Author: Michael Allaby File Type: pdf From School Library JournalGrade 8 Up-A much-needed resource that does not disappoint. Nearly 3000 alphabetically arranged entries offer explanations of how the atmosphere works, how weather forms, instruments, important contributors to the advancement of the atmospheric sciences, and more. Allabys entries range from a few words to essays of several paragraphs. The articles are written in a readable style that requires no background knowledge, though a pronunciation guide is lacking. The set is profusely illustrated with black-and-white maps, diagrams, drawings, and photographs-all captioned. Tables and graphs are scattered throughout. Bold entry headings and guide words at the top of each page facilitate access, while generous type size aids readability. There are a number of cross- and see-references. Many articles include Web addresses an appendix rounds them all up. A bibliography of books and articles, chronologies of disasters and discovery, a geological time scale, and a listing of tornadoes of the past are also included. There is a comprehensive index in both volumes. This set will be a useful source for all those weather-related questions, for report material, and for general interest.Dana McDougald, Cedar Shoals High School, Athens, GA 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalScience author Allaby (Illustrated Dictionary of Science A Dictionary of Earth Sciences) has compiled more of a dictionary than an encyclopedia, covering roughly 3000 alphabetically arranged terms pertaining to climatology and meteorology, as well as geology, biology, and astronomy. The longest entries (mostly biographical) run nearly two pages, but the majority are brief definitions. Allaby succinctly describes noteworthy named storms and also includes local weather terms, from the Indian andhis to the Argentinean zonda. Unfortunately, he omits some terms of particular interest to American and Canadian users, including Alberta clipper, humidex, first heave, Mount Washington Observatory, and storm chaser. The entries are extensively cross-referenced and sometimes include a reference or two to web sites or books. Quite a few of the print references, and a full quarter of the titles in the Bibliography and Further Reading, are to other works by the author. Five appendixes complete the work a Chronology of Disasters (selection criteria unspecified), a Chronology of Discoveries, a chart of the geological time scale, a list of destructive Tornadoes of the Past, and a list of web sites. Given the brevity of the entries, this is an optional purchase for libraries with large scientific and technical reference collections. Smaller academic and public libraries might find it useful but should also consider the less expensive The Facts On File Weather and Climate Handbook, also compiled by Allaby, or even a dictionary, such as Storm Dunlops A Dictionary of Weather or The Facts On File Dictionary of Weather and Climate.Nancy R. Curtis, Univ. of Maine Lib., Orono 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Author: Nadja Durbach File Type: pdf In 1847, during the great age of the freak show, the British periodical Punch bemoaned the publics prevailing taste for deformity. This vividly detailed work argues that far from being purely exploitative, displays of anomalous bodies served a deeper social purpose as they generated popular and scientific debates over the meanings attached to bodily difference. Nadja Durbach examines freaks both well-known and obscure including the Elephant Man Lalloo, the Double-Bodied Hindoo Boy, a set of conjoined twins advertised as half male, half female Krao, a seven-year-old hairy Laotian girl who was marketed as Darwins missing link the Last of the Mysterious Aztecs and African Cannibal Kings, who were often merely Irishmen in blackface. Upending our tendency to read late twentieth-century conceptions of disability onto the bodies of freak show performers, Durbach shows that these spectacles helped to articulate the cultural meanings invested in otherness--and thus clarified what it meant to be Britishat a key moment in the making of modern and imperial ideologies and identities. **Review This is a marvelously researched and engagingly written work of history. (Bulletin Of The History Of Medicine 2011-05-19) Spectacle of Deformity is a detailed and provocative history of the Victorian freak show in Great Britain. (Victorian Studies 2011-07-20) From the Inside Flap Nadja Durbachs work generates fresh insights on familiar phenomena such as the Elephant Man, but pushes its enquiry substantially further, extracting significant conclusions from other sensational but hitherto critically unplumbed wonders of the showmans world in the nineteenth century. An excellent piece of historical research.Peter Bailey, author of Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian City