The Devil And The Disappearing Sea

In January 2000, Rob Ferguson went to Uzbekistan to work on an environmental project to save the Aral Sea. By the time he left Central Asia a year later, he was under suspicion for murder. And despite the support of the World Bank and millions of dollars of donors' money, the environmental project had achieved almost nothing. 2003.

In 2000 Rob Ferguson went to Central Asia to work on an environmental project to save the Aral Sea. By the time he left a year later, he was under suspicion for murder. And the world's biggest ecological catastrophe was getting worse. This is his story."Eminently readable, held together by the author's careful research and attention to detail. As Ferguson travels through the region, he details its bold, colourful history of intense beauty and violent conquest." -National Post"Has the pacing of a detective novel and characters out of Evelyn Waugh. Who would have thought a first-time author could pull off something like that?" -Georgia Straight"Ferguson has crafted something unique, something that blends memoir and documentary with noirish satire, and manages its shifts in tone very smoothly." -Globe and Mail

Successfully navigate the rich world of travel narratives and identify fiction and nonfiction read-alikes with this detailed and expertly constructed guide. Just as savvy travelers make use of guidebooks to help navigate the hundreds of countries around the globe, smart librarians need a guidebook that makes sense of the world of travel narratives. Going Places: A Reader's Guide to Travel Narratives meets that demand, helping librarians assist patrons in finding the nonfiction books that most interest them. It will also serve to help users better understand the genre and their own reading interests. The book examines the subgenres of the travel narrative genre in its seven chapters, categorizing and describing approximately 600 titles according to genres and broad reading interests, and identifying hundreds of other fiction and nonfiction titles as read-alikes and related reads by shared key topics. The author has also identified award-winning titles and spotlighted further resources on travel lit, making this work an ideal guide for readers' advisors as well a book general readers will enjoy browsing.

The Aral Sea is well known for its devastating regression over the second half of the twentieth century, and for its recent partial restoration. Environment and Post-Soviet Transformation in Kazakhstan’s Aral Sea Region is the first book to explore what these monumental changes have meant to those living on the sea’s shores. Following the fluctuating fortunes of the pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet fisheries, the book shows how the vast environmental changes the region has undergone cannot be disentangled from the transformations of Soviet socialism and postsocialism. This ethnographic perspective prompts a critical rethinking of the category of environmental disaster through which the region is predominantly known. Tracing how the sea’s retreat and partial return have been apprehended by diverse local actors in the former port of Aral’sk and surrounding fishing villages, as well as by scientists, bureaucrats and international development workers, William Wheeler draws out the multiple meanings environmental change acquires within different contexts. This study of how people make their lives amidst overlapping ecological and political-economic upheavals is rich in ethnographic detail that is both rooted in Soviet legacies and alive to the new transnational connections that are reshaping the region. Offering a rigorous political ecology of Soviet socialism and after, the book is a major contribution to the nascent environmental anthropology of Central Asia. It will be of interest to environmental anthropologists, environmental historians, and scholars of all disciplines working on Central Asia and the former USSR.

This book is written for teachers who want to make their classrooms an interactive and vibrant place to learn.

The Twentieth Century is lauded as the time period when more technological and scientific advances and breakthroughs were accomplished than all other centuries combined. Probably the most notable progress was in transportation when in the early years, Kitty Hawk marked the first flight which became the jet airplane allowing for global travel and Apollo 11 being our crowning achievement. Henry Ford developed assembly line production of the Model T, the horseless carriage, now the driverless carriage. Transistors gave us the Second Industrial Revolution and are today used everywhere. Computers are known as man's "greatest invention." Health was enhanced with the introduction of penicillin and polio vaccines. On the social scene, we witnessed the start, at least, of civil and women's rights. And who can ever forget the impact of the chocolate chip cookie? However, equally etched into the annals of history are events like the "war to end all wars," the Great Depression, and Vietnam War. What you are about to read will make these pale in comparison. You see, man created in that same span of time the greatest environmental disaster of modern history, the worst short-term atrocity ever committed, developed the "sickest" place on earth, and celebrated the most outstanding year in the history of mankind. Read, remember, and make certain to pass on to posterity what man has done to man.

Humanity's oldest stories and songs show that man has always been captivated by the mysteries of the sea. Though modern geographers and oceanographers have discovered many of the oceans' secrets, some stories about the water's strange powers remain popular. This book explains the tales surrounding the Bermuda Triangle and Atlantis, debunking myths through scientific and historical evidence.

Janis Birkeland presents the innovative new paradigm of 'Positive Development' in which the built environment provides greater life quality, health, amenity and safety for all without sacrificing resources or money. With a different form of design, development itself can become a 'sustainability solution'. A cornerstone of this new paradigm is the eco-retrofitting of the vast urban fabric we already inhabit. The author presents a revolutionary new tool called SmartMode to achieve this end. This book challenges everyone working in or studying the areas of sustainable development, planning, architecture or the built environment to rethink their current ideas and practices.