Mike Rinder's parents began taking him to their local Scientology center when he was five years old. After high school, he signed a billion-year contract and was admitted into Scientology's elite inner circle, the Sea Organization. Brought to founder L. Ron Hubbard's yacht and promised training in Hubbard's most advanced techniques, Mike was instead put to work swabbing the decks. Still, Rinder bought into the doctrine that his personal comfort was...

The story of our home planet and the organisms spread across its surface is far more spectacular than any Hollywood blockbuster, filled with enough plot twists to rival a bestselling thriller. But only recently have we begun to piece together the whole mystery into a coherent narrative. Drawing on his decades of field research and up-to-the-minute understanding of the latest science, geologist Andrew H. Knoll delivers a biography of Earth, charting...

"Winner of the 2003 Book Award in Science, Phi Beta Kappa" Andrew H. Knoll is the Fisher Professor of Natural History at Harvard University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. A paleontologist by training, he has spent more than two decades working to integrate geological and biological perspectives on early life. Australopithecines, dinosaurs, trilobites--such fossils conjure up images of lost worlds filled with vanished organisms....

Death Valley National Park in California, is a 3.5 million acre desert preserve, boasting the hottest, driest, and lowest spot in North America. Patricia Lawrence is exploring this land of extremes with park geologists.

A former ocean biologist describes how she rediscovered her passion for marine science while investigating the enigmatic jellyfish and what the species' unique physiologies can teach about engineering and environmental stability. "Jellyfish have been swimming in our oceans for well over half a billion years, longer than any other animal that lives on the planet. They make a venom so toxic it can kill a human in three minutes. Their sting--microscopic...

"Dip below the ocean's surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that could not seem more foreign to our own: sea sponges, soft corals, and serpulid worms, whose rooted bodies, intricate geometry, and flower-like appendages are more reminiscent of plant life or even architecture than anything recognizably animal. Yet these creatures are our cousins. As fellow members of the animal kingdom--the Metazoa--they can teach us much about the evolutionary...

A clear-sighted revelation, a deep penetration into the world of Scientology by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the now-classic study of al-Qaeda's 9/11 attack, The Looming Tower. Based on more than two hundred personal interviews with both current and former Scientologists--both famous and less well known--and years of archival research, Lawrence Wright uses his extraordinary investigative skills to uncover for us the inner workings of the Church...

Artificial intelligence has been developed to a point where human intelligence can be uploaded into a computer, achieving a sort of hybrid immortality. Astronaut Christian Brannock welcomes this technology, technology that will make it possible for him to achieve his dream and explore the stars. A billion years later, Brannock is dispatched to Earth to check on some strange anomalies. While there, he meets Laurinda Ashcroft, another hybrid upload....

Travel back in time a billion years to Hawksbill Station -- twice. Join in this haunting tale of time travel, loss, betrayal, and redemption through both versions of Silverberg's Hawksbill Station in the same volume. Includes the original novella and full-length novel versions of 'Hawksbill Station' plus an introduction and afterword, describing how each version came to be written. Jim Barrett, once the leader of an underground movement bent...

Take a journey through some of our planet’s most spectacular wildlife events and learn how the world works, the origin of life and our place in nature. Why do you think animals exist? What purpose do they serve and why do we need them? Wildlife in the Balance is the untold story of how animals are essential for a habitable planet. Renowned field biologist, conservationist and film-maker Ian Redmond OBE describes Wildlife in the Balance as 'perhaps...