CAPT Erich M. Telfer of the U.S. Coast Guard examines the Intelligence Community and Coast Guard response to the 2010 BP oil explosion on Deepwater Horizon, which spilled tons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Telfer points out problems that hampered the response and suggests approaches for better communication and coordination in future responses.

Infinite Possibilities is the masterwork from teacher, author, and featured speaker Mike Dooley. As the next step beyond his immensely popular Notes from the Universe trilogy, and his follow up, Choose them Wisely, this book contains even more enriching wisdom for living an abundant, joyous life. Mike Dooley knows that we create our own reality, our own fate, and our own luck. We’re beings filled with infinite possibility—just ready to explore how powerful we truly are. Manifesting the magnificence of our dreams isn’t about hard work, but rather about belief and expectation. These principles transcend belief, realizing the truth about our human nature. Your dreams are not accidental, nor inconsequential. And if someone were tell the truth about life, reality, and the powers we all possessed, would it be recognized? Our lives are full of adventures—and not exactly the sky-diving, mountain-climbing variety—but something better. Readers will laugh, applaud, and be inspired by Mike Dooley’s wit and wisdom.

The acclaimed author of Einstein’s Dreams tackles "big questions like the origin of the universe and the nature of consciousness ... in an entertaining and easily digestible way” (Wall Street Journal) with a collection of meditative essays on the possibilities—and impossibilities—of nothingness and infinity, and how our place in the cosmos falls somewhere in between. Can space be divided into smaller and smaller units, ad infinitum? Does space extend to larger and larger regions, on and on to infinity? Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What was the origin of life, and can biologists create life from scratch in the lab? Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, whom The Washington Post has called “the poet laureate of science writers,” explores these questions and more—from the anatomy of a smile to the capriciousness of memory to the specialness of life in the universe to what came before the Big Bang. Probable Impossibilities is a deeply engaged consideration of what we know of the universe, of life and the mind, and of things vastly larger and smaller than ourselves.

Celebrated for bringing a personal touch to history in her Pulitzer Prize–winning epic The Guns of August and other classic books, Barbara W. Tuchman reflects on world events and the historian’s craft in these perceptive, essential essays. From thoughtful pieces on the historian’s role to striking insights into America’s past and present to trenchant observations on the international scene, Barbara W. Tuchman looks at history in a unique way and draws lessons from what she sees. Spanning more than four decades of writing in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Harper’s, The Nation, and The Saturday Evening Post, Tuchman weighs in on a range of eclectic topics, from Israel and Mao Tse-tung to a Freudian reading of Woodrow Wilson. This is a splendid body of work, the story of a lifetime spent “practicing history.” Praise for Practicing History “Persuades and enthralls . . . I can think of no better primer for the nonexpert who wishes to learn history.”—Chicago Sun-Times “Provocative, consistent, and beautifully readable, an event not to be missed by history buffs.”—Baltimore Sun “A delight to read.”—The New York Times Book Review

This book is an ethic of inclusion leading from gender and sexual difference through the social world of race and culture to the natural world.

God’s Grace Empowers You To Do The Impossible!You have probably heard grace defined as God’s unmerited favor and that is absolutely true, but it is so much more. Grace is the power that God willingly gives us to help us do what we could never do on our own. When God said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you,” He was...

The eleven essays in this volume probe multicultural interactions between Indians, Europeans, and Africans in eastern North America's frontier zones from the late colonial era to the end of the early republic. Focusing on contact points between these groups, they construct frontiers as creative arenas that produced new forms of social and political organization. Contributors to the volume offer fresh perspectives on a succession of frontier encounters from the era of the Seven Years' War in Pennsylvania, New York, and South Carolina to the Revolutionary period in the Ohio Valley to the Mississippi basin in the early national era. Drawing on ethnography, cultural and literary criticism, border studies, gender theory, and African American studies, they open new ways of looking at intercultural contact in creating American identities. Collectively, the essays in Contact Points challenge ideas of either acculturation or conquest, highlighting instead the complexity of various frontiers while demonstrating their formative influence in American history. The contributors are Stephen Aron, Andrew R. L. Cayton, Gregory E. Dowd, John Mack Faragher, William B. Hart, Jill Lepore, James H. Merrell, Jane T. Merritt, Lucy Eldersveld Murphy, Elizabeth A. Perkins, Claudio Saunt, and Fredrika J. Teute.

Is Israel worth saving, and if so, how do we secure its future? The Jewish State must end, say its enemies, from intellectuals like Tony Judt to hate-filled demagogues like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Even average Israelis are wondering if they wouldn't be better off somewhere else and whether they ought to persevere. Daniel Gordis is confident his fellow Jews can renew their faith in the cause, and in Saving Israel, he outlines how. 2009 National Jewish Book Award winner Addresses the most pressing issues faced by Israel-and American Jews-today, without recycling the same old arguments Lays to rest some of the most pernicious myths about Israel, including: Jews could thrive without Israel; Israeli Arabs just want equality, and Palestinians just want their own state; peace will come, if Israel will just do the right things "Morally powerful . . . from a writer whose reflections are consistently as intellectually impressive as they are moving. . . . Gordis addresses the exigencies of our time with the urgency they overridingly demand, and with the depth of feeling they inspire."-Cynthia Ozick Gordis has written many popular personal essays and memoirs in the past, but Saving Israel is a full-throated call to arms. Never has the case for defending-no, celebrating-the existence of Israel been so clear, so passionate, or so worthy of wholehearted support.

In March 1938, Hitler's troops invaded Austria, wildly cheered by thousands of spectators. Following the consequent annexation, a Greater Germany plebiscite recorded a 99 percent support for Austro-German unification under Hitler. By 1942, however, Allied leaders at Yalta had declared the annexed country the first victim of Nazi aggression, laying the groundwork for the suppression of Austria's collaboration in the Holocaust and establishing a grossly deficient culture of memory. Among the forgotten were the 130,000 Austrian Jews who escaped the work camps and gas chambers only to find themselves in unfamiliar lands among unsympathetic people. This book, rising out of Austria's Year of Recollection in 1988, contains the narratives of 27 ex-Austrian Jews who were forced into exile following the Anschlusz. Translated from the German by poet Ewald Osers, the book includes accounts of anti-Semitism before Hitler, the annexation, flight from the homeland, and life in exile.

This 4-volume collection is the first compilation of primary sources to historicize the cultural impact of railways on a global scale from their inception in Great Britain to the Great Depression. Gathered together are over 200 rare out-of-print published and unpublished materials from archival and digital repositories throughout the world. Organized by historical geography, this third volume explores the railways through Eurasia.