Seasons Of Sand Sahara

The author entered a dismal village in the Sahara which had not seen rain in more than four decades. His adventures and successes in the village provide a real-life fable of one person making a difference in the world.

"In 1987, Ernst Aebi happened on a dismal little village in the Sahara, seven days by camel from Timbuktu. Its name was Araouane, and for centuries its abundant water supply had made it a bustling hub of the caravan routes. But now, with the region's trade all but dried up, it had been reduced to a squalid cluster of shacks with a population of 120 who found themselves virtually adrift in the desert." "It was a tableau of misery Aebi couldn't forget. He returned to Araouane with a truckload of date palms, seeds, and farm equipment, a vision of self-sufficiency he was determined to share, and an antic sense of humor that would prove to be a crucial tool. The local dialect eluded him. The villagers had never seen, let alone tasted, vegetables. It hadn't rained in more than four decades, and the water level had sunk to 170 feet below the sand. An ancient class structure supported a white merchant class that ruled the town from afar and kept in perpetual thrall the blacks who worked as their slaves mining salt." "Little by little, though, Aebi achieved success. The garden began to flourish, and those who wouldn't tend it learned they wouldn't eat. The villagers built a school, then a hotel. Former masters worked alongside former slaves, and for the first time, men alongside women. The villagers were introduced to money, and with it, to the complexities of competition and ownership, and the means as well as the hope for a better life. Most important, they tasted self-reliance, a gift that their ongoing struggles cannot erase." "Seasons of Sand is a great and often hilarious story, a real-life fable of altruism and adventure for anyone who has ever wondered whether one person can make a difference in the world."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A deadly toxic compound in the middle of the African desert is killing thousands of people and threatening to extinguish marine life in the world's seas. As Dirk Pitt crosses the Sahara to uncover an unholy conspiracy, he discovers the truth about Kitty Mannock, an Australian pilot missing since 1931, and an incredible secret held in a Confederate ironclad.

A Fast Food Nation for the foods we grow and depend on The bananas we eat today aren't your parents' bananas: We eat a recognizable, consistent breakfast fruit that was standardized in the 1960s from dozens into one basic banana. But because of that, the banana we love is dangerously susceptible to a pathogen that might wipe them out. That's the story of our food today: Modern science has brought us produce in perpetual abundance-once-rare fruits are seemingly never out of season, and we breed and clone the hardiest, best-tasting varieties of the crops we rely on most. As a result, a smaller proportion of people on earth go hungry today than at any other moment in the last thousand years, and the streamlining of our food supply guarantees that the food we buy, from bananas to coffee to wheat, tastes the same every single time. Our corporate food system has nearly perfected the process of turning sunlight, water and nutrients into food. But our crops themselves remain susceptible to the nature's fury. And nature always wins. Authoritative, urgent, and filled with fascinating heroes and villains from around the world, Never Out of Season is the story of the crops we depend on most and the scientists racing to preserve the diversity of life, in order to save our food supply, and us.