The companion volume to the twelve-hour PBS series from theacclaimed filmmaker behind The Civil War, Baseball, and TheWar America’s national parks spring from an idea as radical as theDeclaration of Independence: that the nation’s most magnificent andsacred places should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, butfor everyone. In this evocative and lavishly illustrated narrative,Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan delve into the history of the parkidea, from the first sighting by white men in 1851 of the valleythat would become Yosemite and the creation of the world’s firstnational park at Yellowstone in 1872, through the most recentadditions to a system that now encompasses nearly four hundredsites and 84 million acres. The authors recount the adventures, mythmaking, and intensepolitical battles behind the evolution of the park system, and theenduring ideals that fostered its growth. They capture theimportance and splendors of the individual parks: from Haleakala inHawaii to Acadia in Maine, from Denali

From the Ferris wheel to the integrated circuit, feats ofengineering have changed our environment in countless ways, big andsmall. In Remaking the World: Adventures in Engineering, DukeUniversity's Henry Petroski focuses on the big: Malaysia's1,482-foot Petronas Towers as well as the Panama Canal, a cutthrough the continental divide that required the excavation of 311million cubic yards of earth. Remaking the World tells the stories behind the man-made wondersof the world, from squabbles over the naming of the Hoover Dam tothe effects the Titanic disaster had on the engineering communityof 1912. Here, too, are the stories of the personalities behind the wonders, from the jaunty IsambardKingdom Brunel, designer of nineteenth-century transatlanticsteamships, to Charles Steinmetz, oddball genius of the GeneralElectric Company, whose office of preference was a batteredtwelve-foot canoe. Spirited and absorbing, Remaking the World is acelebration of the creative instinct and of the men and women

Along with plan and elevation, section is one of the essential representational techniques of architectural design; among architects and educators, debates about a project's section are common and often intense. Until now, however, there has been no framework to describe or evaluate it. Manual of Section fills this void. Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki, and David J. Lewis have developed seven categories of section, revealed in structures ranging from simple one-story buildings to complex structures featuring stacked forms, fantastical shapes, internal holes, inclines, sheared planes, nested forms, or combinations thereof. To illustrate these categories, the authors construct sixty-three intricately detailed cross-section perspective drawings of built projects many of the most significant structures in international architecture from the last one hundred years based on extensive archival research. Manual of Section also includes smart and accessible essays on the history and uses of section.,

Today it is no longer a matter of taste as to how and whichcoffee we drink, as it is even more important where we enjoy it. Amultitude of new cafés, coffee shops and coffee houses around theworld honor a centuries old tradition, setting thereby new designtrends. The task is to create communicative and inspiring locationsand spaces, which at the same time measure up to the functionaldemands. The design solutions are as varied as the concepts, thetransitions to lounge, club or restaurant are flowing. After aninformative introduction, Coffee Time presents current projectsthat show the exciting conceptual and stylistic breadth of cafédesigns today.