At the end of each visit, photographer and family collaborated on a remarkable portrait of the family members outside their home, surrounded by all of their possessions—a few jars and jugs for some, an explosion of electronic gadgetry for others. Vividly portraying the look and feel of the human condition everywhere on Earth, this internationally acclaimed bestseller puts a human face on the issues of population, environment, social justice, and consumption as it illuminates the crucial question facing our species today: Can all six billion of us have all the things we want?

    in full color. An apple pie is easy to make...if the market is open. But if the market is closed, the world becomes your grocery store. This deliciously silly recipe for apple pie takes readers around the globe to gather ingredients. First hop a steamboat to Italy for the finest semolina wheat. Then hitch a ride to England and hijack a cow for the freshest possible milk. And, oh yes! Don't forget to go apple picking in Vermont! A simple recipe for apple pie is included.

    But when schools starts again, suddenly a letter for Sophie arrives from London - a letter from Felix! Over 4.8 million Felix books have been sold worldwide!

    With thousands of breathtaking photographs and unique visual catalogues of the features and phenomena that take place on Earth -- such as rocks, minerals, and mountains to tropical rain forests and the different types of clouds -- Earth contains the most up-to-date ideas on how our world works, a compelling review on the health of the planet, and unbelievable images of the world's most stunning features.

    A perfect introduction to mathematical concepts for young readers, written by a Newbery honor-winning author!This colorfully illustrated biography of the Greek philosopher and scientist Eratosthenes, who compiled the first geography book and accurately measured the globe's circumference, is just right for budding mathematicians, scientists, historians, and librarians! Filled with fascinating details about Eratosthenes's world (and in print since 1994), kids are sure to flip through the pages time and again.

    Penetrating, gripping, and provocative, this book combines natural history, anthropology, and ecology on an epic scale. Illustrations.

    Siam Mapped challenges much that has been written on Thai history because it demonstrates convincingly that the physical and political definition of Thailand on which other works are based is anachronistic.

    More than 50 educators helped develop 21 different interactive "exhibits" on topics such as Trash, Get Lost, Meet the Humans and Earth: A Wet, Dirty, Bumpy Rock for this hands-on geography museum.

    His voyages in the Royal Navy to the eastern and western seaboards of North America, the North and South Pacific, the Arctic, and the Antarctic brought a new understanding of the geography and of the peoples, flora, and fauna of the lands he discovered. Cook produced maps of unprecedented accuracy; revolutionized the seafarers' diet, all but eliminating scurvy; and exploded the myth of the Great Southern Continent imagined by earlier geographers and scientists.Hough consulted numerous archives and traveled in Cook's wake from Alaska to Tasmania, visiting many of the Pacific islands.

    By mapping the worldwide geographic distribution of genes for over 110 traits in over 1800 primarily aboriginal populations, the authors charted migrations and devised a clock by which to date evolutionary history. This monumental work is now available in a more affordable paperback edition without the myriad illustrations and maps, but containing the full text and partial appendices of the authors' pathbreaking endeavor.

    Nonsense stories, cartoons, and comic-style captions make it easy to remember facts covering each state's important facts.

    "Hello, Stranger-Friend" begins Maya Angelou's story about Thandi, a South African Ndebele girl, her mischievous brother, her beloved chicken, and the astonishing mural art produced by the women of her tribe.  With never-before-seen photographs of the very private Ndebele women and their paintings, this unique book shows the passing of traditions from parent to child and introduces young readers to a new culture through a new friend.

    John, Virgin Islands. It tells you exactly where to go, how to get there, and what to do and see when you arrive. It contains everything you need to know about the St. John's beaches and hiking trails, as well as its confusing system, of roads, foot-paths and goat-trails. Recommended by Caribbean Travel and Life and by many St. Johnians since locals are NOT on vacation and can't always take time off from work to be a tour guide for their guests. Best Selling St John Guidebook since 1994. Updated in 2009.

    133 color photos.

    The full-color maps, charts, photographs, drawings, and mini-essays of this encyclopedic volume also trace the historical development and cultural relevance of such iconic New York thoroughfares as Fifth Avenue, Wall Street, Park Avenue, and Broadway. This thoroughly updated edition brings the Atlas up to the present, including three all-new two-page spreads on Rudolph Giuliani's New York, the revival of Forty-second Street, and the rebuilding of Ground Zero.A fascinating chronicle of the life of a metropolis, the handsome second edition of The Historical Atlas of New York City provides a vivid and unique perspective on the nation's cultural capital.

    Oliver Rackham's book tells the many-layered story of the British landscape using landscape photography and a series of photographic essays, describing eight of the author's walks within areas of natural beauty.

    Since 1870, however, they have been the target of an official war led by people whose concept of home does not include the hotel. Do these residences constitute an essential housing resource, or are they, as charged, a public nuisance?Living Downtown, the first comprehensive social and cultural history of life in American residential hotels, adds a much-needed historical perspective to this ongoing debate. Creatively combining evidence from biographies, buildings and urban neighborhoods, workplace records, and housing policies, Paul Groth provides a definitive analysis of life in four price-differentiated types of downtown residence. He demonstrates that these hotels have played a valuable socioeconomic role as home to both long-term residents and temporary laborers. Also, the convenience of hotels has made them the residence of choice for a surprising number of Americans, from hobo author Boxcar Bertha to Calvin Coolidge.Groth examines the social and cultural objections to hotel households and the increasing efforts to eliminate them, which have led to the seemingly irrational destruction of millions of such housing units since 1960. He argues convincingly that these efforts have been a leading contributor to urban homelessness.This highly original and timely work aims to expand the concept of the American home and to recast accepted notions about the relationships among urban life, architecture, and the public management of residential environments.

    And he does, warmed only by the sight of a distant fire. When his master refuses to recognize the boy's victory, the boy and his sister decide to beat the rich man at his own game.

    Jackson, a pioneer in the field of landscape studies, here takes us on a tour of American landscapes past and present, showing how our surroundings reflect important changes in our culture. Because we live in urban and industrial environments that are constantly evolving, says Jackson, time and movement are increasingly important to us and place and permanence are less so. We no longer gain a feeling of community from where we live or where we assemble but from common work hours, habits, and customs. Jackson examines the new vernacular landscape of trailers, parking lots, trucks, loading docks, and suburban garages, which all reflect this emphasis on mobility and transience; he redefines roads as scenes of work and leisure and social intercourse—as places, rather than as means of getting to places; he argues that public parks are now primarily for children, older people, and nature lovers, while more mobile or gregarious people seek recreation in shopping malls, in the street, and in sports arenas; he traces the development of dwellings in New Mexico from prehistoric Pueblo villages to mobile homes; and he criticizes the tendency of some environmentalists to venerate nature instead of interacting with it and learning to share it with others in temporary ways. Written with his customary lucidity and elegance, this book reveals Jackson's passion for vernacular culture, his insights into a style of life that blurs the boundaries between work and leisure, between middle and working classes, and between public and private spaces.

    In nine linked essays, he addresses the question: "What is the exact distance that permits us to see things as they are?" To understand our world, suggests Ginzburg, it is necessary to find a balance between being so close to the object that our vision is warped by familiarity or so far from it that the distance becomes distorting.Opening with a reflection on the sense of feeling astray, of familiarization and defamiliarization, the author goes on to consider the concepts of perspective, representation, imagery, and myth. Arising from the theme of proximity is the recurring issue of the opposition between Jews and Christians--a topic Ginzburg explores with an impressive array of examples, from Latin translations of Greek and Hebrew scriptures to Pope John Paul II's recent apology to the Jews for antisemitism. Moving with equal acuity from Aristotle to Marcus Aurelius to Montaigne to Voltaire, touching on philosophy, history, philology, and ethics, and including examples from present-day popular culture, the book offers a new perspective on the universally relevant theme of distance.Carlo Ginzburg teaches at UCLA, where he is the Franklin D. Murphy Chair of Italian Renaissance Studies. His other books in English include The Cheese and the Worms, No Island Is an Island: Four Glances at English Literature in a World Perspective, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches'Sabbath and The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.

    Calculus and calculus-based physics are prerequisites. Physical Hydrology provides a comprehensive modern scientific treatment of hydrology. It combines a qualitative, conceptual understanding of hydrologic processes, an introduction to the quantitative representation of those processes and an understanding of approaches to hydrological measurements and the uncertainties involved in those measurements. Numerous worked examples and exercises are included throughout to help assimilate concepts, consider implications of relations developed in the text, and apply concepts to local conditions. Physical Hydrologys organization and coverage are intended to make it suitable as a reference work for scientists already working in the field, as well as an introduction to hydrology for scientists in related fields.

    Breathtaking watercolors dramatize ancient Ethiopia's contrasting pastoral charm and majesty. Illustrations are rich with Ethiopian details. Story reinforces values of generosity and selflessness over greed and self-centeredness. Glossary of Ethiopian terms and pronunciation key.

    In Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights, she fulfills the promise of the earlier book, and reintroduces readers to the inhabitants of fictional Rio Seco, California. This is the story of Darnell Tucker, and black firefighter and workingman trying to work the toughest turf of all: the straight and narrow. As his friends disappear around him - victims of the streets, of police dogs, of drugs, of an addiction to cheap thrills and guns - Darnell struggles to establish his own business, facing a thousand midnights before he's home free, with a job that supports his young family. Yet even as he gains a tentative sense of self, Darnell Tucker is drawn to the destructive beauty of fires, and to the wilder, untamed forces beyond the structure of domesticity. This search for balance in a dangerous world propels the quiet heroism of a beautifully evoked and very moving story.

    All the mapping and information in this revised edition has been brought fully up to date to give an accurate picture of today's world, taking into account any recent environmental and geopolitical changes. The major updates include in this fifth edition include: the new independent country of Kosovo; the latest magnetic pole positions; revised Aral Sea and Lake Chad outlines; new high speed rail lines in Europe; abandoned settlements—a feature unique to Times world atlases, a large number of new road and railways, many of which are in China; and more than 400 place name changes. The comprehensive index contains more than 25,000 place names. Detailed reference maps in the distinctive and respected Times style provide balanced, systematic coverage of all parts of the world.

    Bears, hares, wolves, and foxes roam the ice-crusted earth, as flowers follow the sun as it moves across the sky. Young readers may never come to the Arctic tundra, but now it can come to them--in a book chock full of fun-to-do experiments and activities for children ages 6 and up that help them to solve some of the mysteries of this strange and forbidding world. Arctic Tundra includes a picture field guide, a glossary-index, and a resource list.

    The story of two children who were victims.

    Examines monumental structures built during the last two centuries, including the British Royal Pavilion, the Statue of Liberty, and the Kansai Airport in Japan which is still under construction.

    -- School Library Journal-- A Parents' Choice Best Reference Book

    A fascinating essay about the history of the region of Mesopotamia is followed by interviews with an early settler who extols the virtues of the date palm, with a 12-year-old boy who is studying to be a scribe, and with a soldier. A section on the Greek theater is personalized with a conversation with Cimon, the mask maker. An 80-year-old man tells us how Rome has expanded and changed from the days of Nero through Hadrian's reign. History is no longer a boring list of dates, but an exciting time peopled with characters as real as our closest friends. The dramatic narrative prose is accompanied by maps, photographs, paintings, cutaway drawings, and cross-sections by a number of artists, including the remarkable Peter Connolly. Meticulous detail and accuracy are his trademarks, and his illustrations and those of the other artists bring to life tribal life at the mouth of a cave in the Stone Age, the city of Rome at the height of its glory, the sprawling palace at Knossos, the first Olympic games, and more. The Oxford First Ancient History gives it readers an understanding of the forces at work in the development of early civilizations and the techniques historians and archaeologists use to interpret their significance. The emphasis is upon everyday life and the reader is encouraged to compare and contrast present day techniques and attitudes with those of the past. This is fascinating and powerful history that brings the ancient world to life.

    

    It returns the focus of urban design to the creation of a better world. It evaluates the efforts of designers who apply knowledge about the environment and people to the creation of livable, enjoyable, and even inspiring built worlds. Urban Design: The American Experience emphasizes that urban design must take a user-oriented approach to achieve a higher quality of life in human settlements. All the keys to this approach are spelled out in chapters that address: * Urban design as both a product and process of communal decision-making * Types of knowledge required as a base for urban design action * How to apply recent environmental and behavioral research to professional design * How human needs are fulfilled through design * The true role of functionalism in design Urban design efforts of the twentieth century in the United States are examined within their socio-political context. Jon Lang reviews the urban design experience from the beginning of the "City Beautiful" movement, paying particular attention to developments since World War II. He explores how the twentieth-century city has developed, as well as discusses the attitudes that have driven major movements in urban design. Readers learn a neo-Modernist approach that builds on the successes and failures of Rationalism and Empiricism, the two major streams of Modernist thought in architecture and urban design. They also gain an understanding of how the environment is experienced by people, and the implications of this experiencing for architectural and urban design. Numerous illustrations throughout demonstrate how various design schemes can be used. Urban Design: The American Experience provides architects, designers, city planners, and students in these fields with a model for their own future development as professionals. It is a valuable guide to design methodology (procedural theory) and other issues related to creating optimal urban environments.

    The author overturns the traditional perspective by showing how figurative aspects of language reveal the poetic structure of mind. Ideas and research from psychology, linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, and literary theory are used to establish important links between the poetic structure of thought and everyday use of language. The Poetics of Mind evaluates current philosophical, linguistic, and literary theories of figurative language and relates the empirical work on figurative language understanding to the broader issues concerning the nature of everyday thought and reasoning.

    When Azerbaijan declared its independence, the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabagh followed suit. Before long, pogrom and war were the order of the day, resulting in thousands of Armenian and Azeri casualties.This book examines the history of Mountainous Karabagh, the ancient Artsakh of the Armenians, and assesses the mass of archaeological material and documentary evidence supporting the conflicting Azeri and Armenian claims. The authors follow the populations of the area from antiquity through periods of Mongol, Turkmen and Persian occupation, on to Turkey's and Russia's entry onto the scene, the period of Bolshevik rule, perestroika and, finally, the war with Azerbaikjan. This book highlights the Armenian culture of the enclave, traces Karabagh's demographic evolution and situates the current hostilities in terms of the interests of neighbouring Russia, Iran and Turkey. The picture that emerges of a clash of nationalistic passions and of Russian economic, military and diplomatic calculation is a signpost for future conflicts on both sides of the Caucasus.The assertion of Armenian and Azeri identity and culture remain at the heart of this tragedy. This book helps us to understand why the Armenians feel so strongly that Artsakh is theirs and is worth dying for.

    A collection of twelve African folk-tales, including: Leelee Goro, a Temne Tale / Anansi and the Phantom Food, a Tale from Liberia / The Boogey Man's Wife, a Mano Tale / Half-a-Ball-of-Kenki, an Ashanti Tale / The Hen and the Dove, an Ashanti Fable / The Sloogey Dog and the Stolen Aroma, a Fang Tale / The Cock and the Jackal, a Khoikhoi Fable / No, Boconono!, a Zulu Tale / Toad's Trick, a Kanuri Fable / Goso the Teacher, a Swahili Narrative Poem / Hapendeki and Binti the Bibi, a Swahili Tale / Kindai and the Ape, a Tale of the Emo-Yo-Quaim.

    Recommended for fans of Mardie Murrie. I had just spent a week in the Teton Science School at a nature journaling class when I found this gem of a book. For me it was inspirational. May you read and enjoy. I read the edition available in 1997 (now reprinted...identical).I'm so sorry to have never met this author, or Mardie Murrie.

    Armchair sailors and practical yachting people will treasure this account of half a lifetime spent on the waters of New England.

    This extensive study of his own family ties to the Mayflower, and his exhaustive investigation of the first contacts between Europeans and Native Americans, in what is today New England, made him an unquestioned authority in both fields.      The research upon which the text of Early Encounters is based occurred between the 1920s and the 1950s. Each of Nickerson’s works included in this carefully edited volume is placed in its context by Delores Bird Carpenter; she provides the reader with a wealth of useful background information about each essay’s origin, as well as Nickerson’s reasons for undertaking the research. Material is arranged thematically: the arrival of the Mayflower; conflicts between Europeans and Native Americans; and other topics related to the history and legends of early European settlement on Cape Cod. Early Encounters is a thoughtfully researched, readable book that presents a rich and varied account of life in colonial New England.

    This book by an eminent ecologist presents in word and photograph the ecology of this beautiful area. Dennis H. Knight begins by introducing the diverse environments in the region and their geologic history. He then discusses the landscapes along streams and rivers, the lowland plains and basins, the foothills and mountains, and three regions of special interest - Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and the Black Hills and Bear Lodge Mountains. He concludes by explaining land use constraints and opportunities in the region. Throughout the book, Knight considers plant ecology, plant-animal interactions, geologic influences, nutrient cycling, land management, and disturbances such as fires and insect epidemics. More than 150 photographs, maps, and line drawings illustrate ecological processes and landscape patterns. A remarkable synthesis of information on land management, ecosystem science, and plant and animal adaptation, the book will be of interest to naturalists as well as to ecologists and professional land managers.

    Obtaining and changing job assignments, buying certain foods and consumer items, getting into good hospitals, buying train tickets, obtaining housing, even doing business-all such tasks call for the skillful and strategic giving of gifts and cultivating of obligation, indebtedness, and reciprocity.Mayfair Mei-hui Yang's close scrutiny of this phenomenon serves as a window to view facets of a much broader and more complex cultural, historical, and political formation. Using rich and varied ethnographic examples of guanxi stemming from her fieldwork in China in the 1980s and 1990s, the author shows how this "gift economy" operates in the larger context of the socialist state redistributive economy.

    Combining strong visual images with stories and analysis, Brown illuminates the cultural, historic, and aesthetic roles of gravestones in both metropolitan and rural cemeteries. The art itself manifests a great many forms and subjects, including life-size limestone statuary, hovering marble angels, and ornate wrought-iron crosses, in addition to the more modest traditional motifs in etched granite and concrete. Brown also records the idiosyncratic and the bizarre - an Egyptian sphinx, a gigantic baseball, an elaborate locomotive, a converted car engine - and provides insight into the meaning of epitaphs and iconography.

    Uses composite photographs to depict habitats, including taiga, tundra, ocean, coastline, swamp, grassland, forest, savanna, rain forest, mountain, lake, desert, scrubland, and coral reef.

    Step-by-step instructions are given for model making, games to play, recipes to try, songs to sing, and a variety of other projects designed to help the reader learn about each country and introduce its language in an enjoyable way.

    transformed life across the Continent and eventually through the whole world. The new European states disposed of unprecedented stores of capital and vast military capacities.In recent decades, scholars have often drawn general models of state formation from the European experience after 1700, then applied them with only partial success to other parts of the world. Although such studies of modern Europe improved on early theories of modernization and development, they failed to accommodate the varied ways in which city-states, empires, federations, centralized states, and other forms of government evolved and the pivotal role that cities played in the multiple paths to state formation.In a sweeping, original work detailing eight centuries of city-state relations, Charles Tilly, Wim P. Blockmans, and their contributors document differences in political trajectories from one part of Europe to another and provide authoritative surveys of urbanization in nine major regions; they also suggest many correctives to previous analyses of state formation. They show that the variable distribution of cities significantly and independently constrained state formation and that states grew differently according to the character of urban networks in a given region. Their systematic study shows that unilinear models of state transformation underestimate the contingency and variability of popular and elite compliance with state-building activities. The book's findings offer important implications for the nature of economy, sovereignty, warfare, state power, and social change throughout the world.

    Over the past 30 years, Alaska Geographic has earned its reputation as the publication for those who love Alaska. The series boasts more than 100 books to date, featuring communities from Barrow to Ketchikan, animals from bears to dinosaurs, history from the Russian explorers to today, and natural phenomena from the aurora to glaciers. Written by leading experts in their fields, these books are illustrated throughout with world-class photography and include colorful maps for reference.

    policymakers so regularly exaggerate the Soviet threat during the Cold War? And with the disappearance of the Soviet Union, is this alarmist tendency likely to persist? Robert H. Johnson examines these questions by using psychological and political analysis and focusing upon U.S. conceptions of threat in the European, nuclear, and Third World arenas of conflict. He offers a different kind of Cold War revisionism, concentrating on mistaken ideas about threats while accepting the reality of threat and the need for a policy of containment. Within this framework, American alarmism can be seen to stem from the human need for order and control and from the necessities of domestic politics. Improbable Dangers advances a cyclical view of U.S. alarmism in the Cold War and includes numerous case studies. Against this background it looks to the future, critiquing emerging views of the fresh perils that may confront this country and suggesting broad guidelines for a more realistic U.S. foreign policy.

    

    A self-confessed incurable landscape voyeur, he has produced order and pattern from massive amounts of data, zestfully finding societal meaning in the terra incognita of our postmodern existence.Now he has gathered his most original and exciting explorations into a volume that captures the nature and dynamics of this remarkable phenomenon we call the United States of America. Each the product of Zelinsky's joyous curiosity, these energetic essays trace the innermost contours of our bewildering American reality."Successfully combines the science of geography with the humanity of geography." -- Roger Welsch"The gathered yield of a great career, this spacious volume is the apt companion to Zelinsky's superb Cultural Geography of the United States. In fine, clear prose, Zelinsky probes, connects, and questions, urging us to new understandings of the American reality. Balancing stories on the spatial plane, he clears new ground enough to keep generations of investigators happily, productively at work." -- Henry Glassie"If there is an unstudied cultural phenomenon, Zelinsky will find some way to measure it, map it, explain it, and assess its significance to our national life. And, if the truth were told, he does it for himself. You and I get to go along for the ride. He needs a scene as broad and diverse as North America to satisfy his insatiable interest in human diversity and cultural change." -- Calvin L. Beale

    

    Shows and describes the daily life of Moroccan children, and discusses the history and culture of Morocco.

    works brilliantly -- a thematic dictionary of the earth that is visually appealing, coherent, and presented in a way that encourages browsing and discovery. -- Science Books & Films

    Much of the controversy swirled around the apparent culpability of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the builder of many of the flood control systems that failed. In this book, Todd Shallat examines the turbulent first century of the dam and canal building Corps and follows the agency's rise from European antecedents through the boom years of river development after the American Civil War. Combining extensive research with a lively style, Shallat tells the story of monumental construction and engineering fiascoes, public service and public corruption, and the rise of science and the army expert as agents of the state. More than an institutional history, Structures in the Stream offers significant insights into American society, which has alternately supported the public works projects that are a legacy of our French heritage and opposed them based on the democratic, individualist tradition inherited from Britain. It will be important reading for a wide audience in environmental, military, and scientific history, policy studies, and American cultural history.