Coming Into the Country

Coming Into the Country
Author: John McPhee
Publisher:
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2015-07
Genre:
ISBN: 9781907970726

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Plunge into the wild climate of unknown Alaska in this riveting travel account.

Annals of the Former World

Annals of the Former World
Author: John McPhee
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2000-06-15
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0374708460

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The Pulitzer Prize-winning view of the continent, across the fortieth parallel and down through 4.6 billion years Twenty years ago, when John McPhee began his journeys back and forth across the United States, he planned to describe a cross section of North America at about the fortieth parallel and, in the process, come to an understanding not only of the science but of the style of the geologists he traveled with. The structure of the book never changed, but its breadth caused him to complete it in stages, under the overall title Annals of the Former World. Like the terrain it covers, Annals of the Former World tells a multilayered tale, and the reader may choose one of many paths through it. As clearly and succinctly written as it is profoundly informed, this is our finest popular survey of geology and a masterpiece of modern nonfiction. Annals of the Former World is the winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction.

Coming Home to Nez Perce Country

Coming Home to Nez Perce Country
Author: Trevor James Bond
Publisher: Washington State University Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2021-07-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1636820743

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In 1847 two barrels of “Indian curiosities” shipped by missionary Henry Spalding to Dr. Dudley Allen arrived in Kinsman, Ohio. The items inside included exquisite Nez Perce shirts, dresses, baskets, and horse regalia--some decorated with porcupine quills and others with precious dentalium shells and rare elk teeth. Donated to Oberlin College in 1893 and transferred to the Ohio Historical Society (OHS) in 1942, the Spalding-Allen Collection languished in storage until Nez Perce National Historic Park curators rediscovered it in 1976. The OHS loaned most of the artifacts to the National Park Service, where they received conservation treatment and were displayed in climate-controlled cases. Josiah Pinkham, Nez Perce Cultural Specialist, notes that they embody “the earliest and greatest centralization of ethnographic objects for the Nez Perce people. You don’t have a collection of this size, this age, anywhere else in the world.” Twelve years later, the OHS abruptly recalled the collection. Eventually, under public pressure, they agreed to sell the articles to the Nez Perce at their full appraised value of $608,100, allowing just six months for payment. The tribe mounted a brilliant grassroots fundraising campaign, as well as a sponsorship drive for specific pieces. Schoolchildren, National Public Radio, artists, and musicians contributed. Major donors came forward, and one day before the deadline, the Nez Perce Tribe met their goal. The author draws on interviews with Nez Perce experts and extensive archival research to tell the Spalding-Allen Collection story. He also examines the ethics of acquiring, bartering, owning, and selling Native cultural history, as Native American, First Nation, and Indigenous communities continue their efforts to restore their exploited cultural heritage from collectors and museums--pieces that are living, breathing, intimately connected to their home region, and inspirational for sustaining cultural traditions.

My Own Country

My Own Country
Author: Abraham Verghese
Publisher: BookRags
Total Pages: 42
Release: 1998
Genre: AIDS (Disease)
ISBN:

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Coming Into McPhee Country

Coming Into McPhee Country
Author: Oliver Alan Weltzien
Publisher:
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2003
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN:

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John McPhee, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for Annals of the Former World, is considered one of the most distinguished writers of literary nonfiction. Coming into McPhee Country is the first comprehensive anthology to address his significant body of work. The first section, 'The Evolving Writer,' examines his work from a biographical point of view, explaining background and influences that affected his development as a writer. The second section, 'McPhee and the Natural World,' focuses on his representations of the natural world and explores his work from the framework of both wilderness and urban environmentalism. The final section, 'The Writerly Challenges of McPhee,' discusses his rhetorical choices in structure and style and demonstrates how his seemingly artless presentation is literary in every sense of the word. Overall, this volume salutes McPhee’s enormous and enormously varying oeuvre and confirms his stature as a major American writer.

Out in the Country

Out in the Country
Author: Mary L. Gray
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2009-08-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0814732208

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Winner of the 2009 Ruth Benedict Prize for Outstanding Monograph from the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists Winner of the 2010 Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association, Sociology of Sexualities Section Winner of the 2010 Congress Inaugural Qualitative Inquiry Book Award Honorable Mention An unprecedented contemporary account of the online and offline lives of rural LGBT youth From Wal-Mart drag parties to renegade Homemaker’s Clubs, Out in the Country offers an unprecedented contemporary account of the lives of today’s rural queer youth. Mary L. Gray maps out the experiences of young people living in small towns across rural Kentucky and along its desolate Appalachian borders, providing a fascinating and often surprising look at the contours of gay life beyond the big city. Gray illustrates that, against a backdrop of an increasingly impoverished and privatized rural America, LGBT youth and their allies visibly—and often vibrantly—work the boundaries of the public spaces available to them, whether in their high schools, public libraries, town hall meetings, churches, or through websites. This important book shows that, in addition to the spaces of Main Street, rural LGBT youth explore and carve out online spaces to fashion their emerging queer identities. Their triumphs and travails defy clear distinctions often drawn between online and offline experiences of identity, fundamentally redefining our understanding of the term ‘queer visibility’ and its political stakes. Gray combines ethnographic insight with incisive cultural critique, engaging with some of the biggest issues facing both queer studies and media scholarship. Out in the Country is a timely and groundbreaking study of sexuality and gender, new media, youth culture, and the meaning of identity and social movements in a digital age.

Country of My Skull

Country of My Skull
Author: Antjie Krog
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0307420507

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Ever since Nelson Mandela dramatically walked out of prison in 1990 after twenty-seven years behind bars, South Africa has been undergoing a radical transformation. In one of the most miraculous events of the century, the oppressive system of apartheid was dismantled. Repressive laws mandating separation of the races were thrown out. The country, which had been carved into a crazy quilt that reserved the most prosperous areas for whites and the most desolate and backward for blacks, was reunited. The dreaded and dangerous security force, which for years had systematically tortured, spied upon, and harassed people of color and their white supporters, was dismantled. But how could this country--one of spectacular beauty and promise--come to terms with its ugly past? How could its people, whom the oppressive white government had pitted against one another, live side by side as friends and neighbors? To begin the healing process, Nelson Mandela created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by the renowned cleric Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Established in 1995, the commission faced the awesome task of hearing the testimony of the victims of apartheid as well as the oppressors. Amnesty was granted to those who offered a full confession of any crimes associated with apartheid. Since the commission began its work, it has been the central player in a drama that has riveted the country. In this book, Antjie Krog, a South African journalist and poet who has covered the work of the commission, recounts the drama, the horrors, the wrenching personal stories of the victims and their families. Through the testimonies of victims of abuse and violence, from the appearance of Winnie Mandela to former South African president P. W. Botha's extraordinary courthouse press conference, this award-winning poet leads us on an amazing journey. Country of My Skull captures the complexity of the Truth Commission's work. The narrative is often traumatic, vivid, and provocative. Krog's powerful prose lures the reader actively and inventively through a mosaic of insights, impressions, and secret themes. This compelling tale is Antjie Krog's profound literary account of the mending of a country that was in colossal need of change.

Oranges

Oranges
Author: John McPhee
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 149
Release: 2011-04-01
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0374708703

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A classic of reportage, Oranges was first conceived as a short magazine article about oranges and orange juice, but the author kept encountering so much irresistible information that he eventually found that he had in fact written a book. It contains sketches of orange growers, orange botanists, orange pickers, orange packers, early settlers on Florida's Indian River, the first orange barons, modern concentrate makers, and a fascinating profile of Ben Hill Griffin of Frostproof, Florida who may be the last of the individual orange barons. McPhee's astonishing book has an almost narrative progression, is immensely readable, and is frequently amusing. Louis XIV hung tapestries of oranges in the halls of Versailles, because oranges and orange trees were the symbols of his nature and his reign. This book, in a sense, is a tapestry of oranges, too—with elements in it that range from the great orangeries of European monarchs to a custom of people in the modern Caribbean who split oranges and clean floors with them, one half in each hand.

Where Our Food Comes From

Where Our Food Comes From
Author: Gary Paul Nabhan
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2012-02-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1597265179

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The future of our food depends on tiny seeds in orchards and fields the world over. In 1943, one of the first to recognize this fact, the great botanist Nikolay Vavilov, lay dying of starvation in a Soviet prison. But in the years before Stalin jailed him as a scapegoat for the country’s famines, Vavilov had traveled over five continents, collecting hundreds of thousands of seeds in an effort to outline the ancient centers of agricultural diversity and guard against widespread hunger. Now, another remarkable scientist—and vivid storyteller—has retraced his footsteps. In Where Our Food Comes From, Gary Paul Nabhan weaves together Vavilov’s extraordinary story with his own expeditions to Earth’s richest agricultural landscapes and the cultures that tend them. Retracing Vavilov’s path from Mexico and the Colombian Amazon to the glaciers of the Pamirs in Tajikistan, he draws a vibrant portrait of changes that have occurred since Vavilov’s time and why they matter. In his travels, Nabhan shows how climate change, free trade policies, genetic engineering, and loss of traditional knowledge are threatening our food supply. Through discussions with local farmers, visits to local outdoor markets, and comparison of his own observations in eleven countries to those recorded in Vavilov’s journals and photos, Nabhan reveals just how much diversity has already been lost. But he also shows what resilient farmers and scientists in many regions are doing to save the remaining living riches of our world. It is a cruel irony that Vavilov, a man who spent his life working to foster nutrition, ultimately died from lack of it. In telling his story, Where Our Food Comes From brings to life the intricate relationships among culture, politics, the land, and the future of the world’s food.

Justice Is Coming

Justice Is Coming
Author: Cenk Uygur
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2023-09-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1250272807

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A manifesto that outlines the progressive vision, recent history and worldview—by the founder of The Young Turks and co-founder of Justice Democrats. The media can't stop talking about the gridlock in Washington, as if a handful of stubborn Republicans are the only thing standing between us and a fully-functional democracy. The reality is that our government was taken over by big business and their allies in both political parties. The getaway driver in this heist was corporate media. The good news is that the American people are very progressive. And soon progressives will take over Washington as well! And when they do, the great majority of Americans will love it. In Justice Is Coming, The Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur presents two ideas that counter everything we hear from pundits and politicians on a daily basis: one, progressives are correct on all issues, and two, America is actually a very progressive country. Millions of us know that we are a part of something larger, a movement that is already transforming Washington. This compulsively readable manifesto seeks to apply the momentum we have already built to a concrete progressive agenda that activists, voters, and citizens can all rally around. It looks beyond Trump to the larger historical forces that have given us this unique political moment, and explains why we should fight, how we should fight, and how we will win. Sharp-witted, persuasive, and inspiring, calling out toxic Republicans, politely-ineffectual Democrats, and mealy-mouthed media mavens in equal measure, Justice is Coming will give heart to Democrats and progressives who seek to change our politics and society for the better.