Hilltops surrounded by farmland in southern Wisconsin turn out to be the eroded remnants of an ancient archipelago. An island in the Yellow Sea where Korean tourists flock is the peak of a flooded mountain rising from a drowned continental shelf. From a mountaintop shrine to Genghis Khan in Inner Mongolia, the silhouette of a Silurian seascape can be spotted. On the shores of Hudson Bay, where polar bears patrol the Arctic tundra, a close look unveils what was a tropical coastline encrusted with corals nearly 450 million years ago. The geologist Markes E. Johnson invites readers on a journey through deep time to find the traces of ancient islands. He visits a dozen sites around the globe, looking above and below today’s waterlines to uncover how landscapes of the past are preserved in the present. Going back 500 million years to the Cambrian through the Pleistocene 125,000 years ago, this book reconstructs how “paleoislands” appeared under different climatic conditions and environmental constraints. Finding vestiges of prehistoric ecologies, Johnson emphasizes the complexity of island ecosystems and the importance of preserving these significant sites. Inviting and accessible, this book is a travelogue that takes readers through time as well as space. Islands in Deep Time shares the adventure of exploring striking locations across geologic eras and issues a passionate call for their conservation.

Hilltops surrounded by farmland in southern Wisconsin turn out to be the eroded remnants of an ancient archipelago. An island in the Yellow Sea where Korean tourists flock is the peak of a flooded mountain rising from a drowned continental shelf. From a mountaintop shrine to Genghis Khan in Inner Mongolia, the silhouette of a Silurian seascape can be spotted. On the shores of Hudson Bay, where polar bears patrol the Arctic tundra, a close look unveils what was a tropical coastline encrusted with corals nearly 450 million years ago. The geologist Markes E. Johnson invites readers on a journey through deep time to find the traces of ancient islands. He visits a dozen sites around the globe, looking above and below today’s waterlines to uncover how landscapes of the past are preserved in the present. Going back 500 million years to the Cambrian through the Pleistocene 125,000 years ago, this book reconstructs how “paleoislands” appeared under different climatic conditions and environmental constraints. Finding vestiges of prehistoric ecologies, Johnson emphasizes the complexity of island ecosystems and the importance of preserving these significant sites. Inviting and accessible, this book is a travelogue that takes readers through time as well as space. Islands in Deep Time shares the adventure of exploring striking locations across geologic eras and issues a passionate call for their conservation.

With Russia's inability to improve conditions in Chechnya and the international community's failed attempts to negotiate a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, Islamic extremism in Chechnya is growing precipitously and risks spilling over into the neighboring republics of Ingushetia, Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria and the neighboring country of Georgia. The question this paper addresses, therefore, is: does the unresolved Chechen conflict and the spread of Islamic extremism warrant U.S. intervention? As this paper's analysis of the conflict demonstrates, the answer to this question is a resounding -yes. In fact, this paper argues that if the United States does not use its influence to resolve the Chechen conflict and thus preempt the growth of Islamic extremism in the North Caucasus, Chechnya risks devolving into a major front in the GWOT. The only thing that keeps Chechnya from morphing into a major front in the GWOT today is the secular Chechen separatist leadership that continuously struggles to control, with varying degrees of success, the rebellious Islamic extremist faction within its movement. The pro-Moscow Chechen security and Russian military forces' heavy-handed tactics and almost daily human rights abuses against the Chechen people do not help the already volatile situation. The only nation capable of reversing the downward spiral of Chechnya into a major front in the GWOT is the United States. The United States, as a close GWOT ally and economic partner to Russia, has the influence to negotiate an end to the Chechen conflict and deter the Islamic extremists' aspirations of a greater Islamic state in the North Caucasus. This paper recommends the following six-point peace initiative as a framework from which the United States can intervene to resolve the Chechen conflict: Six Point Peace Initiative. 1. Define the Threat: The United States needs to engage the Russian and Chechen leaders by first brokering an agreement on the definition of the threat in

"Superman, Hairspray and the Greatest Goat on Earth" is a collection of essays and stories about simple things: the trauma of shopping for shoes with a woman, of being surrounded by literally thousands of vengeful, man-eating bears in the Great Smoky Mountains, of a life-long obsession with empty hairspray cans, and of a little girl's relentless search for a live unicorn. This is a Saturday-in-the-rain book. Maybe it will jog a few memories of your own, take away a little stress, and prompt you to pay the author what he considers the ultimate compliment: "You're really not well, are you?"