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Robbie G. Blakemore

"History of Interior Design and Furniture, Second Edition presents a comprehensive survey of the major historical periods of interior architecture and decorative styles. Now full color throughout, this monumental overview is a journey through five millennia of interior space, architectural details, and furniture." "This work offers more than just a history of style - it examines furniture and design from the broader social, political, economic, and technological perspectives exclusive to each historical period. By examining design as a historical continuum, this insightful book traces the thread of cultural influence across centuries, from the ancient Roman's retrospective look at their Greek forerunners to the revival styles that characterize the Victorian age. Thoroughly researched and clearly presented, this book integrates enlightening facts against a backdrop of the evolution of space and the interior aesthetic over time." "More than 450 elegant photographs and over 175 new illustrations - many covering furniture types such as beds and storage - support the authoritative text inside. Stunning three-dimensional plans convey the spatial relationships that are essential to understanding the history of interior architecture, and a historical timeline chronicles the important events that shaped interior design. Explicit, cogent captions not only identify each figure but also provide insightful commentary that supplements the primary text. This edition is also complete with a new, comprehensive glossary of terms as well as companion Web site."--Jacket.

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Brian Fagan

"In this book, leading scientists weave a compelling story out of the most up-to-date discoveries in different fields of Ice Age research." "As the glaciers melted 10,000 years ago, our ancestors faced a staggering sea-level rise of 120 metres, far in excess of the relatively modest rise predicted for the 21st century. The final chapter issues a stark warning about the future of our planet and the consequences of our profligate lifestyles." "Magnificently illustrated with dramatic landscape photography, fossil remains of our ancestors and Ice Age beasts, and specially commissioned explanatory diagrams, The Complete Ice Age shows both the fragility of our climate system and the power of humans to adapt to the most extreme environmental challenges."--BOOK JACKET.

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John Rajchman

In this series of overlapping essays on architecture and art, John Rajchman attempts to do theory in a new way that takes off from the philosophy of the late Gilles Deleuze. Starting from notions of folding, lightness, ground, abstraction, and future cities, he embarks on a conceptual voyage whose aim is to help "construct" a new space of connections, to "build" a new idiom, perhaps even to suggest a new architecture. Along the way, he addresses questions of the new abstraction, operative form, other geometries, new technologies, global cities, ideas of the virtual and the formless, and possibilities for critical theory after utopia and transgression.

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T. Kenneth Fowler

In The Fusion Quest, T. Kenneth Fowler offers a vivid and colorful insider's account of the decades-long search for fusion power - a potentially abundant and environmentally "clean" energy source that could sustain industrial society in the twenty-first century and beyond. Scientists have known for more than sixty years that nuclear fusion powers the sun and stars. But would it work on Earth? To help answer this question, Fowler explains the physical principles on which fusion is based, describes the experiments that have led to the present state of the art, and shows how all these considerations would affect the design of possible fusion-based nuclear power plants. Fowler describes magnets nearly as cold as outer space surrounding miniature "stars" hotter than the sun; lasers that for the merest split-second produce a blinding flash more powerful than every light bulb in America turned on at once. And he recounts the exciting discoveries of classical physics from Newton to Einstein, from Faraday to Lorentz, that provide the foundation of fusion science today. Ultimately, The Fusion Quest offers an informative and timely look at fusion's potential to provide an environmentally acceptable new energy source in a future more vulnerable to energy shortages and pollution than many of us realize.