The Great Fog

Download or read book Death in the Air written by Kate Winkler Dawson and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2018-01-02 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A real-life thriller in the vein of The Devil in the White City, Kate Winkler Dawson's debut Death in the Air is a gripping, historical narrative of a serial killer, an environmental disaster, and an iconic city struggling to regain its footing. London was still recovering from the devastation of World War II when another disaster hit: for five long days in December 1952, a killer smog held the city firmly in its grip and refused to let go. Day became night, mass transit ground to a halt, criminals roamed the streets, and some 12,000 people died from the poisonous air. But in the chaotic aftermath, another killer was stalking the streets, using the fog as a cloak for his crimes. All across London, women were going missing--poor women, forgotten women. Their disappearances caused little alarm, but each of them had one thing in common: they had the misfortune of meeting a quiet, unassuming man, John Reginald Christie, who invited them back to his decrepit Notting Hill flat during that dark winter. They never left. The eventual arrest of the "Beast of Rillington Place" caused a media frenzy: were there more bodies buried in the walls, under the floorboards, in the back garden of this house of horrors? Was it the fog that had caused Christie to suddenly snap? And what role had he played in the notorious double murder that had happened in that same apartment building not three years before--a murder for which another, possibly innocent, man was sent to the gallows? The Great Smog of 1952 remains the deadliest air pollution disaster in world history, and John Reginald Christie is still one of the most unfathomable serial killers of modern times. Journalist Kate Winkler Dawson braids these strands together into a taut, compulsively readable true crime thriller about a man who changed the fate of the death penalty in the UK, and an environmental catastrophe with implications that still echo today.

Download or read book London Fog written by Christine L. Corton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-02 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A Telegraph Editor’s Choice An Evening Standard “Best Books about London” Selection In popular imagination, London is a city of fog. The classic London fogs, the thick yellow “pea-soupers,” were born in the industrial age of the early nineteenth century. Christine L. Corton tells the story of these epic London fogs, their dangers and beauty, and their lasting effects on our culture and imagination. “Engrossing and magnificently researched...Corton’s book combines meticulous social history with a wealth of eccentric detail. Thus we learn that London’s ubiquitous plane trees were chosen for their shiny, fog-resistant foliage. And since Jack the Ripper actually went out to stalk his victims on fog-free nights, filmmakers had to fake the sort of dank, smoke-wreathed London scenes audiences craved. It’s discoveries like these that make reading London Fog such an unusual, enthralling and enlightening experience.” —Miranda Seymour, New York Times Book Review “Corton, clad in an overcoat, with a linklighter before her, takes us into the gloomier, long 19th century, where she revels in its Gothic grasp. Beautifully illustrated, London Fog delves fascinatingly into that swirling miasma.” —Philip Hoare, New Statesman

Download or read book The Great Smog of China written by Anna L. Ahlers and published by Association for Asian Studies. This book was released on 2020-08 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great Smog of China traces Chinese air pollution events dating back to more than 2,000 years ago. Based on the authors' fieldwork, interviews and text studies, the book offers a short and concise history of selected air pollution incidents that for varying reasons prompted different kinds of responses and forms of engagement in Chinese society. The three authors, from the disciplines of anthropology, China studies and political science, identify traceable incidents of smog and air pollution that have been communicated in different media and came to impact society in various ways. This also informs a discussion of what it takes to transform people's experiences of health and environmentally related risks of pollution into broader forms of socio-political agency.

Download or read book The Big Smoke (Routledge Revivals) written by Peter Brimblecombe and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2012-07-26 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1987, Peter Brimblecombe's book provides an engaging historical account of air pollution in London, offering a fascinating insight into the development of air pollution controls against a changing social and economic background. He examines domestic and industrial pollution and their effects on fashions, furnishings, buildings and human health. The book ends with an intriguing analysis of the dangers arising from contemporary pollutants and a glimpse of what the future may hold for London.

Download or read book The Great Fog written by H. F. Heard and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-07-05 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories blending science fiction and horror, including a classic that predicted the terror of climate change. It starts with common mildew—mold appearing where it has never grown before. A strange kind of mold, it spreads across the entire globe in a matter of months. Although it’s harmless, it’s an indication of something much more terrifying. Without our noticing, the Earth’s climate has changed. But as the world’s greatest scientists rush to save the planet, they realize it may already be too late. The balance of nature has been disturbed, and mankind is about to become an endangered species. “The Great Fog” is a chilling piece of hard science fiction that predicted global climate change decades before it became a reality. Like the other stories in this volume—including “Eclipse,” “The Crayfish,” and other classics—it shows author H. F. Heard at his best. A spiritualist, scientist, and early advocate of environmentalism, Heard was one of the leading thinkers of his day. A colleague of Aldous Huxley, author of the legendary Brave New World, he used his unique background to redefine the budding field of science fiction, producing elegant, odd short fiction that still “makes the flesh creep [and] the conscience crawl” (Time).

Download or read book The Sky of Our Manufacture written by Jesse Oak Taylor and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2016-03-23 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The smoke-laden fog of London is one of the most vivid elements in English literature, richly suggestive and blurring boundaries between nature and society in compelling ways. In The Sky of Our Manufacture, Jesse Oak Taylor uses the many depictions of the London fog in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century novel to explore the emergence of anthropogenic climate change. In the process, Taylor argues for the importance of fiction in understanding climatic shifts, environmental pollution, and ecological collapse. The London fog earned the portmanteau "smog" in 1905, a significant recognition of what was arguably the first instance of a climatic phenomenon manufactured by modern industry. Tracing the path to this awareness opens a critical vantage point on the Anthropocene, a new geologic age in which the transformation of humanity into a climate-changing force has not only altered our physical atmosphere but imbued it with new meanings. The book examines enduringly popular works--from the novels of Charles Dickens and George Eliot to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, and the Sherlock Holmes mysteries to works by Joseph Conrad and Virginia Woolf--alongside newspaper cartoons, scientific writings, and meteorological technologies to reveal a fascinating relationship between our cultural climate and the sky overhead. Under the Sign of Nature: Studies in Ecocriticism

Download or read book Areas of Fog written by Will Dowd and published by Etruscan Press. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Will Dowd takes us on a whimsical journey through one year of New England weather in this engaging collection of essays. As unpredictable as its subject, Areas of Fog combines wit and poetry with humor and erudition. A fun, breezy, and discursive read, it is an intellectual game that exposes the artificiality of genres. Will Dowd is a writer and artist based outside Boston. He obtained his MFA in Creative Writing from New York University, where he received a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship; an MS from MIT, serving as a John Lyons Fellow; and a BA from Boston College, as a Presidential Scholar.