Tropic Of Hopes

Just after the Civil War, two states prominently laid claim to being America's paradise destinations. Private companies, state agencies, and journalists all lent a hand in creating a seductive, expansionist imagery that promoted semitropical California and Florida and helped "sell" Americans on the idea of an attainable paradise within the United States. In Tropic of Hopes, Henry Knight examines the promotion of California and Florida from the end of the Civil War to the eve of the Great Depression, a period when both states were transformed from remote, sparsely populated locales into two of the most publicized and dreamed-about destinations in America. Using the discussion of climate, geography, race, and environment to link agricultural, tourist, and urban development in these regions, Knight provides a highly original and informative account.

Miller’s groundbreaking first novel, banned in Britain for almost thirty years.

“Timely, dark, and ultimately hopeful: it might not ‘make America great again,’ but then again, it just might.”—Cory Doctorow, New York Times bestselling and award winning author of Homeland Acclaimed short story writer and editor of the World Fantasy Award-nominee Three Messages and a Warning eerily envisions an American society unraveling and our borders closed off—from the other side—in this haunting and provocative novel that combines Max Barry’s Jennifer Government, Philip K. Dick’s classic Man in the High Castle, and China Mieville’s The City & the City The United States of America is no more. Broken into warring territories, its center has become a wasteland DMZ known as “the Tropic of Kansas.” Though this gaping geographic hole has no clear boundaries, everyone knows it's out there—that once-bountiful part of the heartland, broken by greed and exploitation, where neglect now breeds unrest. Two travelers appear in this arid American wilderness: Sig, the fugitive orphan of political dissidents, and his foster sister Tania, a government investigator whose search for Sig leads her into her own past—and towards an unexpected future. Sig promised those he loves that he would make it to the revolutionary redoubt of occupied New Orleans. But first he must survive the wild edgelands of a barren mid-America policed by citizen militias and autonomous drones, where one wrong move can mean capture . . . or death. One step behind, undercover in the underground, is Tania. Her infiltration of clandestine networks made of old technology and new politics soon transforms her into the hunted one, and gives her a shot at being the agent of real change—if she is willing to give up the explosive government secrets she has sworn to protect. As brother and sister traverse these vast and dangerous badlands, their paths will eventually intersect on the front lines of a revolution whose fuse they are about to light. “Futurist as provocateur! The world is sheer batshit genius . . . a truly hallucinatorily envisioned environment.”—William Gibson, New York Times bestselling and award-winning author

The Physiology of Tropical Fishes is the 21st volume of the well-known Fish Physiology series and consists of 12 chapters. The purpose of the book is to consolidate and integrate what is known about tropical fishes (marine and freshwater species). The twelve chapters focus on the physiological adaptations acquired during the evolutionary process to cope with warm and shallow hypoxic waters from tropical and neotropical hydrographic basins as well as with the intertidal and coral reef habitats which occur in abundance in tropical seas. The special characteristics of tropical fish fauna will be issued in order to explain the tropical fish radiation, which gave rise to such extreme fish diversity. This present volume, is a voyage through the tropical region reviewing the fish diversity of the main tropical freshwater sheds, including the major tropical rivers and lakes, the major dams, and marine environments. State-of-the-art information on tropical fish physiology Written by specialists working in the Tropics Offers a diverse depiction of the various tropical fishes and the environment where they inhabit 12 innovative chapters covering a concise view of growth rate, biological rhythms, feeding plasticity, cardio-respiratory design and function, diversity of structure, and much more

From Africa to Asia and Latin America, the era of climate wars has begun. Extreme weather is breeding banditry, humanitarian crisis, and state failure. In Tropic of Chaos, investigative journalist Christian Parenti travels along the front lines of this gathering catastrophe--the belt of economically and politically battered postcolonial nations and war zones girding the planet's midlatitudes. Here he finds failed states amid climatic disasters. But he also reveals the unsettling presence of Western military forces and explains how they see an opportunity in the crisis to prepare for open-ended global counterinsurgency. Parenti argues that this incipient "climate fascism" -- a political hardening of wealthy states-- is bound to fail. The struggling states of the developing world cannot be allowed to collapse, as they will take other nations down as well. Instead, we must work to meet the challenge of climate-driven violence with a very different set of sustainable economic and development policies.

Tropical Archaeobotany fills the need for a substantial reference work on plant remains from the tropics. It covers the examination, identification and interpretation of plant remains in tropical archaeology, whilst also the origins, spread, investigating the origins, spread, distribution and past use of tropical plants for food and other purposes. Recent technological developments in electron microscopy and biochemical and genetic research, as well as increased interest in tropical environments and ecosystems, are now beginning to realise the great potential for archaeobotanical research in the tropics. With the use of case studies from a wide range of areas, this volume details the latest macroscopic, microscopic and chemical techniques for the analysis of plant remains, from seeds, roots and tubers to epidermal fragments, pollen and phytoliths. Each chapter of Tropical Archaeobotany focuses on a different aspect of archaeobotanical research, using detailed examples from a varieety of tropical areas, though with its emphasis on techniques and methodology the book has a relevance beyond the regional scope of each chapter.