A tiny organism called pollen pulls off one of nature’s key tasks: plant reproduction. Pollination involves a complex network of different species interacting with one another and mutually adapting to their ecosystems, which are constantly changing. Some pollen grains require just a puff of wind to set them in motion, but most plants depend on creatures gifted with mobility. These might be birds, bats, reptiles, or insects including butterflies, beetles, flies, wasps, and over twenty thousand species of bee. In Paths of Pollen Stephen Humphrey asks readers to imagine a tipping point where plants and pollinators can no longer adapt to stressors such as urbanization, modern agriculture, and global climate change. Illuminating the science of pollination ecology through evocative encounters with biologists, conservationists, and beekeepers, Humphrey illustrates the significance of pollination to such diverse concerns as food supply, biodiversity, rising global temperatures, and the resilience of landscapes. As human actions erase habitats and raise the planet’s temperature, plant diversity is dropping and a growing list of pollinators faces decline or even extinction. Paths of Pollen chronicles pollen’s vital mission to spread plant genes, from the prehistoric past to the present, while looking towards an ecologically uncertain future.

Theatre of the Rule of Law presents a sustained critique of global rule of law promotion - an expansive industry at the heart of international development, post-conflict reconstruction and security policy today. While successful in articulating and disseminating an effective global public policy, rule of law promotion has largely failed in its stated objectives of raising countries out of poverty and taming violent conflict. Furthermore, in its execution, this work deviates sharply from 'the rule of law' as commonly conceived. To explain this, Stephen Humphreys draws on the history of the rule of law as a concept, examples of legal export during colonial times, and a spectrum of contemporary interventions by development agencies and international organisations. Rule of law promotion is shown to be a kind of theatre, the staging of a morality tale about the good life, intended for edification and emulation, but blind to its own internal contradictions.

Theatre of the Rule of Law presents a sustained critique of global rule of law promotion - an expansive industry at the heart of international development, post-conflict reconstruction and security policy today. While successful in articulating and disseminating an effective global public policy, rule of law promotion has largely failed in its stated objectives of raising countries out of poverty and taming violent conflict. Furthermore, in its execution, this work deviates sharply from 'the rule of law' as commonly conceived. To explain this, Stephen Humphreys draws on the history of the rule of law as a concept, examples of legal export during colonial times, and a spectrum of contemporary interventions by development agencies and international organisations. Rule of law promotion is shown to be a kind of theatre, the staging of a morality tale about the good life, intended for edification and emulation, but blind to its own internal contradictions.

As the effects of climate change continue to be felt, appreciation of its future transformational impact on numerous areas of public law and policy is set to grow. Among these, human rights concerns are particularly acute. They include forced mass migration, increased disease incidence and strain on healthcare systems, threatened food and water security, the disappearance and degradation of shelter, land, livelihoods and cultures, and the threat of conflict. This inquiry into the human rights dimensions of climate change looks beyond potential impacts to examine the questions raised by climate change policies: accountability for extraterritorial harms; constructing reliable enforcement mechanisms; assessing redistributional outcomes; and allocating burdens, benefits, rights and duties among perpetrators and victims, both public and private. The book examines a range of so-far unexplored theoretical and practical concerns that international law and other scholars and policy-framers will find increasingly difficult to ignore.

There are few areas of London that have changed in recent decades as much as the dockside areas of Bermondsey and Rotherhithe. As the importance of London as a shipping port declined in the post-war years many of the city's docklands began to see changes. In Bermondsey and Rotherhithe almost the whole of the riverside was once devoted to the unloading and loading of goods of all kinds from ships that arrived from all over the world. The goods were stored in the gigantic warehouses that lined the rover and factories, with famous names, grew up to process them close to where they were unshipped and stored. To service and maintain the port industries a multitude of workers and their families lived and worked in the often cramped and narrow streets that ran around and between the port buildings. This book recalls the days when these communities were at the heart of British commerce and industry, and covers particularly the years from between the wars to a decade of two after the Second World War. Drawing on the excellent collection of photographs and memorabilia held in Southwark Local Studies Library, Stephen Humphrey reveals the sights and sounds of an industrial heritage that is now all but gone and an area that is now the scene of major redevelopment.

This book will be immensely helpful to those who wish to orient themselves to what has become a very large body of literature on medieval Islamic history. Combining a bibliographic study with an inquiry into method, it opens with a survey of the principal reference tools available to historians of Islam and a systematic review of the sources they will confront. Problems of method are then examined in a series of chapters, each exploring a broad topic in the social and political history of the Middle East and North Africa between A.D. 600 and 1500. The topics selected represent a cross-section of Islamic historical studies, and range from the struggles for power within the early Islamic community to the life of the peasantry. Each chapter pursues four questions. What concrete research problems are likely to be most challenging and productive? What resources do we possess for dealing with these problems? What strategies can we devise to exploit our resources most effectively? What is the current state of the scholarly literature for the topic under study?

It's the day before Christmas Eve and Harold and Charlie are very excited. But when Stanley the reindeer arrives to switch on the Christmas lights he has some troubling news about Santa! What has happened to Santa and why can't he fit down the chimneys? Harold has a plan to help but can a platypus and a little bear really deliver presents to every little boy and little girl before Christmas morning?

PRAISE FOR THE FIRST EDITION: "Humphreys brings a historian's deep and dispassionate perspective to the modern Middle East. In Between Memory and Desire, he poses incisive questions, elaborates convincing arguments and does not shy from tackling the prickliest of topics. All this is achieved with an eye for telling detail and a concise style that is rare in academic writing. . . . Humphreys's work is in the best tradition of writing on foreign cultures. Objective yet sympathetic, scholarly yet accessible, his book ends up revealing as much about our own society as about those it describes."--Max Rodenbeck, "New York Times Book Review ""In this sober and highly informative book, Humphreys introduces educated readers to the nuances of Middle Eastern political and social discourse. He goes behind the headlines and offers a sophisticated and yet accessible analysis of Islamic polity for Western readers."--"Library Journal ""'People know a lot of things that aren't so, ' warns Stephen Humphreys, and then he tells us all we should really know about the Middle East--a vast, complex, and frequently misunderstood universe. It is a rare achievement that combines erudition, compelling writing, and personal experience."--Meron Benvenisti, author of "City of Stone"

In this accessible study, Stephen Humphreys introduces the most elusive of the early caliphs, Mu'awiya ibn abi Sufyan (602-680). Notoriously guarded about his thoughts, motives and emotions, Mu'awiya was universally known as a figure of immense political acumen. Beyond this, opinions are deeply divided. Throughout history, some have accused him of being the first caliph to diverge from Muhammed's model of ideal Muslim leadership whilst others credit him with uniting an empire in disarray and transforming the Caliphate into a practicable form of government. In light of this, Humphreys critically analyses his sources, and seeks to get as close as possible to a historical account of the great man.

This selection of photographs illustrates the transformation of the London Borough of Southwark over the 20th century. It covers Bermondsey, Camberwell, Peckham and Dulwich, as well as Southwark itself, and offers an insight into the daily lives and living conditions of local people. It also offers an impression of familiar streets and districts as they developed during a century of unprecedented change.