A new way of measuring the health of a political system: by examining the health of its landscapes and ecosystems East Germany, its economy, and its society were in decline long before the country's political collapse in the late 1980s. The clues were there in the natural landscape, Arvid Nelson argues in this groundbreaking book, but policy analysts were blind to them. Had they noted the record of the leadership's values and goals manifest in the landscape, they wouldn't have hailed East Germany as a Marxist-Leninist success story. Nelson sets East German history within the context of the landscape history of two centuries to underscore how forest and ecosystem change offered a reliable barometer to the health and stability of the political system that governed them. Cold War Ecology records how East German leaders' indifference to human rights and their disregard for the landscape affected the rural economy, forests, and population. This lesson from history suggests new ways of thinking about the health of ecosystems and landscapes, Nelson shows, and he proposes assessing the stability of modern political systems based on the environment's system qualities rather than on political leaders' goals and beliefs.

Three fantastic stories for one great price in one amazing omnibus. QUEEN SONJA VOL 1 - "Know also, O prince, that in the selfsame days that the Cimmerian did stalk the Hyborian Kingdoms, one of the few swords worthy to cross with his was that of Red Sonja, warrior-woman out of majestic Hyrkania. Forced to flee her homeland because she spurned the advances of a king and slew him instead, she rode west across the Turanian steppes and into the shadowed mists of legendry." -- -The Nemedian Chronicles QUEEN SONJA VOL 2: THE RED QUEEN - Sonja finds herself warily upon the throne and facing a new and deadly threat from within... and without! QUEEN SONJA VOL. 3: COMING OF AGE - Before she was a warrior, Red Sonja was a wild child in the Hyrkanian wilderness, before she ruled the empire of Emora, she thieved the streets of Pah-Disha. Running from the the pain of her bloody origins she gambles her life recklessly. Surviving these rough years taught her to fight, to hunt, to steal and to kill. They taught her one more thing, that her gift is her doom, and there is no escaping it.