In the tradition of Jon Ronson and Tim Wu, an absorbing and revelatory journey into the American Way of Defying Death . . .

As longevity medicine revolutionizes the lives of many older people, the quest to take the next step--to live as long as we choose--has spurred a scientific arms race in search of the elixir of life, funded by Big Tech and Silicon Valley.

Once the stuff of Mesopotamian mythology and episodes of Star Trek, the effort to make humans immortal is becoming increasingly credible as the pace of technological progress quickens. It has also empowered a wild-eyed fringe of pseudo-scientists, tech visionaries, scam-artists, and religious fanatics who have given their lives over to the pursuit of immortality.

Starting off at the Church of Perpetual Life in Florida and exploring the feuding subcultures around the cryonics industry, Peter Ward immerses himself into an eccentric world of startups, scam artists, scientific institutions, and tech billionaires to deliver this deeply reported, nuanced, and sometimes very funny exploration of the race for immortality -- and the potentially devastating consequences should humanity realize its ultimate dream.

An engrossing and revelatory first look at the search for alien life--on Earth and beyond

For the past twenty years, Peter Ward has been at the forefront of popular science writing, with books such as the influential and controversial Rare Earth. In Life as We Do Not Know It, Ward, with his signature blend of eloquence, humor, and learned insight, vividly details the latest scientific findings, cutting-edge research, and intrepid new theories on the subject of alien life and the possible extraterrestrial origins of life on Earth. In lucid, entertaining, and bold prose, Peter Ward once again challenges our notions of life on earth (and beyond).

Behind each shot there lies an idea or purpose. When setting up a shot, the camera operator can employ a range of visual techniques that will clearly communicate the idea to an audience. Composition is the bedrock of the operator's craft, yet is seldom taught in training courses in the belief that it is an intuitive, personal skill. Peter Ward shows how composition can be learned, to enhance the quality of your work.

Based on the author's own practical experience, the book deals with the methods available for resolving practical production questions such as:

Does the shot composition accurately reflect the idea that initiated the shot?
Will the content and method of presenting the subject accurately convey the idea?

Major innovations in television and film production since the previous edition have affected the styles of composition, such as wide-screen and the use of mini DV cameras. These new technologies and their implications for picture composition are addressed in this new edition. A new colour plate section is also being included to update the section on colour.

If you are a practising camera operator, trainee camera operator, student or lecturer on a television or film production course, or simply a video enthusiast wishing to progress to a more professional standard you will find this book essential in enhancing the quality of your work.

A lucid, bright and essential work of reporting, analysis and genuine care. Peter Ward has given us a new way to think about private endeavors in space. Superb.⁠--Rivka Galchen, author of Little Labors

This in-depth work of reportage dares to ask what's at stake in privatizing outer space

Earth is in trouble--so dramatically that we're now scrambling to explore space for valuable resources and a home for permanent colonization. With the era of NASA's dominance now behind us, the private sector is winning this new space race. But if humans and their private wealth have made such a mess of Earth, who can say we won't do the same in space?

In The Consequential Frontier, business and technology journalist Peter Ward is raising this vital question before it's too late. Interviewing tech CEOs, inventors, scientists, lobbyists, politicians, and future civilian astronauts, Ward sheds light on a whole industry beyond headline-grabbing rocket billionaires like Bezos and Musk, and introduces the new generation of activists trying to keep it from rushing recklessly into the cosmos.

With optimism for what humans might accomplish in space if we could leave our tendency toward deregulation, inequality, and environmental destruction behind, Ward shows just how much cooperation it will take to protect our universal resource and how beneficial it could be for all of us.

Richard Henley's day began with a visit from a stranger and an invitation to dinner. It ended with him receiving a note in his own handwriting warning that someone was trying to kill him--a note he had no memory of writing.

What followed would push Richard's grip on reality to the limit, forcing him to confront the inexplicable, question his past, and trust his fate to an unknown ally.

Note to Self takes Richard on a journey to places he never knew existed, explores the role of technology in the modern world, and asks whether the choices we are making are really our own.

Several times in the distant past, catastrophic extinctions have swept the Earth, causing more than half of all species--from single-celled organisms to awe-inspiring behemoths--to suddenly vanish and be replaced by new life forms. Today the rich diversity of life on the Earth is again in grave danger--and the cause is not a sudden cataclysmic event but rather humankind's devastation of the environment. Is life on our planet teetering on the brink of another mass extinction? In this absorbing new book, acclaimed paleontologist Peter D. Ward answers this daunting question with a resounding yes.

Elaborating on and updating Ward's previous work, The End of Evolution, Rivers in Time delves into his newest discoveries. The book presents the gripping tale of the author's investigations into the history of life and death on Earth through a series of expeditions that have brought him ever closer to the truth about mass extinctions, past and future. First describing the three previous mass extinctions--those marking the transition from the Permian to the Triassic periods 245 million years ago, the Triassic to the Jurassic 200 million years ago, and the Cretaceous to the Tertiary 65 million years ago--Ward assesses the present devastation in which countless species are coming to the end of their evolution at the hand of that wandering, potentially destructive force called Homo sapiens.

The book takes readers to the Philippine Sea, now eerily empty of life, where only a few decades of catching fish by using dynamite have resulted in eviscerated coral reefs--and a dramatic reduction in the marine life the region can support. Ward travels to Canada's Queen Charlotte Islands to investigate the extinctions that mark the boundary between the Triassic and Jurassic periods. He ventures also into the Karoo desert of southern Africa, where some of Earth's earliest land life emerged from the water and stood poised to develop into mammal form, only to be obliterated during the Permian/Triassic extinction.

Rivers of Time provides reason to marvel and mourn, to fear and hope, as it bears stark witness to the urgency of the Earth's present predicament: Ward offers powerful proof that if radical measures are not taken to protect the biodiversity of this planet, much of life as we know it may not survive.

Several times in the distant past, catastrophic extinctions have swept the Earth, causing more than half of all species--from single-celled organisms to awe-inspiring behemoths--to suddenly vanish and be replaced by new life forms. Today the rich diversity of life on the Earth is again in grave danger--and the cause is not a sudden cataclysmic event but rather humankind's devastation of the environment. Is life on our planet teetering on the brink of another mass extinction? In this absorbing new book, acclaimed paleontologist Peter D. Ward answers this daunting question with a resounding yes.

Elaborating on and updating Ward's previous work, The End of Evolution, Rivers in Time delves into his newest discoveries. The book presents the gripping tale of the author's investigations into the history of life and death on Earth through a series of expeditions that have brought him ever closer to the truth about mass extinctions, past and future. First describing the three previous mass extinctions--those marking the transition from the Permian to the Triassic periods 245 million years ago, the Triassic to the Jurassic 200 million years ago, and the Cretaceous to the Tertiary 65 million years ago--Ward assesses the present devastation in which countless species are coming to the end of their evolution at the hand of that wandering, potentially destructive force called Homo sapiens.

The book takes readers to the Philippine Sea, now eerily empty of life, where only a few decades of catching fish by using dynamite have resulted in eviscerated coral reefs--and a dramatic reduction in the marine life the region can support. Ward travels to Canada's Queen Charlotte Islands to investigate the extinctions that mark the boundary between the Triassic and Jurassic periods. He ventures also into the Karoo desert of southern Africa, where some of Earth's earliest land life emerged from the water and stood poised to develop into mammal form, only to be obliterated during the Permian/Triassic extinction.

Rivers of Time provides reason to marvel and mourn, to fear and hope, as it bears stark witness to the urgency of the Earth's present predicament: Ward offers powerful proof that if radical measures are not taken to protect the biodiversity of this planet, much of life as we know it may not survive.

Studio and outside broadcast is often done with more than one camera and has its own distinct discipline and operational procedures. Many camera operators now start with single camera operations and have little or no experience of the skills required for multi-camera operation, whereas it used to be the other way round. This book prepared newcomers to multi-camerawork and the techniques required to produce professional results.

Studio and Outside Broadcast Camerawork is a revised edition of Multi-Camera Camerawork, including new material on widescreen shooting and an update on BBC (and worldwide) policy of 'shoot and protect' for dual aspect ratio format production.

A visionary book for the emergent church. The church must be like water--flexible, fluid, changeable. This book is a vision for how the church can embrace the liquid nature of culture rather than just scrambling to keep afloat while sailing over it. Ward urges us to move away from the traditional notion of church as a gathering of people meeting in one place at one time to the dynamic notion of the emergent church as a series of relationships and communications. In the Liquid Church, membership is determined by participation and involvement. Liquid Church is continually on the move, flowing in response to the Spirit and the gospel of Jesus, the imagination and creativity of its leaders, and the choices and experiences of it worshippers. In this provocative, insightful, and challenging book, Pete Ward presents his vision of a Liquid Church that addresses the needs of the isolated consumer-Christian by providing connection and community, located in common cause and similar desire for God.

Manage and lead a team remotely by intertwining leadership principles with the many robust tools of Microsoft Teams. This book shows you how to utilize Microsoft Teams in an effective way to achieve your global team goals.

Leading a team is a challenge, but leading a team in the zoom economy can make you stressed out and overworked. Peter Ward gives the reader a communication and organization centered approach for the dynamic, hardworking, successful employee who wants to step into a leadership role and vastly improve their organization with the aid of Microsoft Teams. Ward shares his own rules for successful leadership of teams and small companies, to scale at a steady pace, creating a culture of accountability and responsibility, with a remote workforce, not using venture capital, and applying minimal bureaucracy. Ward says teamwork, right hires, diversity, and work balance are equally important as profitability. Leadership in a Zoom Economy with Microsoft Teams is a portrait of a productive, sane, balanced life that is organized and filled with rich results.

After reading this book, you will be able to extend your Microsoft Team capabilities to day-to-day leadership principles.

What Will You Learn

• Use MS Teams to build trust in your remote or virtual workplace with teams
• Work with Planner, Outlook, and Tasks within MS Teams
• Coach, mentor, and develop your team when you are not in the exact location
• Lead a remote workforce effectively
• Apply an entrepreneur mentality to remote teams
• Create a culture that is innovative and creative when you are a dispersed organization

Who This Book Is For
Managers who want to step into leadership, and leaders who want to raise their leadership game using Microsoft Teams as a technical tool.

AD 450: A young king and his followers step down from their longship onto a foreign shore to celebrate Yule at the court of his brother-in-law. But their hopes of warm fires and ale, feasting and good cheer, are dashed as they realise that they have walked in to the middle of the mother of all family feuds.

From the wreckage of the disaster, a reluctant leader emerges, one who must choose between survival and breaking the heroic code, picking his way through a maze of betrayals and tangled loyalties to lead his people towards a destiny that is fundamental to the foundation of England.

From the time that England forgot, but brilliantly evoking the warrior-heroic culture of Beowulf, Peter Ward has brought back to life the heroes and the kings, their longhalls and longships, showing us the women with the wit and the warriors with the grit: the wave­ farers whose deeds and daring brought Saxon ships to Britain's shores.

How often did our ancestors bathe? How often did they wash their clothes and change them? What did they understand cleanliness to be? Why have our hygienic habits changed so dramatically over time? In short, how have we come to be so clean? The Clean Body explores one of the most fundamental and pervasive cultural changes in Western history since the seventeenth century: the personal hygiene revolution. In the age of Louis XIV bathing was rare and hygiene was mainly a matter of wearing clean underclothes. By the late twentieth century frequent - often daily - bathing had become the norm and wearing freshly laundered clothing the general practice. Cleanliness, once simply a requirement for good health, became an essential element of beauty. Beneath this transformation lay a sea change in understandings, motives, ideologies, technologies, and practices, all of which shaped popular habits over time. Peter Ward explains that what began as an urban bourgeois phenomenon in the later eighteenth century became a universal condition by the end of the twentieth, touching young and old, rich and poor, city dwellers and country residents alike. Based on a wealth of sources in English, French, German, and Italian, The Clean Body surveys the great hygienic transformation that took place across Europe and North America over the course of four centuries.

In The Medea Hypothesis, renowned paleontologist Peter Ward proposes a revolutionary and provocative vision of life's relationship with the Earth's biosphere--one that has frightening implications for our future, yet also offers hope. Using the latest discoveries from the geological record, he argues that life might be its own worst enemy. This stands in stark contrast to James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis--the idea that life sustains habitable conditions on Earth. In answer to Gaia, which draws on the idea of the good mother who nurtures life, Ward invokes Medea, the mythical mother who killed her own children. Could life by its very nature threaten its own existence?

According to the Medea hypothesis, it does. Ward demonstrates that all but one of the mass extinctions that have struck Earth were caused by life itself. He looks at our planet's history in a new way, revealing an Earth that is witnessing an alarming decline of diversity and biomass--a decline brought on by life's own biocidal tendencies. And the Medea hypothesis applies not just to our planet--its dire prognosis extends to all potential life in the universe. Yet life on Earth doesn't have to be lethal. Ward shows why, but warns that our time is running out.

Breathtaking in scope, The Medea Hypothesis is certain to arouse fierce debate and radically transform our worldview. It serves as an urgent challenge to all of us to think in new ways if we hope to save ourselves from ourselves.

Basic Betacam Camerawork offers a complete introduction to both the analogue and digital beta camera formats: Betacam, Digital Beta, Betacam SX and DV & DVCAM. Step-by-step instructions are given covering everything from pre-recording checklists, to technical camera specifications, instruction on exposure and lighting, composition, editing and sound and techniques for different programme styles.

Aimed at TV camera operators just starting out and film cameramen and women converting to video this book will also appeal to students on film and television production courses.

Peter Ward is a freelance cameraman and trainer working with the International Television Training Consultancy and ex-Chairman of the Guild of Television Cameramen. He spent many years working on a variety of programmes at the BBC before becoming Head of Cameras at Television South West. Peter is author of the following books for Focal Press: Digital Video Camerawork, Picture Composition for Film and Video, Studio & Outside Broadcast Camerawork, TV Technical Operations and co-author of Multiskilling for TV Production.

Basic Betacam Camerawork offers a complete introduction to both the analogue and digital beta camera formats.

When it was originally published in 1986, this was the first book to deal simultaneously with several aspects of social welfare provision in a developing country. The unique contribution of the book is based on the analysis of 3 substantive welfare areas - land (for self-help housing), urban infrastructure and health - which are examined in terms of the nature, motivation and effectiveness of government intervention. The book covers 3 administrations between 1970 and the mid-1980s and sets the analysis in the wider context of Latin American affairs. The author shows that although social welfare expenditure has increased, its importance as a government priority has been sharply eroded.

TV Technical Operations is an introduction for new entrants to the broadcast industry and is designed to prepare them for working in mainstream television by discussing essential techniques, technologies and work attitudes.

The author explores:
* the need to develop a professional approach
* the occupational skills needed to meet deadlines, work under pressure and within budget
* the importance of understanding the potential of broadcast equipment in program making
* the need to keep up to date with the technique and technology
* the responsibility to ensure continuity of experience and training in all craft skills that technical operators are required to work with
* the need to maintain a critical appraisal of what and who influences working practices and how these influences affect production and viewers
* an introduction to the basic skills needed to work as a multi-skilling technical operator in television
* an introduction to broadcast equipment in general production use

Peter Ward is a freelance cameraman and camerawork trainer working with international training and television consultancy. He was formerly head of cameras at Television South West.

Written by television trainers who run their own courses on Multiskilling, this book offers a comprehensive introduction to the broad range of skills and technical knowledge required in this industry. It details all the essential information you need to know, acting as an on-the-job reference source for everyday use.

For many broadcasting technicians, one of the biggest challenges in recent years has been the transition from a career working in a solo core skill such as camerawork or audio, to acquiring the experience and expertise of a range of production jobs. Many people are expected to work in a number of crafts and to equip themselves with a much wider range of television techniques than had been customary in the past.

Multiskilling has become an integral part of television culture, requiring that new entrants are competent in several specialist production skills. Multiskilling for Television Production concentrates on the techniques associated with news and magazine programme production, where most tecnhical operators are usually employed, but most techniques are shared across the whole spectrum of television and film making.

Anyone baffled by the range and scope of skills to be mastered will find this book invaluable.

Courtship, love, and marriage are seen today as very private affairs, and historians have generally concluded that after the late eighteenth century young people began to enjoy great autonomy in courtship and decisions about marriage. Peter Ward disagrees with this conclusion and argues that freedom in nineteenth-century English Canada was constrained by an intricate social, institutional, and familial framework which greatly influenced the behaviour of young couples both before and after marriage.