Chris Jones

On February 1, 2003, ten astronauts were orbiting the planet. Seven headed back to Earth on the space shuttle Columbia. They never made it. And the three men left behind found themselves too far from home. Chris Jones chronicles the efforts of the beleaguered Mission Control in Houston and Moscow as they work frantically against the clock to bring their men safely back to Earth, ultimately settling on a plan that felt, at best, like a long shot. Yet even amid the danger, the call of space is a siren song, and Too Far From Home details beautifully the majesty and mystique of space travel, while reminding us all how perilous it is to soar beyond the sky.

Whilst many undergraduate finance textbooks are largely descriptive in nature, the economic analysis in most graduate texts is too advanced for latter year undergraduates. This book bridges the gap between these two extremes, offering a textbook that studies economic activity in financial markets, focusing on how consumers determine future consumption and on the role of financial securities. Areas covered in include: an examination of the role of finance in the economy using basic economic principles, eventually progressing to introductory graduate analysisa microeconomic study of capital asset pricing when there is risk, inflation, taxes and asymmetric informationan emphasis on economic intuition using geometry to explain formal analysisan extended treatment of corporate finance and the evaluation of public policy.

Whilst many undergraduate finance textbooks are largely descriptive in nature, the economic analysis in most graduate texts is too advanced for latter year undergraduates. This book bridges the gap between these two extremes, offering a textbook that studies economic activity in financial markets, focusing on how consumers determine future consumption and on the role of financial securities. Areas covered in include: an examination of the role of finance in the economy using basic economic principles, eventually progressing to introductory graduate analysisa microeconomic study of capital asset pricing when there is risk, inflation, taxes and asymmetric informationan emphasis on economic intuition using geometry to explain formal analysisan extended treatment of corporate finance and the evaluation of public policy.

Strange Likeness provides the first full account of how Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) was rediscovered by twentieth-century poets, and the uses to which they put that discovery in their own writing. Chapters deal with Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, Edwin Morgan, and Seamus Heaney. Stylistic debts to Old English are examined, along with the effects on these poets' work of specific ideas about Old English language and literature as taught while these poets were studying the subject at university. Issues such as linguistic primitivism, the supposed 'purity' of the English language, the politics and ethics of translation, and the construction of 'Englishness' within the literary canon are discussed in the light of these poets and their Old English encounters. Heaney's translation of Beowulf is fully contextualized within the body of the rest of his work for the first time.

Applied Welfare Economics uses important results in the welfare economics literature to extend a conventional Harberger cost-benefit analysis. After reviewing the properties of different welfare measures a conventional welfare equation is used to evaluate marginal policy changes in a general equilibrium economy with tax distortions. The analysis is extended to accommodate trade and income taxes, time, internationally traded goods, and non-tax distortions, including externalities, non-competitive behaviour, public goods and price quantity controls. The welfare analysis is developed in stages, and where possible is explained using diagrams, to make it more adaptable to the different institutional arrangements encountered in applied work. With this in mind, computable welfare expressions are solved using demand and supply elasticities for each good. The lump-sum transfers used in a conventional analysis to separate welfare effects are carefully examined to identify the role of the marginal social cost of public funds (MCF) in policy evaluation. The main contribution in the book is to separate income effects for marginal policy changes in the shadow value of government revenue, which converts efficiency effects into dollar changes in private surplus. It is a scaling coefficient that makes income effects irrelevant in single (aggregated) consumer economies, and conveniently isolates distributional effects in heterogeneous consumer economies. The decomposition is used to test for Pareto improvements, and to examine the separate but related roles of the shadow value of government revenue and the MCF in applied work.

The best-selling low-budget filmmaker's bible in the UK has now, at long last, been totally revamped for the US film industry. The two authors have interviewed hundreds of film industry insiders, resulting in, without doubt, the most comprehensive, entertaining, information-packed book available in America on how to produce a low-budget movie for the US market. The book has three main sections: Anatomy of a Movie, Case Studies, and The Toolkit. Anatomy of the a Movie features in-depth, candid interviews with a huge cast of people already working in the film industry - from script readers to bank managers, casting directors to costume providers; and from sound mixers to negative cutters. Case Studies tells the stories of a selection of low-budget movies, and how they were made. These include Chris and Genevieve's own films. As well as international successes like The Blair Witch Project and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The Toolkit is an amazing resource for new filmmakers, incorporating a huge range of sample legal contracts and agreements, as well as templates for production forms like locations checklists, shooting schedules, and call sheets.

Watershed Health Monitoring: Emerging Technologies is a concise reference that defines the concept of watershed health and explains that monitoring the health of watersheds is a critical precursor to adaptive resource management on a watershed basis. The focus of the text is a clear description of an innovative "Closed Loop" model that specifies four key aspects of successful monitoring programs: political linkages and support, sound scientific assessment techniques, a community education and awareness component; and a sustainable cost-recovery framework achieved through partnership. Divided into two sections, the book begins with an introduction that defines watershed health, explains how monitoring fits into watershed planning and management, describes frequent shortfalls of monitoring programs around the world (with an emphasis on North America) and proposes a "Closed Loop" approach that will help ensure successful programs. Subsequent chapters detail each component of the "Closed Loop" model with special emphasis on scientific assessment. The second part features a set of six case studies that describe successful real-world applications of the "Closed Loop" approach to watershed monitoring. Written in an easily understood manner with the practitioner in mind, Watershed Health Monitoring balances the need for a detailed yet concise treatment of the topic of watershed health monitoring. It is the first book to recognize the multidisciplinary nature of successful monitoring programs-programs that go far beyond science.