Search results for ""Counterpoint""
Columbia University Press Species Concepts and Phylogenetic Theory: A Debate
No question in theoretical biology has been more perennially controversial or perplexing than "What is a species?" Recent advances in phylogenetic theory have called into question traditional views of species and spawned many concepts that are currently competing for general acceptance. Once the subject of esoteric intellectual exercises, the "species problem" has emerged as a critically important aspect of global environmental concerns. Completion of an inventory of biodiversity, success in conservation, predictive knowledge about life on earth, management of material resources, formulation of scientifically credible public policy and law, and more depend upon our adoption of the "right" species concept. Quentin D. Wheeler and Rudolf Meier present a debate among top systematic biology theorists to consider the strengths and weaknesses of five competing concepts. Debaters include (1) Ernst Mayr (Biological Species Concept), (2) Rudolf Meier and Rainer Willmann (Hennigian species concept), (3) Brent Mishler and Edward Theriot (one version of the Phylogenetic Species Concept), (4) Quentin Wheeler and Norman Platnick (a competing version of the Phylogenetic Species Concept), and (5) E. O. Wiley and Richard Mayden (the Evolutionary Species Concept). Each author or pair of authors contributes three essays to the debate: first, a position paper with an opening argument for their respective concept of species; second, a counterpoint view of the weakness of competing concepts; and, finally, a rebuttal of the attacks made by other authors. This unique and lively debate format makes the comparative advantages and disadvantages of competing species concepts clear and accessible in a single book for the first time, bringing to light numerous controversies in phylogenetic theory, taxonomy, and philosophy of science that are important to a wide audience. Species Concepts and Phylogenetic Theory will meet a need among scientists, conservationists, policy-makers, and students of biology for an explicit, critical evaluation of a large and complex literature on species. An important reference for professionals, the book will prove especially useful in classrooms and discussion groups where students may find a concise, lucid entree to one of the most complex questions facing science and society.
£108.90
ArchiTangle GmbH The Kinetic City and Other Essays
This book presents Rahul Mehrotra’s writings over the last thirty years and illustrates his long-term engagement with and analysis of urbanism in India. This work has given rise to a new conceptualization of the city. Mehrotra calls it the Kinetic City, which is the counterpoint to the Static City, as familiar to most of us from conventional city maps. He argues that the city should instead be perceived, read, and mapped in terms of patterns of occupation and associative values attributed to space. The framework is established in this publication by Rahul Mehrotra’s anchor essay, which draws out its potential to “allow a better understanding of the blurred lines of contemporary urbanism and the changing roles of people and spaces in urban society.” The emerging urban Indian condition, of which the Kinetic City is symbolic, is examined in this publication through a selection of writings curated by Mehrotra, which led to and then subsequently built on this framework. The theory is reinforced by different perspectives that Rahul Mehrotra brings to bear on discourse, and on the profession of architects and urban designers, thanks to his career as an architect, urban designer, conservationist, educator, and advocate for the city. From essays such as “Evolution, Involution and the City’s Future: A Perspective on Bombay’s Urban Form” to more generally applicable ruminations such as “Our Home in the World,” this book offers an in-depth look at the last thirty years of reflection and theorizing behind Mehrotra’s work. The publication is divided into three parts. The anchor essay, “Negotiating the Static and Kinetic Cities,” and other contributions (twenty-one in total) make up the main section. A second book within the book is dedicated to an expansive complimentary photo essay by the photographer Rajesh Vora, illustrating the key themes transaction, instability, spectacle, and habitation. The last section presents an illustrated bibliography of Rahul Mehrotra’s wide range of research and writings.
£49.50
The University of Chicago Press American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the Soviet Dream
If you were an independent, adventurous, liberated American woman in the 1920s or '30s where might you have sought escape from the constraints and compromises of bourgeois living? Paris and the Left Bank quickly come to mind. But would you have ever thought of Russia and the wilds of Siberia? This choice was not as unusual as it seems now. As Julia Mickenberg uncovers in American Girls in Red Russia, there is a forgotten counterpoint to the story of the Lost Generation: beginning in the late nineteenth century, Russian revolutionary ideology attracted many women, including suffragists, reformers, educators, journalists, and artists, as well as curious travelers. Some were famous, like Isadora Duncan or Lillian Hellman; some were committed radicals, though many more were curious about the "Soviet experiment." But all came to Russia in search of social arrangements that would be more equitable, just, and satisfying. And most in the end were disillusioned, sometimes by the mundane realities, others by ugly truths too horrifying to even contemplate. Mickenberg reveals the complex motives that drew American women to Russia, which appeared to be the very embodiment of modern ideas and ways of living. American women saw in Russia the hope for a new era in which women would be not merely independent of men, but also equal builders of a new society. Russian women, after all, earned the right to vote in 1917, and they also had abortion rights, property rights, the right to divorce, maternity benefits, and state-supported childcare. Yet as Mickenberg's sympathetic biography shows, Russia turned out to be as much a grim commune as a utopia of freedom, replete with many of the same economic and sexual inequities that the immigrants had hoped to escape.American Girls in Red Russia recounts the experiences of women who saved starving children from the Russian famine, worked on rural communes in Siberia, wrote for Moscow or New York newspapers, or performed on Soviet stages. Mickenberg finally tells these forgotten stories, full of hope and grave disappointments.
£31.49
Cune Press,US The Dusk Visitor: Stories from Syria
A collection of 36 short stories from a Raqqa, Syria native whose home was commandeered by ISIS and later destroyed by coalition airstrikes.Musa Al-Halool developed these stories based on a sense of embitterment toward the Syrian regime. Now, after his country has fallen from the grips of an obtuse and rigidly bureaucratic state into the uncertainties of war . . . he presents his stories as the response of one still-same voice in the midst of madness.Musa Al-Halool’s stories depict a Kafkaesque Middle Eastern world. The collection opens with eight political fables in a chapter titled Ratistan . . . or the country of Rats. These fables introduce themes which are picked up and developed in the later stories or simply serve as counterpoint to the longer pieces.The Dusk Visitor is an object lesson for Western readers. In just a few words, it invokes the warnings of Ernest Hemingway about the dangers of Fascism in 1920s Italy and the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s . . . that resulted in WWII. The author shows in compelling detail that Middle East dictators and the upside down world of security state rule in the Middle East are the reward for functioning civil societies where a few too many ”good people” find it more convenient to collaborate rather than to resist.Western readers, in their arrogance, are accustomed to pity such dysfunctional societies. In The Dusk Visitor, the tables are turned. Musa Al-Halool forces us to look in the mirror: Middle Eastern style comical inanity and inefficiency as well as torture, mass murder, and other human rights horrors are just around the corner for the EU, UK, US, and other societies where it is OK to raise half-truths, lies, and exaggeration above traditional journalism, dilute the judiciary, gerrymander the election system, usher in strongmen who prefer to be rulers for life, and threaten legal action against one’s political opponents.The Dusk Visitor is a MUST-READ for anyone concerned about the growth of subtle and overt fascism within modern civil society.
£11.99
Bloodaxe Books Ltd Uncollected Poems
R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) is a major writer of our time, one of the finest religious poets in the English language and one of Wales's greatest poets. His output was prolific: over six decades he published some 25 individual collections of poems, as well as several volumes of prose. A substantial number of his poems, however, have hitherto remained uncollected, and often elusive - poems published in newspapers, magazines and journals (many of them obscure), as well as in private or limited editions. Uncollected Poems - published to mark the centenary of Thomas's birth - brings together for the first time a rigorous selection of the best of these. The fruit of several years' research by Tony Brown and Jason Walford Davies, the volume makes available work which spans the whole of Thomas's career - from an early sonnet to his first wife, M.E. Eldridge (included in his first, unpublished, collection Spindrift in the late 1930s) and an early Iago Prytherch poem published in the Dublin Magazine, to poems which are powerful expressions of the metaphysical meditations of his later years. R.S. Thomas's Uncollected Poems takes its place alongside Collected Poems 1945-1990 (Dent, 1993; Phoenix, 2000), Selected Poems (Penguin, 2003) and Collected Later Poems 1988-2000 (Bloodaxe Books, 2004). It gives readers of R.S. Thomas's work access to much new and fascinating material. Uncollected Poems is a companion volume to R.S. Thomas's Collected Later Poems 1988-2000 (Bloodaxe Books, 2004), the sequel to Collected Poems 1945-1990 (Dent, 1993; Phoenix Press, 2000), which only covers his collections up to Experimenting with an Amen (1986). Collected Later Poems 1988-2000 reprints in full the contents of R.S. Thomas's last five collections, The Echoes Return Slow (Macmillan, 1988: unavailable for many years), and Bloodaxe's Counterpoint (1990), Mass for Hard Times (1992), No Truce with the Furies (1995) and the posthumously published Residues (2002). There is no overlap between the two Bloodaxe editions: none of the poems in Residues, uncollected at the time of his death in 2000, is included in Uncollected Poems.
£15.00
AU Press Mission Life in Cree-Ojibwe Country: Memories of a Mother and Son
In May of 1868, Elizabeth Bingham Young and her husband of only fivemonths, Egerton Ryerson Young, began a long journey from Hamilton,Ontario, to the Methodist mission of Rossville, at Norway House. Overthe next eight years, Elizabeth supported her husband’s work atRossville and then at the newly founded mission of Berens River, on theeast shore of Lake Winnipeg. In these remote outposts, she gave birthto four children, one of whom died in infancy, acted as a nurse anddoctor, and applied both perseverance and determination to learningCree, while also coping with poverty and a chronic shortage ofsupplies, both in the mission and in the community it served. WhenElizabeth died, in 1935, she left behind various reminiscences, notablyan extended account of her experiences at Norway House and BerensRiver, evidently written in 1927. Her memoirs offer an exceedingly rareportrait of mission life as seen through the eyes of a woman. Elizabeth’s first child and only surviving son, also namedEgerton Ryerson Young but known in his youth as “Eddie,”was born at Norway House in 1869. Cared for by a Cree woman almost frominfancy, Eddie spent his early childhood immersed in local Cree andOjibwe life, culture, and language, in many ways exemplifying theprocess of reverse acculturation often in evidence among the childrenof missionaries. He, too, left behind hitherto unpublishedreminiscences, one composed around 1935 and a second dictated shortlybefore his death. Like those of his mother, Eddie’s memoriescapture the sensory and emotional texture of mission life, a life inwhich the Christian faith is implicit rather than prominently ondisplay, while also providing an intriguing counterpoint to hismother’s recollections. Like all memoirs, these are refractedthrough the prism of time, and yet they remain startling in theirimmediacy. Together, the writings of mother and son—conjoinedhere with a selection of archival documents that supplement the mainnarratives, with the whole meticulously edited by Jennifer S. H.Brown—afford an all too uncommon opportunity to contemplatemission life from the ground up.
£25.19
University of Pennsylvania Press Extinction and the Human: Four American Encounters
The Americas have been the site of two distinct waves of human migration, each associated with human-caused extinctions. The first occurred during the late Pleistocene era, some ten to thirty thousand years ago; the other began during the time of European settler-colonization and continues to this day. In Extinction and the Human Timothy Sweet ponders the realities of animal extinction and endangerment and the often divergent Native American and Euro-American narratives that surround them. He focuses especially on the force of human impact on megafauna—mammoths, whales, and the North American bison—beginning with the moments that these species' extinction or endangerment began to generate significant print archives: transcriptions of traditional Indigenous oral narratives, historical and scientific accounts, and literary narratives by Indigenous American and Euro-American authors. "If the Sixth Extinction is a hyperobject, an event so massively distributed in space and time that it cannot be experienced directly," he writes, "these cases of particular megafauna have nevertheless consistently commanded our focus and attention. They form a starting point for a coherent, approachable history." Reflecting on questions of agency, responsibility, and moral assessment, Sweet engages with the consequences of thinking of humans as fundamentally separate from the rest of the natural world. He investigates stories of a lost race of giants at the time of the first encounters between Europeans and Indigenous Americans; culturally distinct ways of understanding the extinction of the mammoths; the impact of the Euro-American whaling industry and the controversial revitalization of Native American whaling traditions; and the bison's near-extermination at the hands of white market hunters and today's Euro-American and Native American efforts on behalf of the animal's preservation. He reflects on humans' relations with animals through models of divine preservation, competitive extermination, evolutionary determination, biophilia, and treaties with animals. Ultimately, he argues, it is the critical assessment of ideas of human exceptionalism that provides a necessary counterpoint both to apologies for human mastery over nature and deep ecology's attempts to erase the human.
£30.60
Rizzoli International Publications Kate: The Kate Moss Book
Created by Kate Moss herself, in collaboration with creative director Fabien Baron, Jess Hallett, and Jefferson Hack, this book is a highly personal retrospective of Kate Moss’s career, tracing her evolution from “new girl with potential” to one of the most iconic models of all time.KATE: The Kate Moss Book will be released with eight unique covers, shot by Mario Testino, Corinne Day, Inez & Vinoodh, Craig McDean, Mert & Marcus, David Sims, Mario Sorrenti, and Juergen Teller and will be shipped to customers at random. Kate Moss began modeling as a teenager and achieved recognition when photographs of her shot by Corinne Day appeared in British magazine The Face. She made her so-called “waif” mark as a counterpoint in the 90s to then-dominant, Amazonian supermodels like Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, and Linda Evangelista, and, with countless international magazine covers and fashion features, and campaigns for brands including Calvin Klein, Chanel, Bulgari, Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, and Longchamp, has remained one of fashion’s most enduring and influential forces. Moss’s magic has been captured by the world’s leading photographers, and this volume spans the entirety of her unparalleled career, from model to fashion designer, and muse to icon. Told through images that Moss has personally selected, KATE shows the influence of her collaborations with top photographers and artists over the last two decades, and clearly demonstrates why her career has had, and continues to have, such incredible longevity.Photography by Arthur Elgort, Corinne Day, Craig McDean, David Sims, Hedi Slimane, Inez & Vinoodh, Juergen Teller, Mario Sorrenti, Mario Testino, Mert & Marcus, Nick Knight, Patrick Demarchelier, Peter Lindbergh, Roxanne Lowit, Steven Klein, Terry Richardson and others Including many ‘never-before-seen’ images from her own archives and those of the illustrious photographers with whom she has worked, KATE is a must-have for anyone interested in one of the most iconic models in the history of fashion media and modern culture.
£67.50
Duke University Press When a Flower Is Reborn: The Life and Times of a Mapuche Feminist
A pathbreaking contribution to Latin American testimonial literature, When a Flower Is Reborn is activist Rosa Isolde Reuque Paillalef’s chronicle of her leadership within the Mapuche indigenous rights movement in Chile. Part personal reflection and part political autobiography, it is also the story of Reuque’s rediscovery of her own Mapuche identity through her political and human rights activism over the past quarter century. The questions posed to Reuque by her editor and translator, the distinguished historian Florencia Mallon, are included in the text, revealing both a lively exchange between two feminist intellectuals and much about the crafting of the testimonial itself. In addition, several conversations involving Reuque’s family members provide a counterpoint to her story, illustrating the variety of ways identity is created and understood.A leading activist during the Pinochet dictatorship, Reuque—a woman, a Catholic, and a Christian Democrat—often felt like an outsider within the male-dominated, leftist Mapuche movement. This sense of herself as both participant and observer allows for Reuque’s trenchant, yet empathetic, critique of the Mapuche ethnic movement and of the policies regarding indigenous people implemented by Chile’s post-authoritarian government. After the 1990 transition to democratic rule, Reuque collaborated with the government in the creation of the Indigenous Development Corporation (CONADI) and the passage of the Indigenous Law of 1993. At the same time, her deepening critiques of sexism in Chilean society in general, and the Mapuche movement in particular, inspired her to found the first Mapuche feminist organization and participate in the 1996 International Women’s Conference in Beijing. Critical of the democratic government’s inability to effectively address indigenous demands, Reuque reflects on the history of Mapuche activism, including its disarray in the early 1990s and resurgence toward the end of the decade, and relates her hopes for the future.An important reinvention of the testimonial genre for Latin America’s post-authoritarian, post-revolutionary era, When a Flower Is Reborn will appeal to those interested in Latin America, race and ethnicity, indigenous people’s movements, women and gender, and oral history and ethnography.
£26.99
Stanford University Press Trapped in the Cold War: The Ordeal of an American Family
The disappearance behind the Iron Curtain of the American brothers Noel and Hermann Field in 1949, followed by that of Noel’s wife and their foster daughter, was one of the most publicized international mysteries of the Cold War. This dual memoir gives an intensely human dimension to that struggle, with Hermann narrating all that happened to him from the day he was abducted from the Warsaw airport to his release five years later, and Kate relating her unrelenting efforts to find her husband. Thousands of potential victims of Hitler’s dragnet were rescued in 1939 and during World War II through separate efforts of the Field brothers. Arrested in Czechoslovakia in 1949, Noel was taken to Hungary and used as an example of American perfidy in show trials. Hermann went to Poland primarily to find out what had happened to his brother. After Hermann’s abduction, he was taken to the cellar of a secret Polish prison, where he was held for five years. He gives us a detailed account of his battle to survive, alternating despair and horror with mordant humor. Meanwhile, his family had no idea whether he was still alive and if so, where. This moving story, based on detailed notes made by the authors during and shortly after the events described, presents an inside-outside counterpoint, as Hermann’s chapters on his inward journey in his cellar world alternate with Kate’s efforts in London to find him by scrutinizing accounts of political events in Eastern Europe for clues and penetrating the diplomatic corridors of power in the West for help. Hermann had been arrested by a Polish security agent who later defected and became one of the West’s most important informants on Soviet operations in Eastern Europe. The search for the Field brothers was complicated by their history of leftist connections, for this tense period in the Cold War was also the era of McCarthyism in the United States. The book ends with an Epilogue that analyzes the events of fifty years ago in the light of what we know today, as the result of newly available archival material.
£26.99
Stanford University Press Trapped in the Cold War: The Ordeal of an American Family
The disappearance behind the Iron Curtain of the American brothers Noel and Hermann Field in 1949, followed by that of Noel’s wife and their foster daughter, was one of the most publicized international mysteries of the Cold War. This dual memoir gives an intensely human dimension to that struggle, with Hermann narrating all that happened to him from the day he was abducted from the Warsaw airport to his release five years later, and Kate relating her unrelenting efforts to find her husband. Thousands of potential victims of Hitler’s dragnet were rescued in 1939 and during World War II through separate efforts of the Field brothers. Arrested in Czechoslovakia in 1949, Noel was taken to Hungary and used as an example of American perfidy in show trials. Hermann went to Poland primarily to find out what had happened to his brother. After Hermann’s abduction, he was taken to the cellar of a secret Polish prison, where he was held for five years. He gives us a detailed account of his battle to survive, alternating despair and horror with mordant humor. Meanwhile, his family had no idea whether he was still alive and if so, where. This moving story, based on detailed notes made by the authors during and shortly after the events described, presents an inside-outside counterpoint, as Hermann’s chapters on his inward journey in his cellar world alternate with Kate’s efforts in London to find him by scrutinizing accounts of political events in Eastern Europe for clues and penetrating the diplomatic corridors of power in the West for help. Hermann had been arrested by a Polish security agent who later defected and became one of the West’s most important informants on Soviet operations in Eastern Europe. The search for the Field brothers was complicated by their history of leftist connections, for this tense period in the Cold War was also the era of McCarthyism in the United States. The book ends with an Epilogue that analyzes the events of fifty years ago in the light of what we know today, as the result of newly available archival material.
£89.10
The University of Chicago Press Growing Each Other Up: When Our Children Become Our Teachers
From growing their children, parents grow themselves, learning the lessons their children teach. "Growing up", then, is as much a developmental process of parenthood as it is of childhood. While countless books have been written about the challenges of parenting, nearly all of them position the parent as instructor and support-giver, the child as learner and in need of direction. But the parent-child relationship is more complicated and reciprocal; over time it transforms in remarkable, surprising ways. As our children grow up, and we grow older, what used to be a one-way flow of instruction and support, from parent to child, becomes instead an exchange. We begin to learn from them. The lessons parents learn from their offspring voluntarily and involuntarily, with intention and serendipity, often through resistance and struggle are embedded in their evolving relationships and shaped by the rapidly transforming world around them. With Growing Each Other Up, Macarthur Prize winning sociologist and educator Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot offers an intimately detailed, emotionally powerful account of that experience. Building her book on a series of in-depth interviews with parents around the country, she offers a counterpoint to the usual parental development literature that mostly concerns the adjustment of parents to their babies' rhythms and the ways parents weather the storms of their teenage progeny. The focus here is on the lessons emerging adult children, ages 15 to 35, teach their parents. How are our perspectives as parents shaped by our children? What lessons do we take from them and incorporate into our worldviews? Just how much do we learn often despite our own emotionally fraught resistance from what they have seen of life that we, perhaps, never experienced? From these parent portraits emerges the shape of an education composed by young adult children an education built on witness, growing, intimacy, and acceptance. Growing Each Other Up is rich in the voices of actual parents telling their own stories of raising children and their children raising them; watching that fundamental connection shift over time. Parents and children of all ages will recognize themselves in these evocative and moving accounts and look at their own growing up in a revelatory new light.
£22.25
University Press of Kansas Victory at Mortain: Stopping Hitler's Panzer Counteroffensive
A powerful German counterattack in Normandy in August 1944 might have been one of the Wehrmacht's great shining moments in the Second World War. The odds were certainly in their favour. Determined to drive the Allies back to the English Channel, elements of four combat-hardened panzer divisions faced off against a single American infantry division near the town of Mortain. Instead, the Americans held their ground, enabling the Allied armies to secure the invasion and ultimately liberate France.In a vivid recreation of this pivotal battle—less celebrated than the encounter at the Falaise Pocket but just as decisive—Mark Reardon tells how the 30th Infantry Division held off the German panzer juggernaut, which was designed to drive a wedge between Allied forces. In recounting this showdown, he offers a new perspective on the German defeat in Normandy and a convincing counterpoint to the conventional view of most military analysts that Germany lost the war as a result of Allied materiel superiority or Hitler's strategic meddling.Through vigorous prose laced with compelling anecdotes, Reardon reconstructs the battle from both sides of the firing line to explain why it evolved and ended as it did. He reveals how professional rivalries and lack of accurate battlefield information hampered the efforts of German generals to execute a successful counteroffensive. He also tells how the U.S. Army profited from the bitter lessons of hedgerow fighting to gain superiority in ground manoeuvre, fire support, and the use of airpower, logistics, communications, and reconnaissance in the face of more experienced and better armed opponents.Reardon's riveting tale reveals that Americans GIs could fight as well as their more vaunted opponent, which gave the U.S. Army the confidence it needed to take the war into the enemy's homeland. Equally important, their victory prevented the Germans from retaking strategic points that would have kept the war bottled up in Normandy.Drawing not only on exhaustive research in Anglo-American and German archives but also on first hand accounts by more than two hundred American soldiers, Reardon's detailed reconstruction fills an important gap in the history of World War II combat that has existed for more than half a century.
£33.53
Oxford University Press Tort Law
Takes students from zero knowledge to engaged and critical thinkers. This best-selling undergraduate textbook from renowned authors Kirsty Horsey & Erika Rackley offers a lively, accessible, and thoughtful treatment of all key tort law topics, and includes carefully chosen learning features that encourage deep and critical thinking. Key features: - Problem questions at the beginning of chapters set the scene, immediately putting the law in context. Outline answers and an annotated version with issues and cases to consider offer students further insights - Author videos in every chapter enliven, explain, and enrich key topics - 'Counterpoint' and 'pause for reflection' boxes encourage students to think critically and engage with areas of controversy or reform - Annotated statutes and judgments explain the more difficult points of law and help students develop the invaluable skills of reading, interpreting, and analysing - Interactive decision trees provide a visual aid to understanding key torts, and cement that knowledge through direct, step-by-step engagement New to this edition: - Author videos and interactive decision trees - New and updated coverage of key legal developments, including Banks v Cadwalladr [2022] EWHC 1417 (QB) on defamation, Bloomberg LP (Appellant) v ZXC (Respondent) [2022] UKSC 5 on privacy, and Paul v Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust; Polmear v Royal Cornwall Hospital NHS Trust; Purchase v Ahmed [2022] EWCA Civ 12 on psychiatric harm Digital formats and resources: This edition is available as an enhanced e-book, which offers an array of integrated resources to support learning. These include author videos, interactive decision trees, and support in tackling the problem question, as well as a mobile experience and convenient access, functionality tools, navigation features, and links: www.oxfordtextbooks.co.uk/ebooks A selection of online resources is available to paperback, Law Trove, and enhanced e-book users, including: - Outline answers to questions in the book - Annotated links to external web resources and videos - Downloadable annotated case judgments, statutes, and problem questions - Guidance on answering problem and essay questions - Additional content on elements of a claim in the tort of negligence and on product liability - Access to the enhanced e-book's videos and interactive decision trees
£41.98
Mandel Vilar Press Harmonics: Sixty Years of Life in Art
Paul Gruhler opened his first studio in 1962 at the age of 21 — a year later he had a solo show at the DeMena Gallery in lower Manhattan. From the beginning, Gruhler, a self-taught artist, was compelled by what came to be known as geometric abstraction, in which the deliberative arrangement of color, line, texture, and scale, in paintings and collage, evoke from these disparate elements a sense of meditative harmony. For sixty years, he has continued to explore the subtle differences that can be made from color and line. Gruhler was fortunate in the early years to have met and become good friends with three older artists who were also important teachers and mentors — first Michael Lekakis, then Harold Weston and Herb Aach. Lekakis, a celebrated sculptor, who already had had exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Americans 1963, took Gruhler under his wing, navigating him through New York’s thriving avant-garde art scene. As Carolyn Bauer writes, “Michael Lekakis was instrumental in encouraging Gruhler to attend art events, while taking him to invite-only museum openings.” He also introduced him to renowned artists — among them, Alexander Calder, Isamu Noguchi, Louise Nevelson, and Barnett Newman — whose works influenced the young Gruhler, as did such artists as Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, and Ad Reinhardt. Lekakis was also instrumental in Gruhler’s first show, giving titles to his paintings and writing catalog copy that drew upon his own abstract poetics. “These canvases,” he wrote, are “multi colored fire densely cascades to suspension hanging a counterpoint of rhythmic patterns in space covering it like a shroud united by a golden fragmentation.” Over these years Gruhler has had numerous solo and group shows in the U.S. in New York and Vermont, in Mexico, and abroad in Finland, Germany, Sweden, and The Netherlands. HARMONICS is both a retrospective and a current view of Paul Gruhler’s intensive art. “My work,” he says, “has been a meditative exploration of vertical and horizontal relationships in space, in order to achieve both harmony and tension within color, line and form.”
£22.49
Sarabande Books, Incorporated Georgia Under Water: Stories
Heather Seller's unpretentious, vernacular prose allows Georgia a persuasive mix of innocence and experience. These are miraculous stories of survival, perhaps even forgiveness. To some of us Georgia's life would be unthinkable. Sellers makes us believe it is well worth living. "Heather Sellers writes delicious, dangerous prose. She starts you twenty-three floors up in condo squalor, nips across for dysfunction in Disney country, threatens incest in Hotlanta, and comes to grief on the Gulf. The dead-credible life of Georgia Jackson—ineffably sweet, thoroughly in love with her own luscious body, half in love with her lush of a father—skids at the edge of the surreal. Her story had me laughing through the lump in my throat. An original. A knockout debut."-Janet Burroway Marketing Plans Author tour in Sellers' hometowns in Michigan and Florida Brochure and postcard mailings Advertisements in key literary and trade magazines Heather Sellers was born and raised in Orlando, Florida and received a Ph.D. in Writing from Florida State University. Her work has appeared in Indiana Review, New Virginia Review, The Hawaii Review, The Chattahoochee Review, The Women's Review of Books, and Sonora Review. Her story "Fla. Boys" is anthologized in New Stories from the South, 1999: The Year's Best. She received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1999. She currently lives in Holland, Michigan, where she's an associate professor of English at Hope College. Excerpt From Georgia Under Water From the short story, "Spurt" I spent those days watching myself in every reflective surface known to Daytona Beach. My knees weren't knobs anymore. My knees were lush transitions. My thighs shone golden-brown; my shins, paler, but long and strong. My ankles were slim, bony in a fetching way, my feet suddenly inches too long for my slaps and sandals. My hair swung in a shiny curtain behind me; my legs were in constant motion, counterpoint. "You've had a growth spurt," my mother said. "Your shorts are way too short. When did this happen?" "I think yesterday and/or the day before," I said. We were in
£9.99
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Sexual Ethics: An Anthology
An accessible and engaging anthology of readings focused specifically on applied ethics issues of sexual morality Sexual Ethics: An Anthology addresses conceptual, ethical, and public policy issues about sex, providing a balanced and non-sectarian discussion of many of today’s most important and controversial moral topics. Covering a broad range of contemporary sexual ethics issues, this easily accessible textbook includes explications and point/counterpoint pieces on the definition of sex and sexual orientation, sexual harassment and rape law, sexual discrimination, age of consent, marriage and adultery, online affairs, gay marriage, polygamy and polyamory, sexual orientation change therapy, transgender and sex reassignment surgery, intersexed infants and surgery, pornography, prostitution, psychiatric classifications of sexuality disorders, and specific paraphilias. Organized around six broad themes—Consent, Marriage, Homosexuality, Transgender, Commerce, and Paraphilias—Sexual Ethics presents multiple sides of each issue, offering diverse perspectives on critical topics, supported by relevant philosophical arguments, position papers, psychological studies, government regulations, and court rulings. Sexual Ethics is particularly designed to provide a ready-made course in sexual ethics, with several major elements ideally suited for classroom instructors and students: Includes an introductory chapter on key definitional, conceptual, and theoretical issues Features “Framing Questions” for each section that address a major moral or policy issue and highlights the pro/con nature of the readings (e.g., How should we define rape? Should pornography be protected as free speech?) Features a short summary at the beginning of each reading, including the topic, major points, and conclusion, very helpful for instructor planning Features 15 “Discussion Starters” that help students start thinking critically and talking about sexual ethics before doing any reading Features 45 brief “Decision Cases” drawn from major media stories especially relevant to the college student context, including college virginity, male rape, child pornography on television, college sexual harassment, faux-bisexuality, fraternity party sex, transgender inclusion, race and sex, asexuality, bromances, campus pride groups, fetishes and kink, online sex, Title IX mandatory reporting, transgender sports competition, religious diversity and sex, sex education, feminists working at sexually exploitative jobs, cancel culture, and robot sex. These cases are ideal for class discussion, class presentations, and research paper topics. Sexual Ethics: An Anthology is an excellent textbook for undergraduate classes in applied ethics, sexual ethics, and gender studies, as well as related courses in sociology, public policy, marriage and family law, and social work.
£42.50
Southern Illinois University Press Abraham Lincoln’s Statesmanship and the Limits of Liberal Democracy
This bold, groundbreaking study of American political development assesses the presidency of Abraham Lincoln through the lenses of governmental power, economic policy, expansion of executive power, and natural rights to show how Lincoln not only believed in the limitations of presidential power but also dedicated his presidency to restraining the scope and range of it.Though Lincoln’s presidency is inextricably linked to the Civil War, and he is best known for his defense of the Union and executive wartime leadership, Lincoln believed that Congress should be at the helm of public policy making. Likewise, Lincoln may have embraced limited government in vague terms, but he strongly supported effective rule of law and distribution of income and wealth. Placing the Lincoln presidency within a deeper and more meaningful historical context, Abraham Lincoln’s Statesmanship and the Limits of Liberal Democracy highlights Lincoln’s significance in the development of American power institutions and social movement politics.Using Lincoln’s prepresidential and presidential words and actions, this book argues that decent government demands a balance of competing goods and the strong statesmanship that Lincoln exemplified. Instead of relying too heavily on the will of the people and institutional solutions to help prevent tyranny, historian Jon D. Schaff proposes that American democracy would be better served by a moderate and prudential statesmanship such as Lincoln’s, which would help limit democratic excesses.Schaff explains how Lincoln’s views on prudence, moderation, natural rights, and economics contain the notion of limits, then views Lincoln’s political and presidential leadership through the same lens. He compares Lincoln’s views on governmental powers with the defense of unlimited government by twentieth-century progressives and shows how Lincoln’s theory of labor anticipated twentieth-century distributist economic thought. Schaff’s unique exploration falls squarely between historians who consider Lincoln a protoprogressive and those who say his presidency was a harbinger of industrialized, corporatized America.In analyzing Lincoln’s approach, Abraham Lincoln’s Statesmanship and the Limits of Liberal Democracy rejects the idea he was a revolutionary statesman and instead lifts up Lincoln’s own affinity for limited presidential power, making the case for a modest approach to presidential power today based on this understanding of Lincoln’s statesmanship. As a counterpoint to the contemporary landscape of bitter, uncivil politics, Schaff points to Lincoln’s statesmanship as a model for better ways of engaging in politics in a democracy.
£33.26
Edition Axel Menges Opus 82: Bodensee-Wasserversorgung, Sipplingen
Autumn 1958 marked the launching of the Bodensee-Wasserversorgung (Lake Constance water supply), an infrastructure project whose largest part is underground, hidden from view. Even in the first phase of the project, 2160 litres of water per second were taken from Lake Constance at a depth of roughly 60 m, treated on Sipplinger Berg and transported over hundreds of kilometres of pipeline through the Swabian Alb to the greater Stuttgart area. What is remarkable about this project, however, is not only the technological challenge of a combination of the lake-water treatment and the overland water pipeline, but particularly the special quality of the design of the visible parts of the waterworks, a result of the collaboration of engineers, architects, landscape designers and artists. Hermann Blomeier, who had settled in Constance in 1932 after graduating from the Bauhaus Dessau under Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, was commissioned with implementing the Sipplingen pumping station following a competition and, with functionally and transparently designed buildings, created a counterpoint to the expressive landscape of Lake Constance that was as restrained as it was confident. The treatment plants on Sipplinger Berg, built by a team comprising Blomeier and the architect and academic Günter Wilhelm, from the 'Quelltopf' (source pot) and the filter basins to the clean-water reservoir, exactly meet functional requirements and at the same time impressively illustrate the technical processes. The long distance travelled by the water is accompanied by seemingly subordinate buildings designed by architect Wolf Irion, subtly integrated in the landscape as a kind of wayside chapels, housing the pipe-rupture safety devices and line valves. The high quality of the design is evident not only in the buildings, but also in the work of landscape architect Walter Rossow and of visual artists Hans-Dieter Bohnet, Martin Matschinsky and Brigitte Matschinksy-Denninghof. Andreas Schwarting is professor of architectural history and architecture theory at the Hochschule Konstanz. His research has focussed particularly on 20th-century architecture, its reception and historiography, and on specific issues of conservation and maintenance. His publications include the monograph on Walter Gropius Dessau-Törten estate, and he was instrumental in the publication of the Stiftung Wüstenrot on the preservation of contemporary buildings. He was appointed by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) to monitor the UNESCO world-heritage sites of the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau.
£26.91
City Lights Books We the Resistance: Documenting a History of Nonviolent Protest in the United States
"A highly relevant, inclusive collection of voices from the roots of resistance. . . . Empowering words to challenge, confront, and defy."--Kirkus Reviews"This book fights fascism. This books offers hope. We The Resistance is essential reading for those who wish to understand how popular movements built around nonviolence have changed the world and why they retain the power to do so again."—Jonathan Eig, author of Ali: A Life "This comprehensive documentary history of non-violent resisters and resistance movements is an inspiring antidote to any movement fatigue or pessimism about the value of protest. It tells us we can learn from the past as we confront the present and hope to shape the future. Read, enjoy and take courage knowing you are never alone in trying to create a more just world. Persevere and persist and win, but know that even losing is worth the fight and teaches lessons for later struggles."—Mary Frances Berry, author of History Teaches Us to Resist: How Progressive Movements Have Succeeded in Challenging Times"We the Resistance illustrates the deeply rooted, dynamic, and multicultural history of nonviolent resistance and progressive activism in North America and the United States. With a truly comprehensive collection of primary sources, it becomes clear that dissent has always been a central feature of American political culture and that periods of quiescence and consensus are aberrant rather than the norm. Indeed, the depth and breadth of resistant and discordant voices in this collection is simply outstanding."—Leilah Danielson, author of American Gandhi: A.J. Muste and the History of American Radicalism in the Twentieth Century While historical accounts of the United States typically focus on the nation's military past, a rich and vibrant counterpoint remains basically unknown to most Americans. This alternate story of the formation of our nation—and its character—is one in which courageous individuals and movements have wielded the weapons of nonviolence to resist policies and practices they considered to be unjust, unfair, and immoral. We the Resistance gives curious citizens and current resisters unfiltered access to the hearts and minds—the rational and passionate voices—of their activist predecessors. Beginning with the pre-Revolutionary era and continuing through the present day, readers will directly encounter the voices of protesters sharing instructive stories about their methods (from sit-ins to tree-sitting) and opponents (from Puritans to Wall Street bankers), as well as inspirational stories about their failures (from slave petitions to the fight for the ERA) and successes (from enfranchisement for women to today's reform of police practices). Instruction and inspiration run throughout this captivating reader, generously illustrated with historic graphics and photographs of nonviolent protests throughout U.S. history.
£16.99
Johns Hopkins University Press Living Hell: The Dark Side of the Civil War
Many Americans, argues Michael C. C. Adams, tend to think of the Civil War as more glorious, less awful, than the reality. Millions of tourists flock to battlefields each year as vacation destinations, their perceptions of the war often shaped by reenactors who work hard for verisimilitude but who cannot ultimately simulate mutilation, madness, chronic disease, advanced physical decay. In Living Hell, Adams tries a different tack, clustering the voices of myriad actual participants on the firing line or in the hospital ward to create a virtual historical reenactment. Perhaps because the United States has not seen conventional war on its own soil since 1865, the collective memory of its horror has faded, so that we have sanitized and romanticized even the experience of the Civil War. Neither film nor reenactment can fully capture the hard truth of the four-year conflict. Living Hell presents a stark portrait of the human costs of the Civil War and gives readers a more accurate appreciation of its profound and lasting consequences. Adams examines the sharp contrast between the expectations of recruits versus the realities of communal living, the enormous problems of dirt and exposure, poor diet, malnutrition, and disease. He describes the slaughter produced by close-order combat, the difficulties of cleaning up the battlefields-where tens of thousands of dead and wounded often lay in an area of only a few square miles-and the resulting psychological damage survivors experienced. Drawing extensively on letters and memoirs of individual soldiers, Adams assembles vivid accounts of the distress Confederate and Union soldiers faced daily: sickness, exhaustion, hunger, devastating injuries, and makeshift hospitals where saws were often the medical instrument of choice. Inverting Robert E. Lee's famous line about war, Adams suggests that too many Americans become fond of war out of ignorance of its terrors. Providing a powerful counterpoint to Civil War glorification, Living Hell echoes William Tecumseh Sherman's comment that war is cruelty and cannot be refined. Praise for Our Masters the Rebels: A Speculation on Union Military Failure in the East, 1861-1865. "This excellent and provocative work concludes with a chapter suggesting how the image of Southern military superiority endured in spite of defeat." (Civil War History). "Adams' imaginative connections between culture and combat provide a forceful reminder that Civil War military history belongs not in an encapsulated realm, with its own categories and arcane language, but at the center of the study of the intellectual, social, and psychological currents that prevailed in the mid-nineteenth century." (Journal of American History). Praise for The Best War Ever: America and World War II: "Adams has a real gift for efficiently explaining complex historical problems." (Reviews in American History). "Not only is this mythologizing bad history, says Adams, it is dangerous as well. Surrounding the war with an aura of nostalgia both fosters the delusion that war can cure our social ills and makes us strong again, and weakens confidence in our ability to act effectively in our own time." (Journal of Military History).
£33.04
Johns Hopkins University Press Living Hell: The Dark Side of the Civil War
Many Americans, argues Michael C. C. Adams, tend to think of the Civil War as more glorious, less awful, than the reality. Millions of tourists flock to battlefields each year as vacation destinations, their perceptions of the war often shaped by reenactors who work hard for verisimilitude but who cannot ultimately simulate mutilation, madness, chronic disease, advanced physical decay. In Living Hell, Adams tries a different tack, clustering the voices of myriad actual participants on the firing line or in the hospital ward to create a virtual historical reenactment. Perhaps because the United States has not seen conventional war on its own soil since 1865, the collective memory of its horror has faded, so that we have sanitized and romanticized even the experience of the Civil War. Neither film nor reenactment can fully capture the hard truth of the four-year conflict. Living Hell presents a stark portrait of the human costs of the Civil War and gives readers a more accurate appreciation of its profound and lasting consequences. Adams examines the sharp contrast between the expectations of recruits versus the realities of communal living, the enormous problems of dirt and exposure, poor diet, malnutrition, and disease. He describes the slaughter produced by close-order combat, the difficulties of cleaning up the battlefields-where tens of thousands of dead and wounded often lay in an area of only a few square miles-and the resulting psychological damage survivors experienced. Drawing extensively on letters and memoirs of individual soldiers, Adams assembles vivid accounts of the distress Confederate and Union soldiers faced daily: sickness, exhaustion, hunger, devastating injuries, and makeshift hospitals where saws were often the medical instrument of choice. Inverting Robert E. Lee's famous line about war, Adams suggests that too many Americans become fond of war out of ignorance of its terrors. Providing a powerful counterpoint to Civil War glorification, Living Hell echoes William Tecumseh Sherman's comment that war is cruelty and cannot be refined. Praise for Our Masters the Rebels: A Speculation on Union Military Failure in the East, 1861-1865 "This excellent and provocative work concludes with a chapter suggesting how the image of Southern military superiority endured in spite of defeat."- Civil War History "Adams's imaginative connections between culture and combat provide a forceful reminder that Civil War military history belongs not in an encapsulated realm, with its own categories and arcane language, but at the center of the study of the intellectual, social, and psychological currents that prevailed in the mid-nineteenth century."- Journal of American History Praise for The Best War Ever: America and World War II "Adams has a real gift for efficiently explaining complex historical problems."- Reviews in American History "Not only is this mythologizing bad history, says Adams, it is dangerous as well. Surrounding the war with an aura of nostalgia both fosters the delusion that war can cure our social ills and makes us strong again, and weakens confidence in our ability to act effectively in our own time."- Journal of Military History
£18.50
Jessica Kingsley Publishers Group Action: The Dynamics of Groups in Therapeutic, Educational and Corporate Settings
The author does a commendable job of taking what is known about groups, the unconscious, and psychodynamics in an academic sense, and grounding it in relevant experiential education examples. This book is appropriate for intermediate and advanced practitioners who want to stretch their own thinking about group processes and group management. Ringer's text provides a good bridge between academic journals (and contains an abundance of quality citations) and practical application related to group leadership. I [found] it engaging and thought provoking.'- Journal of Experiential Education'Martin Ringer offers explanations of group processes with examples (both extensive and quite brief) that illustrate both concepts and strategies. Also a rare phenomenon, he positively encourages readers to relax their concentration on the written word and to think, make associations and learn by reflection on their own experiences of being leaders and members of groups.'- Leadership & Organization Development Journal'It gives huge assistance to a thinking group-worker. [It] brings alternative viewpoints and slants of lighting that open up familiar territory in fresh and stimulating ways. Worth the read.'- ANZPA 2002'The book's audience is not limited to those in training. Experienced group leaders will have their memories refreshed by his reviews of experimental learning and psychoanalytic and semi-systemic ways of understanding human and group behaviour practitionners in both the fields of adventure and group psychology will recognise that there is a maturity in Ringer's writing. He speaks from a profound understanding that comes from the practical lived level.'- Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Living'In publishing this book, Martin Ringer has provided us with a companion for quiet reflection. It will support group leaders in developing insights into their own practice and in raising their conscious awareness. It is a counterpoint to the many texts that focus on recipes and heuristics for success. In contrast to these superficial quick fixes, the author offers a book that brings the reader to profound reflection...The book is invaluable as a companion to signpost directions for further inquiry and experience. It can act to stretch one's appreciation and understanding of group complexity... It is a book that rewards patient contemplation and delivers high returns for depth of study. As I journey through the troubled and pleasant waters of group life, Martin Ringer's book will be a companion to accompany my thinking and actions.'- Steve Kempster, MBA Programme Director, Lancaster University School of ManagementGroups provide a powerful medium for therapeutic work, and are the building blocks of all institutions - whether in the education, health, government, or private sectors. Martin Ringer, an internationally known consultant and writer on group psychology, here outlines techniques for understanding groups that will be relevant to those who lead teams in any setting. The result is an accessible guide both to leading a group, and to understanding the necessary dynamics that will result in the best team-work. Throughout, Martin Ringer uses his wide-ranging experience and an informal style to make his points as accessible as possible to all readers - whether or not they have a formal background in group psychology.Rich with new ideas and challenging perspectives, this book is strongly recommended for anyone who wants to improve their ability as a group leader. The author provides basic and fundamental reference points for leaders, whilst also encouraging them to adopt more experimental approaches.
£32.99
John Wiley & Sons Inc Personality and Psychopathology: Building a Clinical Science: Selected Papers of Theodore Millon
Earlier assessments of Dr. Millon's work-- "Millon writes engagingly with a reverence for the history of ideas and for the steps necessary in the development of a scientific discipline." --Contemporary Psychology "Millon stands tall among the most prominent figures in the field of psychopathology." --The Family Letter of the National Academy of Counselors and Family Therapists Of related interest... TOWARD A NEW PERSONOLOGY An Evolutionary Model Theodore Millon Drawing on principles inherent in the physical and biological sciences, Theodore Millon explicates his groundbreaking theory of personality, its foundations, and its applications to the study of psychopathology. This innovative conceptual structure describes personality in terms of its basic survival and adaptive functions--especially in the polarities of pleasure/pain, passivity/activity, and self/other. This is an essential work for psychologists, psychiatrists, and personality researchers. 1990 (0-471-51573-6) 208 pp. DISORDERS OF PERSONALITY DSM-IV and Beyond Second Edition Theodore Millon and Roger D. Davis Written by one of the world's leading authorities on personality disorders and an influential member of the DSM-IV Axis II Work Group, this book will serve as an indispensable companion to DSM-IV and the definitive guide to all the advances in the field since the publication of the first edition. Major revisions include an expansion of basic personality prototypes, an enlarged review of contemporary thinking on personality disorders, detailed material on frequent Comorbid Axis I and Axis II diagnoses, and more material on personality assessment and therapy, including an up-to-date review of available instruments. 1995 (0-471-01186-X) 768 pp. One has to turn to the writings of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung to find so systematic, profound, and seminal a body of work as that of Theodore Millon. A theorist of the first rank, he has authored numerous books of compelling clinical utility and insight. In Personality and Psychopathology, Millon provides the reader with a coordinated series of papers that illustrate his unprecedented model for building a unified science of personology and psychopathology. In this effort, he seeks to integrate previously disparate components into a clinical science. Rather than developing independently and being left to stand as largely unconnected functions, Millon argues that a truly mature clinical science will embody explicit: 1) theories, that is, explanatory and heuristic conceptual schemes that enable the development of a formal 2) nosology, a taxonomic classification of disorders that is devised logically from the theory and which permits the development of coordinated 3) instruments, tools that are empirically grounded and sufficiently sensitive quantitatively to enable the theory's hypothesis to be adequately investigated, and from which target areas can be specified for 4) interventions, strategies and tactics of therapy designed in accord with the theory. A series of groundbreaking papers comprise this creative work. Some connect personology to other scientific realms of nature, and others establish a series of thought-provoking "diagnostic criteria" for the concept of normality. The precision and logic for classifying psychopathologies comprise another classic article. A lively and insightful analysis of the borderline personality, explicated from a social learning perspective, serves as a refreshing counterpoint to the standard analytical model. No less bold are Millon's "Ten Commandments" for personologic psychotherapy, a richly articulated integration of contemporary treatment modalities. Wise and witty, this future classic will furnish the field with both clinical and scientific mandates that are sure to have a powerful impact on psychological diagnosis and therapy for years to come.
£159.95
Odyssey Publications,Hong Kong Mekong River: From Source to Sea Featuring Laos
This title includes: regional map of mighty Mekong river from source to sea; UNESCO World Heritage sites; French colonial Vientiane; exquisite Luang Prabang; Pak Ou Caves; Khone Pha Pheng Falls; and, coffee-growing regions. Laos has been discovered. Pristine and exotic in a changing world where other Asian cultures have been affected by rapid development, Laos is still green. The rivers mostly run free through sites well worth visiting, from the ancient Khmer temple of Vat Phou in the south to the former royal capital of Luang Prabang in the north. But if you want to see the old Laos you have to move fast. Luang Prabang, an exquisite little town on the banks of the life-giving Mekong, is a UNESCO World Heritage site and the main Mecca for tourists. The town is home to some of the finest Buddhist temples anywhere. Charming old colonial mansions are now hotels, trendy restaurants, or upscale boutiques. Al fresco restaurants serving spicy Lao fare line the riverside. A night bazaar with dozens of stalls offers high-quality woven silk scarves, silver jewellery, and embroidered Hmong bedspreads, just a few of the popular wares available. Laos has a long, rich tradition of silk weaving, and textiles are not just a "best buy" for tourists. They represent the most important craftwork done in the country and in some ways define the Lao nation. Also on the Mekong, the capital Vientiane still has the look of a French provincial town complete with tree-lined streets, fading colonial buildings, and sidewalk cafes. Its trendy restaurants offer fusion cuisine as a counterpoint to traditional fiery Lao fare. The city's most prominent monument, Patuxai, closely resembles the pride of Paris, the Arc de Triomphe. Upstream from Luang Prabang, at the confluence of the Ou River, are the Pak Ou Caves, an easy day trip by long-tail boat through pastoral countryside and jungle-covered mountains. The two caves, etched over millennia out of limestone karst cliffs, contain hundreds of images of the Buddha donated by generations of believers. To get away from the heat along the river, travellers head to the Bolaven Plateau, a fertile upland area known for its cooler climate, dramatic waterfalls, and (thanks to the French) some of the best coffee in the world. This is the gateway to the higher mountains to the east and the hill tribes. A trip to southern Laos should include a visit to the spectacular the Khone Pha Pheng Falls, where the usually languid Mekong boils and tumbles through eight miles of wild cataracts that effectively close the river to navigation. One of the key attractions of Laos is the people. Sixty percent of the population is ethnic Lao, who migrated from China a millennium ago. The rest are largely upland people representing about fifty hill tribes. The Lao are mostly Theravada Buddhists who live in the valleys and are famed for being easy-going, party-loving and affable. A precious pearl of a country blessed with pristine natural beauty, exotic flora and rare fauna, Laos hosts the mighty Mekong for a significant distance during its almost 5,000 kilometre journey from the Tibetan Plateau to the sea. Whether you chose to travel by land or by water or both, Odyssey's "Illustrated "Map will enhance your journey both as a pre-trip planner and as a post-trip souvenir. Unfolded map size 991mm x 686mm.
£10.43