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The Geography of Nowhere traces America's evolution from a nation of Main Streets and coherent communities to a land where every place is like no place in particular, where the cities are dead zones and the countryside is a wasteland of cartoon architecture and parking lots. In elegant and often hilarious prose, Kunstler depicts our nation's evolution from the Pilgrim settlements to the modern auto suburb in all its ghastliness. The Geography of Nowhere tallies up the huge economic, social, and spiritual costs that America is paying for its car-crazed lifestyle. It is also a wake-up call for citizens to reinvent the places where we live and work, to build communities that are once again worthy of our affection. Kunstler proposes that by reviving civic art and civic life, we will rediscover public virtue and a new vision of the common good. "The future will require us to build better places," Kunstler says, "or the future will belong to other people in other societies."
Key Features: Provides clear and authoritative recommendations for
managing fire in ecological and social contexts Authors are all
international leaders in their fields and include not only
academics but also leaders of Indigenous communities Explains
Indigenous cultural and knowledge systems to a degree that has
rarely been accessible to lay and academic readers outside
specialized disciplines like Anthropology Responds to growing need
for new approaches to managing human-ecological systems that are in
greater sympathy with Australia's natural environments/climate, and
value the knowledge of Indigenous people Timely for scholarly and
interest groups intervention, as the Australian government is again
looking to 'develop the north' Sustainable Land Sector Development
in Northern Australia sets out a vision for developing North
Australia based on a culturally appropriate and ecologically
sustainable land sector economy. This vision supports both
Indigenous cultural responsibilities and aspirations, as well as
enhancing enterprise opportunities for society as a whole. In the
past, well-meaning if often misguided policy agendas have failed -
and continue to fail - North Australians. This book helps breach
that gap by acknowledging and harnessing Indigenous cultural
strengths and knowledge systems for looking after the country and
its people, as part of a smart, novel and diversified ecosystem
services economy.
Key Features: Provides clear and authoritative recommendations for
managing fire in ecological and social contexts Authors are all
international leaders in their fields and include not only
academics but also leaders of Indigenous communities Explains
Indigenous cultural and knowledge systems to a degree that has
rarely been accessible to lay and academic readers outside
specialized disciplines like Anthropology Responds to growing need
for new approaches to managing human-ecological systems that are in
greater sympathy with Australia's natural environments/climate, and
value the knowledge of Indigenous people Timely for scholarly and
interest groups intervention, as the Australian government is again
looking to 'develop the north' Sustainable Land Sector Development
in Northern Australia sets out a vision for developing North
Australia based on a culturally appropriate and ecologically
sustainable land sector economy. This vision supports both
Indigenous cultural responsibilities and aspirations, as well as
enhancing enterprise opportunities for society as a whole. In the
past, well-meaning if often misguided policy agendas have failed -
and continue to fail - North Australians. This book helps breach
that gap by acknowledging and harnessing Indigenous cultural
strengths and knowledge systems for looking after the country and
its people, as part of a smart, novel and diversified ecosystem
services economy.
In his previous book, celebrated social commentator James Howard
Kunstler explored how the age of globalization and mankind's
explosive progress over the last two hundred years was based on the
availability of cheap fossil fuels. He observed that the terminal
decline of oil production, combined with the perils of climate
change, had the potential to put industrial civilization out of
business. A tremendous success, The Long Emergency sold over
100,000 copies and cemented Kunstler's place as an important voice
in the debate on our country's future. His latest book, the
critically acclaimed World Made by Hand, is an astonishing work of
speculative fiction that brings to life what America might be, a
few decades hence. For the townspeople of Union Grove, New York,
the future is nothing like they thought it would be. After the
catastrophes converged--the end of oil, climate change, resource
wars, and global pandemics--they are doing whatever they can to get
by. Transportation is slow and dangerous, so food is grown locally
at great expense of time and energy, and the outside world is
largely unknown. There may be a president, and he may be in
Minneapolis now, but people aren't sure. Their challenges play out
in a dazzling, fully realized world of abandoned highways and empty
houses, horses working the fields and rivers, no longer polluted,
and replenished with fish. With the cost of oil skyrocketing--and
with it the price of food--Americans are increasingly aware of the
possibility of the long emergency. Kunstler's extraordinary book, a
novel full of love and loss, violence and power, sex and drugs,
depression and desperation, but also plenty of hope, is sure to
find many new readers inpaperback.
Forget the speculation of pundits and media personalities. For
anyone asking "Now what?" the answer is out there. You just have to
know where to look. In his 2005 book, The Long Emergency, James
Howard Kunstler described the global predicaments that would pitch
the USA into political and economic turmoil in the 21st century-the
end of affordable oil, climate irregularities, and flagging
economic growth, to name a few. Now, he returns with a book that
takes an up-close-and-personal approach to how real people are
living now-surviving The Long Emergency as it happens. Through his
popular blog, Clusterf*ck Nation, Kunstler has had the opportunity
to connect with people from across the country. They've shared
their stories with him-sometimes over years of correspondence-and
in Living in the Long Emergency: Global Crisis, the Failure of the
Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way
Forward, he shares them with us, offering an eye-opening and
unprecedented look at what's really going on "out there" in the
US-and beyond. Kunstler also delves deep into his past predictions,
comparing and contrastingt hem with the way things have unfolded
with unflinching honesty. Further, he turns an eye to what's ahead,
laying out the strategies that will help all of us as we navigate
this new world. With personal accounts from a Vermont baker,
homesteaders, a building contractor in the Baltimore ghetto, a
white nationalist, and many more, Living in the Long Emergency is a
unique and timely exploration of how the lives of everyday
Americans are being transformed, for better and for worse, and what
these stories tell us both about the future and about human
perseverance.
The last, longest and most damaging of the wars fought between East
Rome and Sasanian Persia (603-628) brought the classical phase of
west Eurasian history to a dramatic close. Despite its evident
significance, not least as the distant setting for Muhammad's
prophetic mission, this last great war of antiquity attracted
comparatively little scholarly attention until the last decades of
the twentieth century. James Howard-Johnston's contributions to the
subject, most of which were published in out-of-the-way places
(one, that on al-Tabari, is printed for the first time), are
brought together in convenient form in this volume. They strive to
root history in close observation of landscape and monuments as
well as careful analysis of texts. They explore the evolving
balance of power between the two empires, look at events through
Roman, Armenian and Arab eyes, and home in on the climax of the
final conflict in the 620s.
From the renowned social critic, energy expert, and bestselling
author James Howard Kunstler, The Harrows of Spring concludes the
quartet of his extraordinary World Made By Hand novels, set in an
American future of economic and political collapse, where
electricity, automobiles, and the familiar social structures of the
"old times" are a misty memory. In the little upstate New York town
of Union Grove, springtime is a most difficult season, known as
"the six weeks want," when fresh food is scarce and winter stores
have dwindled. Young Daniel Earle returns from his haunting travels
around what is left of the United States intent on resurrecting the
town newspaper. He is also recruited by the town trustees to help
revive the Hudson River trade route shut down peevishly by the
local grandee, planter Stephen Bullock. Meanwhile, a menacing gang
of Social Justice Warriors styling themselves as agents of the
Berkshire People's Republic appear one evening camped on the
outskirts of town. Their leaders are the imposing Amazonian beauty
Flame Aurora Greengrass and the charismatic grifter Sylvester
"Buddy" Goodfriend, progressive to a fault in their politics and
determined to extract whatever tribute they can from the people of
Union Grove. Romance, politics, bunko, violence, and family tragedy
swirl through the thrilling finale to Kunstler's bestselling
series. The Harrows of Spring is a powerful, heart-wrenching, and
satisfying conclusion to this poignant history of the future.
A History of the Future is the third thrilling novel in Kunstler's
"World Made By Hand" series, an exploration of family and morality
as played out in the small town of Union Grove. Following the
catastrophes of the twenty-first century--the pandemics, the
environmental disaster, the end of oil, the ensuing chaos--people
are doing whatever they can to get by and pursuing a simpler and
sometimes happier existence. In little Union Grove in upstate New
York, the townspeople are preparing for Christmas. Without the
consumerist shopping frenzy that dogged the holidays of the
previous age, the season has become a time to focus on family and
loved ones. It is a stormy Christmas Eve when Robert Earle's son
Daniel arrives back from his two years of sojourning throughout
what is left of the United States. He collapses from exhaustion and
illness, but as he recovers tells the story of the break-up of the
nation into three uneasy independent regions and his journey into
the dark heart of the New Foxfire Republic centered in Tennesee and
led by the female evangelical despot, Loving Morrow. In the
background, Union Grove has been shocked by the Christmas Eve
double murder by a young mother, in the throes of illness, of her
husband and infant son. Town magistrate Stephen Bullock is in a
hanging mood. A History of the Future is attention-grabbing and
provocative, but also lyrical, tender, and comic--a vision of a
future of America that is becoming more and more convincing and
perhaps even desirable with each passing day.
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Challenge to Faith
Donna James Howard
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R342
Discovery Miles 3 420
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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The history of Byzantium pivots around the eleventh century, during
which it reached its apogee in terms of power, prestige, and
territorial extension, only then to plunge into steep political
decline following serious military defeats and extensive
territorial losses. The political, economic, and intellectual
history of the period is reasonably well understood, but not so
what was happening in that crucial intermediary sphere, the social
order, which both shaped and was shaped by contemporary ideas and
brute economic developments. This volume aims to deepen
understanding of Byzantine society by examining material evidence
for settlements and production in different regions and by sifting
through the far from plentiful literary and documentary sources in
order to track what was happening in town and country. There is
evidence of significant change: the pattern of landownership
continued to shift in favour of those with power and wealth, but
there was sustained and effective resistance from peasant villages.
Provincial towns prospered in what was an era of sustained economic
growth, and, through newly emboldened local elites, took a more
active part in public affairs. In the capital the middling classes,
comprising much of officialdom and leading traders, gained in
importance, while the twin military and civilian elites were
merging to form a single governing class. However, despite this
social upheaval, careful analysis of these various factors by a
range of leading Byzantine historians and archaeologists leads to
the overarching conclusion that it was not so much internal
structural changes which contributed to the vertiginous decline
suffered by Byzantium in the late eleventh century, as the
unprecedented combination of dangerous adversaries on different
fronts, in the east, north, and west.
The last and longest war of classical antiquity was fought in the
early seventh century. It was ideologically charged and fought
along the full length of the Persian-Roman frontier, drawing in all
the available resources and great powers of the steppe world. The
conflict raged on an unprecedented scale, and its end brought the
classical phase of history to a close. Despite all this, it has
left a conspicuous gap in the history of warfare. This book aims to
finally fill that gap. The war opened in summer 603 when Persian
armies launched co-ordinated attacks across the Roman frontier.
Twenty-five years later the fighting stopped after the final,
forlorn counteroffensive thrusts of the Emperor Heraclius into the
Persians' Mesopotamian heartland. James Howard-Johnston pieces
together the scattered and fragmentary evidence of this period to
form a coherent story of the dramatic events, as well as an
introduction to key players-Turks, Arabs, and Avars, as well as
Persians and Romans- and a tour of the vast lands over which the
fighting took place. The decisions and actions of
individuals-particularly Heraclius, a general of rare talent-and
the various immaterial factors affecting morale take centre stage,
yet due attention is also given to the underlying structures in
both belligerent empires and to the Middle East under Persian
occupation in the 620s. The result is a solidly founded, critical
history of a conflict of immense significance in the final episode
of classical history.
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Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
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R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
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