Why Humans Build Up

★“This great STEAM offering has multiple applications and will be useful for report writers and aspiring architects alike.”—Booklist, starred review ★“Finely detailed inside and outside...Broad in scope, perceptively organized, and enriched with fascinating entries.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review Why did they build it so high? People have been constructing tall buildings for thousands of years, for many different reasons. Castle walls kept people safe. Utility towers transmit TV and cell-phone signals. Observatories give people a bird’s-eye view of the world. Beautiful buildings stand out in the crowd. Skyscrapers provide housing for a lot of people. There are some good reasons for building up, and a few bad ones as well. With a growing global population, we will need more and more space to live, learn and work in. But what does that mean for the health of the planet? Can we do it sustainably? Tall buildings may be part of the answer. From the Great Pyramids of Giza and the Leaning Tower of Pisa to the Burj Khalifa and the Shanghai Tower, Why Humans Build Up asks why and how we build higher and higher, and what that means for the planet.

Winner of the Hugo Award! In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, bestselling Becky Chambers's delightful new Monk and Robot series, gives us hope for the future. It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They're going to need to ask it a lot. Becky Chambers's new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

“Net Zero” has been an effective rallying cry for the green building movement, signaling a goal of having every building generate at least as much energy as it uses. Enormous strides have been made in improving the performance of every type of new building, and even more importantly, renovating the vast and energy-inefficient collection of existing buildings in every country. If we can get every building to net-zero energy use in the next few decades, it will be a huge success, but it will not be enough. In Build Beyond Zero, carbon pioneers Bruce King and Chris Magwood re-envision buildings as one of our most practical and affordable climate solutions instead of leading drivers of climate change. They provide a snapshot of a beginning and map towards a carbon-smart built environment that acts as a CO2 filter. Professional engineers, designers, and developers are invited to imagine the very real potential for our built environment to be a site of net carbon storage, a massive drawdown pool that could help to heal our climate. The authors, with the help of other industry experts, show the importance of examining what components of an efficient building (from windows to solar photovoltaics) are made with, and how the supply chains deliver all those products and materials to a jobsite. Build Beyond Zero looks at the good and the bad of how we track carbon (Life Cycle Assessment), then takes a deep dive into materials (with a focus on steel and concrete) and biological architecture, and wraps up with education, policy and governance, circular economy, and where we go in the next three decades. In Build Beyond Zero, King and Magwood show how buildings are culprits but stand poised to act as climate healers. They offer an exciting vision of climate-friendly architecture, along with practical advice for professionals working to address the carbon footprint of our built environment.

From the internationally bestselling author of the Mars Trilogy and New York 2140 Before Kim Stanley Robinson terraformed Mars, he wrote three science fiction novels set in Orange County, California, where he grew up. These alternate futures—one a post-apocalypse, one an if-this-goes-on future reminiscent of Philip K. Dick, and one an ecological utopia—form a whole that illuminates, enchants, and inspires--collected here as Three Californias. What if... there was a limited nuclear war that left the United States blockaded, fragmented, the few survivors living in the ruins of a once-great nation? What if... this goes on, and technology continues to accelerate, and power continues to be consolidated into corporate culture, a developer’s dream world gone mad: an endless sprawl of condos, freeways, and malls, and designer drugs? What if... a revolution happens, and the US addresses climate change in a responsible way. Is a future green Utopia all that great when you’re young and in love? This Tor Essentials edition of Three Californias includes an introduction by Francis Spufford, bestselling author of Golden Hill and Red Plenty. “[Robinson] invites us to share his characters’ intensely personal, intensely local attachment to what they have. The result may shame you into entertaining new hope for the future.” —The New York Times on Pacific Edge At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

This controversial new book describes how human behaviour - thoughts, emotions, actions and mental health - can be largely explained if we understand how people make sense of their world and how that framework of understanding has been learned. In this ground-breaking book, Peter Kinderman, presents a simple, but radical new model of mental well-being. Published following the publication of the new edition of the controversial, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the author challenges notions such as 'mental illness' and 'abnormal psychology' as old-fashioned, demeaning and invalid, and argues that diagnoses such as 'depression' and 'schizophrenia' are unhelpful. Kinderman argues that one consequence of our current obsession with a medical approach to human well-being and distress, is that human problems are too often merely diagnosed and treated, rather than understood. Witten by an expert in his field, and accessible to all those interested in and affected by mental health issues, The New Laws of Psychology will change the way we define mental illness forever.

Malešević offers a novel sociological answer to the age-old question: 'Why do humans fight?', by emphasising the centrality of social contexts that make fighting possible.

The first true book which biochemically shows how we can lower the risk of developing today's modern diseases through the supplementation of selenium-enriched vegetables, vitamin C, vitamin E, and other common phytochemicals. Free Radical poisons are forever invading our cells causing modern diseases and it is time to stop their damaging affects before it is too late!

This book addresses the link between visual literacy - people's ability to interpret and skillfully use images - and art museums. Art museums invite you to look at objects in different ways. They stimulate your visual curiosity, give you visual satisfaction, and allow the visual to merge with other sensory experiences. All of this makes art museums potentially the ideal learning environments for acquiring visual literacy skills. But how should an art museum stimulate visual literacy in practice? How can it actually become such an ideal learning place? How can it spark visitors' visual literacy and increase their knowledge about it? In this book a wide range of authors from different parts of the world offer their answers. As researchers, curators and educators they provide crucial theoretical insights and reflect on real-life examples.