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Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
In his runaway bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond brilliantly examined the circumstances that allowed Western civilizations to dominate much of the world. Now he probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to fall into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? Using a vast historical and geographical perspective ranging from Easter Island and the Maya to Viking Greenland and modern Montana, Diamond traces a fundamental pattern of environmental catastrophe—one whose warning signs can be seen in our modern world and that we ignore at our peril. Blending the most recent scientific advances into a narrative that is impossible to put down, Collapse exposes the deepest mysteries of the past even as it offers hope for the future. “Diamond’s most influential gift may be his ability to write about geopolitical and environmental systems in ways that don’t just educate and provoke, but entertain.” —The Seattle Times “Extremely persuasive . . . replete with fascinating stories, a treasure trove of historical anecdotes [and] haunting statistics.” —The Boston Globe “Extraordinary in erudition and originality, compelling in [its] ability to relate the digitized pandemonium of the present to the hushed agrarian sunrises of the far past.” —The New York Times Book Review.
Price: $14.65
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Resurrecting the Granary of Rome: Environmental History and French Colonial Expansion in North Africa (Ecology & History)
Tales of deforestation and desertification in North Africa have been told from the Roman period to the present Such stories of environmental decline in the Maghreb are still recounted by experts and are widely accepted without question today. International organizations such as the United Nations frequently invoke these inaccurate stories to justify environmental conservation and development projects in the arid and semiarid lands in North Africa and around the Mediterranean basin. Recent research in arid lands ecology and new paleoecological evidence, however, do not support many claims of deforestation, overgrazing, and desertification in this region. Diana K. Davis’s pioneering analysis reveals the critical influence of French scientists and administrators who established much of the purported scientific basis of these stories during the colonial period in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, illustrating the key role of environmental narratives in imperial expansion. The processes set in place by the use of this narrative not only systematically disadvantaged the majority of North Africans but also led to profound changes in the landscape, some of which produced the land degradation that continues to plague the Maghreb today. Resurrecting the Granary of Rome exposes many of the political, economic, and ideological goals of the French colonial project in these arid lands and the resulting definition of desertification that continues to inform global environmental and development projects. The first book on the environmental history of the Maghreb, this volume reframes much conventional thinking about the North African environment. Davis’s book is essential reading for those interested in global environmental history. .
Price: $26.92
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SAHARASIA: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, In the Deserts of the Old World
One of the largest and most ambitious scientific and systematic, cross-cultural evaluations of human behavior ever undertaken Originally a doctoral dissertation undertaken by the author at the University of Kansas, now supplemented with new chapters, and with hundreds of maps and illustrations. "Saharasia" is scarsely known to the wider public, given the controversial conclusions which precipitated from its development. But its findings, made as early as 1980, have been validated repeatedly by subsequent scientific discovery, and by world events. The new edition contains all-new Appendix documentation: "Update on Saharasia" reviewing archaeological evidence suggestive of an ancient period of generally peaceful human social conditions, world-wide..
Price: $31.79
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Wilhelm Reich and the Healing of Atmospheres: Modern Techniques for the Abatement of Desertification
A scientific overview of Wilhelm Reich's discovery of the atmospheric life-energy, and applications of Cosmic Orgone Engineering, or "cloudbusting" as it is more popularly known. Covers Reich's experiments, and those of his associates, with sections devoted to more recent CORE research by: Richard Blasband, Jerome Eden, and James DeMeo, among others. Presents experiments for drought-abatement and desert-greening in the USA, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, all with positive results supportive of Reich's original claims. Comprehensive with numerous photos, diagrams, graphs and full citation-lists. Translated from the original Italian, with a Foreword by James DeMeo..
Price: $39.00
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Birmingham, 35 Miles
In this haunting and poignant debut novel, James Braziel tells an unforgettable story of love, family, and survival across a world that has already begun to die.…
When the ozone layer opened and the sun relentlessly scorched the land, there was nothing left but to hope. Mathew Harrison had always heard of a better life as close as Birmingham, only thirty-five miles away—zones of blue sky, wet grass, and clean breathable air. But to him it’s a myth, a place guarded by soldiers, off limits to all but the lucky few. Meanwhile Mat works alongside his father, mining only the red clay that the once fertile Alabama soil can offer. Now, with the killing deserts on the move again and the woman he loves on a Greyhound heading north, Mat has a travel visa and every reason to leave. But his roots in this lifeless soil inexplicably hold him firmly to the past. Torn between hope and resignation, with time running out, Mat must make a fateful choice between a new life and the one that isn’t ready to let him go..
Price: $2.95
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The Last Ranch: A Colorado Community and the Coming Desert
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The Socio-Economic Causes and Consequences of Desertification in Central Asia (NATO Science for Peace and Security Series C: Environmental Security)
This book contains a selection of papers presented at the Advanced Research Workshop on ‘The Socio-economic causes and consequences of desertification in Central Asia’ held in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in June 2006. The meeting provided a forum for scientists from Central Asia and NATO countries to discuss the human dimensions of the desertification process. Papers presented to the meeting examined recent scientific evidence on the impact of desertification and contributed to the formulation of coherent national and regional policies for the management of watersheds, rangelands, and irrigated agriculture. These issues were examined from the perspective of environmental policy formulation, with respect to overgrazing by livestock, and in terms of a series of case studies of natural resource degradation and desertification control. .
Price: $65.49
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Conquering the Desert of Death: Across the Taklamakan
The ferocious Taklamakan desert in Central Asia, one of the largest sandy deserts in the world and the harshest on earth, is known by the Chinese as the "desert of death" or the "place of no return." Its unknown depths are said to be haunted by demons and spirits and legend has it that ancient cities filled with treasure lie lost and buried beneath its dunes. The only certainty is that no human being in history had ever crossed it from end to end. But, after five years of planning, in 1993, Charles Blackmore together with a team of British, Chinese and Uyghurs and a caravan of thirty camels, set out to accomplish the seemingly impossible: they would cross the Taklamakan, west to east, directly through its unmapped, untrodden centre. Conquering the Desert of Death is at once a deeply personal journey and the story of an adventure that will go down in history as one of the great achievements of exploration. .
Price: $9.67
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