Catalog

After a disaster, nothing recovers until the debris is cleared. Roads must open before ambulances can reach hospitals, before power can be restored, and before families can come home. The people who do that work, the public works crews, utility teams, contractors, inspectors, and trained volunteers this book calls resilience workers, operate in some of the most dangerous conditions in all of disaster recovery.
This book exists because a disaster site is not a construction site. The structures are damaged in ways you cannot always see, the ground has been changed by water and motion, utilities may be live when they look dead, and the work itself keeps changing the hazards as it goes. Experience on ordinary jobs can even work against you, because it teaches you to trust things that are no longer trustworthy.
Across twelve chapters, the book moves from why this work matters and how to read a damaged site, through personal protective equipment, the Focus Four hazards, heavy equipment, and hazardous materials, to the human and organizational side of safety: worker well-being, leadership and communication, training and safety culture, emergency response, and the community, environmental, and ethical responsibilities that reach beyond the worksite. A closing chapter brings these together into a systems view, where safety is not any single control but the way hazard recognition, equipment, people, leadership, and culture work together.
What sets this guide apart is that it is built to be used, not just read. Each chapter opens with a real situation, states clear learning objectives, delivers concrete and actionable guidance, and closes with a one-page job aid that workers can keep with them, a chapter summary, knowledge-check questions with facilitator notes for trainers, and a scenario exercise for tabletop discussion. It is written in plain language for a workforce of mixed experience, and it is grounded throughout in authoritative sources including OSHA, FEMA, EPA, NIOSH, NFPA, and ASCE.
Whether you are stepping onto your first debris site, leading a crew through a long recovery, or training the next group of workers, this book is designed to help you recognize the hazards, manage the risk, and bring your people home.

Microbiomes: Health and the Environment was created to provide accessible insight into the novel and complex world of polymicrobial community interactions. As we push forward into the future of medicine and environmental health, it is imperative that we learn from each other, from history, and keep up to date with the latest advances in research and technology. This book not only provides content from the latest microbiome studies, but contains interactive tools, videos, and thought-provoking questions to help the reader hone and truly understand the respective topic. Though there is much overlap between themes due to the ubiquitous nature of microbes, the book is broken down into sections pertaining to both human health (e.g., gut health and disease, as well as other organ-specific niches) and aspects of the environment (e. g., nutrient cycling and climate change, marine health, soil and plant health, etc.) influenced by microbes. However, the content is designed to bridge ideas and aspects between these themes to support the One Health concept: that the health of people, animals, and the environment are all interconnected. This project will continue to grow with new findings, and adapt with the ever-changing world of microorganisms.

This book offers an accessible and critical look at the historical geography of North America. Placing an emphasis on the continent's various human geographies, the book discusses how they developed and interacted across North America’s various physiographic regions. Highlighting spatial entanglements of culture, ethnicity, and religion, the book addresses the development of technology within the context of the historical extraction and consumption of the continent’s natural resources. Engaging a time span that reaches back to the Pre-Columbian Era, and up to the early decades of the twenty-first century, the book provides a broad survey of North America's historical geography.

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The next 25 years will see unprecedented growth in U.S. electricity demand, driven primarily by data centers for AI and industrial electrification. This surge presents unique challenges for power generation, especially for large loads requiring hundreds of megawatts to gigawatts from a single location. Conventional grid expansion is inadequate, prompting the need for innovative, flexible, and sustainable solutions. This book explores the opportunities, challenges, and hybrid generation strategies to support the evolving landscape of large-scale electric loads.

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In Keepin’ Up with Popular Culture, Dr. David Arditi introduces students to popular culture as a way to view and understand society, politics, and culture. This book demonstrates to students the overall importance of popular culture in their lives. It explores the ways that language is used (and the way that we use language) to construct the world around us through popular culture.

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We created this book to provide a targeted understanding of the process of communication to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) students. We have included specific and concise information in this book catering to technical and professional fields. Students will be able to develop their skills in writing, presenting, and interviewing, and improve their interpersonal relationships in the workplace. 

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Public Service Ethics offers readers an approachable introduction to a field that can often feel abstract or overly technical. The book invites students to see ethics not as a distant philosophical exercise or as a list of conduct violations, but as a deeper framework that shapes and is shaped by our public ideals, our public institutions and our public employees.

The book is designed to give students and professors a shared foundation for meaningful conversations about public service ethics. Rather than presenting ethics as a rigid set of rules, this book uses ethics as a lens to help readers understand how public institutions function, how decisions are made, and how values shape outcomes. Each chapter introduces a core topic in public administration, from service delivery to intergovernmental relations to public accountability, and then explores the ethical considerations of each topic. This structure makes the book flexible enough for classroom use while still offering a cohesive narrative that students can follow from beginning to end.

Ultimately, the goal of this book is to demystify the field and empower readers to think critically about public service ethics. By blending practical examples, accessible explanations, and a deep respect for the people who dedicate their careers to public work, the book becomes more than a textbook. It is an invitation to enter the field with curiosity, to ask better questions, and to see public service as both a responsibility and a profoundly powerful endeavor.

This book is to learn water and weather by integrating with other cultures. This textbook is organized around two interconnected components. The first component provides cultural knowledge of China, India, Korea, and Mexico. The second component focuses on culturally responsive science instruction created for the Cultural Science Night event, an occasion in which teachers present hands-on, culturally responsive science activities in collaboration with students.

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Contributors to this open textbook offer relatable descriptions, details, and contexts of artworks from around the world, which have often been relegated to the peripheries of art and social history. Art traditions from Africa, Oceania, South and Southeast Asia, Islamicate regions, East Asia, and the indigenous Americas (before colonization) are prioritized to challenge the long-held view that “real art” only comes from the West. Introductory discussions of the history of art history and geographic conventions set the stage for considering the larger question, “where does art come from,” and other questions such as, “why haven’t I heard much about art from Africa, Oceania, etc.?” This book takes a pluralistic approach, forefronting diversity and interconnectedness. Scholars and students collaborated to produce this book. Student contributions will continue to improve the text and interactivity as it evolves. A scavenger hunt of student-made “easter eggs” builds a thread of engagement and humor throughout the book. Make sure to find them all! 

Basic engineering knowledge about fluid mechanics is required in various sectors of water resources engineering, such as designing hydraulic structure on any riverine environments and flood mitigation process. The objective of this book is to enable students to understand fundamental concepts in the field of fluid mechanics and apply those concepts in practice. Applied Fluid Mechanics Lab Manual is designed to enhance civil engineering students’ understanding and knowledge of experimental methods and basic principles of fluid mechanics. The ten experiments in this lab manual provide an overview of widely used terms and phenomena of fluid mechanics and open channel flow, which are required for solving engineering problems.