Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  The Pine Barrens

  John McPhee

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  Most people think of New Jersey as a suburban-industrial corridor that runs between New York and Philadelphia. Yet in the low center of the state is a near wilderness, larger than most national parks, which has been known since the seventeenth century as the Pine Barrens. 
   
   
   
  The term refers to the predominant trees in the vast forests that cover the area and to the quality of the soils below, which are too sandy and acid to be good for farming. On all sides, however, developments of one kind or another have gradually moved in, so that now the central and integral forest is reduced to about a thousand square miles. Although New Jersey has the heaviest population density of any state, huge segments of the Pine Barrens remain uninhabited. The few people who dwell in the region, the "Pineys," are little known and often misunderstood. Here McPhee uses his uncanny skills as a journalist to explore the history of the region and describe the people—and their distinctive folklore—who call it home.

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  Crusading against the Ottomans:...

  Editors Charles River

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  In terms of geopolitics, perhaps the most seminal event of the Middle Ages was the successful Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453. The city had been an imperial capital as far back as the 4th century, when Constantine the Great shifted the power center of the Roman Empire there, effectively establishing two almost equally powerful halves of antiquity’s greatest empire. Constantinople would continue to serve as the capital of the Byzantine Empire even after the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed in the late 5th century. Naturally, the Ottoman Empire would also use Constantinople as the capital of its empire after their conquest effectively ended the Byzantine Empire, and thanks to its strategic location, it has been a trading center for years and remains one today under the Turkish name of Istanbul. 
  Naturally, the Byzantines and Europeans didn’t take the Ottoman incursions laying down, and in the generations before the Ottoman victory at Constantinople, European alliances frequently tried to check Ottoman advances, couching their campaigns in the terms of crusading. One of them came near the end of the 14th century, and it presaged what was to come in the 15th century. 
  The Ottoman campaigns of the 14th century would provide the context for the events that led to the Battle of Nicopolis. One of the last major crusades was launched in 1396 by Pope Boniface IX, and the timing was perfect for the European kingdoms to unite and form a strong threat to the Ottomans. The 100-year war between France and England was in a state of truce, and King Richard II had just married Princess Isabella of France. Thus, both the English and the Franks would be able to send forces to join in a crusade, and so would Hungary, Bulgaria, Venice, Genoa, Croatia, Wallachia, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Knights Hospitaller.

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  Galveston Orphans Home - The...

  Denise Sandoval

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  The Galveston Orphans Home of Texas has been a fixture of the historic city for over a hundred years. Surviving the great storm of 1900 and giving children a place to call home, there are countless stories about the house's rich history. 
  This book is my collection of stories, Having worked as the caretaker for the mansion, now known as Tavilleh, I've had plenty of experiences to share from a unique perspective. 
  During my time as caretaker, I continued to grow in my relationship with God and develop my spiritual abilities. Every trial I faced was met with courage and the faith that the Lord would guide me through. 
  From prophecies to break-ins, I've seen it all. Houses that old have history and sometimes that history is filled with dark, painful secrets that are trying to get out. All it takes is one person open to the supernatural to help restore peace and security. 
  Tavilleh Mansion was my home for almost two decades. I put countless hours of love, sweat, and prayer into keeping it safe and well-maintained. I protected the property as God protected me, and now it's time to share my experiences with the world,

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  Red Leviathan - The Secret...

  Ryan Tucker Jones

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  The Soviet Union killed over six hundred thousand whales in the twentieth century, many of them illegally and secretly. That catch helped bring many whale species to near extinction by the 1970s, and the impacts of this loss of life still ripple through today’s oceans. In this new account, based on formerly secret Soviet archives and interviews with ex-whalers, environmental historian Ryan Tucker Jones offers a complete history of the role the Soviet Union played in the whales' destruction. 
   
   
   
  As other countries—especially the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Norway—expanded their pursuit of whales to all corners of the globe, Stalin determined that the Soviet Union needed to join the hunt. Cold War intrigue encouraged this destruction, but, as Jones shows, there is a more complex history behind this tragic Soviet experiment. Jones compellingly describes the ultimate scientific irony: today's cetacean studies benefited from Soviet whaling, as Russian scientists on whaling vessels made key breakthroughs in understanding whale natural history and behavior. 
   
   
   
  Red Leviathan reveals how the Soviet public began turning against their country's whaling industry, working in parallel with Western environmental organizations like Greenpeace to help end industrial whaling—not long before the world's whales might have disappeared altogether.

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  Time for the world to learn from...

  Ruth Finnegan

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  It is a common notion that Africa has, and indeed ought to have, learned much from the west. This is not wrong; all cultures rightly learn from each other. But less is said of what there is to learn from Africa: from her stories, myths, music, proverbs, insights - and more. Here an acclaimed African scholar steps into the gap with a prize winning account that uncovers something of the great legacy of African thought and practice in ways that will astonish many. Written with verve and authority and directed above all to students and sixth formers, this book will also delight and often surprise those who know something of Africa as well as those hitherto ignorant. 
   Ruth Finnegan OBE FBA is Emeritus Professor The Open University, Foreign Associate of the Finnish Literature Bureau, and International Fellow of the American Folklore Society. An anthropologist and multi-award author, she has published extensively, chiefly on Africa, musical practice, and English urban life. Recent books include How is Language?, Fiji's Music: Where Did It Come From?, her edited Entrancement: The Consciousness of Dreaming, Music and The World, and several prize-winning Africa-influenced novels, including The Black Inked Pearl and Voyage of Pearl of the Seas.

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  Holding Fire - A Reckoning with...

  Bryce Andrews

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  From the award-winning author of Down from the Mountain, a memoir of inheritance, history, and one gun’s role in the violence that shaped the American West—and an impassioned call to forge a new way forward 
  Bryce Andrews was raised to do no harm. The son of a pacifist and conscientious objector, he moved from Seattle to Montana to tend livestock and the land as a cowboy. For a decade, he was happy. Yet, when Andrews inherited his grandfather’s Smith & Wesson revolver, he felt the weight of the violence braided into his chosen life. Other white men who’d come before him had turned firearms like this one against wildlife, wilderness, and the Indigenous peoples who had lived in these landscapes for millennia. This was how the West was “won.” Now, the losses were all around him and a weapon was in his hand. 
  In precise, elegiac prose, Andrews chronicles his journey to forge a new path for himself, and to reshape one handgun into a tool for good work. As waves of gun violence swept the country and wildfires burned across his beloved valley, he began asking questions—of ranchers, his Native neighbors, his family, and a blacksmith who taught him to shape steel—in search of a new way to live with the land and with one another. In laying down his arms, he transformed an inherited weapon, his ranch, and the arc of his life. 
  Holding Fire is a deeply felt memoir of one Western heart’s wild growth, and a personal testament to how things that seem permanent—inheritance, legacies of violence, forged steel—can change. 
  Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

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