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8 Great eBooks ! ! ! (eBook Compilation) ! ! !

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1. Citizenship And Sovereignty 2009

2. The Tunguska Fireball - By Surendra Verma 2005

In the early morning of June 30, 1908, a fireball flew across the Siberian sky and exploded in a 15 megaton blast that flattened 2,150 acres of Siberian forest. In the years that followed, scientists correlated atmospheric pressure readings, reports of unusually bright sunsets and "night glows" in the skies over northern Europe, recordings of seismic waves, and eyewitness accounts, concluding that the cause was probably a stony asteroid that entered the earth's atmosphere and broke up explosively 8 kilometers above the Earth at 7:14 am local time.

Verma's story doesn't end there, of course, or "The Tunguska Fireball" would be a fairly short book. As it is, Verma uses the Tunguska event to embark on an entertaining discussion of how scientists came to understand what had probably happened in the skies over Siberia. The investigations into this remote area were difficult and the findings yielded many interesting theories, ranging from fairly plausible ideas about the arrival of a stony asteroid or comet, to more exotic hypotheses involving black holes, antimatter, mirror matter, volcanoes, ball lightning, and "geometeors," to really bizarre notions about crippled alien spaceships, laser beams from other planets and death rays secretly invented by Nikola Tesla (really). The Tunguska event offers a great excuse to digress among a number of interesting ideas, although I confess that I find Verma's explanations of the underlying science to be a tad murky at times.

When the dust settles (so to speak), I'll place my bets on the stony asteroid theory, with a sentimental vote for the killer comet--the other hypotheses seem to require too much special pleading to be a compelling way to think about the event, at least based on the information we have in hand today. That said, the most sobering revelation in Verma's book is his report of the "mini-Tunguska" event of September 24, 2002. A US satellite spotted an object that entered the earth's atmosphere, but lost it as it fell below 30 kilometers; a few moments later, another satellite reported a fireball exploding in the cloudy skies above Siberia. The explosion flattened 100 square kilometers of forest with the energy of a small atomic bomb, but no one witnessed the fireball and, as far as we know, no one was killed or injured. The story would have been very different if the object, whatever it was, had exploded above a populated area.

Verma's books makes entertaining and sobering reading. "The Tunguska Fireball" will make you wonder how many more objects are floating around in the void with Earth's name on them.

3. The San Francisco Earthquake - by Richard Worth 2005

This book is about the tragic San Francisco earthquake of 1906.
On April 18, 1906, the quake struck California’s Bay Area, and
with its resulting fires left over 500 people dead and more than
$500 million worth of damage.

4. How to Lose a Battle: Foolish Plans and Great Military Blunders

A remarkable compendium of the worst military
decisions and the men who made them

The annals of history are littered with horribly bad military leaders. These combat incompetents found amazing ways to ensure their army's defeat. Whether it was a lack of proper planning, miscalculation, ego, bad luck, or just plain stupidity, certain wartime stratagems should never have left the drawing board. Written with wit, intelligence, and eminent readability, How to Lose a Battle pays dubious homage to these momentous and bloody blunders, including:

Cannae, 216 B.C.: the bumbling Romans lose 80,000 troops to Hannibal's forces.

The Second Crusade: an entire Christian army is slaughtered when it stops for a drink of water.

The Battle of Britain: Hitler's dreaded Luftwaffe blows it big-time.

Pearl Harbor: more than one warning of the impending attack is there, but nobody listens.

How to Lose a Battle includes more than thirty-five chapters worth of astonishing (and avoidable) disasters, both infamous and obscure -- a treasure trove of trivia, history, and jaw-dropping facts about the most costly military missteps ever taken.

5. The Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster - by W. Scott Ingram, Scott Ingram

This book is about the nuclear accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the former Soviet Union. On April 26, 1986, a massive explosion blew the roof off the plant’s Reactor Four and sent radioactive dust into the air.

6. Encyclopedia of the Antarctic - by Beau Riffenburgh 2006... $449.03

Antarctica is defined politically by the Antarctic Treaty as all areas south of 60 degrees S latitude. Scholars generally consider the boundary to be the Polar Front, an irregularly located current in the Southern Ocean where cold waters meet the warmer waters of the southern Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific oceans. The Encyclopedia of the Antarctic covers these areas as well as a few related geographic locations. Editor Riffenburgh is affiliated with the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge. The encyclopedia follows Encyclopedia of the Arctic, published by Routledge in 2004. The detail of coverage is amazing. The nearly 500 articles range from 500 to 6,000 words and cover Antarctic subjects from islands of the region to various animal life, from plankton to sea mammals. Geologic articles on topics such as fossils, plate tectonics, and volcanoes explore the ties the continent has to the rest of the planet. Countries having Antarctic research stations—for instance, Brazil, Finland, and South Africa—each have a separate entry describing the station, its location, and type of research. Polar exploration is heavily represented through biographical as well as expedition articles. The several appendixes include a chronology, the Antarctic Treaty, a list of signatories to the treaty, a list of research stations, and more. Alphabetical and classified tables of contents initially guide the reader, and the detailed index is repeated in each volume. With shorter entries and color pictures, Antarctica: An Encyclopedia from Abbott Shelf to Zooplankton (Firefly, 2002) is geared more to the general reader. The title under review contains graphs, maps, photographs, and illustrations, but though none are in color, the lack of splash in no way detracts from the usefulness of the title. Highly recommended for all academic and large public libraries. Stratton, Steve

7. Unsettled Matters: The Life & Death of Bruce Lee - Tom Bleecker 1996

This is the often criticized book about martial arts legend Bruce Lee. Author Bleecker was married to widow Linda Lee for a short time, and had access to private files of the Lee estate - maybe that's the reason Bleecker fell "in love" with her. Bleecker's thoughts are not mainstream, he believe there are some cruel things happening to Bruce Lee - there is because of the title Unsettled Matters.

8. Everybody’s guide to Small Claims Court in California (16th edition) - by ralph warner 2006