Roped into wacky attempts to break world records, imitate scenes from books, and other inspired ideas, Riley and Reed follow their fearless leader Henry into the wilderness, the bull-riding ring, a haunted house, cataclysmic collision with explosive life forms, and off the roof of a house on a bike.

The foolproof guide to damage control from the "masters of disaster" Whether you're a politician caught with his pants down, a publicly traded company accused of accounting improprieties, a family-owned restaurant with a lousy Yelp review or just the guy in the corner cubicle who inadvertently pushed "reply all," a crisis doesn't have to be the make-or-break moment of your career. For those of us that aren't natural spin doctors, it's hard to resist the impulse to cover your tracks, lie, or act like nothing happened. But resist you must! In Masters of Disaster, Christopher Lehane and Mark Fabiani, reveal the magic formula you need to take control when it's your turn to be sucked into the vortex of the modern spin cycle. Covering the ten commandments of damage control, and based on their work for clients like Bill Clinton, Goldman Sachs and Hollywood studios, the authors outline the strategies that can make real time news alerts, Twitter trend lines and viral videos work for you rather against you. Full of both lively personal anecdotes and hard-knuckled straight talk, this is a must-read for anyone who wants to emerge with their reputation intact.

In this blockbuster installment of the bestselling Middle School series, Rafe and the other favorite characters from James Patterson's books for kids join forces for the first time in a hilarious adventure! Rafe and Jimmy, two misunderstood "troublemakers", are finally up to something good. They're in charge of a huge celebration of books and reading -- but when a small issue snowballs into a big problem that threatens to derail the whole event, they need to work fast to keep things on track! And the best part? Rafe and Jimmy are joined by the funniest storytellers they know, including Jamie Grimm from I Funny, Jacky Ha-Ha, the Kidd family of Treasure Hunters, and super-genius Max Einstein -- everyone's favorite characters from James Patterson's bestselling series for kids!

"Despite warnings of impending disaster, preemptive action is rarely taken by those who have the ability to do so. How do smart, high-powered people, leaders of global corporations, national institutions, even nations, often get it so wrong? While most investigations focus on the technical causes of disaster, Flirting With Disaster examines the psychological, social, and cultural impediments to whistle-blowing, showing what we can do to reduce the possibility of disasters happening at all"--Publisher's website.

An earthquake shatters Haiti and a hurricane slices through Texas. We hear that nature runs rampant, seeking to destroy us through these 'natural disasters'. Science recounts a different story, however: disasters are not the consequence of natural causes; they are the consequence of human choices and decisions. we put ourselves in harm's way; we fail to take measures which we know would prevent disasters, no matter what the environment does. This can be both hard to accept, and hard to unravel. A complex of factors shape disasters. They arise from the political processes dictating where and what we build, and from social circumstances which create and perpetuate poverty and discrimination. They develop from the social preference to blame nature for the damage wrought, when in fact events such as earthquakes and storms are entirely commonplace environmental processes We feel the need to fight natural forces, to reclaim what we assume is ours, and to protect ourselves from what we perceive to be wrath from outside our communities. This attitude distracts us from the real causes of disasters: humanity's decisions, as societies and as individuals. It stops us accepting the real solutions to disasters: making better decisions. This book explores stories of some of our worst disasters to show how we can and should act to stop people dying when nature unleashes its energies. The disaster is not the tornado, the volcanic eruption, or climate change, but the deaths and injuries, the loss of irreplaceable property, and the lack and even denial of support to affected people, so that a short-term interruption becomes a long-term recovery nightmare. But we can combat this, as Kelman shows, describing inspiring examples of effective human action that limits damage, such as managing flooding in Toronto and villages in Bangladesh, or wildfire in Colorado. Throughout, his message is clear: there is no such thing as a natural disaster. The disaster lies in our inability to deal with the environment and with ourselves.

This is the long awaited, revised and illustrated edition of Kings of Disaster, the study of the Rainmakers of the Nilotic Sudan that is in many ways a breakthrough in anthropological thinking on African political systems. Taking his inspiration from René Girard’s theory of consensual scapegoating, the author shows that the longstanding distinction of states and stateless societies as two fundamentally different political types does not hold. Centralized and segmentary systems only differ in the relative emphasis put on the victimary role of the king as compared with that of enemy. Kings of Disaster so proposes an uninvolved solution to the vexed problem of regicide.

"Death is where this story begins; disaster is what follows. In 1987, Andy Warhol overcame his deep fear of hospitalization to seek treatment for a gallbladder ailment he'd neglected for fourteen years. "I'm not gonna make it," he said to his personal physician, who assured him that the surgery he faced was routine. The operation was both routine and successful, but less than twenty-four hours later, Warhol was dead." "The shocking news set off a blizzard of activity: Warhol's East Side townhouse was sealed, his executor took charge, lawyers were called in, canvases were moved to secret warehouse (some never to be seen again), security guards were posted at the Factory. The world that Andy Warhol had carefully constructed over three decades was about to go public." "A brilliant collector, compulsive shopper, and prolific worker, Warhol left vast holdings that included antique furniture and jewelry, real estate, a profitable magazine, contemporary art, and the single most valuable asset, his own unsold work - a collection so large that its appraisal would take months. In their early moments of panic, Warhol's associates set the value of his estate at $10-$15 million. Seven years later, with the estate not yet closed, some claimed that Warhol's empire was worth $220 million, while others would assert that it was worth $827 million. Finally, in April 1994, a New York surrogate's court judge fixed the value of Warhol's estate at more than $500 million." "Shortly after Warhol's death, as directed in his will, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts - a not-for-profit grant-giving organization - was created. By 1990, however, the foundation, the estate that created it, and the attorney who at one time represented both entities would all be at war. At the heart of the conflict was the question of the ultimate worth of one of this century's most influential artists, and, as the multimillion-dollar battle was waged in court, in the gossip columns, and in the pages of newspapers and magazines, a story both absurd and tragic - a veritable saga for the nineties - began to unfold."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This book can serve as a quick reference for either public health practitioners or public safety personnel who need quick information about disaster response for natural, man-made, and weapons of mass destruction. In addition, it identifies the public health role in each aspect of disaster activity, something that no other book has done. It also organizes morbidity and mortality concerns by disaster so that these negative outcomes can be referred to quickly.

Natural Hazards: Earth Processes as Hazards, Disasters and Catastrophes, Fourth Edition, is an introductory-level survey intended for university and college courses that are concerned with earth processes that have direct, and often sudden and violent, impacts on human society. The text integrates principles of geology, hydrology, meteorology, climatology, oceanography, soil science, ecology and solar system astronomy. The book is designed for a course in natural hazards for non-science majors, and a primary goal of the text is to assist instructors in guiding students who may have little background in science to understand physical earth processes as natural hazards and their consequences to society. Natural Hazards uses historical to recent examples of hazards and disasters to explore how and why they happen and what we can do to limit their effects. The text's up-to-date coverage of recent disasters brings a fresh perspective to the material. The Fourth Edition continues our new active learning approach that includes reinforcement of learning objective with a fully updated visual program and pedagogical tools that highlight fundamental concepts of the text. This program will provide an interactive and engaging learning experience for your students. Here's how: Provide a balanced approach to the study of natural hazards: Focus on the basic earth science of hazards as well as roles of human processes and effects on our planet in a broader, more balanced approach to the study of natural hazards. Enhance understanding and comprehension of natural hazards: Newly revised stories and case studies give students a behind the scenes glimpse into how hazards are evaluated from a scientific and human perspective; the stories of real people who survive natural hazards, and the lives and research of professionals who have contributed significantly to the research of hazardous events. Strong pedagogical tools reinforce the text's core features: Chapter structure and design organizes the material into three major sections to help students learn, digest, and review learning objectives.

"This book brings together the latest scholarly research, theories, and case studies to investigate the scale and types of disasters that can impact a library"--