"In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn't a primary concern. On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied 'droid--a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked...

"In this book, early fluent readers will learn about Mars' unique characteristics. Vivid, full-color photos and carefully leveled text engage young readers as they learn more about the planet's defining features, composition, atmosphere, weather, gravity, moons, exploration attempts, and more. Take a Look! infographics feature a diagram showing the planet's location in the solar system as well as a diagram showing the planet's composition. Sidebars...

"In late eighteenth-century England, a spirited young woman copes with the suit of a snobbish gentleman as well as the romantic entanglements of three of her four sisters." --

Modern humans are an indoor species. We spend 90 percent of our time inside, shuttling between homes and offices, schools and stores, restaurants and gyms. And yet, in many ways, the indoor world remains unexplored territory. For all the time we spend inside buildings, we rarely stop to consider: How do these spaces affect our mental and physical well-being? Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors? Our productivity, performance, and relationships? In...

"Enter the dark worlds created by Edgar Allen Poe in the collection "The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales." Poe emphasizes morbidity and death through his tales and poems, and this anthology holds all of Poe's best and most famous works from throughout his career. In "The Fall of the House of Usher," a man and his sister suffer from a strange, debilitating illness. Her death drives him to the point of madness, and the fragile mansion falls...

Winston Churchill's wartime heroics and larger-than-life personality propelled him to the center of the world stage in the twentieth century. To many, not just in Great Britain but around the world, he remains his nation's greatest prime minister, overshadowing all others until perhaps Margaret Thatcher, who regularly evoked and emulated him. Yet while he may have embodied and inspired his country's finest hour, Churchill was arguably not his nation's...

Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and for its presentation of Tom, "a man of humanity," as the first black hero in American fiction. Labeled racist and condescending by some contemporary critics, it remains a shocking,...

"Jupiter is one of the brightest planets in our night sky and by far the largest in the Solar System. What the Romans called the Father of the Sky is huge - its diameter is more than ten times, Earth's and its mass is well over twice the total of all the rest of the planets in the Solar System. Yet in spite of its staggering size, its position relatively close to us, and its prominent place in our myths and imagination, Jupiter has remained the of...

If you think computer security has improved in recent years, Myths of Security will shake you out of your complacency. Longtime security professional John Viega reports on the sorry state of security, with concrete suggestions for professionals and individuals confronting the issue. Provocative, insightful, and often controversial, The Myths of Security addresses IT professionals who deal with security issues, and speaks to Mac and PC users who spend...

Professional baseball players have always been well paid. In 1869, Harry Wright paid his Cincinnati Red Stockings about seven times what an average working-man earned. Today, on average, players earn more than fifty times the average worker's salary. In fact, on December 12, 1998, pitcher Kevin Brown agreed to a seven-year, $105,000,000 contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the first nine-figure contract in baseball history. Brown will be earning...