Impact Erebus

Judgment on Erebus is narrative nonfiction at its most compelling and unsettling. Commanded by one of Air New Zealand’s most meticulous and cautious pilots, a sightseeing airliner inexplicably crashes into an active Antarctic volcano in broad daylight, causing the world’s fourth-worst aviation disaster. The New Zealand government’s Office of Air Accidents Investigation soon publishes an official report attributing the disaster to pilot error. Skeptical, an aroused public demands an “independent” official inquiry. Realizing that he badly needs a second investigator to confirm the first one’s findings, an imperious Prime Minister selects for the post a distinguished High Court judge he believes will be a team player. After conducting his own extensive inquiry into the crash, though, Justice Peter Mahon reaches a verdict on the cause(s) of and culpability for the devastating loss of life on Mt. Erebus that is totally incompatible with the government’s earlier in-house report. All hell breaks loose. One of the two official investigators must be gravely mistaken—or lying—but which one and why? Years of political, legal, and judicial pyrotechnics commence to answer that question. Meanwhile, a stricken nation mourns its 257 dead. Sheehan takes a fresh look at Mahon’s evidence for concluding that the national airline itself was responsible for the tragic loss of life, which the government immediately tried to cover up with a well-organized, multi-tentacled, multi-phased, and aggressive attempt to pin the accident on the well-respected dead pilots. She also movingly relates what befell the judge after an enraged Prime Minister turned on him. This twist gives a superb political and legal thriller its moral center: a Goliath-against-David struggle over the truth.

How 287 people died in the air crash on Mt Erebus. What caused the crash and who covered it up

Uncertainty surrounds the use of publicity as a means of controlling corporate crime. On the one hand, some agree with Justice Brandeis's dictum that light is "the best of disinfectants...the most efficient policeman." On the other hand, many believe that corporations' internal affairs are effectively shrouded with a thick fog that prevents the light of public scrutiny from reaching them. The Impact of Publicity on Corporate Offenders is the first study to go beyond the rhetoric, through an examination of corporate experience. Fisse and Braithwaite have carried out a qualitative inquiry concerning 17 large corporations involved in publicity crises. Based mainly on interviews, the inquiry includes company employees and former employees, union officials, officers of government regulatory agencies, competitors, independent accountants, government prosecutors, public interest activists, judicial officers, stockbrokers, and other experts.

This is a pioneering work. Recent disasters such as the tsunami disaster continue to demonstrate Professor Allinson’s thesis that valuing human lives is the core of ethical management. His unique comparison of the ideas of the power of Fate and High Technology, his penetrating analysis of the very concept of an "accident", demonstrate how concepts rule our lives. His wide-ranging investigation of court cases and government documents from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, and from places as diverse as the USA, UK and New Zealand provide ample supporting evidence for the universality and the power of explanation of his thesis. Saving Human Lives will have an impact beyond measurement on the field of management ethics.

When an Air New Zealand sightseeing plane crashed into the lower slopes of Mount Erebus in Antarctica in 1979, all 257 people on board lost their lives. The Erebus disaster sent shockwaves through our small country - it is said that 'everyone knew someone' involved. What's more, the aftermath wreaked its own trail of destruction, with the Royal Commission of Inquiry coining the oft-quoted phrase 'an orchestrated litany of lies' to describe the airline management's conduct. The surrounding media storm drowned out the stories of those at the heart of the tragedy: the families who lost someone, and the people who worked so hard to bring loved ones home. Their stories were forgotten - until now. Marking the fortieth anniversary of that horrific event, this is the first book on the topic written by a family member. In Towards the Mountain, Sarah Myles uses extensive research and interviews to weave together the stories of her grandfather, his fellow adventurers and the first responders. This is the story of what happened and its enduring impact on those most affected. What emerges is a testament to the possibility of hope.

Giant monsters whose every roar and footstep shakes the earth, whose simple stroll through a city wreaks havoc: KAIJU! And even though humankind has never really seen such monsters - we tremble at the thought of them and love to shiver as their screen versions make mayhem: the beast from twenty-thousand fathoms, Godzilla demolishing Tokyo, the massive creature in Cloverfield destroying New York, all of Earth warring with the colossal monsters in Pacific Rim. Now, for the first time, a definitive anthology that gathers a wide range of larger-than-life short fiction with creatures that run a gargantuan gamut: the stealthy gabbleduck of Neal Asher's Polity universe; Gary McMahon's huge sea-born terror; An Owomoyela 's incredibly tall alien invaders; Frank Wu's city-razing, eighty-foot-high, fire-breathing lizard; Lavie Tidhar's titanic ship-devouring monstrosity; a really big Midwest US smackdown related by Jeremiah Tolbert . . . and many more mega-monster stories to feed your need for killer kaiju! With an introduction by Robert Hood, co-editor of the groundbreaking, Ditmar Award-winning Daikaiju: Giant Monster Tales and host of Undead Backbrain, the premier website for matters relating to giant monsters.

Risk in Extreme Environments presents a wide-ranging discussion of approaches for assessing and managing extreme risks. Extreme events are not only severe, but also outside the normal range of experience of the system in question, and can include environmental catastrophe; engineering failure; financial or business meltdown; and nuclear or other extreme terrorism. The book focuses on synthesizing research results in a way that provides insights useful to decision makers, and enables them to ask probing questions about the risks faced by their organizations, identify creative solutions, and minimize the neglect of extreme risks that can come from a focus on mundane or ordinary management challenges. The book details case studies on nuclear power, infectious diseases, and global catastrophic risks, in addition to sections on risk assessment, risk management, and risk perceptions. Since effective management benefits from an interdisciplinary perspective, the chapter authors include experts in economics, engineering, geography, law, political science, psychology, sociology, and science in addition to risk analysis. Risk in Extreme Environments is an accessible and valuable resource for risk managers and other decision makers responsible for large complex business and government decisions, while also providing enough detail and references to be informative for risk analysts interested in learning more about technical aspects of the various methods.