Download or read book Sahara Unveiled written by William Langewiesche and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-04-20 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is as vast as the United States and so arid that most bacteria cannot survive there. Its loneliness is so extreme it is said thatmigratory birds will land beside travelers, just for the company. William Langewiesche came to the Sahara to see it as its inhabitants do, riding its public transport, braving its natural and human dangers, depending on its sparse sustenance and suspect hospitality. From his journey, which took him across the desert's hyperarid core from Algiers to Dakar, he has crafted a contemporary classic of travel writing. In a narrative studded with gemlike discourses on subjects that range from the physics of sand dunes to the history of the Tuareg nomads, Langewiesche introduces us to the Sahara's merchants, smugglers, fixers, and expatriates. Eloquent and precise, Sahara Unveiled blends history and reportage, anthropology and anecdote, into an unforgettable portrait of the world's most romanticized yet most forbidding desert.
Download or read book Sahara Unveiled written by Patrick Turnbull and published by . This book was released on 1940 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sahara unveiled by patrick turnbull written by Patrick Turnbull and published by . This book was released on 1940 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sahara Unveiled A Story of French Colonial Conquest With Plates and Maps written by Patrick Turnbull and published by . This book was released on 1940 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sahara Unveiled written by Patrick Turnbull and published by . This book was released on 1940 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Feeding Desire written by Rebecca Popenoe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the Western world adheres to a beauty ideal that says women can never be too thin, the semi-nomadic Moors of the Sahara desert have for centuries cherished a feminine ideal of extreme fatness. Voluptuous immobility is thought to beautify girls' bodies, hasten the onset of puberty, heighten their sexuality and ripen them for marriage. From the time of the loss of their first milk teeth, girls are directed to eat huge bowls of milk and porridge in one of the world's few examples of active female fattening. Based on fieldwork in an Arab village in Niger, Feeding Desire analyses the meanings of women's fatness as constituted by desire, kinship, concepts of health, Islam, and the crucial social need to manage sexuality. By demonstrating how a particular beauty ideal can only be understood within wider social structures and cultural logics, the book also implicitly provides a new way of thinking about the ideal of slimness in late Western capitalism. Offering a reminder that an estimated eighty per cent of the world's societies prefer plump women, this gracefully written book is both a fascinating exploration of the nature of bodily ideals and a highly readable ethnography of a Saharan people.
Download or read book The Almoravids and the Meanings of Jihad written by Ronald A. Messier and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-08-19 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a scholarly, highly readable account of the 11th-12th century rulers of Morocco and Muslim Spain who offered a full range of meanings of jihad and challenged Ibn Khaldun's paradigm for the rise and fall of regimes. Originally West African, Berber nomads, the Almoravids emerged from what is today Mauritania to rule Morocco, western Algeria, and Muslim Spain. Over the course of the century-long lifespan of the Almoravid dynasty, the concept of jihad evolved through four distinct phases: a struggle for righteousness, a war against pagans in the Sahara to impose their own sense of righteousness, war against "bad" Muslims in Sijilmasa and the rest of the Maghrib, and finally, war against Christian infidelsthe Christian kings of Iberia. The Almoravids and the Meanings of Jihad takes readers through a clear chronology of the dynasty from its birth through its dramatic rise to power, then its decline and eventual collapse. Several important themes in North African history are explored throughout the book, including the dynastic theory of noted Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, the unique relationship of rural and urban lifestyles, the interactions of distinct Berber and Arab identities, and the influence of tribal solidarity and Islam in forming the social fabric of medieval North African society
Download or read book Going Places written by Robert Burgin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-01-08 with total page 837 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Last Civilized Place written by Ronald A. Messier and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set along the Sahara's edge, Sijilmasa was an African El Dorado, a legendary city of gold. But unlike El Dorado, Sijilmasa was a real city, the pivot in the gold trade between ancient Ghana and the Mediterranean world. Following its emergence as an independent city-state controlling a monopoly on gold during its first 250 years, Sijilmasa was incorporated into empire—Almoravid, Almohad, and onward—leading to the "last civilized place" becoming the cradle of today's Moroccan dynasty, the Alaouites. Sijilmasa's millennium of greatness ebbed with periods of war, renewal, and abandonment. Today, its ruins lie adjacent to and under the modern town of Rissani, bypassed by time. The Moroccan-American Project at Sijilmasa draws on archaeology, historical texts, field reconnaissance, oral tradition, and legend to weave the story of how this fabled city mastered its fate. The authors' deep local knowledge and interpretation of the written and ecological record allow them to describe how people and place molded four distinct periods in the city's history. Messier and Miller compare models of Islamic cities to what they found on the ground to understand how Sijilmasa functioned as a city. Continuities and discontinuities between Sijilmasa and the contemporary landscape sharpen questions regarding the nature of human life on the rim of the desert. What, they ask, allows places like Sijilmasa to rise to greatness? What causes them to fall away and disappear into the desert sands?
Download or read book Godforsaken Sea written by Derek Lundy and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2012-09-20 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Godforsaken Sea is the hair-raising account of the world's most demanding, dangerous, and deadly sailing race. Around the world, one sailor, one boat, no stops, no assistance. Author Derek Lundy's vivid book follows the field of the 1996 - 1997 Vendee Globe through the race's grueling four-month circumnavigation of the globe, most of it through the terror of the Southern Ocean. Lundy narrates the race through the eyes and experiences of sixteen sailors - fourteen men and two women - who embdoy the best and most eccentric aspects of our human condition. There's the gallant Brit who spends days beating back against the worst seas to save a fellow sailor; the Frenchman who bothers to salvage only a bottle of champagne from his broken and sinking boat; the sailor who comes to love the albatross that trails her for months, naming it Bernard; the sailor who calmly smokes a cigarette as his boat capsizes; and the Canadian who, hours before he disappears forever, dispatches this message: If you drag things out too long here, you're sure to come to grief. With the literary touch of Saint-Exupery and Conrad, Derek Lundy harnesses hurricane-force winds, six story waves, icebergs, and deafening noise. And he lays bare the spirit of the men and women who push themselves to the outer limits of human endeavor - even if it means never returning home.
Download or read book Savage Grace written by Jay Griffiths and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jay Griffiths is a tour guide for anyone who has ever wished to commune with the side of our human psyche that remains in touch with the wild. Equally at home among the "sea gypsy" Bajo people who live off the coast of Thailand and forage their food from the ocean floor, drinking the psychedelic ayahuasca plant with Amazonian shamans, or joining an Inuit whale hunt at the northern tip of Canada, Griffiths takes readers on an adventure both charted and un–chartable. She divides her meditations on these travels into sections named after the ancient elemental properties of the universe—Earth, Air, Fire, Ice, and Water—because her subject matter is not merely the places traveled to but the depths of mind and the cultural narratives revealed by place. It is a universal story told of far–flung groups of humans, with vastly different ways of life, connected through the varied wilderness that sustains them. By describing the ways in which human societies and the human mind have developed in response to the wilder elements of our homelands, Savage Grace reveals itself as a benediction for the emotional, intellectual, and physical nourishment that people continue to draw from the natural world. Under the sway of Griffiths' charisma, her poetic prose, and her deeply learned and persuasive case for the wild roots of our shared human being, we learn that we are all, each and every one of us, a force of nature.
Download or read book 1001 Illustrations That Connect written by Craig Brian Larson and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every preacher, teacher, or writer knows the value of a good illustration in helping connect the truth of the passage with the congregation or class—and how hard it is to come up with good illustrations week after week. This book contains the cream of the crop: 1001 illustrations carefully selected from among thousands on Christianity Today International’s popular website PreachingToday.com. These illustrations are proven, memorable, and illuminating. As the saying goes, they will preach! And they’re fresh, all written within the past seven years. Of course the best illustrations are no good if you can’t find the right one. These illustrations have been arranged according to twelve master topics, each divided into several subtopics. Further, they’ve been indexed according both to Bible references and to 500 keywords. A searchable CD-ROM is included, allowing you to get the illustration into your lesson or sermon with ease.
Download or read book The Statesman s Year Book written by Mortimer Epstein and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-27 with total page 1516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic reference work that provides annually updated information on the countries of the world.
Download or read book Algeria written by Jonathan Oakes and published by Bradt Travel Guides. This book was released on 2008 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first guide to focus on the renascent Algeria. After a decade of isolated but brutal civil unrest, peace is holding and tourism is emerging. From the northern coastal strip with bays reminiscent of southern Italy to the desert towns of the south, Algeria has a great deal to offer visitors.Algeria's World Heritage sites are free of thronging crowds. There is significant evidence of the country's Roman past; the ruins of Timgad are among the best-preserved in the world, while those at Tipasa overlook the Mediterranean Sea and are within easy reach of the capital, Algiers. The desert holds 8,000-year-old cave paintings and the wonderful Haggar Mountains.
Download or read book Cutting for Sign written by William Langewiesche and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1995-05-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The border between the United States and Mexico extends 1,951 miles. Among the people who live along it are a migrant laborer huddled in a makeshift camp, a Chicano cowpuncher, a Pima Indian who makes his living tracking drug smugglers across the desert, and the millions crowded along the border in Mexicali. In this beautifully written, unerringly insightful book, William Langewiesche allows us to see this boundary in all its political, moral, and emotional complexity. Whether he is patrolling the border with officers of the U.S. Immigration Service or talking with the desperate men and women who cross it every day, Langewiesche is always engaged in what trackers call “cutting the sign” reading the marks that human beings have made on this contested land and decoding the meaning they hold for the rest of us. ”Spellbinding. . . . The reportage [is] high art . . . for Langewiesche painstakingly uncovers the connections between elusive clues as he searches out the border and its people.”—Boston Globe
Download or read book Inside the Sky written by William Langewiesche and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1999-06-29 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Langewiesche's life has been deeply intertwined with the idea and act of flying. Fifty years ago his father, a test pilot, wrote Stick and Rudder, a text still considered by many to be the bible of aerial navigation. Langewiesche himself learned to fly while still a child. Now he shares his pilot's-eye view of flight with those of us who take flight for granted--exploring the inner world of a sky that remains as exotic and revealing as the most foreign destination. Langewiesche tells us how flight happens--what the pilot sees, thinks, and feels. His description is not merely about speed and conquest. It takes the form of a deliberate climb, leading at low altitude first over a new view of a home, and then higher, into the solitude of the cockpit, through violent storms and ocean nights, and on to unexpected places in the mind. In Langewiesche's hands it becomes clear, at the close of this first century of flight, how profoundly our vision has been altered by our liberation from the ground. And we understand how, when we look around, we may find ourselves reflected in the grace and turbulence of a human sky.
Download or read book Unveiled Mysteries written by Godfré Ray King and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: MOUNT SHASTA stood out boldly against the western sky, surrounded at its base by a growth of pine and fir trees that made it look like a jewel of diamond shining whiteness held in a filigree setting of green. Its snow covered peaks glistened and changed color from moment to moment, as the shadows lengthened in the sun's descent toward the horizon. Rumor said there was a group of men, Divine men in Fact, called the Brotherhood of Mount Shasta, who formed a branch of the Great White Lodge, and that this Focus from very ancient times had continued unbroken down to the present day. I had been sent on government business to a little town situated at the foot of the mountain, and while thus engaged occupied my leisure time trying to unravel this rumor concerning The Brotherhood. I knew, through travels in the Far East, that most rumors, myths, and legends have, somewhere as their origin, a deep underlying Truth that usually remains unrecognized by all but those who are Real students of life. I fell in love with Shasta and each morning, almost involuntarily, saluted the Spirit of the Mountain and the Members of the Order. I sensed something very unusual about the entire locality and, in the light of the experiences that followed, I do not wonder that some of them cast their shadows before. Long hikes on the trail had become my habit, whenever I wanted to think things out alone or make decisions of serious import. Here, on this great giant of nature, I found recreation, inspiration, and peace that soothed my soul and invigorated mind and body. I had planned such a hike for pleasure as I thought, to spend some time deep in the heart of the mountain, when the following experience entered my life to change if so completely that I could almost believe I was on another planet but for my return to the usual routine in which I had been engaged for months. The morning in question, I started out at daybreak deciding to follow where fancy led, and in a vague sort of way, asked God to direct my path. By noon, I had climbed high up on the side of the mountain where the view to the south was beautiful as a dream. As the day advanced, it grew very warm and I stopped frequently to rest and enjoy to the full the remarkable stretch of country around the McCloud River, Valley, and town. It came time for lunch, and I sought a mountain spring for clear, cold water. Cup in hand, I bent down to fill it as an electrical current passed through my body from head to foot. I looked around, and directly behind me stood a young man who, at first glance, seemed to be someone on a hike like myself. I looked more closely, and realized immediately that he was no ordinary person. As this thought passed through my mind, he smiled and addressed me saying: "My Brother, if you will hand me your cup, I will give you a much more refreshing drink than spring water." I obeyed, and instantly the cup was filled with a creamy liquid. Handing it back to me, he said: "Drink it." I did so and must have looked my astonishment for, while the taste was delicious, the electrical vivifying effect in my mind and body made me gasp with surprise. I did not see him put anything into the cup, and I wondered what was happening. "That which you drank," he explained, "comes directly from the Universal Supply, pure and vivifying as Life Itself, in fact it is Life Omnipresent Life for it exists everywhere about us. It is subject to our conscious control and direction, willingly obedient, when we Love enough, because all the Universe obeys the behest of Love. Whatsoever I desire manifests itself, when I command in Love. I held out the cup, and that which I desired for you appeared.
