Introduce your child to the magic of Christmas and a good “who dunnit” story with The Case of the Christmas Concert Catastrophe kid’s mystery book! Lyra is so excited for the Christmas concert that she has a hard time focusing on anything else—that is until someone starts sabotaging the decorations needed for the concert! Who would want to get the concert canceled? Join the Gumshoe Gang at Watson Elementary as they solve the latest mystery. Fun Storybook Features: This children's Christmas book includes 9 mystery-filled chapters with exciting illustrations 64 pages with black and white illustrations Lexile 630L About Rourke We proudly publish respectful and relevant non-fiction and fiction titles that represent our diverse readers, and are designed to support reading on a level that has no limits!

Middle school meets the Dark Side in this grimly hilarious survival story of a sci-fi-obsessed eighth grader. Clark Sherman's situation is desperate. He's just crash-landed on an inhospitable planet--also known as Festus Middle School--where the natives don't take kindly to newcomers . . . particularly ones who love sci-fi and memorizing episodes of the hit TV show Star Survivors. Hostile natives include violent bullies, uncaring teachers, and the fiendishly evil Principal Denton, and Clark realizes he'll be lucky enough to survive eighth grade, let alone thrive. But then, three kindred life forms make themselves known . . . and suddenly, Clark finds he not only has the will to survive, but the strength to fight back. Sharp, painfully funny, and deeply moving, Revenge of the Star Survivors is a story for sci-fi fans-- and for anyone who's ever felt alone in this world. Michael Merschel's witty writing, by turns hilarious and heartbreaking, brings Clark's inner strength into the light. Winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Jean Flynn Award for Best Children's Book

Human history is periodically punctuated by natural disasters, from Vesuvius' eruption to the modern-day Covid-19 pandemic. Volcanoes have buried entire cities, earthquakes have reduced structures to smoldering ruins. Floods and cyclones have wreaked havoc on river valleys and coastlines, and desertification and climate change have weakened society's underpinnings. Death tolls are often escalated by starvation and illness, which frequently occur in tandem. This second edition assesses natural disasters on human society and the effect of strategies developed to reduce their impact. This book addresses the interconnectivity of disaster and human responsibility through 23 updated case studies, including a new chapter on the 2011 Tōhoku tsunami and the ensuing Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Al Qaeda detonates a nuclear weapon in Times Square during rush hour, wiping out half of Manhattan and killing 500,000 people. A virulent strain of bird flu jumps to humans in Thailand, sweeps across Asia, and claims more than fifty million lives. A single freight car of chlorine derails on the outskirts of Los Angeles, spilling its contents and killing seven million. An asteroid ten kilometers wide slams into the Atlantic Ocean, unleashing a tsunami that renders life on the planet as we know it extinct. We consider the few who live in fear of such scenarios to be alarmist or even paranoid. But Worst Cases shows that such individuals—like Cassandra foreseeing the fall of Troy—are more reasonable and prescient than you might think. In this book, Lee Clarke surveys the full range of possible catastrophes that animate and dominate the popular imagination, from toxic spills and terrorism to plane crashes and pandemics. Along the way, he explores how the ubiquity of worst cases in everyday life has rendered them ordinary and mundane. Fear and dread, Clarke argues, have actually become too rare: only when the public has more substantial information and more credible warnings will it take worst cases as seriously as it should. A timely and necessary look into how we think about the unthinkable, Worst Cases will be must reading for anyone attuned to our current climate of threat and fear.

China is the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world and also suffers from devastating climate catastrophes. Increasingly, policymakers in China have come to realize that government alone cannot adequately prevent or defray climate-related disaster risks. This book contends that a better way to manage catastrophe risk in China is through private insurance rather than directly through the Chinese government. In addition, private insurance could function as a substitute for, or complement to, government regulation of catastrophe risks by causing policyholders to take greater precautions to reduce climate change risks.

Including the latest invaluable insights into catastrophe reinsurance, this book provides you with a wealth of risk management expertise gained from many of the largest catastrophe risk transfer programmes worldwide.

This book aims to provide a straightforward introduction to chemical applications of the catastrophe theory. It is primarily intended for chemists interested in placing chemical reactions in the broader context of non-linear science, but it has a practical relevance for scientists in general. Catastrophe theory deals with those non-linear phenomena in which a continuous change in the control parameters results in a discontinuous alteration of a characteristic quantity of the system. The author discusses the origins of catastrophe theory, giving examples of occurrences in the areas of physics, chemistry and biology. Elementary theory and non-chemical applications are also described. The chemical kinetics and methods of analysis of chemical kinetic equations arising from elementary and generalized catastrophe theories are reviewed. Finally, the theory is applied to analyse and classify phenomena associated with the stability loss that may occur in chemical reactions. The book contains over 100 figures and an extensive subject index.