Resources of the Earth: Origin, Use, and Environmental Impact (3rd Edition)

Book Description

Extensively illustrated, balanced, broad-based, and up-to-date, this book explores the nature and critical issues of all major types of earth resources--energy, metallic, nonmetallic, water, soil--and the impacts that resource usage has on the earth environment. It provides geologic background of resource formation and occurrence of most of the various types of resources; offers an international perspective; discusses resources not only from the scientific point of view, but also from the point of economic, political, historical considerations; and considers how the extraction and use of the resources creates impacts--local or global, immediate or delayed, visible or invisible, singular or cumulative. Minerals: The Foundations of Society. Plate Tectonics and The Origins of Mineral Resources. Earth's Resources Through History. Environmental Impacts of Resource Exploitation and Use. Energy from Fossil Fuels. Nuclear Power and Alternative Energy Sources. Abundant Metals. The Geochemically Scare Metals. Fertilizer and Chemical Minerals. Building Materials and Other Industrial Minerals. Water Resources. Soil as a Resource. Future Resources. For anyone interested in earth resources.

Customer Reviews:

Readable text- odd images.......2006-10-29

I enjoyed reading about natural resources in this textbook format, and have gone back to re-read chapters repeatedly. I found this text's approach much more enjoyable and enlightening than my prep school or college geology studies. However, the page layout of the images seemed amateurish:some photographs images were distored to fit the page.

Average customer rating:

GEO Book
Abbott explains how Natural Disasters occur
Natural Disasters
Natural Disasters makes geology interesting!
A great book for beginners interested in this topic!!!

Natural Disasters
Patrick Leon Abbott
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Science/Engineering/Math
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Control of Nature

ASIN: 007329232X

Book Description

This book focuses on natural disasters: how the normal processes of the Earth concentrate their energies and deal heavy blows to humans and their structures. It is concerned with how the natural world operates and, in so doing, kills and maims humans and destroys their works. Throughout the book, certain themes are maintained: * energy sources underlying disasters * plate tectonics and climate change * earth processes operating in rock, water, and atmosphere * significance of geologic time * complexities of multiple variables operating simultaneously * detailed and readable case studies.

Customer Reviews:

GEO Book.......2006-03-16

The book has an excellent number of graphs and pictures and makes it fairly easy to absorb information through self-learning. Great tool with lectures. Sometimes a bit of a drag on the boredom scale depending upon the topic.

Abbott explains how Natural Disasters occur .......2005-09-19

Although Abbott could have done a better job of simplifying some of his explainations, he does a great job of breaking down the formation of Natural Disasters in easy to understand steps. He also provides briefings on real life natural disaster occurances.

Natural Disasters.......2004-05-07

I used this book for one of my Earth and Ocean Science courses at the University of British Columbia. Although I enjoyed the many good examples, I found that the text did not have a very good flow to it. I found some of it to be choppy, and some of the sentences to be quite unclear. I agree, the examples are interesting, but it seems like the text relies on those examples to be interesting. I think a lot of processes could have been explained better, as I thought the point from class notes I received from my professors did a lot better than the text in helping me understand certain processes. I definetely agree it's a beginner text though as the examples give a good indication that natural disasters only occur because humans have inhabited locations that often times threaten lives.

Natural Disasters makes geology interesting!.......1999-10-28

As a developer of geology and earth science college textbooks for major publishers, I've worked with a lot of excellent books. Patrick Abbott's Natural Disasters, second edition, is one of the most interesting, readable, informative, and engaging books available. It doesn't have all the four-color diagrams and photos, and doesn't need them. The book tells many fascinating stories that engage students (e.g., the Lisbon earthquake of 1755), relates these natural events to humanity, and offers outstanding short summaries of geologic phenomena and events (e.g., the K-T extinction). This is one of the few books I keep on my desk to illustrate geologic events and principles for friends and coworkers. Highly recommended!

A great book for beginners interested in this topic!!!.......1999-01-11

I just finished taking a course at Florida International University having to do with natural disasters and this book was the required text. I found the book very interesting and informative. The different forms of natural disasters were seperated by chapters and were very well explained. I found it very easy to learn about natural disasters using this book.

Landscape Planning: Environmental Applications

Average customer rating:

Wetlands overview
Where Physical Geography & Env. Planning share common ground
Environmental Planning
Great book

Landscape Planning: Environmental Applications
William M. Marsh
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Landscape Ecology Principles in Landscape Architecture and Land-Use Planning
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Basic Elements of Landscape Architectural Design

ASIN: 0471485837

Book Description

Increasingly landscape planning requires an understanding of how the landscape functions. Marsh's book provides a unique integration of landscape architecture, forestry, ecology, and geography.

This Fourth Edition incorporates the rapid expansions taking place in the field. It addresses several topics of concern in both public and private sectors such as flooding wetlands, species conservation, and groundwater. Readers will also discover how physical geography, planning, and landscape architecture relate to environmental problems and issues.
* An overview of environmental topics as applied to development, land use, and environmental problems of the landscape
* Focuses on landscape processes, systems, forms, and analysis
* Places greater emphasis on urban environments and site-scale problems
* Arms the reader with a collection of best management practices, which can be applied in the field
* Presents updated case studies that examine planning and design problems

Customer Reviews:

Wetlands overview.......2007-03-29

Clearly explained wetland designations and issues. Good in preparation for the LARE exams part B.

Where Physical Geography & Env. Planning share common ground.......2004-12-17

This may be one of the best introductions to environmental planning for geography students interested in the application of physical geographic techniques. When inquiring minds ask how a Geography major like myself ended up doing septic plan review as a county Environmental Health Specialist I simply point to Marsh's chapter on waste disposal and describe the necessary physical parameters familiar to physical geographers (soil types and percolation rates, groundwater levels, slopes and topography, surface water, geohazards, mapping, etc). There is something for everybody in this book and you don't have to be a geography major to benefit. A very practical text.

Environmental Planning.......2003-11-26

I am a student in environmental planning and have found this book to be extremely useful. It address a variey of things such as watershed, storm discharge, streamflow, etc. It really gives the reader an idea of how to design with nature.

Great book.......1999-12-26

This book was a great tool for the beginning landscape architect. Many great tools for land planning including equations and tables and charts to determine various things like water runoff, erosion, sun exposure, and much more.

Average customer rating:

Outstanding
An Important book about a major influence of the 60's through the 90's
Interesting but too academic
An excellent record of an amazing life
What one person can turn on within these vast systems within which we vibrate

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism
Fred Turner
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

ASIN: 0226817415

Book Description

In the early 1960s, computers haunted the American popular imagination. Bleak tools of the cold war, they embodied the rigid organization and mechanical conformity that made the military-industrial complex possible. But by the 1990s—and the dawn of the Internet—computers started to represent a very different kind of world: a collaborative and digital utopia modeled on the communal ideals of the hippies who so vehemently rebelled against the cold war establishment in the first place.

From Counterculture to Cyberculture is the first book to explore this extraordinary and ironic transformation. Fred Turner here traces the previously untold story of a highly influential group of San Francisco Bay–area entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network. Between 1968 and 1998, via such familiar venues as the National Book Award–winning Whole Earth Catalog, the computer conferencing system known as WELL, and, ultimately, the launch of the wildly successful Wired magazine, Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running collaboration between San Francisco flower power and the emerging technological hub of Silicon Valley. Thanks to their vision, counterculturalists and technologists alike joined together to reimagine computers as tools for personal liberation, the building of virtual and decidedly alternative communities, and the exploration of bold new social frontiers.

Shedding new light on how our networked culture came to be, this fascinating book reminds us that the distance between the Grateful Dead and Google, between Ken Kesey and the computer itself, is not as great as we might think.

Customer Reviews:

Outstanding.......2007-09-03

In lucid, incisive and engaging prose, Fred Turner tells the fascinating story of how innovative modes of working and thinking (born from the World War II military industrial complex) cross-pollinated with hippie counterculture (through the imagination and particular cultural anxieties of Stewart Brand) to produce the current ubiquitous mode of conceiving a world-wide networked reality.

The book isn't a hatchet job of Stewart Brand; but neither is it a celebration of him and his mythology.

It is a sharply-observed, consistently critical look at the ways in which Stewart Brand and his (almost overwhelmingly white, male and privileged) cohort built a particularly powerful ideology, narrative and network around themselves, with very real physical, political, environmental, industrial and ideological consequences.

Damn interesting, and a pleasurable read--Turner's sense of humor and irony are employed subtly but to very enjoyable effect.

An Important book about a major influence of the 60's through the 90's.......2007-05-22

As someone who was deeply and profoundly influenced by the WEC, WER, and the WELL, I found this to both reinvigorate the excitement of the different eras it discusses and, also, to tie them together and provide fresh insights. After I finished it I looked around my office and realized how much of my thinking was influenced by Steward Brand and his experiments. Easily 30% of the books in my library were originally recommended in either the Catalog or the Review. I was also an early WELL subscriber and a `Maniacal' Whole Earth Review subscriber so almost everything mentioned here I could relate to.

It may devolve into `professor-speak' at times but it is well worth it. If you want to know about one of the critical components of both the `counter culture' of the 60's and the internet revolution of the 90's this is a must read.

Interesting but too academic.......2007-05-21

Interesting people and times are covered in this book. The hippie counterculture, Whole Earth Catalog, computer bulletin boards morphing into The Internet, Wired magazine, etc. A good deal of information you probably didn't know, so it may give you a slightly different perspective of this time. Why did these early computer geeks think computers would change society and give power to all the people?

The down side is that it sometimes reads as if it was written by a college professor; but it was! To much theoretical framework for my taste. Still, if you are interested in this time, read the book. You can easily skip the tedious stuff.

An excellent record of an amazing life.......2006-11-26

Stewart Brand is a high-IQ Zelig, who has been a catalyst of so many important developments throughout the last 4 decades of the 20th century. This volume is more scholarly, and more revealing of the social forces at work, than Markoff's What the Dormouse Said. It focuses with great intensity on Brand, due to Turner's unique access to Brand's diaries in the Stanford Library. SB is shown to have been central to far more moments of incipient Renaissance than anyone since Lou Salome, friend of Nietzsche, Rilke and Freud: He joined Ken Kesey as an original Prankster, was the videographer for Engelbart's 'mother of all demos,' then linked up all kinds of communes (including Ant Farm) while founding and editing the Whole Earth Catalog. Besides all the events already mentioned, Turner dives deeply into the WELL, which was the primordial "virtual community", co-founded by Brand. With his vision of power as drawn from network affiliations, Brand then built a consulting company called the Global Business Network, which used scenario planning as a form of "corporate performance art", by fusing countercultural norms with the needs of corporate board rooms. Turner does a fairly good job posing critical questions about how the privileged white male perspective defined the unfolding story. He flags the problem of this privilege, but isn't able to concretely identify how it could have been solved. Read this book to learn how SB helped create the world we live in, and deployed his unique social entrepreneurial skills to stay in the center of the game.

What one person can turn on within these vast systems within which we vibrate .......2006-10-26

Like one of his teachers and friends Buckminster Fuller, Stesart Brand is an archetypal example of the American individualist- inventor the man who Thoreau said ' hears the sound of his own drummer'. Paradoxically the super- individualist Brand is also perhaps the single person most responsible for making ordinary Americans connect with, show concern with the various systems cyber-systems, eco-systems, communications - systems we are moving within.
In this informed, detailed, and extremely well- written survey of the career of Brand, Fred Turner also provides a insightful and exciting look at America 's cultural, and especially 'alternative culture ' development from the sixties through the nineties. Brand meets up on his travels with 'Edge's' John Brockman, with Ken Kesey with whom he is a Merry Prankster, with Bucky Fuller who tries to help his projects,with Kevin Kelly of the 'Wired' world, with many of those seeking new ways of making the Technology connect with communal frameworks that will enable ( at least this is one of Brand's goals) the individual to truly be an individual .
Brand's most famous contribution 'The Whole Earth Catalogue' which was certainly one of the major cultural influences upon the Environmental Movement, and incidentally the Hippy Culture of the Sixties , told us the way we could get anything we needed to make our way into the rapidly changing future. Brand's work as editor and thinker also contributed to the World Wide Web to come, and the name and concept 'personal computer' is also one of his contributions.
This is an important work to read not only to learn about decisive moments in the life of a remarkable individual, but to better understand the world- in- the -making we are a part of.

Severe and Hazardous Weather: An Introduction to High Impact Meteorology

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Severe and Hazardous Weather: An Introduction to High Impact Meteorology
Bob Rauber , John Walsh , and Donna Charlevoix
Manufacturer: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0757517544

An Introduction to Atmospheric Radiation, Volume 84, Second Edition (International Geophysics)

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good introductary book

An Introduction to Atmospheric Radiation, Volume 84, Second Edition (International Geophysics)
K. N. Liou
Manufacturer: Academic Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0124514510

Book Description

This Second Edition of An Introduction to Atmospheric Radiation has been extensively revised to address the fundamental study and quantitative measurement of the interactions of solar and terrestrial radiation with molecules, aerosols, and cloud particles in planetary atmospheres. It contains 70% new material, much of it stemming from the investigation of the atmospheric greenhouse effects of external radiative perturbations in climate systems, and the development of methodologies for inferring atmospheric and surface parameters by means of remote sensing. Liou's comprehensive treatment of the fundamentals of atmospheric radiation was developed for students, academics, and researchers in atmospheric sciences, remote sensing, and climate modeling.

Key Features
*Balanced treatment of fundamentals and applications
*Includes over 170 illustrations to complement the concise description of each subject
*Numerous examples and hands-on exercises at the end of each chapter

Customer Reviews:

good introductary book.......2007-01-10

Good book for both undergrads and grads. also helpful as a reference book for researchers.

Average customer rating:

Impacts of a Warming Arctic
Arctic Climate Impact Assessment
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0521617782

Book Description

The Arctic is now experiencing some of the most rapid and severe climate change on earth. Over the next 100 years, climate change is expected to accelerate, contributing to major physical, ecological, social, and economic changes, many of which have already begun. Changes in arctic climate will also affect the rest of the world through increased global warming and rising sea levels. Impacts of a Warming Arctic is a plain language synthesis of the key findings of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), designed to be accessible to policymakers and the broader public. The ACIA is a comprehensively researched, fully referenced, and independently reviewed evaluation of arctic climate change. It has involved an international effort by hundreds of scientists. This report provides vital information to society as it contemplates its responses to one of the greatest challenges of our time. It is illustrated in full color throughout.

Perils of a Restless Planet: Scientific Perspectives on Natural Disasters

Average customer rating:

Extremely interesting book on science of disasters....
particularly appropriate for a post tsunami read
Couldn't put it down
Readable Non-Fiction
Scientific Perspectives on Natural Disasters

Perils of a Restless Planet: Scientific Perspectives on Natural Disasters
Jr, Ernest Zebrowski , and Jr., Ernest Zebrowski
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Paperback

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Amazon.com

The Johnstown flood of 1889, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, the pan-European bubonic plague epidemic of 1347-51--all of these events left deep impressions on contemporary history and are remembered even today. We have yet to gauge the effects of more modern disasters--for instance, the Kobe earthquake of 1995, which killed 5,000 Japanese--but we recognize their significance. Many scientists are now engaged in developing means to forecast natural disasters more accurately and to put in place more effective safety measures. Ernest Zebrowski tracks their work through history, noting that even the most current of ideas about, say, the dangers of wind shear will almost certainly be proven obsolete in the years to come. Students of technological history, geology, and climatology will find his work stimulating, and general readers will find it highly accessible.

Book Description

From epidemics and earthquakes to tornados and tidal waves, the overwhelming power of nature never ceases to instill humankind with both terror and awe. As natural disasters continue to claim human lives and leave destruction in their wake, Perils of a Restless Planet examines our attempts to understand and anticipate such phenomena. Now available in paperback, this highly acclaimed book draws on actual events from ancient to present times. Coverage focuses on basic scientific inquiry, technological innovation and, ultimately, public policy to provide a lucid and riveting look at the natural events that have shaped our view of natural disasters. While shedding light on the elusive quality of nature's intermittent tantrums and the limits scientific study and laboratory replication impose on our understanding of its mercurial ways, the author extrapolates from the history of science to suggest how we may someday learn to warn and protect the vulnerable populations on our small, tempestuous planet. Compelling and informative, this book will find readers both in and outside of the scientific community.

Customer Reviews:

Extremely interesting book on science of disasters...........2007-05-10

I've long been interested in climate, weather, and geological sciences that have very little to do with the science of the body or biology that I usually teach or that I read for. I didn't get much of this science in school, and I find it fascinating, though of course, it makes me extremely uneasy to read information like this after we have had several very large natural disasters that led to major suffering on the part of human beings partly through our own fault, and partly as a natural condition of being part of an eco-system that is very much impacted by what we humans do.

This book is not just the usual listing of catastrophic happenings, but rather a few major events are listed with significant information about what either led up to the event, or how the event happened, or how and why it impacted civilization. A lot of this stuff was a mix of several different ways of looking at disasters, including epidemiology and population statistics, things that are not usually looked at until way after the event, and even then, are dismissed. But we dismiss this type of study at our own peril. After Katrina, people should understand more that if you put a city near an immense body of water, with no protection for that city, whether natural or otherwise, there will be consequences of that action. Whether that consequence occurs during the lifetime of the people who build that city without thinking on the edge of a precipice, or whether it occurs during their children's lifetime, has little or no bearing on the deliverance of those consequences.

This book is a must read for urban engineers and urban planning. Whether dealing with environmental impact of building unsafely, or the population statistcs of whether an area can adequately support an exponentially growing population without leading to problems such as that seen on Easter Island where a small environment could not support a large population adequately, is up for grabs. I would hope that those who come after us would do better at taking such concerns to heart when planning communities.

Karen L. Sadler

particularly appropriate for a post tsunami read.......2005-11-16

This is an approachable but not dumbed down introduction to the science and history of natural disasters: picking it up in the early post-Thailand/Indonesia/India etc tsunami it explained the whyfores and wherefores as well as the nature and extent of the damage clearly and concisely.
Highly recommended as an either an introduction to more technical treatments, or as an excellent 'popular science' outline of the subject.

Couldn't put it down.......2004-08-06

One of the best books I've read in a long time. This is popular science done right! For a start, the writing is very clear and the author manages to explain some complicated subjects in a straightforward manner.
A book on natural disasters wouldn't be complete without exciting tales of death, mayhem and general destruction. In this book, the author proves himself a first rate yarn spinner. I was on the edge of my seat waiting to hear what happened when Mont Pelee exploded or when Lisbon was swamped by a tsunami.
This is the kind of science book I like. It assumes no prior knowledge of the subject, yet also assumes the reader is intelligent and can grasp new concepts. For example, the second chapter (in a book on natural disasters) is titled "The Evolution of Science" and provides a lucid and compact summary of the history and philosophy of science, no less! Bravo! Another great thing is the auther is always ready to point out the limitations of current science or current techniques. Some authors tend to gloss over the unknowns and pretend they know everything.
You can learn a lot from this book. Each page is dense with scientific information, with no filler. What to do if involved in an earthquake, hurricane, tsunami or volcano. How to build a house. How the richter scale works. Its all in there. And the author isn't afraid to throw a few equations into the mix to illustrate the science behind the discussed phenomenon.
If you are a thinker, you will love this book. Guaranteed!

Readable Non-Fiction.......2004-06-11

If you're the type of person who likes reading about disasters, but who wants more than tales of woe, then buy this book! Zebrowski gives thoughtful descriptions of various natural catastrophes that were exacerbated by human foibles and design shortcomings. His narrative offers enough detail to satisfy the engineer, but explains complex concepts in a manner that makes the material accessible and enjoyable to the layman.

Scientific Perspectives on Natural Disasters.......2002-05-20

Ernest Zebrowski, Jr. is both a teacher and a story-teller in "Perils of a Restless Planet." I picked the book up to review it and found myself reading it from cover to cover all over again.

Stylistically, the author will begin with the story of, say, the San Francisco earthquake (1906). He then compares it to the Messina earthquake (1908), and asks why there were so many more casualties in the Messina quake (only a 33% - 45% survival rate as compared to San Francisco's 99.8% survival rate). This question leads to a discussion of the strengths of materials---how well they perform when deformed by tension, compression, shear, and torsion. In San Francisco, the houses were built of wood, which will bend and twist and allow its occupants time to escape during a quake. The houses in Messina were built of stone. "It is this plastic behavior of wood (versus stone) that explains the dramatic difference in survival rates in the San Francisco and Messina earthquakes of 1906 and 1908."

There's lots of physics (and some biology, archeology, and sociology) in 'Perils' but it is all very clear and palatable. In fact, this book would make a good overview of science for high school students. It's got stories of volcanoes, plagues, earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, asteroids, and poisonous lakes to hold the students' interest. The clear physical explanations of, for example, why some boats will float during a tsunami and others will turn turtle, are an excellent foundation for further explorations into the worlds of science. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in how we've managed to survive and even thrive on the surface of such a restless planet. It is an excellent summary of the science necessary to understand many of the Earth's natural catastrophes.

Climate Change 2007 - Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability: Working Group II contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC (Climate Change 2007)
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Climate Change 2007 - Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability: Working Group II contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC (Climate Change 2007)
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0521705975

Book Description

The Climate Change 2007 volumes of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provide the most comprehensive and balanced assessment of climate change available. This IPCC Working Group II volume brings us completely up-to-date on the vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change. Written by the world's leading experts, the IPCC volumes will again prove to be invaluable for researchers, students, and policymakers, and will form the standard reference works for policy decisions for government and industry worldwide.

The Man Who Fell to Earth (Del Rey Impact)

Average customer rating:

Brilliant, relevant...and very lonely
Good in this Genre
A Sci Fi classic that probably you've not read...
Responce
Amazing!

The Man Who Fell to Earth (Del Rey Impact)
Walter Tevis
Manufacturer: Del Rey
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Man Who Fell to Earth - Criterion Collection

ASIN: 0345431618
Release Date: 1999-09-28

Book Description

T.J. Newton is an extraterrestrial who goes to Earth on a desperate mission of mercy. But instead of aid, Newton discovers loneliness and despair that ultimately ends in tragedy.

Customer Reviews:

Brilliant, relevant...and very lonely.......2007-08-27

This a deceptively simple story, told in simple, uncomplicated prose, but with unexpected depth and relevance. It might come off as slightly trite now, as with most mid-20th century fiction set in "the near future" (the late 1980s, of all things!), but I'm sure in 1963 it was truly a sign of the times. What I'm sure hasn't lost its charge over the years is the tint of sadness, of individualized despair, that permeates the book and ultimately embitters the characters. No one escapes their self-destructive fears - not the American government, not the curious scientist, and most especially not the titular visitor who comes to save his world but can't even save himself. The film version, starring David Bowie, is far more surreal and symbolically charged (and, as with any Nicholas Roeg film, obsessed with sexuality), but the plot is very very similar, and anyone who enjoys one version of the tale should enjoy the other. Definitely recommended!

Good in this Genre.......2006-08-01

As most of the reviewers on this page accurately describe and seem to appreciate, the Sci-Fi elements in this book are subtle and cerebral. There are no silver bodysuits, foil helmets, or strange secret weapons in this book (in fact, the alien protagonist threatens the possession of the latter, but he was only fooling). Instead, the ET life form in this book is just different enough from you and me to still be human but to be a metaphor for the outcast. He is a human, although we learn that his anatomy has enough quirks to make him different and vulnerable. He seems to possess attributes for any variety of self-aware nonconformist (alcoholic, sexually ambiguous, artsy, and socially and intellectually superior while also utterly confused by the society around him - in other words, Truman Capote with reptilian eyes).

The story in a nutshell: alien comes to Earth to fulfill a plan to save the 'people' on his own dying planet. The plan requires him to work with Earthlings using his technology and their materials and labor. The plan starts, like all well-executed plans, with capital financing and good legal counsel. Plan is facilitated by gin-soaked hillbilly woman, savvy patent lawyer, and insightful scientist. Plan is frustrated by gin-soaked alien, bumbling government agents, and a humanly lack of committment to mission. Tale ends with alien moving to Greenwich Village, wearing a big hat, and writing poetry.

This book is not a work of genius, and it's not great science fiction. It is a bit dated, being one of the hundreds of its type that came out in the mid-Cold War era. Its events take place in the unimaginable "future" of the 1980's. Tevis spares us from too many future-world wonders. The government of the US is largely the same as it existed in Tevis' world, as are cars, drinks, media, and air transportation (save for the apparent commonality of space travel). Apart from "coffee pills" there are no scenes like people traveling by personal jet-pack or being operated on by robots.

Overall very enjoyable and worth the praise that it has received on this page. For me, not as mind-bending as Bradbury or Heinlein, and not as pulse-pounding as Finney.

A Sci Fi classic that probably you've not read..........2006-07-19

This is an amazing story. An alien comes to Earth to save it and his race. Will he succeed?

I have a vague recollection of seeing the original movie, and I know I haven't seen the most recent with David Bowie. I don't remember the movie ending the way the book does. Could be my memory!

The Man Who Fell to Earth doesn't need ray guns, explosions, and tentacles. It is absorbing, engaging, and... surprising.

Put this one on your must read list whether you are a fan of the sci fi genre or not.

Responce.......2004-03-19

"The Man Who Fell To Earth, June 5, 2003
Reviewer: A reader from California "
I would just like to comment on what you said, I must agree with just about everything you said.

And with your words about the movie, I believe this was David Bowie's was the perfect, PERFECT role and he is exscatly how I pictured him looking and acting in my mind! Other than that..The sex sence almost made me want to cry, they had the chance to make a wonderful film, {do not get me wrong, the editing was amazing photography wise} and they turned it into a soft porno.

Amazing!.......2004-03-19

I read this book about a month ago, and still it lingers with me. I am not going to go into deatil about the book, becuase I am sure enough, you know the plot line already. Yes, there is only 200 pages, but It is not a easy read. If easy read means, the the words were bigger and huge science words were not involved , then yes..it was an easy read...but don;t judge a book by it's cover. The plot is orginal and complelling.

This book is not for everyone, but I do recomind it for all people. It IS in fact the best book I have EVER read in my life, and I have read a lot of books. This touched something in my heart, and even though it is the revised version of the book, it still has the style and emotion it orignally had.

This book, it without a doubt worth your time. I still remember reading the last few pages of this book and thinking about life. It will open your eyes and open your mind.

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