How an audacious environmental engineering plan fanned white settlers’ visions for South Africa, stoked mistrust in scientific experts, and gave rise to the Apartheid state. In 1918, South Africa’s climate seemed to be drying up. White farmers claimed that rainfall was dwindling, while nineteenth-century missionaries and explorers had found riverbeds, seashells, and other evidence of a verdant past deep in the Kalahari Desert. Government experts insisted, however, that the rains weren’t disappearing; the land, long susceptible to periodic drought, had been further degraded by settler farmers’ agricultural practices—an explanation that white South Africans rejected. So when the geologist Ernest Schwarz blamed the land itself, the farmers listened. Schwarz held that erosion and topography had created arid conditions, that rainfall was declining, and that agriculture was not to blame. As a solution, he proposed diverting two rivers to the Kalahari’s basins, creating a lush country where white South Africans could thrive. This plan, which became known as the Kalahari Thirstland Redemption Scheme, was rejected by most scientists. But it found support among white South Africans who worried that struggling farmers undermined an image of racial superiority. Green Lands for White Men explores how white agriculturalists in southern Africa grappled with a parched and changing terrain as they sought to consolidate control over a Black population. Meredith McKittrick’s timely history of the Redemption Scheme reveals the environment to have been central to South African understandings of race. While Schwarz’s plan was never implemented, it enjoyed sufficient support to prompt government research into its feasibility, and years of debate. McKittrick shows how white farmers rallied around a plan that represented their interests over those of the South African state and delves into the reasons behind this schism between expert opinion and public perception. This backlash against the predominant scientific view, McKittrick argues, displayed the depth of popular mistrust in an expanding scientific elite. A detailed look at the intersection of a settler society, climate change, white nationalism, and expert credibility, Green Lands for White Men examines the reverberations of a scheme that ultimately failed but influenced ideas about race and the environment in South Africa for decades to come.

"Green City Rising is an ethnographic account of collective organizing for environmental justice in an era of growing concern about environmental and climate challenges. The conventional sustainability paradigm promises improved environmental conditions for all, such as fresh air and clean water, walkable and bikeable neighborhoods, green space access, and protection from climate crises. Yet, without particular interventions, the pursuit of such environmental amenities often contributes to displacement and further harm for communities that have historically borne the brunt of land theft, racial capitalism, and toxic industries. Drawing on the work of an alliance of grassroots organizations called the Portland Harbor Community Coalition (PHCC), Erin Goodling shows how communities have come together across lines of race and class to work for a more just, green future in Portland, Oregon. Green City Rising reveals that the violence of settler colonialism and white supremacy are far from endpoints: a collective vision for a better future is emerging, and ordinary people are building the understanding, skills, and relationships necessary to usher it in"--

Words spoken through the mists of time: Trustwe love with pure heart, pure intent! Truthwe seek that which cannot be seen! Soulwe touch that which cannot be felt! Bitternesswe taste that which does not pass our lips! Successwe smell that which so sweetly does it hold the senses, yet of aroma it has none! Logicwe understand the concept of life, yet do know not how! Emotionswe heal the wounds within where scars do not show, yet go deeper than most! This book is about the struggles of a proud and resilient people whose way of life was to be altered without thought for their traditions or culture as the white men infiltrated deeper and deeper into their lands. It reflects their way of life before it changed, and the effect it was to have on a nation ground down by ignorance and greed. There are many reasons for this work, and spirit laid no blame on those perpetrators; the main reason they have come forward now is the need to see our world saved from the power struggle going on between nations, and the rape of our beautiful lands. Having been taken on many journeys with them, I understand so clearly how the indomitable spirit of this culture must stay alive, this being the reason for every word channeled. To walk in shadow of sun is natural; to walk in shadow of another man is not. A Hand Held Out I am being shown a beautiful babbling brook. The sun is glistering on its surface as a thousand lights dancing with joy. A hand is being held out to me. I have to trust that all will be revealed as I walk into the picture. I can smell the newness of the morning, and sweet Bird song assails my ears. My (as yet to introduce himself) friend, tells me I am being taken on a journey of learning. So I follow... I follow a voice... a hand... I listen and I wait. I spy Red Squirrel scurrying around foraging among fallen leaves for nuts. They do not notice me, for I am not really there, only in the sense of illusion. Trailing along the brook i am shown a beautiful little Pawnee child. She is playing in the water with a small dog that is yapping and running in circles around the child who is giggling and laughing at its antics. I feel as though I am watching this on a cinema screen, and yet I am being pulled into the scene by some unknown force.

When German submarines were sinking so much Allied shipping that Britain faced the danger of starvation, Dennis Wheatley – then a member of the War Cabinet's Joint Planning Staff – suggested that a system of raft convoys, moved by the Gulf Stream and prevailing winds, should be used to float essential supplies across the Atlantic. This story is based on that idea. Philip Vaudell leaves the United States on a solitary raft, but when he comes across a ploy that would put him in danger, he casts away from his crew and the raft is left in the lap of the gods. But, with Philip was the other real trouble – in the enticing shape of red-headed Gloria, who had stowed away on his raft. Instead of drifting into European waters, they are carried down to the Antarctic where, amidst its eternal snows, he discovers a large area with a warm climate and populated by a lost race. Will they be able to make contact and request rescue, or will they be forced to find a way to integrate with these people? Furthermore, will they be welcomed, or used as part of their ritual human sacrifice?

The completion of a law degree and job offers from a number of law firms should have been a graduate's crowning achievement; however, Art Costello meets it with indifference. Art broods over his future before deciding to take a couple of gap years. Once committed to pursue other endeavours, he becomes hopeful that he may discover some meaning to his life. But he doesn't anticipate that it would he lead him to evaluate his very existence. Art gains knowledge about a people considered to have the oldest continuous culture on the planet, to have the world's longest living art tradition, and who remain true to their spiritual beliefs, since the time of creation, through their enduring connection to each other, to nature and to all living things. And yet these very people have been subjected to the most atrocious injustices ever perpetrated against human beings. Art learns a great deal from them, but the greatest lesson he learns is that of survival. These are the indigenous peoples of Australia.

Zeese Papanikolas forges seemingly disparate events and movements in western history?including some of its strangest and most exotic strains?into a coherent whole by examining them against the laughter and wisdom of Shoshonean trickster tales. Seen against these tales, the West becomes both a canvas for the projection of utopian dreams and the site of their shattered remains. ø Papanikolas undertakes a dramatic retelling of Shoshoni creation stories and examines, along with other topics, the mythologies embedded in the ?Dream Mine? of Mormon folklore, the heroic images of cowboys and Wobblies, the MX missile, the dark side of Oz, and the Las Vegas of tourists, dam builders, and gamblers. ø Among those whose visions are played out against the mirage-haunted background of the West are Cabeza de Vaca, Winston Churchill, Big Bill Haywood, and Native American wise man, Antelope Jake. It is a testament to the power of Papanikolas's conception that he can weave the themes and topics of each chapter into a book that is both eloquent and intellectually stimulating.

When turmoil broke in Kashmir in 1989 so much happened there- an explosive uprising, rule of gun on the streets, exodus of Kashmiri Pandits and conversion of Kashmir into a beautiful prison. Whiteman in dark is a memoir of a female doctor trained in Kashmir during the peak years of turmoil. The pain of spine-breaking crackdowns, unending curfews, violent protests and prolonged sieges is described in the setting of Downtown Srinagar adjoining the area of Kohimaran where Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs would converge and bow together. Besides an in-depth account of the effect of turmoil on the lives of medical students, medical education and healthcare the memoir describes how doctors were churned out in adverse circumstances. After militancy was curbed, the lull and calmness seen as signs of peace returning-was a temporary fatigue, with people flooding the streets again in 2008,2009 and 2010.This time the weapon was a stone and not a gun. Same story happened,...Curfew returned, disorder prevailed and Kashmiri again was the target. Today became another yesterday. The memoir is meant to touch the heartstrings of all sensitive beings who believe in peace. It is first memoir by a Kashmiri female and first one by a doctor.

Some of the great literary works such as the Bible and Indian epics, among others, provide society with the guiding principles of life. Works by poets have always entertained their readers and will continue to do so. The Lord of the Rings, The Godfather, A Tale of Two Cities, Harry Potter, and James Bond have been among the best-selling books of all time for many generations. While some literary and poetic works carry life lessons, many others make us think. Some works are known for the sheer entertainment they provide, while others intrigue. Many works of literature establish a strong connection with their audience through the stories they tell or the message they convey. Readers tend to associate themselves with the emotions described in these works and participate emotionally. Literature therefore has a profound impact on the minds of readers and, in turn, on their lives! A Melody Called Africa reminds the human society that strong and integrated works of literature and art can improve our lives and answer the big weary questions of the mankind.

The profound economic and social changes in the post-Civil War United States created new challenges to a nation founded on Enlightenment and transcendental values, religious certainties, and rural traditions. Newly-freed African Americans, emboldened women, intellectuals and artists, and a polyglot tide of immigrants found themselves in a restless new world of railroads, factories, and skyscrapers where old assumptions were being challenged and new values had yet to be created. In An American Cakewalk: Ten Syncopators of the Modern World, Zeese Papanikolas tells the lively and entertaining story of a diverse group of figures in the arts and sciences who inhabited this new America. Just as ragtime composers subverted musical expectations by combining European march timing with African syncopation, so this book's protagonists—who range from Emily Dickinson to Thorstein Veblen and from Henry and William James to Charles Mingus—interrogated the modern American world through their own "syncopations" of cultural givens. The old antebellum slave dance, the cakewalk, with its parody of the manners and pretensions of the white folks in the Big House, provides a template of how the tricksters, shamans, poets, philosophers, ragtime pianists, and jazz musicians who inhabit this book used the arts of parody, satire, and disguise to subvert American cultural norms and to create new works of astonishing beauty and intellectual vigor.