'Nature' is a deceptively simple and ahistorical term, suggesting intrinsic, unchanging reality. Yet nature has a history too, both in terms of human attitudes and human impacts. Coates outlines the major understandings of 'nature' in the western world since classical times, from nature as higher authority to its more recent meaning of threatened physical space and life forms.Unlike many others, this book places the history of attitudes to nature within the story of human-induced c...

Squirrel Nation is a history of Britain’s two species of squirrel over the past two hundred years. The red squirrel, although rare, is among the most cherished of native species. Grey squirrels, by contrast, are one of the most frequently seen wild creatures in our gardens, parks, towns and countryside, and many Britons consider it to be a foreign interloper, introduced from North America in the late nineteenth century. By examining this animal’s colonization of Britain, Peter Coa...

These penetrating metaphysical and spiritual teachings cross the divides of culture and time, providing unexpectedly modern insight.

Many of the world’s major cities sprang up on the banks of rivers. Used for water, food, irrigation, transportation and power, rivers sustain life and connect places and countries, but most of us think of them simply as waterways that must be crossed on the way to somewhere else. Relating the biographies of four European and two North American rivers, A Story of Six Rivers considers the place of rivers in our world and emphasizes the inextricable links between their history, cultu...

Authored by two highly respected experts in this specialist area, The Fundamentals of Radiation Thermometers is an essential resource for anyone intending to measure the temperature of an object using the radiated energy from that object. This readable, user-friendly book gives important background knowledge for anyone working in the field of non-contact thermometry.The book begins with an accessible account of how temperature scales are set up and defined, and ex...

Getting Immigration Right focuses on what is arguably the most important aspect of the current immigration debate: how best to understand and resolve illegal immigration from Mexico. The scale and character of illegal immigration is only one facet of the immigration problem currently before Congress and the president, but it is its most contentious and visible face. It is also the one part of the contemporary immigration story that attracts the most intense opposition, the most widely ...

Every year, wild salmon travel hundreds of miles upstream. They fight fierce river currents, leap over rocks and small waterfalls, and die by the thousands of starvation, disease and exposure to cold. Even if they surmount these obstacles the fish risk becoming dinner for hungry predators like bears, birds and humans. Guided by a keen sense of smell, the survivors travel to their original hatching grounds, where they breed, spawn and die ina short space of time.Inspired by the rema...

This book contains the fundamental works of Marxism, Anarchism and Bolshevism:The Communist Manifesto, originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels;Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg;The Conquest of Bread by the Russian anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin;Anarchism: What it Really Stands For by Emma Goldman;The State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin;Fascism: What It Is and How To Fight It by Leon Trotsk...

The influence of human economies and cultures on ecosystems is particularly striking in the new worlds into which Europeans have expanded over the past five hundred years. Using a comparative and multidisciplinary approach, Beinart and Coates examine this neglected aspect of the history of settler incursion and dominance in two frontier nations, the USA and South Africa. They also seek to explain change in indigenous ideas and practices towards the environment, and discuss the rise of popu...

In 1943, three years into World War II, Orwell wrote "Looking Back on the Spanish Civil War," a long meditation on his memories. Orwell reminisces about his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. He remembers the foul living conditions, the overflowing latrines, and the poor quality of the meager food. It is often necessary to fight wars to preserve one's life or the freedom of the nation, and war is necessarily evil and vile. Atrocities are perpetrated by all sides in nearly all wars - the...

The Sign of the Four (1890), also called The Sign of Four, is the second novel featuring Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories featuring the fictional detective.The story is set in 1888. The Sign of the Four has a complex plot involving service in India, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, a stolen treasure, and a secret pact among four convicts ("the Four" of the title) and two corrupt prison guards. It presents the detective's drug habi...

"White Nights" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a poignant and introspective short story that delves into the complexities of human emotions and the transient nature of romantic connections. Set against the backdrop of St. Petersburg's nocturnal charm, the narrative follows the lonely protagonist through four consecutive white nights, where he encounters a mysterious young woman. As the two form a deep but ephemeral connection, Dostoyevsky explores themes of love, isolation, and the fleeting natur...