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Preface
Since the rst edition of this book was published, we have had airplanes grounded by the ash from
the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokul, 11 people died after an explosion on an oil rig in the Gulf of
Mexico, 33 Chilean miners were rescued after 69 days underground, many other miners died in
mining accidents in several countries, a collapse of a football dome, massive ooding in Pakistan,
a bridge collapse in Minnesota, the crippling of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors, and the devasta-
tion in Haiti after the earthquake. All of these and many other stories in the news have a number
of aspects to them—social, humanitarian, political—but, ...