Viewing the Earth examines the role played by interest groups in shaping the process of technological change, offering valuable insights into how technologies evolve. It traces the history of Landsat from its origins through the launch and use of the first few satellites, showing how a variety of forces shape the form and the eventual reception of any new technology. The Landsat earth resources satellite system was a project of The National Aeronautics and Space Administration that was created to collect data about earth resources from space. The first satellite was launched in 1972 with great fanfare and high expectations. The data proved useful for everything from finding oil to predicting harvests, yet today the successful commercialization of the program is still uncertain. Why? To answer this question, Pamela E. Mack focuses on the negotiating process that went on among different parts of the space agency, other interested government agencies, and various organizations that were potential users of the data. This formal and informal negotiating process, she points out, involved not only choices between alternative technologies and the satellite but also conflicting definitions of what the satellite would do. The story is full of fascinating detail, from the concerns of the intelligence community over civilian satellites looking at the earth to the politics of agricultural survey. Pamela E. Mack is Associate Professor in the History Department at Clemson University.

Included in a program of both online and classroom components, this book is accompanied by an online suggested set of activities intended to introduce remote-sensing to our youngest future scientists. Prompts are provided in the book to these activities through a "Note to teachers and parents." Website includes links to a student's site, and a teacher's guide.

The definitive biography of the revolutionary band Nirvana and its star-crossed frontman Kurt Cobain, hailed by Rolling Stone as “the first [book] to comprehensively tell the band’s tale from Aberdeen, Wash., to world domination” “Amazingly raw and candid . . . an unsparing and extremely honest depiction of the group’s highly tumultuous history . . . Come As You Are is as good as rock bios get.”—Billboard “Just tell the truth. That’ll be better than anything else that’s been written about me.”—Kurt Cobain Nirvana came out of nowhere in 1991 to sell nearly five million copies of their landmark album Nevermind, whose thunderous sound and indelible melodies embodied all the confusion, frustration, and passion of the emerging Generation X. Come As You Are is the close-up, intimate story of Nirvana—the only book with exclusive in-depth interviews with bandmembers Kurt Cobain, Krist Noveselic, and Dave Grohl, as well as friends, relatives, former bandmembers, and associates—now updated to include a final chapter detailing the last year of Kurt Cobain's life, before his tragic suicide in April 1994. Vivid, evocative, and thought-provoking, Come As You Are is an essential document not just for Nirvana fans but for anyone interested in the cultural legacy of the 1990s.