Feral Empire

Examines how horses shaped society, politics, and imperial control during the first century of conquest and colonization in Spanish America.

"The British opium trade along China’s seacoast has come to symbolize China’s century-long descent into political and social chaos. In the standard historical narrative, opium is the primary medium through which China encountered the economic, social, and political institutions of the West. Opium, however, was not a Sino–British problem confined to southeastern China. It was, rather, an empire-wide crisis, and its spread among an ethnically diverse populace created regionally and culturally distinct problems of control for the Qing state. This book examines the crisis from the perspective of Qing prohibition efforts. The author argues that opium prohibition, and not the opium wars, was genuinely imperial in scale and is hence much more representative of the actual drug problem faced by Qing administrators. The study of prohibition also permits a more comprehensive and accurate observation of the economics and criminology of opium. The Qing drug traffic involved the domestic production, distribution, and consumption of opium. A balanced examination of the opium market and state anti-drug policy in terms of prohibition reveals the importance of the empire’s landlocked western frontier regions, which were the domestic production centers, in what has previously been considered an essentially coastal problem."

This book considers the material basis of building as a key impetus of both urbanization and the energetics of urban life. The otherwise externalized material geographies and thermodynamics of building’s material basis reveal much about the dynamics and efficacy of how we build. This book plots the material history and geography for one plot of land in Manhattan—the parcel of land under the Empire State Building—over the past two hundred years. Through rich illustrations, it tracks all the building material that have passed through this parcel or remain in its geographic and ecological dynamics: spatially (in terms of their geographic material footprints and industrial processes) and quantitatively (in terms of embodied energy, embodied carbon, and emergy flow). In successive chapters, the book articulates the empire and states that are inherent to building, but remain unconsidered—abstract and unknown—by architects.

This is the story of a young white leopard growing up in the most tempting time in history. She receives a dream from the Shepherd that tells her that she will "defeat the maned one with the voice of thunder." However, as she grows up her life becomes unstable and she begins to question her purpose. Stress and strife dominate her life, and eventually, doubt begins to rule her thoughts, allowing bitterness to envelop her heart. Dreams and visions, though, also dominate her mind as they foreshadow future events. As she tries to figure out each vision, heavenly signs also appear unto the white leopard, signs that she knows only come from the Lord of heaven and earth. Eventually, these visions come to pass. Four sore plagues — war, famine, death, and wild beasts — devastate a fourth part of the earth, changing the landscape of the world. In an attempt to restore peace and safety, the kingdoms of the earth come together to form a ten-kingdom coalition called the New Kingdom. With this New Kingdom comes new rules and laws that contradict the holy laws established by the Lord of heaven and earth. While most suspect nothing of the kingdom's true plans, the white leopard senses that the time of great tribulation is at hand. In order to survive, she must trust the Lord to bring her through all trials and show her the path for strength in fulfilling her purpose while also overcoming emotional bondages that have hampered her spiritual freedom.

Nature has gone feral. How can we re-attune ourselves to the new nature? A field guide can help. Human action has transformed our planet and ushered in a new geological epoch—the Anthropocene. The effects are global in scope, but take shape within distinct social and ecological "patches," discontinuous regions within which the key actors may not be human, but the plants, animals, fungi, viruses, plastics, and chemicals creating our new world. Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene takes stock of our current planetary crisis, leading readers through a series of sites, thought experiments, and genre-stretching descriptive practices to nurture a revitalized natural history. Field guides teach us how to notice, name, and so better appreciate more-than-human worlds. They hone our powers of observation and teach us to see the world anew. Field-based observations and place-based knowledge cultivation—getting up-close and personal with patchy dynamics—are vital to truly grapple with the ecological challenges and the historical conjunctures that are bringing us to multiple catastrophic tipping points. How has commercial agriculture runoff given rise to comb jellies in the Black Sea? What role did the Atlantic slave trade play in the worldwide spread of virus-carrying mosquitoes? How did the green revolution transform the brown planthopper into a superpredator in Philippine rice fields? Questions like these open up new ways of understanding, and ways of living through, the epoch that human activity has ushered in. This Field Guide shifts attention away from knowledge extractive practices of globalization to encourage skilled observers of many stripes to pursue their commitments to place, social justice, and multispecies community. It is through attention to the beings, places, ecologies, and histories of the Anthropocene that we can reignite curiosity, wonder, and care for our damaged planet.

“Think of a man walking in the desert,” writes Griffin, “looking for the path to its summit, looking for the observatory that may, at last, shed light on what’s below.” In this luminous and moving book of essays, award-winning author Shaun Griffin weaves together a poetic meditation on living meaningfully in this world. Anchored in the American West but reaching well beyond, he recounts his discoveries as a poet and devoted reader of poetry, a teacher of the disadvantaged, a friend of poets and artists, and a responsible member of the human family. Always grounded in place, be it Nevada, South Africa, North Dakota, Spain, Zimbabwe, or Mexico, Griffin confronts the world with an openness that allows him to learn and grow from the people he meets. This is a meditation on how all of us can confront our own influences to achieve wholeness in our lives. Along with Griffin, readers will reflect on how they might respond to a homeless man walking through central Nevada, viewing the open desert as Thoreau might have viewed Walden, seeing the US-Mexico border as a region of lost identity, reconciling how poets who live west of the Hudson River find anonymity to be their laurel, and experiencing how writing poetry in prison becomes lifesaving. Whether poets or places in the West or beyond, experiences with other cultures, or an acute awareness that poetry is the refuge of redress—all have influenced Griffin’s writing and thinking as a poet and activist in the Great Basin. The mindfulness of Because the Light Will Not Forgive Me demonstrates that even though the light does not forgive, it still reveals.

In this provocative work, Virginia Milhouse demonstrates how autoethnography combines creative and analytical practices to help bring to consciousness some complex social and political agendas hidden in narratorial writings. It demonstrates how an arts-based qualitative research method (narrative inquiry) can be fused with a scientific-based quantitative method (DMIS-IDI) and compliment, support and or correct each other. It also demonstrates how "writing as a method of inquiry" can be a viable way for researchers to learn about themselves and their research, as well as features standards for evaluating creatively and analytically constructed text. Further, the author's examination of the aesthetics of "inner-readiness" and "in-betweeness" will be very helpful to people doing this kind of self-reflexive fieldwork. The reader will also appreciate this author's recognition of the importance of combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies--something not many writers can do with great success. Also, this book will be a real contribution to sojourners and others traveling or living abroad. The work is very smart; and, is, beautifully and clearly written. The 'labyrinth' quote at the beginning of her work is very fitting and certainly promises to illustrate those words.

Brian Staveley, author of The Emperor's Blades, gives readers the first book in a new epic fantasy trilogy based in the world of his popular series the Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, The Empire's Ruin. FanFiAddict—Lord TBR's Best of 2021 Best of Summer 2021—Polygon The Annurian Empire is disintegrating. The advantages it used for millennia have fallen to ruin. The ranks of the Kettral have been decimated from within, and the kenta gates, granting instantaneous travel across the vast lands of the empire, can no longer be used. In order to save the empire, one of the surviving Kettral must voyage beyond the edge of the known world through a land that warps and poisons all living things to find the nesting ground of the giant war hawks. Meanwhile, a monk turned con-artist may hold the secret to the kenta gates. But time is running out. Deep within the southern reaches of the empire and ancient god-like race has begun to stir. What they discover will change them and the Annurian Empire forever. If they can survive. Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne The Emperor's Blades The Providence of Fire The Last Mortal Bond Other books in the world of the Unhewn Throne Skullsworn At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.