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Book Dream State

    Book Details:
  • Author : Diane Roberts
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2007-11-01
  • ISBN : 1416589570
  • Pages : 376 pages

Download or read book Dream State written by Diane Roberts and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part family memoir, part political commentary, part apologia, Dream State is all Floridian, telling the grand and sometimes crazy story of the twenty-seventh state through the eyes of one of its native daughters. Acclaimed journalist and NPR commentator Diane Roberts has many family secrets and she's ready to tell them. Like the time her cousin state Senator Luther Tucker wrapped his Caddy around a tree, allegedly with a jug of moonshine on the seat next to him. Or how cousin Susan Branford was given an African girl for her eighth birthday. Or the time when cousin Enid Broward was made the May Queen of 1907, even though her daddy the governor shocked the state by trying to drain the entire Everglades. Roberts' ancestors helped settle Florida, kill off its pesky Indians, enslave some of its inhabitants, clear its forests, lay its train tracks, and pave its roads, all the time weaving themselves into the very fabric of this dangling chad of a state. With a storyteller's talent for setting great scenes, Roberts lays out the sweeping history of eight geberations of Browards and Bradfords, Tuckers anf Robertses, even as she Forest Gumps them into situations with more historically familiar names. Whether it's the American court of Catherine de Médicis, the Tallahassee court of Katherine Harris, Henry Flagler's boardroom -- not to mention his bedroom -- or Jeb Bush's statehouse, you're likely to find a branch or a root of the Roberts family growing entangled nearby. Starting in the recent past with the botched presidential election of 2000, Roberts introduces the many sides of the debate, coincidentally peopled with cousins both kissing and close. She then goes back to Florida's first inhabitants, showing how this alluring peninsula many called a paradise played a role in the destiny of those who settled there. Following their colorful progress up to the present, she renders them all with a deep, familial affection. Florida has forced itself into the collective American unconscious with its messed-up elections, anthrax scares, shark attacks,boat lifts, snowbirds, and the Bush dynasty. While exposing the real people whom Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard have been fictionalizing for years, Dream State ultimately reveals the cogs and wheels that make the state tick.

Book California in the Movies

Download or read book California in the Movies written by Mick Lasalle and published by Heyday Books. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eminent film writer looks behind the curtain of the California dream It hardly needs to be argued: nothing has contributed more to the mythology of California than the movies. Fed by the film industry, the California dream is instantly recognizable to people everywhere yet remains evasive for nearly everyone, including Californians themselves. That paradox is the subject of longtime San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle's first book in nine years. The opposite of a dry historical primer, California in the Movies is a freewheeling journey through several dozen big-screen visions of the Golden State, with LaSalle's unmistakable contrarian humor as the guide. His writing, unerringly perceptive and resistant to cliché, brings clarity to the haze of Hollywood reverie. He leaps effortlessly between genres and generations, moving with ease from Double Indemnity to the first two versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Boyz N the Hood to Booksmart. There are natural disasters, heinous crimes, dubious utopias, dangerous romances, and unforgettable nights. Equally entertaining and unsettling, this book is a bold dissection of the California dream and its hypnotizing effect on the modern world.

Book Dream States

    Book Details:
  • Author : John Lorinc
  • Publisher : Coach House Books
  • Release : 2022-08-23
  • ISBN : 1770566805
  • Pages : 281 pages

Download or read book Dream States written by John Lorinc and published by Coach House Books. This book was released on 2022-08-23 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE 2022 WRITERS' TRUST BALSILLIE PRIZE FOR PUBLIC POLICY WINNER OF FOR THE PATTIS FAMILY FOUNDATION GLOBAL CITIES BOOK AWARD Is the ‘smart city’ the utopia we’ve been waiting for? The promise of the so-called smart city has been at the forefront of urban planning and development since the early 2010s, and the tech industry that supplies smart city software and hardware is now worth hundreds of billions a year. But the ideas and approaches underpinning smart city tech raise tough and important questions about the future of urban communities, surveillance, automation, and public participation. The smart city era, moreover, belongs firmly in a longer historical narrative about cities — one defined by utopian ideologies, architectural visions, and technological fantasies. Smart streetlights, water and air quality tracking, autonomous vehicles: with examples from all over the world, including New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Portland, and Chicago, Dream States unpacks the world of smart city tech, but also situates this important shift in city-building into a broader story about why we still dream about perfect places. "John Lorinc’s incisive analysis in Dream States reminds us that the search for urban utopia is not new. Throughout the book, Lorinc underscores the fact that a gamut of urban innovations – from smart city megaprojects to e-government to pandemic preparedness tools – only provide promise when scrutinized together with the political, economic, social, and physical complexities of urban life." – Shauna Brail, University of Toronto "Dream States: Smart Cities, Technology, and the Pursuit of Urban Utopias takes us on a fascinating journey across world cities to show how technology has shaped them in the past and how smart city technology will reshape them in the future. This book is essential reading for policy makers, researchers, and practitioners interested in understanding the opportunities and challenges of smart city technology and what it means for city building." – Enid Slack, University of Toronto School of Cities "“Utopia may be the oldest grift in the city-building business, but Dream States shows that technology is a timeless tool for turning the most ordinary of urban dreams – clean air and water, safe streets, and decent homes – into reality. As digital dilettantes try to sell us on a software overhaul, John Lorinc provides us an indispensable and flawless guide to the must-haves and never-agains of the smart city.” – Anthony Townsend, Urbanist in Residence, Cornell Tech, author of Smart Cities

Book Dreamstate

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jed McKenna
  • Publisher : Wisefool Press
  • Release : 2016-08
  • ISBN : 0989175987
  • Pages : 260 pages

Download or read book Dreamstate written by Jed McKenna and published by Wisefool Press. This book was released on 2016-08 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If life is but a dream, to what do we awake? The central premise of Dreamstate: A Conspiracy Theory, is the admittedly ridiculous but incontrovertibly true assertion that the universe does not exist. This is something you can understand conceptually, like watching a documentary about Antarctica, or experientially, like moving to Antarctica. There’s also a related phenomenon where you fall asleep watching the documentary and wake up in the frozen wasteland. That’s gotta be weird, but the truth is that you’re asleep in a barren wasteland dreaming that you’re not, so that’s where waking up gets you.

Book America   s Dream Palace

    Book Details:
  • Author : Osamah F. Khalil
  • Publisher : Harvard University Press
  • Release : 2016-10-17
  • ISBN : 0674974204
  • Pages : 380 pages

Download or read book America s Dream Palace written by Osamah F. Khalil and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-17 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the postwar U.S. national security establishment required Middle Eastern expertise, it cultivated a beneficial relationship with universities. But by the time the Bush administration declared its Global War on Terror, Osamah Khalil shows, think tank agendas aligned with neoconservative goals were the drivers of America’s foreign policy.

Book Lucid Dreaming Guide   Foster Creativity in a Lucid Dream State

Download or read book Lucid Dreaming Guide Foster Creativity in a Lucid Dream State written by Lisa Shea and published by Lisa Shea. This book was released on with total page 75 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How would you like to be able to control your dreams? To turn your dream into a virtual holodeck, like on Star Trek, where you can be anyone and go anywhere? You can fly, you can breathe underwater, you can visit distant planets and live the life you've always wanted. This is what lucid dreaming is all about. In a lucid dream, you become aware that you're dreaming - and you can now control it. You can cause a white stallion to appear on your tropical beach and ride him along the turquoise waters. You can turn your nightmare of a twisted forest into a quiet wood with a beautiful, mossy pond. If you wish, a unicorn can appear to nestle at your side. I'd say the sky was the limit - but really, it's not. If you want to head into outer space, and bounce along the moon's surface, you can! I've been lucid dreaming for many years and have helped others achieve this same glorious state. By following my step-by-step guidelines, you'll find that you're lucid dreaming in no time at all. Take that first step - and live your dreams! All proceeds benefit battered women's shelters.

Book Won   t Lose This Dream

    Book Details:
  • Author : Andrew Gumbel
  • Publisher : The New Press
  • Release : 2020-08-25
  • ISBN : 1620974711
  • Pages : 337 pages

Download or read book Won t Lose This Dream written by Andrew Gumbel and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extraordinary story of how Georgia State University tore up the rulebook for educating lower-income students "Georgia State . . . has been reimagined—amid a moral awakening and a raft of data-driven experimentation—as one of the South's more innovative engines of social mobility." —The New York Times Won’t Lose This Dream is the inspiring story of a public university that has blazed an extraordinary trail for lower-income and first-generation students in downtown Atlanta, the birthplace of the civil rights movement. Over the past decade Georgia State University has upended the conventional wisdom that large numbers of students are doomed to fail simply because of their economic background or the color of their skin. Instead, it has harnessed the power of big data to identify and remove the obstacles that previously stopped them from graduating and completely transformed their prospects. A student from a mediocre high school working two jobs to make ends meet is now no less likely to succeed than a child of wealth and privilege—an earth-shaking achievement that is reverberating across every college campus in the country. With unique access to the key players and drawing on his skills as an investigative reporter, Andrew Gumbel delivers a thrilling, blow-by-blow account of a long battle to determine whether universities exist for their students or vice versa. The story is told through the visionary leaders who overcame fierce resistance to tear up the rules of their own institution and through the many remarkable students whose resilience and determination, often against daunting odds, inspired the work at every stage. Their success shows how the promise of social advancement through talent and hard work, the essence of the American dream, can be rekindled even in an age of deep inequalities and divisive politics.

Book When Brains Dream  Understanding the Science and Mystery of Our Dreaming Minds

Download or read book When Brains Dream Understanding the Science and Mystery of Our Dreaming Minds written by Antonio Zadra and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A truly comprehensive, scientifically rigorous and utterly fascinating account of when, how, and why we dream. Put simply, When Brains Dream is the essential guide to dreaming." —Matthew Walker, author of Why We Sleep Questions on the origins and meaning of dreams are as old as humankind, and as confounding and exciting today as when nineteenth-century scientists first attempted to unravel them. Why do we dream? Do dreams hold psychological meaning or are they merely the reflection of random brain activity? What purpose do dreams serve? When Brains Dream addresses these core questions about dreams while illuminating the most up-to-date science in the field. Written by two world-renowned sleep and dream researchers, it debunks common myths that we only dream in REM sleep, for example—while acknowledging the mysteries that persist around both the science and experience of dreaming. Antonio Zadra and Robert Stickgold bring together state-of-the-art neuroscientific ideas and findings to propose a new and innovative model of dream function called NEXTUP—Network Exploration to Understand Possibilities. By detailing this model’s workings, they help readers understand key features of several types of dreams, from prophetic dreams to nightmares and lucid dreams. When Brains Dream reveals recent discoveries about the sleeping brain and the many ways in which dreams are psychologically, and neurologically, meaningful experiences; explores a host of dream-related disorders; and explains how dreams can facilitate creativity and be a source of personal insight. Making an eloquent and engaging case for why the human brain needs to dream, When Brains Dream offers compelling answers to age-old questions about the mysteries of sleep.

Book Dream Boat

    Book Details:
  • Author : Shelley Feller
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 2020-10-13
  • ISBN : 9781734816709
  • Pages : 76 pages

Download or read book Dream Boat written by Shelley Feller and published by . This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poetry. LGBTQIA Studies. "'behold / this litmus of longing,' Shelley Feller begins in the linguistic triumph that is their foray into extending the conversation that Hart Crane began in the last century. With DREAM BOAT, Feller anatomizes, churns, palpitates, then spews onto the page a powerful exorcism of self-loathing that non-cishet, non-binary souls like them have been forced to imbibe and digest all their lives. Feller does what others have not dared. They literally turn upside down, inside out, even metaphorically flip off the gaze of those who come to the page for easy catharsis. Don't expect the sense-making that anesthetizes the pain and suffering you've come to want to see. That Feller's speakers refuse to be anything other than their fleshly, full-bodied selves is the genius of this debut. O how fortunate we are to hold in our hands such a wondrous, hope-filled work of art."--L. Lamar Wilson "What a dream, to be 'sissy-cathected to death!' With generous helpings of cut-throat aplomb, Shelley Feller hacks up the hierophantic hairball of homo sapiens' compulsive language-ing and pokes it with the genius-stick until something falls out: ack. This book is a delirious conveyance to the viscid otherworld that coats the inside of this world's jeans. It's a sticky zipper, a gemmy hologram, and it's truly, truly, truly outrageous."--Joyelle McSweeney "The brine of Shelley Feller's textual seas is teeming with emergent queer life, post life, and glorious, grotesque effulgence."--Tim Jones-Yelvington "In DREAM BOAT, the sea is an 'open organ,' frothing with gender possibilities, some toxic, some giddy, but always endlessly recombining damaged pasts and rocking new hereafters. A 'chick-fil-a' pirate, Shelley Feller 'spake[s] sissy' into the entire Anglo-American poetic tradition with lavish oceanic sprays of emojis, taunts, schoolyard chants, pop songs, and campy lore. Sweet, nasty, tender, queer: this work is recklessly inventive. It's like nothing else. It's like the future."--Vidhu Aggarwal

Book Square Squire and the Journey to DreamState

Download or read book Square Squire and the Journey to DreamState written by Duane Filer and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2015-04-17 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Square Squire and the Journey to DreamState, my 394-page, 96,729-word novel, is a semiautobiographical story of growing up geeky in the last innocent time when all the basketball players had hopes and none of the gangs had guns. Squire Brooks is a precocious nerd whose only awareness of the transitions in his neighborhood of Compton, California, in the ’60s is the opportunity to chuck stones at the increasing number of For Sale signs in the yards of his white neighbors. His father’s deepening involvement in civil rights creates increasing chaos in his home, where Squire writes his short stories and daydreams. Adolescence brings peer-driven lessons about girls, puberty, girls, bullies, and girls as he navigates the temptations during his elementary, junior high, and high school years. Squire’s daydreaming has developed into an imaginative mechanism that frees his mind from all the chaos and allows him to escape to a dream state whenever he writes. After graduating from high school and on a road trip with his dog, Julius, Squire meets Octavia Steves, who teaches him that his dream state is actually a form of meditation that could help him become the writer of his dreams.

Book Dream Yoga

    Book Details:
  • Author : Samael Aun Weor
  • Publisher : Glorian Publishing
  • Release : 2010-08-13
  • ISBN : 1934206466
  • Pages : 102 pages

Download or read book Dream Yoga written by Samael Aun Weor and published by Glorian Publishing. This book was released on 2010-08-13 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn the methods used by mystics and seers worldwide to awaken consciousness in the dream state. Among the ancient mystics, shamans, Egyptians, Tibetans, and even modern investigators like Carl Jung, consciousness and the dream state have been of the utmost spiritual and psychological importance. Astral projection, lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences and vision quests are all part of the extensive practical science of Dream Yoga, the sacred knowledge of consciously harnessing the power of the dream state. Any sincere practitioner who actively utilizes the clues in this book can open the doors to the inner dimensions of nature and the soul, and thereby come to know the truth of the mysteries that exist beyond the reach of our physical senses. * Provides step-by-step guidance leading to personal experience in the internal worlds * Explains how to remember dreams and how to understand them * Filled with examples from all the world’s religions Chapters include: Consciousness, The Awakening of Consciousness, Fascination, Sleep, Remembering Oneself, Complementary Practice, Patience and Tenacity, On Dreams, Dreams and Visions, Key of SOL, Dream Yoga Discipline, Special Nourishment to Develop the Power of the Memory, Tantric Dream, The Return Practice, The Four Blessings, The Guardian Angel, Hod (The Astral World), The Science of Meditation, Chapter 13: Dream Interpretation, Types of Dreams, Rules for Dream Interpretation, Astral Projection, The Astral Body, Useless Dreams

Book Any Other Way

    Book Details:
  • Author : Stephanie Chambers
  • Publisher : Coach House Books
  • Release : 2017-05-22
  • ISBN : 1770565191
  • Pages : 531 pages

Download or read book Any Other Way written by Stephanie Chambers and published by Coach House Books. This book was released on 2017-05-22 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Toronto is home to multiple and thriving queer communities that reflect the intense diversity of the city itself, and Any Other Way is an eclectic history of how these groups have transformed Toronto since the 1960s. From pioneering activists to show-stopping parades, Any Other Way looks at how queer communities have gone from existing in the shadows to shaping our streets.

Book The Humanities and the Dream of America

Download or read book The Humanities and the Dream of America written by Geoffrey Galt Harpham and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-02-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this bracing and original book, Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that today’s humanities are an invention of the American academy in the years following World War II, when they were first conceived as an expression of American culture and an instrument of American national interests. The humanities portray a “dream of America” in two senses: they represent an aspiration of Americans since the first days of the Republic for a state so secure and prosperous that people could enjoy and appreciate culture for its own sake; and they embody in academic terms an idealized conception of the American national character. Although they are struggling to retain their status in America, the concept of the humanities has spread to other parts of the world and remains one of America's most distinctive and valuable contributions to higher education. The Humanities and the Dream of America explores a number of linked problems that have emerged in recent years: the role, at once inspiring and disturbing, played by philology in the formation of the humanities; the reasons for the humanities’ perpetual state of “crisis”; the shaping role of philanthropy in the humanities; and the new possibilities for literary study offered by the subject of pleasure. Framed by essays that draw on Harpham’s pedagogical experiences abroad and as a lecturer at the U.S. Air Force Academy, as well as his vantage as director of the National Humanities Center, this book provides an essential perspective on the history, ideology, and future of this important topic.

Book Last Lecture

    Book Details:
  • Author : Perfection Learning Corporation
  • Publisher : Turtleback
  • Release : 2019
  • ISBN : 9781663608192
  • Pages : pages

Download or read book Last Lecture written by Perfection Learning Corporation and published by Turtleback. This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Italian Dream

    Book Details:
  • Author : Gelasio Gaetani d’Aragona Lovatelli
  • Publisher : Assouline Publishing
  • Release : 2016-10-01
  • ISBN : 1614285195
  • Pages : 6 pages

Download or read book The Italian Dream written by Gelasio Gaetani d’Aragona Lovatelli and published by Assouline Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10-01 with total page 6 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than three years, Aline Coquelle, the well-known globe-trotting photographer, and Count Gelasio Gaetani d’Aragona Lovatelli, a member of one of the oldest aristocratic Italian families, have followed the map of Italy’s best wines. Guided by Gelasio, readers are introduced to a tribe of artistic and wine-loving amici who share their passion for their country’s heritage and bounty. The Italian Dream: Wine, Heritage, Soul is an escape into the effortlessly elegant Italian lifestyle, savoring wine behind the private gates of family castles and vineyards, from the foothills of the Alps to the hill towns of Tuscany to the relaxed southern seasides.

Book Not So Golden State

    Book Details:
  • Author : Char Miller
  • Publisher : Trinity University Press
  • Release : 2016-08-22
  • ISBN : 1595347836
  • Pages : 288 pages

Download or read book Not So Golden State written by Char Miller and published by Trinity University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-22 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Not So Golden State, leading environmental historian Char Miller looks below the surface of California's ecological history to expose some of its less glittering conundrums. In this necessary work, Miller asks tough questions as we stand at the edge of a human-induced natural disaster in the region and beyond. He details policy steps and missteps in public land management and examines the impact of recreation on national forests, parks, and refuges, assessing efforts to restore wild land habitat, riparian ecosystems, and endangered species. Why, during a devastating five-year drought, is the Central Valley’s agribusiness still irrigating its fields as if it were business as usual? What’s unusual, Miller reveals, is that northern counties rich in groundwater sell it off to make millions while draining their aquifers toward eventual mud. Why, when contemporary debate over oil and gas drilling questions reasonable practices, are extractive industries targeting Chaco Canyon National Historic Park and its ancient sites, which are of inestimable value to Native Americans? How do we begin to understand “local,” a concept of hope for modern environmentalism? After all, Miller says, what we define as local determines how we might act in its defense. To inhabit a place requires placed-based analyses, whatever the geographic scope—examinations rooted in a precise, physical reality. To make a conscientious life in a suburb, floodplain, fire zone, or coastline requires a heightened awareness of these landscapes’ past so that we can develop an intensified responsibility for their present condition and future prospects. Building a more robust sense of justice is the key to creating resilient, habitable, and equitable communities. Miller turns to Aldo Leopold’s insight that “all history consists of successive excursions from a single starting point,” a location humans return to "again and again to organize another search for a durable scale of values.” This quest, a reflection of our ambition to know ourselves in relation to time and space, to organize our energy and structure our insights, is as inevitable as it is unending. Turning his focus to the tensions along the California coastline, Miller ponders the activities of whale watching and gazing at sea otters, thinking about the implications of the human desire to protect endangered flora and fauna, which makes the shoreline a fraught landscape and a source of endless stories about the past and present. In the Los Angeles region these connections are more obvious, given its geography. The San Gabriel Mountains rise sharply above the valleys below, offering some of the steepest relief on the planet. Three major river systems—the Santa Ana, San Gabriel, and Los Angeles—cut through the range’s sheer canyons, carrying an astonishing amount of debris that once crashed into low-lying areas with churning force. Today the rivers are constrained by flood-control dams and channels. Major wildfires, sparked by annual drought, high heat, and fierce Santa Ana winds, move at lightning speed and force thousands to flee. The city’s legendary smog, whose origins lie in car culture, was fueled in part by oil brought to the region's surface in the late nineteenth century. It left Angelenos gasping for breath as climatic conditions turned exhaust into a toxic ozone layer trapped by the mountains that back in the day were hard to see. Clearing the befouled skies took decades. Every bit as complex is the enduring effort to regenerate riparian health and restore wildlife habitat in a concrete-hardened landscape. The emerging tensions are similar to those threading through the U.S. Forest Service’s management of the Angeles National Forest, exacerbated whenever a black bear ambles into a nearby subdivision. How we build ourselves into these spaces depends on the removal of competing users or uses: a historic strawberry patch gives way to a housing development, a memorial forest goes up in smoke, a small creek tells a larger tale of the human impress, and struggles over water—a perennial issue in this dry land—remind us we're not as free of the past as we'd like to think. Neither are we removed from the downwind consequences of our choice to live in fire’s path. The West does not burn every summer; it just seems that way. And not every fire is a smoke signal of distress. Picking through the region’s fiery terrain is as tricky as trying to extinguish a roaring blaze in the August heat. There are lessons to be had by examining how we respond to the annual conflagrations. The Wallow Fire, which in 2011 burned hundreds of thousands of acres in remote Arizona, sparked equal amounts of political grandstanding and hand-wringing about wildfire-fighting strategies. Beyond the headlines and flashy, smoke-filled images lay another reality. The creation of defensible space and the thinning of forests communities—signs of homeowners' and state and federal agencies' proactive intervention—meant few structures burned during the monthlong firestorm. That such good news is rarely reported is part and parcel of another ethical dilemma too rarely acknowledged: the decision to live in fire zones should come coupled with homeowners’ responsibility to do all they can to ensure their homes don't go up in smoke. How they build their homes and landscape its environs are essential steps in defending their space. That obligation comes with another, made clear in the 2013 Yarnell Hill, which took the lives of nineteen firefighters. To make our houses fire-safe is to give firefighters a fighting chance. This reciprocity and the social compact it depends on require us to believe we inhabit common ground with our neighbors, a realization that should build a stronger sense of community. But it's a tough concept to promote in a bewilderingly antisocial political environment, when budgets for fire prevention are slashed as part of larger efforts to defund the nation-state. Or when the very reasons some seek to live in isolated, mountainous environs clash with the larger need to act in concert with their communities. Fires illuminate many things, not least the ties that bind and those that are frayed. Miller develops his argument from a variety of places and perspectives. Most of the pieces ask a series of questions about a particular landscape—Gila National Forest, Death Valley, Zion, Arches, and Rocky Mountain National Parks, and a host of other iconic western scenic spots. Why do we conceive of wilderness as a preserve, separate and inviolate? Who benefits—or does not—from the idea that such landscapes are, or ought to be, untrammeled? Why has this intellectual construction, and the preservationist ethos it depends on, come to dominate contemporary environmentalism? Related queries bubble up after Miller spends time in the newest national park, Pinnacles in central California, or one of the most venerable, the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona. What impact has the long history of tourism and recreation had on these public lands? Maintaining trails that weave through the Yosemite Valley is an arduous, incessant task made more difficult by the visitors pouring in to John Muir’s favorite terrain or rushing to rock climb in Minerva Hoyt’s beloved Joshua Tree. Still more daunting is the prospect of sustained ecological restoration and habitat regeneration under current conditions and those that climate change is generating across the West. Once again Aldo Leopold can be a guide. “A member of a biotic team is shown by an ecological interpretation of history,” he once observed, adding that many “historical events, hitherto explained solely in terms of human enterprise, were actually biotic interactions between people and land.” Only when “the concept of land as a community really penetrates our intellectual life” will history, as a subject and methodology, become fully realized. Not So Golden State contributes powerfully toward the realization of this enduring cross-generational endeavor.

Book Dream Nation

    Book Details:
  • Author : Stathis Gourgouris
  • Publisher : Stanford University Press
  • Release : 2021-09-14
  • ISBN : 1503630641
  • Pages : 476 pages

Download or read book Dream Nation written by Stathis Gourgouris and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Against the backdrop of ever-increasing nationalist violence during the last decade of the twentieth century, this book challenges standard analyses of nation formation by elaborating on the nation's dream-like hold over the modern social imagination. Stathis Gourgouris argues that the national fantasy lies at the core of the Enlightenment imaginary, embodying its central paradox: the intertwining of anthropological universality with the primacy of a cultural ideal. Crucial to the operation of this paradox and fundamental in its ambiguity is the figure of Greece, the universal alibi and cultural predicate behind national-cultural consolidation throughout colonialist Europe. The largely unpredictable institution of a modern Greek nation in 1830 undoes the interweaving of Enlightenment and Philhellenism, whose centrifugal strands continue to unravel the certainty of European history, down to the internal predicaments of the European Union or the tragedy of the Balkan conflicts. This 25th Anniversary edition of the book includes a new preface by the author in which he situates the book's original insights in retrospect against the newer developments in the social and political conditions of a now globalized world: the neocolonial resurgence of nationalism and racism, the failure of social democratic institutions, the crisis of sovereignty and citizenship, and the brutal conditions of stateless peoples.