consider anew what we can expect when we follow Jesus—wherever He leads.

The third James Maxted thriller from the internationally bestselling author, “a master of the sly double- and triple-cross” (The Seattle Times). The Treaty of Versailles has finally been signed, officially ending the World War I peace negotiations, and the action shifts east, to Tokyo, where a team assembled at Max’s behest anxiously awaits his arrival on the docks. The dashing Royal Flying Corps veteran turned secret service operative had arrived in Paris soon after the end of the Great War to investigate the suspicious death of his father, a British diplomat named Sir Henry, and soon plunged into a treacherous game of cat-and-mouse with the people behind his father’s death: German spymaster Fritz Lemmer and the dark horse of the Japanese diplomatic contingent, Count Tomura. It is in Japan—where Sir Henry worked as a young government agent—that Max hopes to finally uncover the whole truth behind his father’s murder and take down Lemmer’s spy network once and for all. But what Max’s cohort doesn’t know is that his own storyline seems to have come to an end in a villa outside Marseilles. Stuck in limbo, the team decides to pursue their only lead—right into Lemmer’s den. Loaded with death threats, knife fights, a kidnapping or two, and a coded list that has the power to dismantle whole governmental hierarchies, The Ends of the Earth is a masterful work of historical cut-and-thrust that tests the bonds of family and country to their very limit. “Thrilling . . . The third and most satisfying entry in an excellent series of old-school spy thrillers.” —Kirkus Reviews