“One of the greatest achievements is to find beauty today, where you struggled to find it yesterday.”

From the global bestseller of Big Panda and Tiny Dragon, our two friends return to undertake a beautifully illustrated and poignant journey. This time the pair are on a quest to find the most beautiful place in the world.

On discovering a map that promises to lead them there, the search takes Big Panda and Tiny Dragon on a demanding expedition through tough terrain. The pair traverse dark forests, hazardous mountains, derelict ruins and dark caves.

There are times when the landscape threatens to overwhelm them, but together they keep walking. Each environment, so menacing at first, slowly yields pockets of light, life and beauty.

This is a story of a life-affirming friendship, of struggle and hope, and the immense power of looking for beauty in the most unlikely places.

A simple, thought-provoking tale with a deep resonance and well of wisdom inspired by Buddhist philosophy – the perfect gift for adults and children alike seeking comfort, understanding and, of course, beauty.

There is a paradox in American Christianity. According to Gallup, nearly eight in ten Americans regard the Bible as either the literal word of God or the inspired by God. At the same time, surveys have revealed gaps in these same Americans' biblical literacy. These discrepancies reveal the complex relationship between American Christians and Holy Writ, a subject that is widely acknowledged but rarely investigated. The Bible in American Life is a sustained, collaborative reflection on the ways Americans use the Bible in their personal lives. It also considers how other influences, including religious communities and the internet, shape individuals' comprehension of scripture. Employing both quantitative methods (the General Social Survey and the National Congregations Study) and qualitative research (historical studies for context), The Bible in American Life provides an unprecedented perspective on the Bible's role outside of worship, in the lived religion of a broad cross-section of Americans both now and in the past. The Bible has been central to Christian practice, and has functioned as a cultural touchstone, throughout American history, but too little is known about how people engage it every day. How do people read the Bible for themselves outside of worship? How have denominational and parachurch publications influenced the interpretation and application of scripture? How have clergy and congregations influenced individual understandings of scripture? These questions are especially pressing in a time when denominations are losing much of their traditional cultural authority, technology is changing reading and cognitive habits, and subjective experience is continuing to eclipse textual authority as the mark of true religion. From the broadest scale imaginable, national survey data about all Americans, down to the smallest details, such as the portrayal of Noah and his ark in children's Bibles, this book offers insight and illumination from scholars across the intellectual spectrum. It will be useful and informative for scholars seeking to understand changes in American Christianity as well as clergy seeking more effective ways to preach and teach about scripture in a changing environment.

Explore the Civil War history of West Virginia's Coal River Valley.

Since the appearance of Homo sapiens on the planet hundreds of thousands of years ago, human beings have sought to exploit their environments, extracting as many resources as their technological ingenuity has allowed. As technologies have advanced in recent centuries, that impulse has remained largely unchecked, exponentially accelerating the human impact on the environment. Humans versus Nature tells a history of the global environment from the Stone Age to the present, emphasizing the adversarial relationship between the human and natural worlds. Nature is cast as an active protagonist, rather than a mere backdrop or victim of human malfeasance. Daniel R. Headrick shows how environmental changes-epidemics, climate shocks, and volcanic eruptions-have molded human societies and cultures, sometimes overwhelming them. At the same time, he traces the history of anthropogenic changes in the environment-species extinctions, global warming, deforestation, and resource depletion-back to the age of hunters and gatherers and the first farmers and herders. He shows how human interventions such as irrigation systems, over-fishing, and the Industrial Revolution have in turn harmed the very societies that initiated them. Throughout, Headrick examines how human-driven environmental changes are interwoven with larger global systems, dramatically reshaping the complex relationship between people and the natural world. In doing so, he roots the current environmental crisis in the deep past.

Explore the history of brewing and beer culture in Louisville, Kentucky.

Explore the haunted history of Salem, Massachusetts.

Discover a wide range of fascinating and bizarre tales from Wilmington and the surrounding region of North Carolina.

Before sleek factory boats dominated Currituck Sound, locals piloted these waters in hulls made by hand. Some still can be seen today--beautiful works of art designed for the utility of travel, fishing, hunting, scouting and touring. They figure prominently in recollections of a bygone sportsman's paradise, and native storyteller Travis Morris offers this engaging collection based on anecdotes, interviews and detailed craft descriptions. It's an insider's history of Currituck's boating heritage featuring the famed Whalehead Club, an accidental run-in with the Environmental Protection Agency and a harrowing U.S. Coast Guard rescue.

In 1859, the legendary Frank Jones Brewery was founded in Portsmouth, paving the way for the booming craft beer scene of today. The surge of budding breweries is bringing exciting styles and flavors to thirsty local palates and neighborhood bars from the White Mountains to the seacoast. Join beer scholars and adventurers Brian Aldrich and Michael Meredith as they explore all of the tastes New Hampshire beer has to offer. They've scoured the taps at Martha's Exchange, peeked around the brew house at Smuttynose and gotten personal with the brewers behind Flying Goose and Moat Mountain. Discover, pint for pint, the craft and trade of the state's unique breweries, from the up-and-comers like Earth Eagle and Schilling to old stalwarts like Elm City and Portsmouth Brewery.

Perhaps no other area of Utah reflects the state's expansive diversity as clearly as the Wasatch Front. "Utah Reflections: Stories from the Wasatch Front" captures the heritage and identity of this self-defining part of the state. These personal stories are grounded in the mountains, waters, deserts and cities of a distinctive geography, from Cache Valley to Salt Lake City to Provo. Contributors include Lance Larson, Katharine Coles, Phyllis Barber, Sylvia Torti, Chadd VanZanten, Pam Houston and Terry Tempest Williams, as well as other exciting established and new voices. Each piece was thoughtfully selected as part of a sweeping panorama of cultural history and the traditions of a people bound to the region to show what makes the Wasatch Front unique, prosperous and beloved.

Stevens County was first inhabited by a Paleo-Indian culture that occupied Kettle Falls along the Columbia River for 9,000 years. A gathering place for several Salish Indian tribes, the area called Shonitkwu, meaning "Falls of Boiling Baskets," was an abundant resource for fishing--specifically salmon. Traveling downriver from Kettle Falls to the trading post Spokane House in 1811, Canadian fur trapper David Thompson described the village as "built of long sheds of 20 feet in breadth" and noted the tribe's ceremonial dances worshiping the arrival of salmon. In 1829, Fort Colville was producing large amounts of food from local crops. And in 1934, work began on the Columbia Dam to generate a much-needed power source for irrigation from the Columbia River. Upon its completion in 1940, the native tribes gathered one last time, not to celebrate the return of the salmon but for a "ceremony of tears" on the salmon's departure.

This collection of eleven new essays contains the latest developments in analytic feminist philosophy on the topic of pornography. While honoring early feminist work on the subject, it aims to go beyond speech act analyses of pornography and to reshape the philosophical discourse that surrounds pornography. A rich feminist literature on pornography has emerged since the 1980s, with Rae Langton's speech act theoretic analysis dominating specifically Anglo-American feminist philosophy on pornography. Despite the predominance of this literature, there remain considerable disagreements and precious little agreement on many key issues: What is pornography? Does pornography (as Langton argues) constitute women's subordination and silencing? Does it objectify women in harmful ways? Is pornography authoritative enough to enact women's subordination? Is speech act theory the best way to approach pornography? Given the deep divergences over these questions, the first goal of this collection is to take stock of extant debates in order to clarify key feminist conceptual and political commitments regarding pornography. This volume further aims to go beyond the prevalent speech-acts approach to pornography, and to highlight novel issues in feminist pornography-debates, including the aesthetics of pornography, trans* identities and racialization in pornography, and putatively feminist pornography.

Amid the tourist bustle in the biggest beach city in Orange County, hometown personalities and their stories are Chris Epting's business. As a widely published author and columnist for the "Huntington Beach Independent," Epting has covered the famous and not-so-famous, the local people, places and events of Surf City's beachscapes and street scenes with a reporter's curiosity, a historian's exactitude and an ambassador's pride. "Huntington Beach Chronicles" offers a diverse collection of stories about the everyday people and extraordinary events that have woven together a community with a charm and character unlike any other.

The first courts handled crimes like lying, idleness and card playing with punishments that ranged from fines to public whipping to death by hanging. Constables kept order until Portsmouth's first police officer took up the shield in 1800. But no force could keep all crime at bay. The court sentenced the beautiful, educated Ruth Blay to hanging on shaky evidence that she might have killed her baby. Business magnate Frank Jones played corrupt politics, succumbed to extramarital temptations and helped make Water Street the red-lighted rum hole destination of the eastern seaboard. Mischievous sailors came into port looking to spend their money, finding ample opportunity in Portsmouth's bowery bordellos. Retired Portsmouth police officer David "Lou" Ferland traces the history of Portsmouth crime and justice from the first courts to today's award-winning police department.

The number of non-religious men and women has increased dramatically over the past several decades. Yet scholarship on the non-religious is severely lacking. In response to this critical gap in knowledge, The Nonreligious provides a comprehensive summation and analytical discussion of existing social scientific research on the non-religious. The authors present a thorough overview of existing research, while also drawing on ongoing research and positing ways to improve upon our current understanding of this growing population. The findings in this book stand out against the corpus of secular writing, which is comprised primarily of polemical rants critiquing religion, personal life-stories/memoirs of former believers, or abstract philosophical explorations of theology and anti-theology. By offering the first research- and data-based conclusions about the non-religious, this book will be an invaluable source of information and a foundation for further scholarship. Written in clear, jargon-free language that will appeal to the increasingly interested general readers, this book provides an unbiased, thorough account of all relevant existing scholarship within the social sciences that bears on the lived experience of the non-religious.

We are women, we are men. We are refugees, single mothers, people with disabilities, and queers. We belong to social categories and they frame our actions, self-understanding, and opportunities. But what are social categories? How are they created and sustained? How does one come to belong to them? Asta approaches these questions through analytic feminist metaphysics. Her theory of social categories centers on an answer to the question: what is it for a feature of an individual to be socially meaningful? In a careful, probing investigation, she reveals how social categories are created and sustained and demonstrates their tendency to oppress through examples from current events. To this end, she offers an account of just what social construction is and how it works in a range of examples that problematize the categories of sex, gender, and race in particular. The main idea is that social categories are conferred upon people. Asta introduces a 'conferralist' framework in order to articulate a theory of social meaning, social construction, and most importantly, of the construction of sex, gender, race, disability, and other social categories.

Nestled in the heart of Wisconsin's renowned Northwoods and surrounded by the world's largest inland chain of lakes, Three Lakes has developed into a premier resort and vacation destination while maintaining its small-town character. The pristine woodland trails and picturesque lakeside views that residents and visitors of today are accustomed to were not always here. Three Lakes was founded as a supply station for the massive logging operations of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Much of the area was barren of standing timber by the end of the first decade of the 20th century. The community reinvented itself as an agricultural center and as a vacation destination that played host to such notable individuals as Amelia Earhart, Bob Hope, and Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower. The community has always shown pride in its schools, churches, and local organizations.

What makes for a philosophical classic? Why do some philosophical works persist over time, while others do not? The philosophical canon and diversity are topics of major debate today. This stimulating volume contains ten new essays by accomplished philosophers writing passionately about works in the history of philosophy that they feel were unjustly neglected or ignored-and why they deserve greater attention. The essays cover lesser known works by famous thinkers as well as works that were once famous but now only faintly remembered. Works examined include Gorgias' Encomium of Helen, Jane Adams' Women and Public Housekeeping, W.E.B. DuBois' Whither Now and Why, Edith Stein's On the Problem of Empathy, Jonathan Bennett's Rationality, and more. While each chapter is an expression of engagement with an individual work, the volume as a whole, and Eric Schliesser's introduction specifically, address timely questions about the nature of philosophy, disciplinary contours, and the vagaries of canon formation.

Tombstone sits less than 100 miles from the Mexico border in the middle of the picturesque Arizona desert and also squarely at the heart of America's Old West. Silver was discovered nearby in 1878, and with that strike, Tombstone was created. It soon grew to be a town of over 10,000 of the most infamous outlaws, cowboys, lawmen, prostitutes, and varmints the Wild West has ever seen. The gunfight at the O.K. Corral made Wyatt Earp and John Henry "Doc" Holliday legendary and secured Tombstone's reputation as "The Town Too Tough to Die." In this volume, more than 200 striking images and informative captions tell the stories of the heroes and villains of Tombstone, the saloons and brothels they visited, the movies they inspired, and Boot Hill, the well-known cemetery where many were buried.

New Mexico Territory attracted outlaws and desperados as its remote locations guaranteed non-detection while providing opportunists the perfect setting in which to seize wealth. Many wicked women on the run from their pasts headed there seeking new starts before and after 1912 statehood. Colorful characters such as Bronco Sue, Sadie Orchard and Lizzie McGrath were noted mavens of mayhem, while many other women were notorious gamblers, bawdy madams or confidence tricksters. Some paid the ultimate price for crimes of passion, while others avoided punishment by slyly using their beguiling allure to influence authorities. Follow the raucous tales of these wild women in a collection that proves crime in early New Mexico wasn't only a boys' game.