Most Popular Books by Patrick Lynch

A beautifully illustrated field guide to the Mid-Atlantic region, from the Jersey Shore to Cape Hatteras The Outer Banks of North Carolina and the beaches of the Mid-Atlantic Coast are among the most popular tourist destinations in the United States. This book is a richly illustrated field guide that surveys the geology, environmental history, natural history, and human history of a region that spans the eastern seaboard from Sandy Hook in New Jersey south to Cape Hatteras on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It is organized around environments, not particular locations. Included are the geology of beaches and barrier islands, the environmental history of the region, as well as detailed looks at the natural history of beaches, dunes, maritime forests, coastal marshes, and estuaries. Also covered are issues involving human activity and climate change, which have become dominant forces shaping geophysical and biological environments. This guide will enable users to walk into a salt marsh or onto a beach and identify much of what they see.

The “philosopher of truth” (Jill Lepore, The New Yorker) shows why truth is an essential democratic value—and how it can be strengthened Do any of us really care about truth when it comes to politics? Should we? In a world of big lies, denialism, and conspiracy theories, democracies are experiencing two interlocked crises: a loss of confidence in democracy itself and the growing sense among many that politics is only about power—not truth. In this book, Michael Patrick Lynch argues that truth not only can—but must—matter in politics. He shows why truth is an essential democratic value—a value we need to sustain our democratic way of life—and how it can be strengthened. Despite evidence that people are rarely motivated by truth when it comes to politics, On Truth in Politics argues that this isn’t inevitable. Accessibly written and rigorously argued, it draws on the American pragmatist tradition to develop an original theory of the nature and value of truth in the messy world of politics. Contrary to the belief of many, political beliefs can be true or false. But if democracy is to continue to be a space of reason and not just an arena of power, we must build a better infrastructure of knowledge, including stronger schools and media, and renew our commitment to science and history. A vital and timely book, On Truth in Politics makes an original case for why democracy cannot survive without truth.

This 1960 text examines the role that Guinness''s brewery played in the Irish economy in the years between 1759-1876.

Surgeon Marcus Ford''s trauma unit at the Willowbrook Medical Center is on the front line, fighting diseases that rage through South Central, L.A.''s violent, poverty-stricken inner city. But suddenly Ford finds himself battling an insidious new enemy. Patients brought in to the emergency room begin to develop routine infections, which suddenly bloom out of control. None of the drugs in the vast arsenal of modern medicine can check the symptoms...or prevent the bacteria from multiplying. As more and more cases appear, and infected patients throughout L.A. start to die, Ford knows he is witnessing the onset of a mass epidemic--a modern-day plague. Then the horror strikes home. Ford''s thirteen-year-old daughter contracts the life-threatening infection. Her only hope of survival is Omega, a radical, genetically engineered antibiotic that is only rumored to exist. As Ford''s search for the phantom drug becomes a frantic race against time, his sole ally is Helen Wray, a pharmaceutical executive who wants to find Omega for reasons of her own. But when Ford becomes a prime suspect in a series of suspicious deaths, he realizes that he can trust no one...not his fellow doctors, not a government seeking to regulate the use of antibiotics, not even the enigmatic Helen. Caught in the middle of a war where powerful men play God and greed can determine who lives and who dies, Ford knows that the only way to save his daughter--and countless others--is to take on the health-care industry itself. What he uncovers is more horrifying than he could ever have imagined. Meticulously researched, unrelentingly suspenseful, bestselling author Patrick Lynch gives us a gripping and unsettling medicalthriller that brings our most frightening health care nightmares as close as tomorrow''s headlines. Highlights of Campbell Scott''s career include the films The Sheltering Sky, Dead Again, Singles, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, Big Night, which he co-directed, and Daytrippers. He has also starred on Broadway in an acclaimed production of Long Day''s Journey Into Night. He can also be heard on the audio production of The Burning Man, also available on BDD Audiocassette.

From the acclaimed author of The Policy comes a top-notch thriller (Publishers Weekly) about a former Olympic skater being stalked by the Ice Man.

At 17, Ellen Cusak was America''s sweetheart, a world champion figure skater. But she disappeared from view following her father''s death and a failed marriage. But one man''s obsession with her never faltered. With Ellen now emerging for a comeback, the stalker decides it''s time to break the ice. Only security specialist Peter Golding can stop him.

After a major corporation takes the giant step into health-care coverage, one of its high-level executives dies under mysterious circumstances. Now, life insurance actuary Alex Tynan is about to learn that numbers don''t lie--but sometimes they can kill. This novel from the author of "Omega" is described as "engaging and cerebral" ("Chicago Tribune").

A shipment of Indonesian monkeys arrives in the U.S. and they are found to be infected with an Ebola-type virus. It''s scary enough, but what is even scarier is that Lt. Col. Carmen Travis, a U.S. Army pathologist, traces the origin of the virus to a research project on U.S. soil.

What is truth? Michael Lynch defends a bold new answer to this question. Traditional theories hold that all truths are true in the same way. More recent theories claim that the concept of truth is of no real importance. Lynch argues against both these extremes: truth is a functional property whose function can be performed in more than one way.

The prominence achieved by the novel measure of "households touched by crime" when it was introduced into the National Crime Survey (NCS) in 1981 was responsible for renewed attention to comparisons between the crime rates reported by the NCS and the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). The new NCS measure suggested that crime was declining; this at a time of widespread awareness that the UCR Index was at all-time highs. Com parisons of the NCS and UCR in The New York Times (1981) and the Washington Post (1981) had the unfortunate consequence of reviving old and usually ill-informed arguments about which is the "better" measure of "trends in crime. " More recent discrepant changes of the two measures in 1986 and 1987 rekindled the debate, although with somewhat diminished stridency. The efforts of criminological statisticians to develop an appreciation for the two statistical systems as quite different but complementary measures have suffered a setback in these debates, but an opportunity is also afforded to improve the understanding of crime statistics by officials, the media, and the public. The need remains for the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) , the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the research community to explain in quantitative terms the ways in which the two systems attend to different, albeit overlapping, aspects of the crime problem.