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Winchester, Simon Krakatoa : The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883
HarperCollins April 1, 2003 0-06-621285-5 / 9780066212852 1st Edition Hardcover Fine/Fine
A tight clean first edition/printing, protected in a new brodart wrapper, n ot price clipped/ex library or a book of the month edition. It may seem a stretch to connect a volcanic eruption with civil and religious unrest in Indonesia today, but Simon Winchester makes a compelling case. Krakatoa tells the frightening tale of the biggest volcanic eruption in history using a blend of gentle geology and narrative history. Krakatoa erupted at a time when technologies like the telegraph were becoming commonplace and Asian trade routes were being expanded by northern European companies. This bustling colonial backdrop provides an effective canvas for the suspense leading up to August 27th, 1883, when the nearby island of Krakatoa would violently vaporize. Winchester describes the eruption through the eyes of its survivors, and readers will be as horrified and mesmerized as eyewitnesses were as the death toll reached nearly 40,000 (almost all of whom died from tsunamis generated by the unimaginably strong shock waves of the eruption). Ships were thrown miles inshore, endless rains of hot ash engulfed those towns not drowned by 100 foot waves, and vast rafts of pumice clogged the hot sea. The explosion was heard thousands of miles away, and the eruption's shock wave traveled around the world seven times. But the book's biggest surprise is not the riveting catalog of the volcano's effects; rather, it is Winchester's contention that the Dutch abandonment of their Indonesian colonies after the disaster left local survivors to seek comfort in radical Islam, setting the stage for a volatile future for the region.
Price:
4000.00 JPY
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Winchester, Simon The Map That Changed the World
Avon Books 2002 0-06-050181-2 / 9780060501815 Paperback Very Good+
Simon Winchester, bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman, prese nts the fascinating story of William Smith, a 19th-century engineer who bec ame the father of modern geology by discovering the various fossil layers u nder the earth and creating the world's first map of the various strata. Be fore he could receive any such acclaim, however, he was forced to overcome a landslide of adversity. Once again, Winchester brings to life an obscure historical figure almost c ompletely forgotten over the years. Smith worked as an engineer at a time w hen canal growth was booming in England -- experienced men were needed to d etermine the most practical route each canal should take. As he surveyed, h e noticed that the rocks were arranged in layers, each layer containing a u nique set of fossils. He quickly realized what this meant: The Earth must b e far older than the 4,004 years commonly thought to be true, as taught by the Bible. For the next 20 years, Smith traveled throughout England, accumulating rock s and fossils -- creating one of the largest collections ever -- while plan ning the creation of a huge hand-painted map that would show the arrangemen t of the various layers. In 1815, his map was produced, at great personal e xpense. Four years later, he was thrown into debtor's prison, and swindled out of his meager profits. He was deemed too "unpolished and ill-educated" to gain entry into the Geological Society, a snub that devastated him. Worst of all, his carefully and painstakingly created map was then plagiarized by a "gentleman," George Bellas Greenough -- a sitting member of both the House of Commons and the Geolo
Price:
500.00 JPY
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Winchester, Simon The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford University Press, USA October 2, 2003 0-19-860702-4 / 9780198607021 1st Edition Hardcover Fine/Fine
A crisp clean hardcover, no markings throughout: With his usual winning blend of scholarship and accessible, skillfully paced narrative, Winchester (Krakatoa) returns to the subject of his first bestseller, The Professor and the Madman, to tell the eventful, personality-filled history of the definitive English dictionary. He emphasizes that the OED project began in 1857 as an attempt to correct the deficiencies of existing dictionaries, such as Dr. Samuel Johnson's. Winchester opens with an entertaining and informative examination of the development of the English language and pre-OED efforts. The originators of the OED thought the project would take perhaps a decade; it actually took 71 years, and Winchester explores why. An early editor, Frederick Furnivall, was completely disorganized (one sack of paperwork he shipped to his successor, James Murray, contained a family of mice). Murray in turn faced obstacles from Oxford University Press, which initially wanted to cut costs at the expense of quality. Winchester stresses the immensity and difficulties of the project, which required hundreds of volunteer readers and assistants (including J.R.R. Tolkien) to create and organize millions of documents: the word bondmaid was left out of the first edition because its paperwork was lost. Winchester successfully brings readers inside the day-to-day operations of the massive project and shows us the unrelenting passion of people such as Murray and his overworked, underpaid staff who, in the end, succeeded magnificently. Winchester's book will be required reading for word mavens and anyone interested in the history of our marvelous,
Price:
1000.00 JPY
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