Foreign Soil

Foreign Soil PDF

Author: Maxine Beneba Clarke

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-01-03

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1501136364

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From a new voice in international fiction, a prize-winning collection of stories that cross the world—Africa, London, the West Indies, Australia—and express the global experience “with exquisite sensitivity” (Dave Eggers, author of The Circle). In this collection of award-winning stories, Maxine Beneba Clarke gives voice to the disenfranchised, the lost, and the mistreated. Her stories will challenge you, move you, and change the way you view this complex world we inhabit. Within these pages, a desperate asylum seeker is pacing the hallways of Sydney’s notorious Villawood detention centre; a seven-year-old Sudanese boy has found solace in a patchwork bike; an enraged black militant is on the war-path through the rebel squats of 1960s Brixton; a Mississippi housewife decides to make the ultimate sacrifice to save her son from small-town ignorance; a young woman leaves rural Jamaica in search of her destiny; and a Sydney schoolgirl loses her way. In the bestselling tradition of novelists such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Marlon James, this urgent, poetic, and essential work announces the arrival of a fresh and talented voice in international fiction.

Dirt

Dirt PDF

Author: David R. Montgomery

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2007-05-14

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 0520933168

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Dirt, soil, call it what you want—it's everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it's no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern times, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations explores the compelling idea that we are—and have long been—using up Earth's soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology and geology, Dirt traces the role of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward. We see how soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil—as society after society has risen, prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. David R. Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.

International Yearbook of Soil Law and Policy 2019

International Yearbook of Soil Law and Policy 2019 PDF

Author: Harald Ginzky

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-03-24

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 3030523179

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This book presents an important discussion on the implementation of sustainable soil management in Africa from a range of governance perspectives. It addresses aspects such as the general challenges in Africa with regard to soil management; the structural deficiencies in legal, organizational and institutional terms; and specific policies at the national level, including land cover policies and persistent organic pollutants. This fourth volume of the International Yearbook of Soil Law and Policy is divided into four parts, the first of which deals with several aspects of the theme “sustainable soil management in Africa.” In turn, the second part covers recent international developments, the third part presents regional and national reports (i.a. Mexico, USA and Germany), and the fourth discusses cross-cutting issues(i.a. on rural-urban interfaces). Given the range of key topics covered, the book offers an indispensible tool for all academics, legislators and policymakers working in this field. The “International Yearbook of Soil Law and Policy” is a book series that discusses central questions in law and politics with regard to the protection and sustainable management of soil and land – at the international, national and regional level.

Foreign Soil

Foreign Soil PDF

Author: Maxine Beneba Clarke

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-10-17

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1501140515

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Originally published in 2014 by Hachette Australia.

Notes on a Foreign Country

Notes on a Foreign Country PDF

Author: Suzy Hansen

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2017-08-15

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0374712441

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Winner of the Overseas Press Club of America's Cornelius Ryan Award • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction A New York Times Book Review Notable Book • Named a Best Book of the Year by New York Magazine and The Progressive "A deeply honest and brave portrait of of an individual sensibility reckoning with her country's violent role in the world." —Hisham Matar, The New York Times Book Review In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen, who grew up in an insular conservative town in New Jersey, was enjoying early success as a journalist for a high-profile New York newspaper. Increasingly, though, the disconnect between the chaos of world events and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul. Hansen arrived in Istanbul with romantic ideas about a mythical city perched between East and West, and with a naïve sense of the Islamic world beyond. Over the course of her many years of living in Turkey and traveling in Greece, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iran, she learned a great deal about these countries and their cultures and histories and politics. But the greatest, most unsettling surprise would be what she learned about her own country—and herself, an American abroad in the era of American decline. It would take leaving her home to discover what she came to think of as the two Americas: the country and its people, and the experience of American power around the world. She came to understand that anti-Americanism is not a violent pathology. It is, Hansen writes, “a broken heart . . . A one-hundred-year-old relationship.” Blending memoir, journalism, and history, and deeply attuned to the voices of those she met on her travels, Notes on a Foreign Country is a moving reflection on America’s place in the world. It is a powerful journey of self-discovery and revelation—a profound reckoning with what it means to be American in a moment of grave national and global turmoil.

International Yearbook of Soil Law and Policy 2016

International Yearbook of Soil Law and Policy 2016 PDF

Author: Harald Ginzky

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-02-13

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 3319425080

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The first volume of the International Yearbook of Soil Law and Policy includes an important discussion on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals that are the basis for the post-2015 development agenda up to the year 2030; the Yearbook focuses in particular on Goal 15, which includes achieving a “land degradation-neutral world.” It also provides a comprehensive and highly informative overview of the latest developments at the international level, important cross-disciplinary issues and different approaches in national legislation. The book is divided into four sections. Forewords by internationally renowned academics and politicians are followed by an analysis of the content and structure of the Sustainable Development Goals with regard to soil and land as well as the scientific methods for their implementation. In addition, all relevant international regimes are discussed, including the latest developments, such as the decisions made at the 12th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The next section deals with cross-disciplinary issues relevant to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals like the right to food, land tenure, migration and the “Economics of Land Degradation” initiative. The last section gathers reports on the development of national legislation from various nations and supra-national entities, including Brazil, China, the European Union, Mongolia, Namibia and the United States. Addressing this broad range of key topics, the book offers an indispensible tool for all academics, legislators and policymakers working in this field. The “International Yearbook of Soil Law and Policy” is a book series that discusses the central questions of law and politics with regard to the protection and sustainable management of soil and land – at the international, national and regional level.

Breach of Trust

Breach of Trust PDF

Author: Andrew J. Bacevich

Publisher: Metropolitan Books

Published: 2013-09-10

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0805096035

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A blistering critique of the gulf between America's soldiers and the society that sends them off to war, from the bestselling author of The Limits of Power and Washington Rules The United States has been "at war" in Iraq and Afghanistan for more than a decade. Yet as war has become normalized, a yawning gap has opened between America's soldiers and veterans and the society in whose name they fight. For ordinary citizens, as former secretary of defense Robert Gates has acknowledged, armed conflict has become an "abstraction" and military service "something for other people to do." In Breach of Trust, bestselling author Andrew J. Bacevich takes stock of the separation between Americans and their military, tracing its origins to the Vietnam era and exploring its pernicious implications: a nation with an abiding appetite for war waged at enormous expense by a standing army demonstrably unable to achieve victory. Among the collateral casualties are values once considered central to democratic practice, including the principle that responsibility for defending the country should rest with its citizens. Citing figures as diverse as the martyr-theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the marine-turned-anti-warrior Smedley Butler, Breach of Trust summons Americans to restore that principle. Rather than something for "other people" to do, national defense should become the business of "we the people." Should Americans refuse to shoulder this responsibility, Bacevich warns, the prospect of endless war, waged by a "foreign legion" of professionals and contractor-mercenaries, beckons. So too does bankruptcy—moral as well as fiscal.