More than a hundred years later the British convict settlements on the east coast were still marked by misery: the harshness of a prison society, where “excessive tyranny each day prevails”. Material growth was bought slowly and painfully by the forced labour of prisoners whose defiance might be punished by a thousand lashes. What lies between these beginnings and the wellfed Australian surfriders who gaze proudly into the 1970s? Manning Clark sees in the story of Australia not only the surface of progress, but also the debates and struggles which lie behind the smiling compromises of Australian society today. He discusses the decision to send Australian troops to Vietnam, and the British government’s intended withdrawal from SouthEast Asia. Andhe celebrates the recent achievement of Australian artists such as Sidney Nolan, Judith Wright and Patrick White.

    How is the European Union's biggest and most powerful economy making a clean break with coal, oil and nuclear energy? It is something most Americans would say is impossible, but already 25 percent of Germany's energy comes from renewable sources. It is on track to reach 80 percent by 2050, and some experts say it could reach 100 percent by then.Germany's energiewende, or energy transformation, is really a very American story that revolves around self-reliant individuals, a responsive democracy, and a national can-do vision. The book tells this remarkable and important story in a narrative directed to ordinary readers.

    Entering the drug game is his ticket to the finer things in life, but it’s called a game for a reason. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. After marrying Shayla, attaining a lakeside property, and having anything he wants at his fingertips, he should be living the good life. But there’s always someone coming for the number one spot.Shayla Wilson gives up everything for her first love. Her pursuit of being a psychiatrist to help the mentally ill, attending church, and ties with her family are all broken when she marries Titus. However, she loves him too much to let go. Along with Titus, her best friends Gladys LaQuinn and Rhonda Jackson are all Shayla needs until the day she finds out that the people closest to her are not who they say they are. What will Shayla do when her beautiful, expensive, expertly designed house of lies threatens to fall?As rival drug cartels invade their lakeside property and friends unveil themselves as foes, will the walls come falling down around Titus and Shayla, or will they survive the darkest test of their lives?This is the second edition of Secrets of a Kept Woman, which has been edited and revised with 10,000 words of new content added.

    Created in 1811 by a three-man commission featuring headstrong Founding Father Gouverneur Morris, the plan called for a dozen parallel avenues crossing at right angles with many dozens of parallel streets in an unbroken grid. Hills and valleys, streams and ponds, forests and swamps were invisible to the grid; so too were country villages, roads, farms, and estates and generations of property lines. All would disappear as the crosshatch fabric of the grid overspread the island: a heavy greatcoat on the land, the dense undergarment of the future city.No other grid in Western civilization was so large and uniform as the one ordained in 1811. Not without reason. When the grid plan was announced, New York was just under two hundred years old, an overgrown town at the southern tip of Manhattan, a notorious jumble of streets laid at the whim of landowners. To bring order beyond the chaos-and good real estate to market-the street planning commission came up with a monolithic grid for the rest of the island. Mannahatta-the native "island of hills"-became a place of rectangles, in thousands of blocks on the flattened landscape, and many more thousands of right-angled buildings rising in vertical mimicry.The Manhattan grid has been called "a disaster" of urban planning and "the most courageous act of prediction in Western civilization." However one feels about it, the most famous urban design of a living city defines its daily life. This is its story.

    

    Following his magnificent reconstruction of Culloden, John Prebble recounts how the Highlanders were deserted and then betrayed into famine and poverty. While their chiefs grew rich on meat and wool, the people died of cholera and starvation or, evicted from the glens to make way for sheep, were forced to emigrate to foreign lands.‘Mr Prebble tells a terrible story excellently. There is little need to search further to explain so much of the sadness and emptiness of the northern Highlands today’ The Times.

    In this travel narrative, she tells the story of her on-the-ground discovery of the relics and memories a few thousand mountain residents left behind when the government used eminent domain to kick the people off their land to create the park.With historic maps and notes from hikers who explored before her, Eisenfeld and her husband hike, backpack, and bushwhack the hills and the hollows of this beloved but misbegotten place, searching for stories. Descendants recount memories of their ancestors “grieving themselves to death,” and they continue to speak of their people’s displacement from the land as an untold national tragedy.Shenandoah: A Story of Conservation and Betrayal is Eisenfeld’s personal journey into the park’s hidden past based on her off-trail explorations. She describes the turmoil of residents’ removal as well as the human face of the government officials behind the formation of the park. In this conflict between conservation for the benefit of a nation and private land ownership, she explores her own complicated personal relationship with the park—a relationship she would not have without the heartbreak of the thousands of people removed from their homes.Purchase the audio edition.

    The exploits and achievements of other Mesopotamian peoples, such as the Assyrians and Babylonians, were already known to a large segment of the population through the Old Testament and the nascent field of Near Eastern studies had unraveled the enigma of the Akkadian language that was widely used throughout the region in ancient times, but the discovery of the Sumerian tablets brought to light the existence of the Sumerian culture, which was the oldest of all the Mesopotamian cultures. Long before Alexandria was a city and even before Memphis and Babylon had attained greatness, the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur stood foremost among ancient Near Eastern cities. Today, the greatness and cultural influence of Ur has been largely forgotten by most people, partially because its monuments have not stood the test of time the way other ancient culture’s monuments have. For instance, the monuments of Egypt were made of stone while those of Ur and most other Mesopotamian cities were made of mud brick and as will be discussed in this report, mud brick may be an easier material to work with than stone but it also decays much quicker. The same is true to a certain extent for the written documents that were produced at Ur. The people of Mesopotamia, which Ur was part of, employed the cuneiform system of writing; since cuneiform was almost always written on clay tablets, modern scholars have been forced with the unfortunate problem that many of those tablets have been broken and made unreadable throughout the centuries. Despite the ephemeral nature of its monuments and to some extent its written texts, Ur proved to be an inspiration to the Sumerians who built the city and also to later cultures and dynasties that inhabited Mesopotamia. An examination of primary sources relating to Ur, as well as archaeological excavations done in the ancient city reveal that the city was a cultural beacon for thousands of years. Ur began as a Sumerian city of secondary importance but quickly grew to be the most important Sumerian city. At its height Ur was the center of a great dynasty that controlled most of Mesopotamia directly through a well maintained army and bureaucracy and the areas that were not under its direct control were influenced by Ur’s diplomats and religious ideas. This study will also reveal that Ur was a truly resilient city because it survived the downfall of the Sumerians, outright destruction at the hands of the Elamites, and later occupations by numerous other peoples, which included Saddam Hussein more recently. Ur inspired the imaginations of ancient peoples, but it has also enraptured the minds of moderns, who have worked for over 150 years to unlock the city’s mysteries. Truly, when it comes to important ancient cities, Ur should be counted among the greatest. Ur: The History and Legacy of the Ancient Sumerian Capital traces the history and legacy of one of the most influential cities of antiquity. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the history of Ur like never before, in no time at all.

    The author maintains that the last two decades have seen the emergence of a mass alternative nation, populated by struggling screen writers, oddball thrift stores, indie rockers and thousands of coffee houses.

    . .'A lyrical and life-affirming book that teaches us as much about birds as it does ourselves - a balm for the soul' Raynor Winn, author of The Salt Path'Charlie has opened my eyes to the constant joy of the sights and sounds of the birds that surround us. It is a book that really will save lives' Dr Richard Shepherd, author of Unnatural Causes'An enchanting book. I knew at once this was something special' Lady Glenconner'This is no ordinary ornithology, but one that portrays the very essence of each bird through a very human lens and shows us that both solace and joy can be ours by merely observing with an open eye and an open heart' John Wright, author of The Forager's Calendar'A wonderful blend of the lyrical and practical. Charlie shows us that our relationship with birds and the natural world is not only healing, but an important part of our cultural heritage worth protecting' Adam Henson_________ Can you recognise the cheerful chirrups of the house sparrow? A song thrush singing out at winter's darkest hour? Or the beautiful haunting call of the curlew? At a time of great anxiety and uncertainty, while coping with the untimely death of his mother, Charlie Corbett realised his perspective on life was slipping. In a moment of despair, he found himself lying on the side of a hill in the rain, alone with his thoughts.Suddenly he hears the song of a skylark - that soaring, tinkling, joyous sound echoing through the air above - and he is transported away from his dark thoughts. Grounded by the beauty of nature, perspective dawns. No longer the leading role in his own private melodrama, merely a bit part in nature's great epic.Through twelve characterful birds, Charlie shows us there is joy to be found if we know where to look, and how to listen. From solitary skylarks to squabbling sparrows, he explores the place of these birds in our history, culture and landscape, noting what they look like and where you're most likely to meet them.By reconnecting with the wildlife all around him and learning to move with the rhythms of the natural world, Charlie discovered nature's powerful ability to heal.In this life-affirming and joyful guide to the birds living all around us, it might just heal you too.

    By living the wabi sabi life, Westerners would be seeking to find peace and truth through nature, harmony and the little things. Readers can explore all aspects of this wondrous way of life: - Wabi sabi working - doing what one loves and not overdoing it; Wabi sabi eating - valuing the humble and familiar and savouring the exotic; Wabi sabi socializing - gleaning the lessons of the ancient tea ceremony; Wabi sabi creativity - enriching one's life by; valuing individual moments. The author serves as a highly eloquent guide on the reader's journey to a simpler, more fulfilling life

         Since 2006 and the election of the 1st Harper government, the vision of Canada's future as an energy superpower has driven the political agenda, as well as the fast-paced development of Alberta's oil sands and the push for more pipelines across the country to bring that bitumen to market. Anyone who objects is labeled a dreamer, or worse--an environmentalist: someone who puts the health of the planet ahead of the economic survival of their neighbours.     In The Carbon Bubble, Jeff Rubin compellingly shows how Harper's economic vision for the country is dead wrong. Changes in energy markets in the US--where domestic production is booming while demand for oil is shrinking--are quickly turning Harper's dream into an economic nightmare. The same trade and investment ties to oil that pushed the Canadian dollar to record highs are now pulling it down, and the Toronto Stock Exchange, one of the most carbon-intensive stock indexes in the world--with over 25 percent market capitalization in oil and gas alone--will be increasingly exposed to the rest of the world's efforts to reduce carbon emissions.     Rubin argues that there is a lifeline to a better future. The very climate change that will leave much of the country's carbon unburnable could at the same time make some of Canada's other resource assets more valuable: our water and our land. In tomorrow's economy, he argues, Canada won't be an energy superpower, but it has the makings of one of the world's great breadbaskets. And in the global climate that the world's carbon emissions are inexorably creating, food will soon be a lot more valuable than oil.

    Daring to step beyond the rhetoric of panic and despair, The Geography of Hope points to the bright light at the end of this very dark tunnel.With a mix of front-line reporting, analysis and passionate argument, Chris Turner pieces together the glimmers of optimism amid the gloom and the solutions already at work around the world, from Canada’s largest wind farm to Asia’s greenest building and Europe’s most eco-friendly communities. But The Geography of Hope goes far beyond mere technology. Turner seeks out the next generation of political, economic, social and spiritual institutions that could provide the global foundations for a sustainable future–from the green hills of northern Thailand to the parliament houses of Scandinavia, from the villages of southern India, where microcredit finance has remade the social fabric, to America’s most forward-thinking think tanks.In this compelling first-person exploration, punctuated by the wonder and angst of a writer discovering the world’s beacons of possibility, Chris Turner pieces together a dazzling map of the disparate landmarks in a geography of hope.While most of the world has been spinning in stagnant circles of recrimination and debate on the subject of climate change, paralyzed by visions of apocalypse both natural (if nothing of our way of life changes) and economic (if too much does), Denmark has simply marched off with steadfast resolve into the sustainable future, reaching the zenith of its pioneering trek on the island of Samsø. And so if there’s an encircled star on this patchwork map indicating hope’s modest capital, then it should be properly placed on this island. Perhaps, for the sake of precision, at the geographic centre of Jørgen Tranberg’s dairy farm.There are, I’m sure, any number of images called to mind by talk of ecological revolution and renewable energy and sustainable living, but I’m pretty certain they don’t generally include a hearty fiftysomething Dane in rubber boots spotted with mud and cow shit. Which is why Samsø’s transformation is not just revolutionary but inspiring, not just a huge change but a tantalizingly attainable one. And it was a change that seemed at its most workaday–near-effortless, no more remarkable than the cool October wind gusting across the island–down on Tranberg’s farm.—from The Geography of Hope

    Marks Place in New York City has spawned countless artistic and political movements. Here Frank O’Hara caroused, Emma Goldman plotted, and the Velvet Underground wailed. But every generation of miscreant denizens believes that their era, and no other, marked the street’s apex. This idiosyncratic work of reportage tells the many layered history of the street—from its beginnings as Colonial Dutch Director-General Peter Stuyvesant’s pear orchard to today’s hipster playground—organized around those pivotal moments when critics declared “St. Marks is dead.”In a narrative enriched by hundreds of interviews and dozens of rare images, St. Marks native Ada Calhoun profiles iconic characters from W. H. Auden to Abbie Hoffman, from Keith Haring to the Beastie Boys, among many others. She argues that St. Marks has variously been an elite address, an immigrants’ haven, a mafia warzone, a hippie paradise, and a backdrop to the film Kids—but it has always been a place that outsiders call home. This idiosyncratic work offers a bold new perspective on gentrification, urban nostalgia, and the evolution of a community.

    Cricket and Bollywood. So there are only two kinds of people, who have unconditional fan following in India. That is Film actors and Cricket players. There are millions of Indians, who are huge fan of Cricket and cricketers. The book is all about collection of memoirs of the author in regard with his idols in the game. Book gives inside in to career span of few of the most prolific Indian cricketers in contemporary Cricket and few of greatest in international Cricket. The career path of them is embedded with most splendid performance of these players and interesting anecdotes (few of them are untold). All in all, a full sketch of these players in a very concise and interesting manner. There are chapters on:- Sachin Tendulkar Kapil Dev Kris Srikkanth Javagal Srinath Mohd. Azharruddin Ajay Jadeja Rahul Dravid Viv Richard Wasim Akram Shane Warne Author – Pankaj Agrawal