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A witness to the murder of his acrobat parents at the hands of gangsters, circus orphan Dick Grayson was taken in by Bruce Wayne, becoming the teen hero Robin! Now, follow some of the Boy Wonder's greatest adventures in this action-packed collection that spans all the ages of Robin! Discover Dick's involvement as a founder member of the world's greatest teenage supergroup the Teen Titans! Then follow the exploits of Jason Todd, the second Robin brutally murdered by the Joker, before being brought up to date with current ward Tim Drake's battles on the streets of Gotham City! Written by comics legends Geoff Johns, Dennis O'Neil, Chuck Dixon and Bill Willingham, and sporting a cover by Alex Ross, this essential collection is simply not to be missed! ... Read more

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A clear introduction to modern inorganic chemistry, covering both theory and descriptive chemistry. Uses concepts and models as an organizing principle to facilitate students' integration of ideas. This edition contains a new chapter on group theory and offers expanded coverage of solid state. Features numerous figures and solved examples. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A Thorough Text on Inorganic Chemistry
"Concepts and Meodels of Inorganic Chemistry" is neither anencyclopedia of descriptive inorganic chemistry nor a textbook ofstructural inorganic chemistry.The book is organized into six majorparts:Basic concepts, bonding structure, chemical reactions, coordinationchemistry, organmetallic chemistry, and selected topics.

This textdistincts itself from Cotton's "Basic Inorganic Chemistry",Shriver's "Inorganic Chemistry", and Misseler & Tarr by theamount of information and details presented in each chapter.Inoformationregarding chemical reactions is presented within a framework of conceptsand models that help readers organize and retrieve chemical knowledge. Descriptive chemistry is woven into almost all chapters and is the subjectof special topics chapters.

Atomic and molecular structure, symmetry andbonding are discussed n very thorough and detailed manner.Almost all thetopics in DeKock and Gray's "Chemical Structure and Bonding" areincluded in this volume.Topics that are usually discussed briefly oromitted altogether in many inorganic chemistry texts are given specialattention: stereochemistry models, spectra and bonding, and inorganicmechanisms.Section on organometallic chemistry can serve as an idealsupplement for an organic course. "Concepts and Models of InorganicChemistry" will suit a two-semester inorganic chemistry sequence. While no major texts can cover all the topics in bonding and structure,main group elements, transition metals and spectra, this text has fulfilledall the above purpose.The text is written in a more advanced level thanShriver and Cotton.Well-written book!

A Thorough Text on Inorganic Chemistry
"Concepts and Meodels of Inorganic Chemistry" is neither anencyclopedia of descriptive inorganic chemistry nor a textbook ofstructural inorganic chemistry.The book is organized into six majorparts:Basic concepts, bonding structure, chemical reactions, coordinationchemistry, organmetallic chemistry, and selected topics.

This textdistincts itself from Cotton's "Basic Inorganic Chemistry",Shriver's "Inorganic Chemistry", and Misseler & Tarr by theamount of information and details presented in each chapter.Inoformationregarding chemical reactions is presented within a framework of conceptsand models that help readers organize and retrieve chemical knowledge. Descriptive chemistry is woven into almost all chapters and is the subjectof special topics chapters.

Atomic and molecular structure, symmetry andbonding are discussed n very thorough and detailed manner.Almost all thetopics in DeKock and Gray's "Chemical Structure and Bonding" areincluded in this volume.Topics that are usually discussed briefly oromitted altogether in many inorganic chemistry texts are given specialattention: stereochemistry models, spectra and bonding, and inorganicmechanisms.Section on organometallic chemistry can serve as an idealsupplement for an organic course. "Concepts and Models of InorganicChemistry" will suit a two-semester inorganic chemistry sequence. While no major texts can cover all the topics in bonding and structure,main group elements, transition metals and spectra, this text has fulfilledall the above purpose.The text is written in a more advanced level thanShriver and Cotton.

nice sumary and interesting contents
This is a nice book about inorganic chemistry ... Read more

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Recently, the concept of judgment has emerged as a highly contestatory site for philosophical, rhetorical, and cultural reflection and inquiry. Judgment Calls offers a variety of essays that explore the question of judgment in a postmodern age, seeking out the question of how, once solid ground is pulled out from underneath the position of the judge, one continues to "tread" judgment, to meet obligations while remaining afloat. ... Read more

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The grim history of Nauru Island, a small speck in the Pacific Ocean halfway between Hawaii and Australia, represents a larger story of environmental degradation and economic dysfunction. For more than 2,000 years traditional Nauruans, isolated from the rest of the world, lived in social and ecological stability. But in 1900 the discovery of phosphate, an absolute requirement for agriculture, catapulted Nauru into the world market. Colonial imperialists who occupied Nauru and mined it for its lucrative phosphate resources devastated the island, which forever changed its native people. In 1968 Nauruans regained rule of their island and immediately faced a conundrum: to pursue a sustainable future that would protect their truly valuable natural resources--the biological and physical integrity of their island--or to mine and sell the remaining forty-year supply of phosphate and in the process make most of their home useless. They did the latter.
In a captivating and moving style, the authors describe how the island became one of the richest nations in the world and how its citizens acquired all the ills of modern life: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension. At the same time, Nauru became 80 percent mined-out ruins that contain severely impoverished biological communities of little value in supporting human habitation.
This sad tale highlights the dire consequences of a free-market economy, a system in direct conflict with sustaining the environment. In presenting evidence for the current mass extinction, the authors argue that we cannot expect to preserve biodiversity or support sustainable habitation, because our economic operating principles are incompatible with these activities. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

"Paradise for Sale" got the job done for me.
I came upon Carl McDaniel's "Paradise for Sale" because I had to write a paper on phosphate mining on Nauru for my Environmental Science class. His book covered many of the aspects I needed for my paper including a good history lesson on phosphate, the island itself as well as the history of phosphate mining on Nauru. The only downfall of the book was the "we're doomed" vibe I got while finishing pretty much every chapter.

A look at "Paradise for Sale"
This book wasn't too bad.It has a good point, but the author does a lot of extrapolating and does not give a really good solution to the problem of resource overuse.Also, the author insults much of modern industrial society, but when he descibes his trip to Nauru, he mentions that he wants ice cream at one point and describes the food served there (beef, chicken, jello, and more) as good.Notice that these good foods and the availability of them are products of Western industrial society.Perhaps he is just another professor type who thinks he is above the common man because of his Ph.D and that people will not see the hypocrisy in his ideas and actions.

This is an IMPORTANT book
This is a book on the scale of "Silent Spring". Listen and heed it's message; this earth, our home, is in trouble. "Paradise for Sale" shows us, with fascinating and disturbing examples and in graphic detail, what can happen to the earth if we don't start changing our way of life. The good news is that it can be done but it has to start NOW! Read this book, it's important.

This book is crap
If you want to learn anything about Nauru, don't bother.If you have a significant emotional investment in the idea that the earth is doomed and western culture is raping the planet, then this is the book for you.Justbe sure to read it by candlelight so you aren't guilty of intellectualdishonesty (no animal fat or paraffin candles allowed, either).

But thenintellectual dishonesty is at the very core of this book.The Nauranpeople, who you would think play the central role in this undeniableenvironmental tragedy, are mere scenery.The authors never bother toprovide anything other than shallow reporting of their culture, history orcurrent situation.The fact that the authors are lamenting on their behalfis presumably adequate.Similarly, as pointed out in another review, theauthors wrote most of the book without bothering to visit, then spentthousands of dollars to ride on a gas-guzzling, ozone-destroying jet to addsome credibility to their preconceived notions.And the whole analogy ofNauru (small isolated island with limited resources and diversity) as Earth(large, diverse lots of resources) is simplistic, but really relevant?Theauthors never really bother with relevance, because hey, simplisticanalogies speak for themselves.In any case, the authors don't seem tohave any serious credentials (other than burning sincerity and concern,which is often all you need in some circles), so it is hard to give muchcredence to what they say about science or anything else.

But what Ifound most offensive was the authors' condescending western liberalintellectual "gee aren't the natives cute and oh-so-wise" view ofcertain non-western cultures that they annoint as being "in tune"with their environments.They give a number of examples, but the one thatsticks in my mind is the Ladhki (sp.?) people, who supposedly live inharmony with their harsh mountain environment.The authors concede thatthis culture has a high infant mortality rate, but that individuals whomake it past the age of five generally enjoy a long healthy life.Well,that's just fine isn't it?As long as it's someone else's babies who aredying. . . But then that is the real problem, isn't it; too many people. If they would just stop reproducing (or living, at least since prematuredeath is the unspoken aspect of "living in harmony with theenvironment) and aspiring to the same quality of life that the authorsenjoy (well, they probably feel suitably guilty about it), everything wouldbe fine.

Make no mistakes; turning a tropical island into a lunarwasteland is a terrible thing, and the people who have to live thereprobably wish things were different.But this is so blindingly obviousthat a whole book on the subject would be (and is) ridiculous.

The World Writ Small
The story of Nauru may well be the story of the modern world writ small and fast! In `Paradise for Sale' Carl McDaniel and John Gowdy trace the history of Nauru, a tiny south-Pacific island, to explore how and whyso-called `modern' humans come invariably to live beyond the means ofnature and seem blinded to the warning signals of ecologicalcollapse.

Nauru is a nearly circular islet virtually on the equator witha diameter of only six to seven kilometers. Prior to its `discovery' in1798, the island's human population was only about a thousand totallyself-reliant Micronesians. "In the absence of trade or other contactwith the outside would, the people of Nauru developed a self-contained,durable society" (p. 14). They lived harmoniously within the bounds ofnature, sustained comfortably by plentiful fish, coconuts, pandanus fruit,and a variety of other natural and cultivated crops.

In 20th Centuryterms, the island's greatest boon (and most fatal curse) has been its richdeposits of phosphate. Phosphate is a vital constituent of fertilizer andonce Nauru's bounty was recognized in 1900, the island's fate was sealed.Industrialization was imposed from without. In just a century of mining,mainly to the benefit of one colonial authority after another, Nauru's onceverdant interior, or `topside', today lies devastated. Over 80% of theisland is a desert wasteland.

As they watched their homeland andecosystem being systematically dissipated across the globe, the nativepeople of Nauru were quickly transformed from proud self-sufficiency tohopeless dependence on the global economy. Today, 10,000 inhabitants of theisland's narrow coastal strip live almost entirely on imported goods - eventheir water must now be brought in from distant `elsewheres'. While for thetime being Nauruans remain economically afloat on the bare leavings oftheir colonial legacy, their phosphate wealth is running out and the islandis deeply in ecological and fiscal debt. There is no return to paradise, sowhere do Nauruans go from here?

That's the question McDaniels and Gowdyare really posing to us all. In microcosm, Nauru's modern history is thehistory of the industrial world. In country after country, industrialhumans, thoroughly alienated from nature, have destroyed much of their ownnatural bounties, exceeded their domestic carrying capacities, and come torely on commerce to sustain themselves. In ecological terms, many modernstates `occupy' through trade and exploitation of the global commons, anarea several times larger than their home territories. Their economies stayafloat on high-end manufacturing and the `knowledge' industries, but thebiophysical basis of life is eroding away at an accelerating pace.

Thispattern is clearly neither sustainable nor extendible to all countries, yetwe rush madly to cast the three-quarters of the yet-to-be-developed worldfrom the same mold. Read this book for a thumbnail sketch of this fatalprocess and for the seemingly radical but obvious steps that must be takento ensure a humanely viable future. "The story of how the world cameto be the way it is calls for a reoriented worldview directed towardenduring habitations. To choose and then to walk the path to an enduringcivilization will not be easy..." (p. 174).The question is, must it becatastrophe that forces us to take even the first tentative steps? ... Read more

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Unfortunately, civic values such as equity and justice that constitute the moral grounding of American democracy are losing their place in public affairs. The promise of this democracy is inclusive: no one is to be left out. Yet many people are. Education and the Making of a Democratic People regards the challenge of inclusiveness as a fundamental and non-negotiable educational agenda. America s public schools are one of the main public forums in which people can learn to preserve and actively protect our democratic process. The value of our schools as a democratic forum extends beyond the classroom to parents and other members of local communities. By engaging in conversations and actions that support the democratic purpose of schools, local communities can ensure that the United States will become a healthy, robust democracy that represents all of its citizens. ... Read more