Leisure Reading Collection

An enterprising teenager in Malawi builds a windmill from scraps he finds around his village and brings electricity, and a future, to his family. This is based on the true story of William Kamkwamba who is forced to drop out of school because his parents could no longer afford the tuition during a local famine.
Malawi is a small, land-locked country located in east Africa and remains one of the poorest countries in the world despite making significant economic and structural reforms to sustain economic growth. The economy is heavily dependent on agriculture, which employs over 80% of the population, and it is vulnerable to external shocks, particularly climatic shocks.

"The essential universe, from our most celebrated and beloved astrophysicist. What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There's no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson. But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day. While you wait for your morning coffee to brew, for the bus, the train, or a plane to arrive, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry will reveal just what you need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines: from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe"-- Provided by publisher.

After Ed Bair gives an analysis of the current and possible sources of electricity, readers will discover that the concept of a solar space station the subject of Bair’s final chapter is anything but whimsical. Bair shows that the “inexorable decline” in the supply and quality of fossil fuels coupled with the supply and efficiency limitations of nuclear hydroelectric geothermal solar and other alternatives will force governments to explore “not the technical feasibility” of the solar space station “but the technical economic and political feasibility of constructing it in orbit.”
Bair’s authority in the realm of electric power is beyond question. A Brown University PhD he has spent much of his career at Indiana University where he is currently an emeritus professor of Chemistry. A longtime consultant in the solar power industry Ed Bair is a scientist as well as an engineer/technician. -- Foreward