Download or read book A State Built on Sand written by David Mansfield and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oscillations in opium poppy production in Afghanistan have long been associated with how the state was perceived, such as after the Taliban imposed a cultivation ban in 2000-1. The international community's subsequent attempts to regulate opium poppy became intimately linked with its own state-building project, and rising levels of cultivation were cited as evidence of failure by those international donors who spearheaded development in poppy-growing provinces like Helmand, Nangarhar and Kandahar. Mansfield's book examines why drug control - particularly opium bans - have been imposed in Afghanistan; he documents the actors involved; and he scrutinizes how prohibition served divergent and competing interests. Drawing on almost two decades of fieldwork in rural areas, he explains how these bans affected farming communities, and how prohibition endured in some areas while in others opium production bans undermined livelihoods and destabilized the political order, fuelling violence and rural rebellion. Above all this book challenges how we have come to understand political power in rural Afghanistan. Far from being the passive recipients of violence by state and non-state actors, Mansfield highlights the role that rural communities have played in shaping the political terrain, including establishing the conditions under which they could persist with opium production.
Download or read book A State Built on Sand written by David Mansfield and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mansfield's book examines why drug control - particularly opium bans - have been imposed in Afghanistan; he documents the actors involved; and he scrutinizes how prohibition served divergent and competing interests. Above all this book challenges how we have come to understand political power in rural Afghanistan.
Download or read book Houses Built on Sand written by Simon Mabon and published by Identities and Geopolitics in the Middle East. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the Arab Uprisings and the instability that engulfed the region in the following years. It argues that to understand the events of the uprisings we must look at relations between rulers and ruled along with the strategies used by regimes to exert sovereign power.
Download or read book Built on Sand written by Paul Scraton and published by Influx Press. This book was released on 2019-04-25 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Berlin: long-celebrated as a city of artists and outcasts, but also a city of teachers and construction workers. A place of tourists and refugees, and the memories of those exiled and expelled. A city named after marshland; if you dig a hole, you'll soon hit sand. The stories of Berlin are the stories Built on Sand. A wooden town, laid waste by the Thirty Years War that became the metropolis by the Spree that spread out and swallowed villages whole. The city of Rosa Luxemburg and Joseph Roth, of student movements and punks on both sides of the Wall. A place still bearing the scars of National Socialism and the divided city that emerged from the wreckage of war. Built on Sand. centres on the personal geographies of place, and how memory and history live on in the individual and collective imagination. Stories of landscapes and a city both real and imagined; stories of exile and trauma, mythology and folklore; of how the past shapes and distorts our understanding of the present in an age of individualism, gentrification and the rising threat of nativism and far-right populism. Together, these stories offer a portrait of a city three decades on from the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the legacy of that history in a city that was once divided but remains fractured and fragmented.
Download or read book Bubble in the Sun written by Christopher Knowlton and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christopher Knowlton, author of Cattle Kingdom and former Fortune writer, takes an in-depth look at the spectacular Florida land boom of the 1920s and shows how it led directly to the Great Depression. The 1920s in Florida was a time of incredible excess, immense wealth, and precipitous collapse. The decade there produced the largest human migration in American history, far exceeding the settlement of the West, as millions flocked to the grand hotels and the new cities that rose rapidly from the teeming wetlands. The boom spawned a new subdivision civilization—and the most egregious large-scale assault on the environment in the name of “progress.” Nowhere was the glitz and froth of the Roaring Twenties more excessive than in Florida. Here was Vegas before there was a Vegas: gambling was condoned and so was drinking, since prohibition was not enforced. Tycoons, crooks, and celebrities arrived en masse to promote or exploit this new and dazzling American frontier in the sunshine. Yet, the import and deep impact of these historical events have never been explored thoroughly until now. In Bubble in the Sun Christopher Knowlton examines the grand artistic and entrepreneurial visions behind Coral Gables, Boca Raton, Miami Beach, and other storied sites, as well as the darker side of the frenzy. For while giant fortunes were being made and lost and the nightlife raged more raucously than anywhere else, the pure beauty of the Everglades suffered wanton ruination and the workers, mostly black, who built and maintained the boom, endured grievous abuses. Knowlton breathes dynamic life into the forces that made and wrecked Florida during the decade: the real estate moguls Carl Fisher, George Merrick, and Addison Mizner, and the once-in-a-century hurricane whose aftermath triggered the stock market crash. This essential account is a revelatory—and riveting—history of an era that still affects our country today.
Download or read book A State Built on Sand written by David Mansfield (Consultant) and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fluctuations in opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan have long been closely associated with perceptions of state power, such as after the Taliban imposed an almost countrywide ban in 2000-1. The international community's subsequent attempts to ban opium poppy cultivation became intimately linked with its state-building project, and rising levels of cultivation were often cited as evidence of failure by those international donors who spearheaded stabilization and development in opium-growing provinces like Helmand, Nangarhar and Kandahar. Mansfield examines why drug control - particularly opium bans - have been imposed in Afghanistan; he documents the actors involved; and scrutinizes how prohibition served quite divergent and sometimes competing interests.
Download or read book The World in a Grain written by Vince Beiser and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award The gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world--sand--and the crucial role it plays in our lives. After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other--even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, is made from sand. From Egypt's pyramids to the Hubble telescope, from the world's tallest skyscraper to the sidewalk below it, from Chartres' stained-glass windows to your iPhone, sand shelters us, empowers us, engages us, and inspires us. It's the ingredient that makes possible our cities, our science, our lives--and our future. And, incredibly, we're running out of it. The World in a Grain is the compelling true story of the hugely important and diminishing natural resource that grows more essential every day, and of the people who mine it, sell it, build with it--and sometimes, even kill for it. It's also a provocative examination of the serious human and environmental costs incurred by our dependence on sand, which has received little public attention. Not all sand is created equal: Some of the easiest sand to get to is the least useful. Award-winning journalist Vince Beiser delves deep into this world, taking readers on a journey across the globe, from the United States to remote corners of India, China, and Dubai to explain why sand is so crucial to modern life. Along the way, readers encounter world-changing innovators, island-building entrepreneurs, desert fighters, and murderous sand pirates. The result is an entertaining and eye-opening work, one that is both unexpected and involving, rippling with fascinating detail and filled with surprising characters.
Download or read book Salt in the Sand written by Lessie Jo Frazier and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2007-07-17 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Salt in the Sand is a compelling historical ethnography of the interplay between memory and state violence in the formation of the Chilean nation-state. The historian and anthropologist Lessie Jo Frazier focuses on northern Chile, which figures prominently in the nation’s history as a site of military glory during the period of national conquest, of labor strikes and massacres in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, and of state detention and violence during World War II and the Cold War. It was also the site of a mass-grave excavation that galvanized the national human rights movement in 1990, during Chile’s transition from dictatorship to democracy. Frazier analyzes the creation of official and alternative memories of specific instances of state violence in northern Chile from 1890 to the present, tracing how the form and content of those memories changed over time. In so doing, she shows how memory works to create political subjectivities mobilized for specific political projects within what she argues is the always-ongoing process of nation-state formation. Frazier’s broad historical perspective on political culture challenges the conventional periodization of modern Chilean history, particularly the idea that the 1973 military coup marked a radical break with the past. Analyzing multiple memories of state violence, Frazier innovatively shapes social and cultural theory to interpret a range of sources, including local and national government archives, personal papers, popular literature and music, interviews, architectural and ceremonial commemorations, and her ethnographic observations of civic associations, women's and environmental groups, and human rights organizations. A masterful integration of extensive empirical research with sophisticated theoretical analysis, Salt in the Sand is a significant contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship on human rights, democratization, state formation, and national trauma and reconciliation.
Download or read book House of Sand and Fog written by Andre Dubus and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1999 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oprah Book Club selection for November 2000.
Download or read book City on the Sand written by Mary Corddry and published by Cornell Maritime Press/Tidewater Publishers. This book was released on 1991 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a little more than a hundred years, a desolate barrier island in Maryland became a teeming resort city. The story of how that feat was achieved is the heart of Mary Corddry's absorbing book. It is also the tale of opposites: the special affection thousands of Marylanders have for this unique place and the growing concern over the dune and marsh ecology and the effect of high density development on it. Here is a narrative of shifting sands and shifting fortunes, recounting how Ocean City has weathered natural and economic setbacks to become, every summer, Maryland's second-largest city.
Download or read book Ivory Towers on Sand written by Martin S. Kramer and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unquestionably, this is one of the most important books about understanding the Middle East written during the last half-century.Jerusalem Post
Download or read book The Kingdom of Sand written by Andrew Holleran and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITOR'S CHOICE PICK ONE OF THE LONDON TIMES' TOP TWENTY-SIX FICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR LA TIMES 5 BEST BOOKS OF 2022 BBC Culture’s 50 Best Books of 2022 "[Holleran's] new novel is all the more affecting and engaging because the images of isolation and old age here are haunted . . . in 1978 Holleran wrote the quintessential novel about gay abandon, the sheer, careless pleasure of it: Dancer From the Dance. Now, at almost 80 years of age, he has produced a novel remarkable for its integrity, for its readiness to embrace difficult truths and for its complex way of paying homage to the passing of time." —Colm Toibin, The New York Times Book Review "It’s rare to find fiction that takes this kind of dying of the light as its subject and doesn’t make its heroes feel either pathetic or polished with a gleam of false dignity . . . This sad, beautiful book captures the sensations Holleran’s characters are chasing — as well as the darkness that inevitably comes for them, and us." —Mark Athitakis, The Los Angeles Times One of the great appeals of Florida has always been the sense that the minute you get here you have permission to collapse. The Kingdom of Sand is a poignant tale of desire and dread—Andrew Holleran’s first new book in sixteen years. The nameless narrator is a gay man who moved to Florida to look after his aging parents—during the height of the AIDS epidemic—and has found himself unable to leave after their deaths. With gallows humor, he chronicles the indignities of growing old in a small town. At the heart of the novel is the story of his friendship with Earl, whom he met cruising at the local boat ramp. For the last twenty years, he has been visiting Earl to watch classic films together and critique the neighbors. Earl is the only person in town with whom he can truly be himself. Now Earl’s health is failing, and our increasingly misanthropic narrator must contend with the fact that once Earl dies, he will be completely alone. He distracts himself with sexual encounters at the video porn store and visits to Walgreens. All the while, he shares reflections on illness and death that are at once funny and heartbreaking. Holleran’s first novel, Dancer from the Dance, is widely regarded as a classic work of gay literature. Reviewers have described his subsequent books as beautiful, exhilarating, seductive, haunting, and bold. The Kingdom of Sand displays all of Holleran’s considerable gifts; it’s an elegy to sex and a stunningly honest exploration of loneliness and the endless need for human connection, especially as we count down our days.
Download or read book Heads in the Sand written by Matthew Yglesias and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-14 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals the wrong-headed foreign policy stance of conservatives, neocons, and the Republican Party for what it is—aggressive nationalism. Yglesias reminds us of the rich tradition of liberal internationalism that, developed by Democrats, was used with great success by both Democratic and Republican administrations for more than fifty years. [from publisher description].
Download or read book A House Built on Sand written by Noretta Koertge and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998-08-27 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural critics say that "science is politics by other means," arguing that the results of scientific inquiry are profoundly shaped by the ideological agendas of powerful elites. They base their claims on historical case studies purporting to show the systematic intrusion of sexist, racist, capitalist, colonialist and/or professional interests into the very content of science. Physicist Alan Sokal recently poked fun at these claims by foisting a sly parody of the genre on the unwitting editors of the cultural studies journal Social Text touching off a still unabated torrent of editorials, articles, and heated classroom and Internet discussion. This hard-hitting collection picks up where Sokal left off. The essayists offer crisp and detailed critiques of case studies offered by the cultural critics as evidence that scientific results tell us more about social context than they do about the natural world. Pulling no punches, they identify numerous crude factual blunders (e.g. that Newton never performed any experiments) and egregious errors of emission, such as the attempt to explain the slow development of fluid dynamics solely in terms of gender bias. Where there are positive aspects of a flawed account, or something to be learned from it, they do not hesitate to say so. Their target is shoddy scholarship. Comprising new essays by distinguished scholars of history, philosophy, and science (including Sokal himself), this book raises a lively debate to a new level of seriousness.
Download or read book Sand Talk written by Tyson Yunkaporta and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A paradigm-shifting book in the vein of Sapiens that brings a crucial Indigenous perspective to historical and cultural issues of history, education, money, power, and sustainability—and offers a new template for living. As an indigenous person, Tyson Yunkaporta looks at global systems from a unique perspective, one tied to the natural and spiritual world. In considering how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation, he raises important questions. How does this affect us? How can we do things differently? In this thoughtful, culturally rich, mind-expanding book, he provides answers. Yunkaporta’s writing process begins with images. Honoring indigenous traditions, he makes carvings of what he wants to say, channeling his thoughts through symbols and diagrams rather than words. He yarns with people, looking for ways to connect images and stories with place and relationship to create a coherent world view, and he uses sand talk, the Aboriginal custom of drawing images on the ground to convey knowledge. In Sand Talk, he provides a new model for our everyday lives. Rich in ideas and inspiration, it explains how lines and symbols and shapes can help us make sense of the world. It’s about how we learn and how we remember. It’s about talking to everyone and listening carefully. It’s about finding different ways to look at things. Most of all it’s about a very special way of thinking, of learning to see from a native perspective, one that is spiritually and physically tied to the earth around us, and how it can save our world. Sand Talk include 22 black-and-white illustrations that add depth to the text.
Download or read book The Invention of the Land of Israel written by Shlomo Sand and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2012-11-20 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is a homeland and when does it become a national territory? Why have so many people been willing to die for such places throughout the twentieth century? What is the essence of the Promised Land? Following the acclaimed and controversial The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand examines the mysterious sacred land that has become the site of the longest-running national struggle of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Invention of the Land of Israel deconstructs the age-old legends surrounding the Holy Land and the prejudices that continue to suffocate it. Sand’s account dissects the concept of “historical right” and tracks the creation of the modern concept of the “Land of Israel” by nineteenth-century Evangelical Protestants and Jewish Zionists. This invention, he argues, not only facilitated the colonization of the Middle East and the establishment of the State of Israel; it is also threatening the existence of the Jewish state today.
Download or read book The Sand Sea written by Michael McClellan and published by Story Grid Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2020-06-24 with total page 1027 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An astounding epic novel of J.R.R. Tolkien proportions!" — Steven Pressfield, Bestselling author of Gates of Fire and The War of Art Raiders of the Lost Ark playing A Game of Thrones The Sand Sea takes place on an alternative Earth roiled by war and conquest that mirrors our own Gilded Age. The treasure that ignites greed and folly in this parallel world is not petroleum, but beserite—a mineral of immeasurable value. Captivated by an ancient prophecy and the call of adventure, inexperienced nobleman and scholar Peter Harmon (think of a young Winston Churchill-like naif) joins an expedition to stake his nation’s claim to a global empire. Harmon’s destination is a vast and inhospitable desert halfway around the world, dominated by the iron-fisted Grand Vizer Jemojeen Jongdar. A tyrant on a mission to secure the ancient and supernatural Staff of the Ram, the Lion, and the Serpent, Jongdar knows the truth that others can only imagine: The one who controls the staff will possess the power to rule the world. Before he can seize his destiny, Jongdar must find and destroy the one person capable of thwarting his ambition, the rightful heir to the Sand Sea realm, an innocent woman named Selena Savanar. Can the brave and indomitable Selena accept her true destiny and rally her people in the eye of a gathering storm? To do so will require her to outwit the man who burned her father alive and left her an orphan and beggar a lifetime ago. Or will Peter Harmon and the cadre of opportunists he rides with conquer the divided empire? With the mythic structure of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy in a world as rich and real as George R.R. Martin’s Westeros, The Sand Sea is an immersive experience made to order for epic fantasy fans and anyone who enjoys grand-scale historical fiction.
