"For me, getting older physically seems to be epitomized in the feeling that I look like my mother. She’s really attractive ... It’s just that I can see that she’s older, and I’m not supposed to be." - Charlotte Wilson Hammond "My view of the world is slowly becoming more integrated. Sometimes I feel as if I’ve walked to the top of a mountain, and can look down and see all around." - Lesia Gregorovitch "Some women have told me that they’re too old at fifty. And I wondered to myself why - at fifty - would anyone think herself too old?" - Linda Silver Dranoff "Now I look upon everything I do ... and say, ’Is this how I’m going to be using the energy that I have, or am I going to use it in a different way?" - Roberta Bondar "The most important thing is not to be afraid." - Kim Campbell

Boating down Nepali rivers, tracking rhinos on foot and on elephant-back, seeing the “Buddha light” at dawn in Peru’s Macchu Picchu and from a sacred mountain peak in China, smoking opium in Thailand’s Golden Triangle, worshipping in the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa just after Tibet was opened to Westerners, and having a pistol pulled on him in Kabul just before Afghanistan and Iran were closed to Westerners by revolutions and wars. By camel in Rajahstan and Morocco, by elephant in Thailand and Nepal, by bike in Sri Lanka, paddleboat in Kashmir, yacht in Panama, motorcycle in Japan, jammed minivan in Java, rickshaw in Jaipur, by thumb in the US, horse in Mexico, water buffalo in India, and on foot everywhere and often, Dr. Stickney invites you along on his travels—country by country, many of them several times over the years.

World literature was long defined in North America as an established canon of European masterpieces, but an emerging global perspective has challenged both this European focus and the very category of "the masterpiece." The first book to look broadly at the contemporary scope and purposes of world literature, What Is World Literature? probes the uses and abuses of world literature in a rapidly changing world. In case studies ranging from the Sumerians to the Aztecs and from medieval mysticism to postmodern metafiction, David Damrosch looks at the ways works change as they move from national to global contexts. Presenting world literature not as a canon of texts but as a mode of circulation and of reading, Damrosch argues that world literature is work that gains in translation. When it is effectively presented, a work of world literature moves into an elliptical space created between the source and receiving cultures, shaped by both but circumscribed by neither alone. Established classics and new discoveries alike participate in this mode of circulation, but they can be seriously mishandled in the process. From the rediscovered Epic of Gilgamesh in the nineteenth century to Rigoberta Menchú's writing today, foreign works have often been distorted by the immediate needs of their own editors and translators. Eloquently written, argued largely by example, and replete with insightful close readings, this book is both an essay in definition and a series of cautionary tales.

With our lives firmly controlled by the steady pace of time, humans have yearned for ways to escape its constraints, and authors have responded with narratives about traveling far into the past or future, reversing the flow of time, or creating alternate universes. This book considers how imaginative works involving time travel reflect ongoing scientific concerns and examine the human condition. The scope of the volume is unusually wide, covering such topics as Dante, the major novels of the 19th century, and stories and films of the 1990s. The book concludes with a lengthy bibliography of short stories and novels, films and television programs, and nonfiction works that feature time travel or speculations about time.

Animal genetic resource diversity underpins the supply livestock products and services across a wide range of production environments. It promotes resilience and serves as a basis for adapting livestock management to changing conditions. It is vital to livelihoods of many of the world’s poor people. It can contribute to the delivery of ecosystem services such as landscape management and the maintenance of wildlife habitats. However, it is often undervalued, underused and under threat. This report updates the global assessment provided in the first report on The State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, published in 2007. It focuses particularly on changes that have occurred during the period since the first report was published. It serves as a basis for a review, and potential update, of the Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources, which since 2007 has provided an agreed international framework for the management of livestock biodiversity. Drawing on 129 country reports, it presents an analysis of the state of livestock diversity, the influence of livestock-sector trends on the management of animal genetic resources, the state of capacity to manage animal genetic resources, including legal and policy frameworks, and the state of the art in tools and methods for characterization, valuation, use, development and conservation.