This is the perfect plane spotting book journal for aviation fans, with prompts for all the airplane information you'll want to record. 6"x9" size Handy travel size

While John McPhee was working on his previous book, Rising from the Plains, he happened to walk by the engineering building at the University of Wyoming, where words etched in limestone said: "Strive on--the control of Nature is won, not given." In the morning sunlight, that central phrase--"the control of nature"--seemed to sparkle with unintended ambiguity. Bilateral, symmetrical, it could with equal speed travel in opposite directions. For some years, he had been planning a book about places in the world where people have been engaged in all-out battles with nature, about (in the words of the book itself) "any struggle against natural forces--heroic or venal, rash or well advised--when human beings conscript themselves to fight against the earth, to take what is not given, to rout the destroying enemy, to surround the base of Mt. Olympus demanding and expecting the surrender of the gods." His interest had first been sparked when he went into the Atchafalaya--the largest river swamp in North America--and had learned that virtually all of its waters were metered and rationed by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' project called Old River Control. In the natural cycles of the Mississippi's deltaic plain, the time had come for the Mississippi to change course, to shift its mouth more than a hundred miles and go down the Atchafalaya, one of its distributary branches. The United States could not afford that--for New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and all the industries that lie between would be cut off from river commerce with the rest of the nation. At a place called Old River, the Corps therefore had built a great fortress--part dam, part valve--to restrain the flow of the Atchafalaya and compel the Mississippi to stay where it is. In Iceland, in 1973, an island split open without warning and huge volumes of lava began moving in the direction of a harbor scarcely half a mile away. It was not only Iceland's premier fishing port (accounting for a large percentage of Iceland's export economy) but it was also the only harbor along the nation's southern coast. As the lava threatened to fill the harbor and wipe it out, a physicist named Thorbjorn Sigurgeirsson suggested a way to fight against the flowing red rock--initiating an all-out endeavor unique in human history. On the big island of Hawaii, one of the world's two must eruptive hot spots, people are not unmindful of the Icelandic example. McPhee went to Hawaii to talk with them and to walk beside the edges of a molten lake and incandescent rivers. Some of the more expensive real estate in Los Angeles is up against mountains that are rising and disintegrating as rapidly as any in the world. After a complex coincidence of natural events, boulders will flow out of these mountains like fish eggs, mixed with mud, sand, and smaller rocks in a cascading mass known as debris flow. Plucking up trees and cars, bursting through doors and windows, filling up houses to their eaves, debris flows threaten the lives of people living in and near Los Angeles' famous canyons. At extraordinary expense the city has built a hundred and fifty stadium-like basins in a daring effort to catch the debris. Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking in his vivid depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those who would attempt to wrest control from her--stubborn, often ingenious, and always arresting characters.

Joe Bovino's Field Guide to Chicks of the United States is the definitive chick guide - the ultimate visual resource for American chickspotting. It's outlandishly hilarious, spot-on accurate, provocatively illustrated, and organized like a field guide to birds, with a series of 2-page profiles on women from over 90 regional, ethnic, and other American subcultures (or species). It's a must-read and for the active and armchair chickspotter in all of us.

One Hundred Young Americans is the first book to paint the full picture of youth culture in America today. Gorgeously photographed and meticulously researched, this year-long project represents photographer Michael Franzini's 30,000-mile journey in search of what it truly means to be a teenager in this hyper-connected, media-driven society. The book is packed with first-hand accounts of youth culture in America from 100 teenagers in 50 states. More than two hundred stunning images show every kind of teenager from every part of our nation, mirroring census data for gender, race, religion and sexual orientation and to strike a balance between urban, rural, suburban and small-town locations. Unlike previous generations, these young people have all grown up with unprecedented access to media and information, and their private lives are more public than ever before. You will read stories that will inspire, move, excite, and even anger you. Along this journey, you will meet people who share your experiences, who remind you of others, and who are unlike anyone you have ever met. You will meet every kind of teenager. The cheerleaders, football jocks, student body presidents, prom queens and other popular kids. The nerds, band geeks, gamers and other not-so-popular kids. Also the skaters, stoners, goths, punks, druggies and a lot of kids whose uniqueness defies labels. What they ultimately have in common is that they are struggling to find their identity and become independent. They are growing up. Prepare yourself. This is what it really means to be young in America today.

Based on the author's true involvement in the 1984 Drug Enforcement Agency sting on Pablo Escobar and the covert arming the Nicaraguan Contras Marshall takes us on midnight runs with a daredevil DEA informant who has infiltrated the Medellin Cartel and is simultaneously running illegal arms to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. The informant character is based entirely on true events of Barry Seal, (working under George Bush and Ollie North) who was running an illegal weapons pipeline from Mena, Arkansas to Central America and a northbound cocaine pipeline from Central America back to Mena. Randolph Chapman is the sidekick to the informant in a deadly game of Mac 10 submachine-guns, cocaine and a corrupt group inside the US Executive Branch, who had formed a covert cocaine trafficking Enterprise of their own, headquartered in the basement of White House. The US Enterprise takes over the routes after the Cartel is rounded up and executed.

Includes jargon, sports slang, and ethnic and regional expressions

This book serves as a fascinating guide to 100 war films from 1930 to the present. Readers interested in war movies will learn surprising anecdotes about these films and will have all their questions about the films' historical accuracy answered. This cinematic guide to war movies spans 800 years in its analysis of films from those set in the 13th century Scottish Wars of Independence (Braveheart) to those taking place during the 21st-century war in Afghanistan (Lone Survivor). World War II has produced the largest number of war movies and continues to spawn recently released films such as Dunkirk. This book explores those, but also examines films set during such conflicts as the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War, World War I, the Vietnam War, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The book is organized alphabetically by film title, making it easy to navigate. Each entry is divided into five sections: Background (a brief discussion of the film's genesis and financing); Production (information about how, where, and when the film was shot); Synopsis (a detailed plot summary); Reception (how the film did in terms of box office, awards, and reviews) and "Reel History vs. Real History" (a brief analysis of the film's historical accuracy). This book is ideal for readers looking to get a vivid behind-the-scenes look at the greatest war movies ever made.