New Releases by John Foster

Despite their fame and reputation, dinosaurs represent only half the story of the Mesozoic Era. In Beast Companions: The Unsung Animals of the Dinosaurs'' World, paleontologist John Foster explores the often-overlooked animals that coexisted with them. These ancient species, often equally remarkable as their dinosaur neighbors, can provide valuable insights into the biotic history of our planet. In some cases, these animals reveal just as much, if not more, about the extinct ecosystems of the time as the dinosaurs themselves. By drawing on a wealth of current and past discoveries, Foster embarks on a sweeping journey across 164 million years to visit the beast companions of the dinosaurs. Along the way, he examines fish, insects, the first frogs and salamanders, turtles, snakes and lizards, marine reptiles, crocodiles, pterosaurs, birds, mammals, and other animals of the Mesozoic Era. Beast Companions is a groundbreaking exploration of the story of these contemporaries of the dinosaurs that set the modern world in motion more than 200 million years ago

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

Prescott''s magisterial account of the Spanish conquest of the Inca empire, drawing upon firsthand accounts and indigenous sources. A landmark work of history and literature, rich in detail and vivid characterization. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Originally published in 1982, the aim of this book is a controversial one – to refute, by the most rigorous philosophical methods, physical realism and to develop and defend in its place a version of phenomenalism. Physical realism here refers to the thesis that the physical world (or some selected portion of it) is an ingredient of ultimate reality, where ultimate reality is the totality of those entities and facts which are not logically sustained by anything else. Thus, in arguing against physical realism, the author sets out to establish that ultimate reality is wholly non-physical. The crucial elements in this argument are the topic-neutrality of physical description and the relationship between physical geometry and natural law. The version of phenomenalism advanced by John Foster develops out of this refutation of physical realism. Its central claim is that the physical world is the logical creation of the natural (non-logical) constraints on human sense-experience. This phenomenalist perspective assumes that there is some form of time in which human experience occurs but which is logically prior to the physical world, and Foster explores in detail the nature of this pre-physical time and its relation to time as a framework for physical events. This book was a major contribution to contemporary philosophical thinking at the time.

The famous bone beds of the Morrison Formation, formed one hundred and fifty million years ago and running from Wyoming down through the red rock region of the American Southwest, have yielded one of the most complete pictures of any ancient vertebrate ecosystem in the world. Jurassic West, Second Edition tells the story of the life of this ancient world as scientists have so far been able to reconstruct it. Aimed at the general reader, Jurassic West, Second Edition recounts the discovery of many important Late Jurassic dinosaurs such as Apatosaurus, Allosaurus, and Stegosaurus. But dinosaurs compose barely a third of the more than 90 types of vertebrates known from the formation, which include crocodiles and turtles, frogs and salamanders, dinosaurs and mammals, clams and snails, and ginkgoes, ferns, and conifers. Featuring nearly all new illustrations, the second edition of this classic work includes new taxa named since 2007, updates to the naming and classifications of some old taxa, and expanded sections on numerous aspects of Morrison Formation paleontology and geology.

In ''The Communist Threat in the Taiwan Area,'' readers are presented with an intricate exploration of Cold War dynamics, focusing on the strategic importance of Taiwan. This anthology unites a diverse range of historical perspectives, diplomatic analyses, and policy recommendations, providing a rich tapestry of literary styles from detailed archival research to compelling narrative recountings. The collection stands out for its deep dive into the subtleties of U.S. foreign policy and the ideological confrontations that characterized the mid-20th century, offering unprecedented insights into the geopolitical chess game between the United States, China, and the Soviet Union. The contributing editors, John Foster Dulles and Dwight D. Eisenhower, bring to the collection their firsthand experience and authoritative perspectives on post-war diplomacy and international relations. Dulles, as Secretary of State, and Eisenhower, as President, were central figures in shaping U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. Their contributions provide a rare glimpse into the decision-making processes and strategic thinking of the era''s leading policymakers, showcasing how their leadership navigated the complexities of global politics and the containment of communism within the broader context of historical, cultural, and literary movements. This anthology is a must-read for scholars, students, and enthusiasts of Cold War history, international relations, and American foreign policy. It offers an unparalleled opportunity to engage with the nuanced debates surrounding the Taiwan Strait Crisis, through the lens of those who were at the heart of shaping the United States'' stance. Readers will gain a comprehensive understanding of the strategic considerations and moral dilemmas faced by policymakers, making ''The Communist Threat in the Taiwan Area'' an invaluable resource for anyone looking to deepen their knowledge of this critical period in global history.

365 daily design mantras from four leading industry experts, providing you with valuable design dos and don''ts for every day of year. Packed with practical advice presented in a fun, lighthearted fashion, this is the perfect book for the ever-growing group of non-designers who want some graphic design guidance. And for more experienced designers, individual entries will either bring forth knowing nods of agreement or hoots of derision, depending on whether or not the reader loves or hates hyphenation, has a pathological fear of beige, or thinks that baseline grids are boring. In the style of a classical almanac, 365 entries combine a specific rule with a commentary from a variety of experienced designers from all fields of the graphic design industry. Covering topics such as typography, colour, layout, imagery, production, and creative thinking, you can either dip in at random or use the book as the source of a daily lesson in how to produce great graphic design.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

A comprehensive guide to the evolution of life during the Cambrian Period, and a story of one man’s search for the world’s oldest animal fossils. “Told with a wry humor, the odd pop cultural/sci-fi reference, and personal anecdotes, Foster does a great job in making this an enjoyable read and bringing the Cambrian to us. An alien world is transformed before our eyes into one that is increasingly more familiar.” —Quarterly Review of Biology This volume, aimed at the general reader, presents the life and times of the amazing animals that inhabited Earth more than five hundred million years ago. The Cambrian Period was a critical time in Earth’s history. During this immense span of time nearly every modern group of animals appeared. Although life had been around for more than two million millennia, Cambrian rocks preserve the record of the first appearance of complex animals with eyes, protective skeletons, antennae, and complex ecologies. Grazing, predation, and multi-tiered ecosystems with animals living in, on, or above the sea floor became common. The cascade of interaction led to an ever-increasing diversification of animal body types. By the end of the period, the ancestors of sponges, corals, jellyfish, worms, mollusks, brachiopods, arthropods, echinoderms, and vertebrates were all in place. The evidence of this Cambrian “explosion” is preserved in rocks all over the world, including North America, where the seemingly strange animals of the period are preserved in exquisite detail in deposits such as the Burgess Shale in British Columbia. Cambrian Ocean World tells the story of what is, for us, the most important period in our planet’s long history. “Definitely the best introductory textbook within its field. It is clearly worth reading.” —Deposits Magazine

The election of Barack Obama as president led some to suggest that not only has US society made significant strides toward racial equality, but it has moved beyond race or become “post-racial.” In fact, studies have exposed numerous contradictions between the ways white Americans answer questions on surveys and how they respond to similar questions during in-depth interviews. How do we make sense of these contradictions? In White Race Discourse: Preserving Racial Privilege in a Post-Racial Society, John D. Foster examines the numerous contradictions sixty-one white college students exhibit as they discuss a variety of race matters. Foster demonstrates that the whites interviewed possess a sophisticated method of communication to come across as ambivalent, tolerant, and innocent, while simultaneously expressing their intolerance, fear, and suspicion of nonwhite Americans. Whether intended or not, this ambivalence assists in efforts to preserve social inequities while failing to address racial injustices. While many scholars have written about the “racetalk” of whites, few have succeeded in bridging both the theoretical and methodological gaps between whiteness scholars and discourse analysts. White Race Discourse presents evidence that these white Americans are “bureaucrats of whiteness” in that they defend the racial status quo through their discourse. It will be a valuable addition to the library of students and scholars of race studies and linguistics who research US race relations and discourse analysis.

The artists featured in Dirty Fingernails, make a concerted effort to do projects that require them to step away from the computer to create one-of-a-kind designs for clients and themselves. They demonstrate that good design doesn’t have to be clean—in fact, the messier the better. From silkscreen prints to collages created from photocopies, to hand-drawn lettering, each designer explains their process and why they’ve chosen to work in their chosen medium. It’s an inspirational collection that will make even the most computer-savvy designer drool.

New in Paperback! In much the way that the CD replaced the album, the poster has waned as a messaging vehicle. The poster has now become a postcard and e-mail blast, leaving many to long for the lost age when posters were not only major promotional vehicles, but also artwork worthy of framing. Some of the world''s best designers just could not stand idle while the poster fell by the wayside. They turned to the poster for personal expression and as an outlet from more restrictive mediums. This book showcases their breathtaking artwork, which has proven that the poster can still serve as a worthy communications tool. In doing so, they''ve brought the poster back to prominence. In this book, John Foster has compiled the world''s finest new work at the height of this rebirth. There is currently no book on the market that can claim it features a "definitive" poster collection.

A World For Us aims to show that the physical world does not exist independently of the human mind, but draws its existence from the way in which, under God''s ordinance, things appear to us in experience.

John Foster presents a clear and powerful discussion of a range of topics relating to our understanding of the universe: induction, laws of nature, and the existence of God. He begins by developing a solution to the problem of induction - a solution whose key idea is that the regularities in the workings of nature that have held in our experience hitherto are to be explained by appeal to the controlling influence of laws, as forms of natural necessity. His second line of argumentfocuses on the issue of what we should take such necessitational laws to be, and whether we can even make sense of them at all. Having considered and rejected various alternatives, Foster puts forward his own proposal: the obtaining of a law consists in the causal imposing of a regularity on theuniverse as a regularity. With this causal account of laws in place, he is now equipped to offer an argument for theism. His claim is that natural regularities call for explanation, and that, whatever explanatory role we may initially assign to laws, the only plausible ultimate explanation is in terms of the agency of God. Finally, he argues that, once we accept the existence of God, we need to think of him as creating the universe by a method which imposes regularities on it in the relevantlaw-yielding way. In this new perspective, the original nomological-explanatory solution to the problem of induction becomes a theological-explanatory solution.The Divine Lawmaker is bold and original in its approach, and rich in argument. The issues on which it focuses are among the most important in the whole epistemological and metaphysical spectrum.

Dualism argues that the mind is more than just the brain. It holds that there exists two very different realms, one mental and the other physical. Both are fundamental and one cannot be reduced to the other - there are minds and there is a physical world. This book examines and defends the most famous dualist account of the mind, the cartesian, which attributes the immaterial contents of the mind to an immaterial self. John Foster''s new book exposes the inadequacies of the dominant materialist and reductionist accounts of the mind. In doing so he is in radical conflict with the current philosophical establishment. Ambitious and controversial, The Immaterial Self is the most powerful and effective defence of Cartesian dualism since Descartes'' own

Poems chosen by John Foster. John''s poetry anthologies present children with original and contemporary poetry, proving that poetry is both accessible and fun!

A collection of poems to perform. Where most anthologies of performance poetry concentrate on modern writing, this collection has a wonderful mix of old favourites, new discoveries, and specially written poems. John Foster has produced many best-selling poetry anthologies. He is also well known as a performer of poetry, and is the perfect anthologist for this book.

John Foster presents a penetrating investigation of the question: what is it to perceive a physical object? Is perceptual contact with a physical object, he asks, something fundamental, or does it break down into further factors? If the latter, what are these factors, and how do they combine to secure the contact? For most of the book, Foster addresses these questions in the framework of a realist view of the physical world. But the arguments which thereby unfold - arguments which undermine direct realism and establish a version of the sense-datum theory - lead to the conclusion that we do not perceive physical objects at all. The only way to avoid this conclusion is by abandoning physical realism for a form of idealism, and this is the option which Foster finally embraces. The Nature of Perception makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate: it sheds light on the traditional issues, and breathes new life into positions which most current philosophers assume to be dead.