A History of the World in 12 Maps

A History of the World in 12 Maps
Author: Jerry Brotton
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 547
Release: 2014-10-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0143126024

A New York Times Bestseller “Maps allow the armchair traveler to roam the world, the diplomat to argue his points, the ruler to administer his country, the warrior to plan his campaigns and the propagandist to boost his cause… rich and beautiful.” – Wall Street Journal Throughout history, maps have been fundamental in shaping our view of the world, and our place in it. But far from being purely scientific objects, maps of the world are unavoidably ideological and subjective, intimately bound up with the systems of power and authority of particular times and places. Mapmakers do not simply represent the world, they construct it out of the ideas of their age. In this scintillating book, Jerry Brotton examines the significance of 12 maps - from the almost mystical representations of ancient history to the satellite-derived imagery of today. He vividly recreates the environments and circumstances in which each of the maps was made, showing how each conveys a highly individual view of the world. Brotton shows how each of his maps both influenced and reflected contemporary events and how, by considering it in all its nuances and omissions, we can better understand the world that produced it. Although the way we map our surroundings is more precise than ever before, Brotton argues that maps today are no more definitive or objective than they have ever been. Readers of this beautifully illustrated and masterfully argued book will never look at a map in quite the same way again. “A fascinating and panoramic new history of the cartographer’s art.” – The Guardian “The intellectual background to these images is conveyed with beguiling erudition…. There is nothing more subversive than a map.” – The Spectator “A mesmerizing and beautifully illustrated book.” —The Telegraph

The Age of Global Warming

The Age of Global Warming
Author: Rupert Darwall
Publisher: Quartet Books (UK)
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014-03
Genre: Climatic changes
ISBN: 9780704373396

Rachel Carson's epoch-creating Silent Spring marked the beginnings of the environmental movement in the 1960s, its 'First Wave' peaking at the 1972 Stockholm Conference. The invention of sustainable development by Barbara Ward, along with Rachel Carson the founder of the environmental movement, created an alliance of convenience between First World environmentalism and a Third World set on rapid industrialization. The First Wave crashed in 1973 with the Yom Kippur War and decade-long energy crisis. Revived by a warming economy of the 1980s, environmentalism found a new, political champion in 1988: Margaret Thatcher. Four years later at the Rio Earth Summit, politics settled the science. One hundred and ninety-two nations agreed that mankind was causing global warming and carbon dioxide emissions should be cut. Rio launched rounds of climate change meetings and summits, with developing nations refusing to countenance any agreement restraining their greenhouse gas emissions--their blanket exemption from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol leading to its rejection by the United States that year, refusing again twelve years later in Copenhagen. Despite proclaiming global warming a planetary emergency, Barack Obama ignored the Europeans to reach a toothless accord with the leaders of the developing world. Copenhagen therefore marked not just the collapse of the climate change negotiations, but something larger--an unprecedented humiliation for the West at the hands of the rising powers of the East.

The Age of Sustainable Development

The Age of Sustainable Development
Author: Jeffrey D. Sachs
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 564
Release: 2015-03-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0231539002

Jeffrey D. Sachs is one of the world's most perceptive and original analysts of global development. In this major new work he presents a compelling and practical framework for how global citizens can use a holistic way forward to address the seemingly intractable worldwide problems of persistent extreme poverty, environmental degradation, and political-economic injustice: sustainable development. Sachs offers readers, students, activists, environmentalists, and policy makers the tools, metrics, and practical pathways they need to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. Far more than a rhetorical exercise, this book is designed to inform, inspire, and spur action. Based on Sachs's twelve years as director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, his thirteen years advising the United Nations secretary-general on the Millennium Development Goals, and his recent presentation of these ideas in a popular online course, The Age of Sustainable Development is a landmark publication and clarion call for all who care about our planet and global justice.

Climate Shock

Climate Shock
Author: Gernot Wagner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2016-04-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1400880769

How knowing the extreme risks of climate change can help us prepare for an uncertain future If you had a 10 percent chance of having a fatal car accident, you'd take necessary precautions. If your finances had a 10 percent chance of suffering a severe loss, you'd reevaluate your assets. So if we know the world is warming and there's a 10 percent chance this might eventually lead to a catastrophe beyond anything we could imagine, why aren't we doing more about climate change right now? We insure our lives against an uncertain future—why not our planet? In Climate Shock, Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman explore in lively, clear terms the likely repercussions of a hotter planet, drawing on and expanding from work previously unavailable to general audiences. They show that the longer we wait to act, the more likely an extreme event will happen. A city might go underwater. A rogue nation might shoot particles into the Earth's atmosphere, geoengineering cooler temperatures. Zeroing in on the unknown extreme risks that may yet dwarf all else, the authors look at how economic forces that make sensible climate policies difficult to enact, make radical would-be fixes like geoengineering all the more probable. What we know about climate change is alarming enough. What we don't know about the extreme risks could be far more dangerous. Wagner and Weitzman help readers understand that we need to think about climate change in the same way that we think about insurance—as a risk management problem, only here on a global scale. With a new preface addressing recent developments Wagner and Weitzman demonstrate that climate change can and should be dealt with—and what could happen if we don't do so—tackling the defining environmental and public policy issue of our time.

Twelve Years of Delusions

Twelve Years of Delusions
Author: Wolf Blaser Jr.
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2018-09-19
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 148086837X

Wolf Blaser Jr., a native of Topeka, Kansas, grew up with a life that most would envy. He and his girlfriend were voted homecoming king and queen in his senior year, and he went to college on football scholarship. After earning a degree in engineering, he was hired by his father’s construction company. Like everyone, he had his ups and downs, but he never had any visions—until 2004, when he started seeing demons. Over time, his visions became more horrific. The demons always had similar features, with slanted eyes and horns sticking out on both sides of their heads. Most of his visions lasted for only a few seconds, but others lasted longer. Soon, he became convinced that others were listening to his thoughts. He began taking medication for depression and bipolar disorder, but he continued to suffer. Life became so bad that he eventually checked himself in to a hospital, giving its staff full authority to determine when he should be released. Join the author as he recalls battling bipolar disorder and fighting to reclaim his life in this powerful memoir.

Around the World with Isis

Around the World with Isis
Author: Isis Fahmy
Publisher: Papadakis Publisher
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2006-07-18
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781901092493

This is the story of how a young woman from an aristrocratic Egyptian family became the first Coptic female journalist in Egypt in the 1940s who traveled the world in pursuit of her profession.

High As the Waters Rise

High As the Waters Rise
Author: Anja Kampmann
Publisher: Catapult
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2021-09-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 164622082X

This "gorgeously written" National Book Award finalist is a dazzling, heart-rending story of an oil rig worker whose closest friend goes missing, plunging him into isolation and forcing him to confront his past (NPR, One of the Best Books of the Year). One night aboard an oil drilling platform in the Atlantic, Waclaw returns to his cabin to find that his bunkmate and companion, Mátyás, has gone missing. A search of the rig confirms his fear that Mátyás has fallen into the sea. Grief-stricken, he embarks on an epic emotional and physical journey that takes him to Morocco, to Budapest and Mátyás's hometown in Hungary, to Malta, Italy, and finally to the mining town of his childhood in Germany. Waclaw's encounters along the way with other lost and yearning souls—Mátyás's angry, grieving half-sister; lonely rig workers on shore leave; a truck driver who watches the world change from his driver's seat—bring us closer to his origins while also revealing the problems of a globalized economy dependent on waning natural resources. High as the Waters Rise is a stirring exploration of male intimacy, the nature of memory and grief, and the cost of freedom—the story of a man who stands at the margins of a society from which he has profited little, though its functioning depends on his labor.

Apocalypse Never

Apocalypse Never
Author: Michael Shellenberger
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2020-06-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0063001705

Now a National Bestseller! Climate change is real but it’s not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem. Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world’s last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today’s Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions. But in 2019, as some claimed “billions of people are going to die,” contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that, as a lifelong environmental activist, leading energy expert, and father of a teenage daughter, he needed to speak out to separate science from fiction. Despite decades of news media attention, many remain ignorant of basic facts. Carbon emissions peaked and have been declining in most developed nations for over a decade. Deaths from extreme weather, even in poor nations, declined 80 percent over the last four decades. And the risk of Earth warming to very high temperatures is increasingly unlikely thanks to slowing population growth and abundant natural gas. Curiously, the people who are the most alarmist about the problems also tend to oppose the obvious solutions. What’s really behind the rise of apocalyptic environmentalism? There are powerful financial interests. There are desires for status and power. But most of all there is a desire among supposedly secular people for transcendence. This spiritual impulse can be natural and healthy. But in preaching fear without love, and guilt without redemption, the new religion is failing to satisfy our deepest psychological and existential needs.

A People's Curriculum for the Earth

A People's Curriculum for the Earth
Author: Bill Bigelow
Publisher: Rethinking Schools
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2014-11-14
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0942961579

A People’s Curriculum for the Earth is a collection of articles, role plays, simulations, stories, poems, and graphics to help breathe life into teaching about the environmental crisis. The book features some of the best articles from Rethinking Schools magazine alongside classroom-friendly readings on climate change, energy, water, food, and pollution—as well as on people who are working to make things better. A People’s Curriculum for the Earth has the breadth and depth ofRethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World, one of the most popular books we’ve published. At a time when it’s becoming increasingly obvious that life on Earth is at risk, here is a resource that helps students see what’s wrong and imagine solutions. Praise for A People's Curriculum for the Earth "To really confront the climate crisis, we need to think differently, build differently, and teach differently. A People’s Curriculum for the Earth is an educator’s toolkit for our times." — Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate "This volume is a marvelous example of justice in ALL facets of our lives—civil, social, educational, economic, and yes, environmental. Bravo to the Rethinking Schools team for pulling this collection together and making us think more holistically about what we mean when we talk about justice." — Gloria Ladson-Billings, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison "Bigelow and Swinehart have created a critical resource for today’s young people about humanity’s responsibility for the Earth. This book can engender the shift in perspective so needed at this point on the clock of the universe." — Gregory Smith, Professor of Education, Lewis & Clark College, co-author with David Sobel of Place- and Community-based Education in Schools

Anne around the World

Anne around the World
Author: Jane Ledwell
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2013-04-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0773588590

What makes Anne of Green Gables an international, time-honoured classic? International audiences have described reading L.M. Montgomery's most celebrated novel as an experience in enchantment. Balancing criticism and celebration, Jane Ledwell and Jean Mitchell bring together essays that consider the sources of the wonder that Montgomery's work inspires. The popular appeal of Montgomery's classic is undeniable, but the reasons for its worldwide resonance are less obvious. From a range of perspectives, the contributors to Anne around the World focus on the numerous themes the novel raises, showcasing why it has charmed readers across the globe - from Iran to Australia, and from Sweden to Japan. Essays consider issues of class, race, and colonial history, discuss Anne's place in children's literature, her passion for writing, and the ways in which L.M. Montgomery and her red-haired protagonist are celebrated by legions of fans. Featuring contributions from many international writers, Anne around the World traces the meaning and influence of a story that spread far from its place of origin on a small Canadian island to distant and culturally diverse places. Contributors include Yoshiko Akamatsu (Notre Dame Seishin University, Japan), Doreley Carolina Coll (University of Prince Edward Island), Brooke Collins-Gearing (School of Humanities and Social Science, New South Wales), Margaret Doody (Notre Dame University), Elizabeth R. Epperly (emeritus, University of Prince Edward Island), Barbara Carman Garner (Carleton University), Caroline E. Jones (Texas State University-San Marcos), Paul Keen (Carleton University), Jane Ledwell, Jennie MacDonald (PhD, University of Denver), Susan Meyer (Wellesley College), Jean Mitchell, Mary Henley Rubio (emeritus, University of Guelph), Gholamreza Sami (Sussex University), Wendy Shilton (University of Prince Edward Island), Cynthia Sugars (University of Ottawa), Tanfer Emin Tunc (Hacettepe University, Turkey), Åsa Warnqvist (Stockholm University, Sweden), Elizabeth Hillman Waterston (emeritus, University of Guelph), and Budge Wilson (author).