Dr. Golem explores some of the mysteries and complexities of medicine while untangling the inherent conundrums of scientific research and highlighting... its vagaries. In eight chapters devoted to case studies of modern medicine, Collins and Pinch consider the prevalence of tonsillectomies, the placebo effect and randomized control trials, bogus doctors, CPR, the efficacy of Vitamin C in fighting cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, AIDS cures, and vaccination. Throughout, Collins and Pinch remind readers that medical science is an economic as well as a social consideration, encapsulated for the authors in the timeless struggle to balance the good health of the many with the good health of a few. Dr. Golem is a timely analysis of the limitations of medicine that never loses sight of its strengths.“Collins and Pinch carefully tease out key conflicts in the way that medical knowledge is constructed and used and endeavor to show how necessarily complicated medical decision-making must be. . . . They investigate three important issues that lie at the core of medicine’s uncertainty: individual versus collective interests; medicine as a science versus a healing art; and the nature of medical expertise. . . . The authors neither jump on the critical bandwagon nor apologize for medicine’s failings, rather they show that the inherent discrepancy between the pace of medical discovery and the need for immediate succour is one that must be addressed jointly by physician and patient.”—Noah Raizman, The Lancet

Janisse Ray was a babe in arms when a boat of her father’s construction cracked open and went down in the mighty Altamaha River. Tucked in a life... preserver, she washed onto a sandbar as the craft sank from view. That first baptism began a lifelong relationship with a stunning and powerful river that almost nobody knows.The Altamaha rises dark and mysterious in southeast Georgia. It is deep and wide, bordered by swamps. Its corridor contains an extraordinary biodi­versity, including many rare and endangered species, which led the Nature Conservancy to designate it as one of the world’s last great places.The Altamaha is Ray’s river, and from childhood she dreamed of paddling its entire length to where it empties into the sea. Drifting into Darien begins with an account of finally making that journey, turning to medita­tions on the many ways we accept a world that contains both good and evil. With praise, biting satire, and hope, Ray contemplates transformation and attempts with every page to settle peacefully into the now.Though commemorating a history that includes logging, Ray celebrates “a culture that sprang from the flatwoods, which required a judicious use of nature.” She looks in vain for an ivorybill woodpecker but is equally eager to see any of the imperiled species found in the river basin: spiny mussel, American oystercatcher, Radford’s mint, Alabama milkvine. The book explores both the need and the possibilities for conservation of the river and the surrounding forests and wetlands. As in her groundbreaking Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, Ray writes an account of her beloved river that is both social history and natural history, understanding the two as inseparable, particularly in the rural corner of Georgia that she knows best. Ray goes looking for wisdom and finds a river.

The few hundred souls who inhabit Words, Wisconsin, are an extraordinary cast of characters. The middle-aged couple who zealously guards their farm from... a scheming milk cooperative. The lifelong invalid, crippled by conflicting emotions about her sister. A cantankerous retiree, haunted by childhood memories after discovering a cougar in his haymow. The former drifter who forever alters the ties that bind a community. In his first novel in 30 years, David Rhodes offers a vivid and unforgettable look at life in small-town America.

The #1 New York Times bestseller that charts America’s dangerous drift into a state of perpetual war. "One of my favorite ideas is, never to keep an... unnecessary soldier," Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1792. Neither Jefferson nor the other Found­ers could ever have envisioned the modern national security state, with its tens of thousands of "privateers"; its bloated Department of Homeland Security; its rust­ing nuclear weapons, ill-maintained and difficult to dismantle; and its strange fascination with an unproven counterinsurgency doctrine. Written with bracing wit and intelligence, Rachel Maddow's Drift argues that we've drifted away from America's original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war, with all the financial and human costs that entails. To understand how we've arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan, along the way exploring the disturbing rise of executive authority, the gradual outsourcing of our war-making capabilities to private companies, the plummeting percentage of American families whose children fight our constant wars for us, and even the changing fortunes of G.I. Joe. She offers up a fresh, unsparing appraisal of Reagan's radical presidency. Ultimately, she shows us just how much we stand to lose by allowing the priorities of the national security state to overpower our political discourse. Sensible yet provocative, dead serious yet seri­ously funny, Drift will reinvigorate a "loud and jangly" political debate about how, when, and where to apply America's strength and power--and who gets to make those decisions.

For more than a century, oil has been the engine of growth for a society that delivers an unprecedented standard of living to many. We now take for... granted that economic growth is good, necessary, and even inevitable, but also feel a sense of unease about the simultaneous growth of complexity in the processes and institutions that generate and manage that growth. As societies grow more complex through the bounty of cheap energy, they also confront problems that seem to increase in number and severity. In this era of fossil fuels, cheap energy and increasing complexity have been in a mutually-reinforcing spiral. The more energy we have and the more problems our societies confront, the more we grow complex and require still more energy. How did our demand for energy, our technological prowess, the resulting need for complex problem solving, and the end of easy oil conspire to make the Deepwater Horizon oil spill increasingly likely, if not inevitable? This book explains the real causal factors leading up to the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history, a disaster from which it will take decades to recover.

Coauthored by a leading drilling engineering professor/researcher and a well-experienced drilling research advisor, Drilling Engineering explains the... fundamentals and field practices in drilling operations. This textbook is an excellent resource for drilling engineers, drilling supervisors and managers, and petroleum engineering students. Topics covered include:***Drilling rig requirements, selection, and evaluation***Drilling fluids, including functions, types, selection criteria, evaluation, rheology***Drilling fluid hydraulics and design requirements***Drillstring mechanics***Drill bit mechanics, including types, operational requirements, optimization***Well control mechanics***Pore and fracture pressures prediction and application***Directional, horizontal, and multilateral well drilling***Cementing and casing design***Drilling problems and solutions***Overview of underbalanced, slim hole, and coiled tubing drilling Key Features & Benefits for the Reader:***Full understanding of the rotary drilling process and its engineering design aspects***Recognizing drilling problems and determining solution options***Design, execution and post analysis of all drilling programs

Written to meet the changing nature and usage of drilling fluids, this book takes on proper circulation to aid in understanding compo-sition, properties... of mud, water-base drilling muds, oil muds, effects of air, gas, and mist drilling, and various problems that can occur with each method. Includes multiple illustrations, review questions, and a complete glossary.

Author Steve Devereux has completely rewritten and updated this overview of onshore and offshore drilling operations and technology. He takes readers... through the entire drilling process from basic drilling geology through managing drilling operations. The updated edition covers key management issues such as safety, the environment, costs, and regulations. A new chapter offers advice to those considering working in the industry.Drilling Technology in Nontechnical Language, 2nd Edition, is ideal for everyone interested in the drilling industry, including industry veterans, non-engineer industry professionals, and undergraduate petroleum engineering students.New to this edition• New chapter on getting work in the drilling industry (including types of employers, service companies, and drilling-related job definitions) • New graphics to make concepts and equipment easier to understand• Explanations of newer drilling technologies• "Well Control" chapter carefully rewritten to cover issues surrounding the BP Macondo blowout

As richly complex and brutal as the terrain it depicts, here is the mesmerizing, darkly original novel that heralded the arrival of Dennis Lehane, the... master of the new noir -- and introduced Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, his smart and tough private investigators weaned on the blue-collar streets of Dorchester. A cabal of powerful Boston politicians is willing to pay Kenzie and Gennaro big money for a seemingly small job: to find the missing cleaning woman who stole some secret documents. As Kenzie and Gennaro learn, however, this crime is no ordinary theft. It's about justice. About right and wrong. But in Boston, finding the truth isn't just a dirty business ... it's deadly.

Once asked to explain how he had sustained himself over so many years of struggle, César Chávez responded: "I don't think I could base my will to... struggle on cold economics or some political doctrine. For me, the base must be faith."In evaluating the life and struggles of César Chávez, one of the most recognized Latino leaders in the United States and the first labor leader to successfully organize and unionize U.S. farm workers, many historians, journalists, and other writers have largely missed one significant factor of his life—his faith and deep spirituality. The Gospel of César Chávez uses the prolific leader's own words to express his profound faith and the way it shaped his life and leadership.

Fifteen million Americans a year are plagued with alcoholism. Five million of them are women. Many of them, like Caroline Knapp, started in their early... teens and began to use alcohol as "liquid armor," a way to protect themselves against the difficult realities of life. In this extraordinarily candid and revealing memoir, Knapp offers important insights not only about alcoholism, but about life itself and how we learn to cope with it.

In her first full-length graphic memoir, Julia Wertz (creator of the cult-hit comic The Fart Party) documents the year she left San Francisco for the... unfamiliar streets of New York. Don’t worry—this isn’t the typical redemptive coming-of-age tale of a young woman and her glorious triumph over tragedy or any such nonsense. It’s simply a hilarious—occasionally poignant—book filled with interesting art, absurd humor and plenty of amusing self-deprecation. Box by box, Wertz chronicles four sketchy apartments, seven terrible jobs, family drama, traveling fiascos, and too many whiskey bottles to count.

Chosen by John Updike as a Today Show Book Club Pick. Already an award-winning writer, ZZ Packer now shares with us her debut, Drinking Coffee... Elsewhere. Her impressive range and talent are abundantly evident: Packer dazzles with her command of language, surprising and delighting us with unexpected turns and indelible images, as she takes us into the lives of characters on the periphery, unsure of where they belong. We meet a Brownie troop of black girls who are confronted with a troop of white girls; a young man who goes with his father to the Million Man March and must decides where his allegiance lies; an international group of drifters in Japan, who are starving, unable to find work; a girl in a Baltimore ghetto who has dreams of the larger world she has seen only on the screens in the television store nearby, where the Lithuanian shopkeeper holds out hope for attaining his own American Dream. With penetrating insight that belies her youth—she was only nineteen years old when Seventeen magazine printed her first published story—ZZ Packer helps us see the world with a clearer vision. Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is a striking performance—fresh, versatile, and captivating. It introduces us to an arresting and unforgettable new voice.

This study analyzes the impact of Spanish rule on Indian peasant identity in the late colonial period by investigating three areas of social behavior.... Based on the criminal trial records and related documents from the regions of central Mexico and Oaxaca, it attempts to discover how peasants conceived of their role under Spanish rule, how they behaved under various kinds of street, and how they felt about their Spanish overlords.In examining the character of village uprisings, typical relationships between killers and the people they killed, and the drinking patterns of the late colonial period, the author finds no warrant for the familiar picture of sullen depredation and despair. Landed peasants of colonial Mexico drank moderately on the whole, and mostly on ritual occasions; they killed for personal and not political reasons. Only when new Spanish encroachments threatened their lands and livelihoods did their grievances flare up in rebellion, and these occasions were numerous but brief. The author bolsters his conclusions with illuminating comparisons with other peasant societies.