If you have a nagging feeling that life is getting increasingly hazardous, you may be interested in the new book, “Operational Risk Management,” by Mark D. Abkowitz, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University.The book contains 15 case studies of major disasters, including September 11, Hurricane Katrina and the losses of the Challenger and Columbia space shuttles. It also includes two success stories where major disasters were averted through careful planning, extraordinary communication and teamwork.
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In this book David Wood accepts, without pessimism, the broad postmodern idea of the end of time. Wood exposes the rich, stratified, and non-linear textures of temporal complexity that characterize our world.
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College education is one of the most important investments a family will make. But between the viewbooks, websites, insider gossip, and magazine rankings, students and their worried parents face a dizzying array of options. What do the rankings really mean? Is it wise to choose the most prestigious school a student can get into? What are the payoffs of higher education and, by the way, how do we pay for them?
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Remapping Reality: Chaos and Creativity in Science and Literature is about intersections among science, philosophy and literature. Author John McCarthy bridges the gap between the traditional "cultures" of science and the humanities by creating an area of interaction that some have called a "third culture." By asking questions about three disciplines rather than about just two, as is customary in research, Remapping Reality breaks new ground in both philosophy and science. Rather than privileging one discipline over another, this study seeks to uncover a common ground for science, ethics, and literary creativity.
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The governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown created an original cocktail of three quarters néolibérales reforms and antilibérales inspired by the American example, a Scandinavian finger of social democracy and an acute will of experimentation which deeply transformed Great Britain. Controlling the country and his party, New Labor, by a combination of slogans and indicators of performance, a force of conviction and an extraordinary leadership, Tony Blair succeeded in making radical reforms of the State and public services, while maintaining growth and economic stability. Whereas Blair leaves the direction of the country, pushed by his party, his rival, a business of corruption and an increasing unpopularity worsened by the loss of confidence related to the invasion of Iraq, this work proposes an original analysis of the laboratory of New Labour and its effects on the life of the British citizens. Warning: this bureaucratic revolution is diffuse in Europe and France!
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Debating Immigration presents 18 original essays, written by some of the world's leading experts and preeminent scholars, that explore the nuances of contemporary immigration and citizenship affecting the United States and Europe. The volume is organized around the following themes: religion and philosophy, law and policy, economics and demographics, race and ethnicity, and cosmopolitanism. Critical questions addressed include: What accounts for the disconnect between public attitudes about immigration and the policies produced by elected officials? Why has the United States not developed a well-articulated public philosophy of immigration?
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Freedom of speech is one of our basic rights as United States citizens, but many Americans in the workforce are faced with the choice between exercising this right and keeping their jobs. While the American people are protected from censorship by the government, there are no laws to protect free speech in the workplace.
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The way we define planets within our solar system is continually changing as scientists constantly discover new objects in space. Pluto has gained attention recently as it was demoted to "dwarf planet", but scientists have been debating its status since it was discovered in 1930. Is Pluto a Planet? doesn't just answer that question. Instead it guides readers through the history of the solar system. Readers learn what the word "planet" really means and how that meaning has changed as people have continued to make new discoveries in astronomy. David Weintraub gives readers the information they need to understand the science surrounding Pluto and find their own answers.
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The challenges of evaluating the moral complexities of people’s actions in war – military and civilian – propelled Vanderbilt University historian Michael Bess to write about World War II, a conflict that he said is too often depicted in morally simplistic terms.
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