Jeff Alexander

Read Jeff Alexander's posts on the Penguin Blog. A couch potato's book of wisdom-- 100% commercial free Some say that entire generations of Americans are being raised by the television...like that's a bad thing. Not so, says author Jeff Alexander, long-time television writer, advocate of education by television, and recapper for the popular website Television Without Pity. Here, he offers the ultimate in life lessons as seen on TV. Topics include: - Saved by the Bell: School on TV - Somebody Save Me: Super Powers and Magic Spells - Tell Me Why I Love You Like I Do: Relationships on TV - Making A Living: The Workplace - And more With a smart, snarky style, Alexander guides readers through important lessons gleaned from years of TV reviewing (now in convenient book form ), freeing up a whole new generation to learn other things, like how to cure cancer or solve world hunger...or anything more useful than watching TV (Author's note: Just joking... there is no such thing).

A 50-year retrospective of the St. Lawrence Seaway: The Seaway was considered one of the world's greatest engineering achievements when it opened in 1959. The $1 billion project a series of locks, canals, and dams that tamed the ferocious St. Lawrence River opened the Great Lakes to the global shipping industry, linking ports on lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario to shipping hubs on the world's seven seas increased global trade in the Great Lakes region. But it came at an extraordinarily high price. Foreign species that immigrated into the lakes unleashed a biological shift that reconfigured the world's largest freshwater ecosystems. Pandora's Locks is the story of politicians and engineers who, driven by hubris and handicapped by ignorance, demanded that the Seaway be built at any cost. It is the tragic tale of government agencies that could have prevented ocean freighters from laying waste to the Great Lakes ecosystems, but failed to act until it was too late. Blending science with compelling personal accounts, this book is the first comprehensive account of how inviting transoceanic freighters into North America's freshwater seas transformed these wondrous lakes.

The big little book of fake DVD commentaries, wherein well-known pundits make impassioned remarks about classic science fiction films. It's a gas!