Cynthia Stokes Brown was an avid reader and researcher. This collection is a digital representation of her personal library with the books categorized as Cynthia had them on the bookshelves in her home.
You can view the collection in it entirety or you can view them by category
American History | Big History| World History | Research | Poetry
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The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People
Neil Shubin
In The Universe Within, Neil Shubin reveals the connection between the evolution of the cosmos and the evolution of the human body.
Just as the history of the earth is written in the rocks, so too is the universe’s 14-billion-year history written in the human body. Starting at the smallest level, with our very molecular composition, Shubin explores the question of why we are the way we are, tracing the formation of the planets, the moon, and the globe of Earth through the development of the organs, cells, and genes that make up human life. -
Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of he Human Body
Neil Shubin
By examining fossils and DNA, he shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our heads are organized like long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genomes look and function like those of worms and bacteria. Your Inner Fish makes us look at ourselves and our world in an illuminating new light.
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Teaching Big History
Richard B. Simon (Ed), Mojgan Behmand (Ed), and Thomas Burke (Ed)
Big History is a new field on a grand scale: it tells the story of the universe over time through a diverse range of disciplines that spans cosmology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and archaeology, thereby reconciling traditional human history with environmental geography and natural history.
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Many Mexicos
Lesley Byrd Simpson
Perhaps no country's history is as fascinating and perplexing as that of Mexico. "Mother Mexico," land of paradox, of contradiction and extreme--these are the strands that Lesley Byrd Simpson weaves into a unified fabric in presenting the country's history. First published in 1941, Many Mexicos was awarded the Commonwealth Club Gold Medal for Literature. Travelers, students, and all who delight in the adventure of narrative history have since treasured the volume for its clarity and readability. Now, completely revised, the Silver Anniversary Edition reflects the vast published output of these past twenty-five years on the history of Mexico. Some chapters have been enlarged, others corrected. A map of Mexico showing political subdivisions is now included, and, in general, new material has been added to document the author's controversial statement (and there are many). Bloody conquests and revolutions; men, good or evil; art, religion, and institutions brought from Spain or made in Mexico; topography and climate; the conflict of cultures and races; and finally, the emergence of Mexico into today's bewildering world--this in broad outline is the absorbing story Mr. Simpson so warmly presents.
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The Glory of Hera: Greek Mythology and the Greek Family
Philip E. Slater
The ancient Athenians were "quarrelsome as friends, treacherous as neighbors, brutal as masters, faithless as servants, shallow as lovers--all of which was in part redeemed by their intelligence and creativity". Thus writes Philip Slater in this classic work on narcissism and family relationships in fifth-century Athenian society. Exploring a rich corpus of Greek mythology and drama, he argues that the personalities and social behavior of the gods were neurotic, and that their neurotic conditions must have mirrored the family life of the people who perpetuated their myths. The author traces the issue of narcissism to mother-son relationships, focusing primarily on the literary representation of Hera and the male gods and showing how it related to devalued women raising boys in an ambitious society dominated by men.
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Diary of an Early American Boy: Noah Blake 1805
Eric Sloane
For his fifteenth birthday in 1805, Noah Blake received a little leather-bound diary. This reprint of his actual journal offers modern readers a charming glimpse of a vanished era through the eyes of a nineteenth-century farm boy. Eric Sloane—a distinguished historian, author, and artist—has expanded Noah Blake's daily entries with a fascinating explanatory narrative and 72 delightful drawings.
Hailed by Library Journal as "informative and nostalgic," this unique book features descriptions and drawings of such common chores as making nails, building a bridge, splitting shingles, spring plowing, and maple-sugaring, along with the construction of an entire backwoods farm. The result is a remarkable window onto the customs and preoccupations of rural New England two centuries ago. -
On Deep History and the Brain
Daniel Lord Smail
When does history begin? What characterizes it? This brilliant and beautifully written book dissolves the logic of a beginning based on writing, civilization, or historical consciousness and offers a model for a history that escapes the continuing grip of the Judeo-Christian time frame. Daniel Lord Smail argues that in the wake of the Decade of the Brain and the best-selling historical work of scientists like Jared Diamond, the time has come for fundamentally new ways of thinking about our past. He shows how recent work in evolution and paleohistory makes it possible to join the deep past with the recent past and abandon, once and for all, the idea of prehistory. Making an enormous literature accessible to the general reader, he lays out a bold new case for bringing neuroscience and neurobiology into the realm of history.
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The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel
Mark S. Smith
In this remarkable, acclaimed history of the development of monotheism, Mark S. Smith explains how Israel's religion evolved from a cult of Yahweh as a primary deity among many to a fully defined monotheistic faith with Yahweh as sole god. Repudiating the traditional view that Israel was fundamentally different in culture and religion from its Canaanite neighbors, this provocative book argues that Israelite religion developed, at least in part, from the religion of Canaan. Drawing on epigraphic and archaeological sources, Smith cogently demonstrates that Israelite religion was not an outright rejection of foreign, pagan gods but, rather, was the result of the progressive establishment of a distinctly separate Israelite identity.
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The Aztecs
Michael E. Smith
The Aztecs brings to life one of the best-known indigenous civilizations of the Americas in a vivid, comprehensive account of the ancient Aztecs.
- A thorough examination of Aztec origins and civilization including religion, science, and thought
- Incorporates the latest archaeological excavations and research into explanations of the Spanish conquest and the continuity of Aztec culture in Central Mexico
- Expanded coverage includes key topics such as writing, music, royal tombs, and Aztec predictions of the end of the world
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Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe
Lee Smolin
It’s the sort of question we rarely ask because it seems so obvious. And yet, to a physicist, time is simply a human construct and an illusion. If you could somehow get outside the universe and observe it from there, you would see that every moment has always existed and always will. Lee Smolin disagrees, and in Time Reborn he lays out the case why.
Developments in physics and cosmology point toward the reality of time and the openness of the future. Smolin’s groundbreaking theory postulates that physical laws can evolve over time and the future is not yet determined. Newton’s fundamental laws may not remain so fundamental. Time Reborn serves as a popular primer and investigation of time, both what it is and how the true nature of it impacts our world. -
Wrinkles in Time
George Smoot and Keay Davidson
Astrophysicist George Smoot spent decades pursuing the origin of the cosmos, "the holy grail of science," a relentless hunt that led him from the rain forests of Brazil to the frozen wastes of Antarctica. In his search he struggled against time, the elements, and the forces of ignorance and bureaucratic insanity. Finally, after years of research, Smoot and his dedicated team of Berkeley researchers succeeded in proving the unprovable; uncovering, inarguably and for all time, the secrets of the creation of the universe. Wrinkles in Time describes this startling discovery that would usher in a new scientific age; and win Smoot the Nobel Prize in Physics.
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Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in th Greco-Roman Experience
Frank M. Snowden Jr.
The Africans who came to ancient Greece and Italy participated in an important chapter of classical history. Although evidence indicated that the alien dark- and black-skinned people were of varied tribal and geographic origins, the Greeks and Romans classified many of them as Ethiopians. In an effort to determine the role of black people in ancient civilization, Mr. Snowden examines a broad span of Greco-Roman experience--from the Homeric era to the age of Justinian--focusing his attention on the Ethiopians as they were known to the Greeks and Romans. The author dispels unwarranted generalizations about the Ethiopians, contending that classical references to them were neither glorifications of a mysterious people nor caricatures of rare creatures.
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America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy
James Gustave Speth
"The "New Economy Movement," as Gar Alperovitz described it in The Nation, is an effort to unite the various wings of progressive politics into a coherent set of ideas and programs that will be radically different from the current free-market paradigm. The movement arises out of environmentalism: the era of climate change, it asserts, demands a much deeper rethinking of American institutions than much of the political establishment is willing to contemplate. This book, as its title suggests, is the New Economy Movement's manifesto. Gus Speth argues that America faces four problems of such magnitude that any one of them could seriously undermine the nation. All four together will almost certainly lead to a crisis, especially since the problems interact with each other. The four problems are: 1. the growth of inequality in our country, which is not only an economic burden but a social one, as it is creating classes of people who have little knowledge of or sympathy for each others' lives, and little commitment to addressing the problems of others; 2. the increasingly onerous burden of foreign military commitments; 3. climate change; 4. our increasingly polarized and dysfunctional politics. It's the interactions that are the most frightening: how, for instance, will the U.S. respond to sea-level rise in Bangladesh that forces tens of millions of people to flee the coast for higher ground? This would not only create a humanitarian crisis but a diplomatic and military one as well. America, politically paralyzed and economically almost bankrupt, would be called upon to act or cede its strategic supremacy"--Provided by publisher.
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Maus: A Survivor's Tale
Art Spiegelman
Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek’s harrowing story of survival is woven into the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century’s grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors. Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us.
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Big History and the Future of Humanity
Fred Spier
Big History and the Future of Humanity presents an original theoretical approach that makes “big history” – the placing of the human past within the history of life, the Earth, and the Universe -- accessible to general readers while revealing insights into what the future may hold for humanity.
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The Structures of Big History: From the Big Bang Until Today
Fred Spier
"The social and natural sciences have more in common than most people would perhaps suspect. This thought-provoking study, the first of its kind ever attempted, presents a single straightforward structure which unites the latest scientific views on the history of the Universe, the Solar System, Earth, life and humankind. It contributes to a better understanding of some long-standing academic controversies, such as the root causes for the origins of humankind, the rise of agriculture and the emergence of early states."--Jacket.
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The Education of a WASP
Lois Mark Stalvey
Brimming with honestly and passion, The Education of a WASP chronicles one white woman's discovery of racism in 1960s America. First published in 1970 and highly acclaimed by reviewers, Lois Stalvey's account is as timely now as it was then. Nearly twenty years later, with ugly racial incidents occurring on college campuses, in neighborhoods, and in workplaces everywhere, her account of personal encounters with racism remains deeply disturbing. Educators and general readers interested in the subtleties of racism will find the story poignant, revealing, and profoundly moving.
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Significant Others: The Ape-human Continuum and the Quest for Human Nature
Craig Stanford
Evolutionary scientists know that the line that divides humans from other animals has grown increasingly blurry, yet many other fields, especially in the social sciences, have not really absorbed this knowledge. At the same time, the knowledge that all humans are genetically and cognitively modern has left the apes as our only true "savages." Thus if we want to learn about human nature and how we came to be as we are, we must look to the apes. In this sweeping, fresh, controversial book, primatologist Craig Stanford does just that, giving us fascinating insights--and debunks many myths--about infanticide, mating practices, and the origins of human cognition.
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Interpreting the Industrial Revolution
Peter N. Stearns
This essay examines the causes and changes--economic, social, political, and technological--of the Industrial Revolution that first influenced European and American societies and were then felt on a global basis. Industrial revolutions in Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, the United States, and several developing nations are also studied.
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Earth Abides
George R. Stewart
A disease of unparalleled destructive force has sprung up almost simultaneously in every corner of the globe, all but destroying the human race. One survivor, strangely immune to the effects of the epidemic, ventures forward to experience a world without man. What he ultimately discovers will prove far more astonishing than anything he'd either dreaded or hoped for.
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When God Was a Woman
Merlin Stone
Here, archaeologically documented,is the story of the religion of the Goddess. Under her, women’s roles were far more prominent than in patriarchal Judeo-Christian cultures. Stone describes this ancient system and, with its disintegration, the decline in women’s status. Index; maps and illustrations.
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Gender, Sex, and Empire
Margaret Strobel
The intersection of gender, sexuality, and race is a new area of exploration within the study of European imperialism. In this essay the author discusses such roles as white women’s implicit task of regulating the sexual boundaries between the ruling classes and the indigenous populations during the 18th and 19th centuries. The focus of this exploration is primarily on British Africa and India, with other areas briefly touched upon.
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The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era
Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry
"Grounded in contemporary scientific understanding and inspired by the world's great wisdom traditions, cosmologist Brian Swimme and cultural historian Thomas Berry meld the findings of contemporary science - cosmology, geology, biology, and sociology - with the human search for meaning. The resulting account articulates fifteen billion years of existence with awe, delight, and vision." "Swimme and Berry remind us of the importance of story - "story is the only way of providing, in our times, what the mythic stories of the universe provided for tribal peoples and for the earlier classical civilizations in their times." In a richly detailed narrative of epic sweep, they recount the unfolding of the universe, from the "primordial flaring forth" and the formation of galaxies and supernovas to the "human emergence," classical civilizations, and imminent Ecozoic era." "The Universe Story compellingly explores humanity's place in the evolving cosmos and our ecological imperative. Crippling the Earth's biodiversity, "we are deciding what species will live or perish, we are determining the chemical structure of the soil and the air and the water, we are mapping out the areas of wilderness that will be allowed to function in their own natural modalities." This, Swimme and Berry remind us, "is filled with risk and presumption," for "the story of the Earth is also the story of the human."" "Honoring "the special capacity of the human to enable the universe and the planet Earth to reflect on and to celebrate ... in our music and our art, our dance and our poetry, and in our religious rituals," Swimme and Berry urge that we honor the knowledge gained by centuries of scientific inquiry with reverence, entrancement, and a commitment to renewal. Such joyous commitment is essential, for "there is eventually only one story, the story of the universe. Every form of being is integral with this comprehensive story. Nothing is itself without everything else.""--Jacket.
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Journey of the Universe
Brian Thomas Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker
In Journey of the Universe Brian Thomas Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker tell the epic story of the universe from an inspired new perspective, weaving the findings of modern science together with enduring wisdom found in the humanistic traditions of the West, China, India, and indigenous peoples. The authors explore cosmic evolution as a profoundly wondrous process based on creativity, connection, and interdependence, and they envision an unprecedented opportunity for the world's people to address the daunting ecological and social challenges of our times.
Journey of the Universe transforms how we understand our origins and envision our future. Though a little book, it tells a big story—one that inspires hope for a way in which Earth and its human civilizations could flourish together.
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The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals our Genetic Ancestry
Bryan Sykes
n 1994 Bryan Sykes was called in as an expert to examine the frozen remains of a man trapped in glacial ice in northern Italy for over 5000 years―the Ice Man. Sykes succeeded in extracting DNA from the Ice Man, but even more important, writes Science News, was his "ability to directly link that DNA to Europeans living today." In this groundbreaking book, Sykes reveals how the identification of a particular strand of DNA that passes unbroken through the maternal line allows scientists to trace our genetic makeup all the way back to prehistoric times―to seven primeval women, the "seven daughters of Eve."
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The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the ideas that Have Shaped our World View
Richard Tarnas
Here are the great minds of Western civilization and their pivotal ideas, from Plato to Hegel, from Augustine to Nietzsche, from Copernicus to Freud. Richard Tarnas performs the near-miracle of describing profound philosophical concepts simply but without simplifying them. Ten years in the making and already hailed as a classic, THE PASSION OF THE WESTERN MIND is truly a complete liberal education in a single volume.
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Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
R. H. Tawney
In one of the truly great classics of twentieth-century political economy, R. H. Tawney addresses the question of how religion has affected social and economic practices. He does this by a relentless tracking of the influence of religious thought on capitalist economy and ideology since the Middle Ages. In so doing he sheds light on why Christianity continues to exert a unique role in the marketplace. In so doing, the book offers an incisive analysis of the historical background of present morals and mores in Western culture.
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism is even more pertinent now than when it first was published; for today it is clearer that the dividing line between spheres of religion and secular business is shifting, that economic interests and ethical considerations are no longer safely locked in separate compartments.
By examining that period which saw the transition from medieval to modern theories of social organization, Tawney clarifies the most pressing problems of the end of the century. In tough, muscular, richly varied prose, he tells an absorbing and meaningful story. And in his new introduction, which may well be a classic in its own right, Adam Seligman details Tawney's entire background, the current status of social science thought on these large issues, and a comparative analysis of Tawney with Max Weber that will at once delight and inform readers of all kinds.
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State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?
The Worldwatch Institute
"In 'State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?', experts define clear sustainability metrics and examine various policies and perspectives, including geoengineering, corporate transformation, and changes in agricultural policy, that could put us on the path to prosperity without diminishing the well-being of future generations. If these approaches fall short, the final chapters explore ways to prepare for drastic environmental change and resource depletion, such as strengthening democracy and societal resilience, protecting cultural heritage, and dealing with increased conflict and migration flows"--Provided by publisher.
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The Old Way: A Story of the First People
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas was nineteen when her father took his family to live among the Bushmen of the Kalahari. Fifty years later, after a life of writing and study, Thomas returns to her experiences with the Bushmen, one of the last hunter-gatherer societies on earth, and discovers among them an essential link to the origins of all human society.
Humans lived for 1,500 centuries as roving clans, adapting daily to changes in environment and food supply, living for the most part like their animal ancestors. Those origins are not so easily abandoned, Thomas suggests, and our modern society has plenty still to learn from the Bushmen.
Through her vivid, empathic account, Thomas reveals a template for the lives and societies of all humankind.
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Industrialization and Gender Inequality
Louise A. Tilly
This essay explores the impact of changing socioeconomic structures on gender inequality by making systematic comparisons of early industrialization and urbanization in Britain, China, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States. The essay draws conclusions based on the analysis of the differing effects and methods of industrialization and makes suggestions for continued research.
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Understanding Early Civilizations
Bruce G. Trigger
Arising independently in various parts of the world, early civilizations-the first class-based societies in human history-are of importance to social scientists interested in the development of complexity, while their cultural productions fascinate both humanists and the general public. This book offers the first detailed comparative study of the seven most fully documented early civilizations: ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Shang China, the Aztecs and their neighbors, the Classic Maya, the Inca, and the Yoruba. Unlike previous studies, equal attention is paid to similarities and differences in their sociopolitical organization, their economic systems, and their religious beliefs, knowledge, art, and values.
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Great Tide Rising: Towards Clarity and Moarl Courage in a Time of Planetary Change
Mary Evelyn Tucker
"Even as seas rise against the shores, another great tide is beginning to rise - a tide of outrage against the pillage of the planet, a tide of commitment to justice and human rights, a swelling affirmation of moral responsibility to the future and to Earth's fullness of life. Philosopher and nature essayist Kathleen Dean Moore takes on the essential questions: Why is it wrong to wreck the world? What is our obligation to the future? What is the transformative power of moral resolve? How can clear thinking stand against the lies and illogic that batter the chances for positive change? What are useful answers to the recurring questions of a storm-threatened time - What can anyone do? Is there any hope? And always this: What stories and ideas will lift people who deeply care, inspiring them to move forward with clarity and moral courage? "-- Provided by publisher.
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The Time Before History: 5 Million Years of Human Impact
Colin Tudge
Chronicles the period in evolution during which human beings progressed from simians to hominids, citing the pivotal roles of climate, ecology, and geological movements while predicitng future changes
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Desert Exile: the Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family
Yoshiko Uchida
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, everything changed for Yoshiko Uchida. Desert Exile is her autobiographical account of life before and during World War II. The book does more than relate the day-to-day experience of living in stalls at the Tanforan Racetrack, the assembly center just south of San Francisco, and in the Topaz, Utah, internment camp. It tells the story of the courage and strength displayed by those who were interned.
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Renion
Fred Uhlman
Reunion is the story of intense and innocent devotion between two young men growing up in "the soft, serene, bluish hills of Swabia," and the sinister (but all too mundane) forces that end both their friendship and their childhood.
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The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-60
John D. Unruh Jr.
This volume presents a study of overland travel across the Great Plains of the United States prior to the Civil War. It covers mainly the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails. The author provides excerpts from the traveler's journals and diaries, along with references from various newspapers throughout the country. He first introduces the political and social ramifications and the pros and cons of overland travel to Oregon and California. He then unravels the "why's" as to the emigrants' desire to pursue such an endeavor, risking loss of everything, including possibly life itself. Readers get a feel for how the "overlanders" got along with each other; their relations with Indians; the battles of overcoming hunger, thirst, cold, etc. The author also mention of private entrepreneurs along the trail who were trading and selling goods at exorbitant prices; the "white Indians" who were white men masqueraded as Indians taking advantage of the emigrants; the Mormon influence throughout the Salt Lake area, along with the "Winter Mormons" who were average non-Mormon emigrants wishing to overwinter in Salt Lake but subjected to cruel and unjust treatments. The author describes the federal government's role in Westward emigration by improving roads, establishing forts along the way and implementing troops to guide and protect the overlanders to safety.
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Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
Nicholas Wade
Nicholas Wade’s articles are a major reason why the science section has become the most popular, nationwide, in the New York Times. In his groundbreaking Before the Dawn, Wade reveals humanity’s origins as never before—a journey made possible only recently by genetic science, whose incredible findings have answered such questions as: What was the first human language like? How large were the first societies, and how warlike were they? When did our ancestors first leave Africa, and by what route did they leave? By eloquently solving these and numerous other mysteries, Wade offers nothing less than a uniquely complete retelling of a story that began 500 centuries ago.
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The Odyssey of Ibn Battuta: Uncommon Tales of a Medieval Adventurer
David Waines
Ibn Battuta was, without doubt, one of the world’s truly great travelers. Born in fourteenth-century Morocco, and a contemporary of Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta left an account in his own words of his remarkable journeys, punctuated by adventure and peril, throughout the Islamic world and beyond. Whether sojourning in Delhi and the Maldives, wandering through the mazy streets of Cairo and Damascus, or contesting with pirates and shipwreck, the indefatigable Ibn Battuta brought to vivid life a medieval world brimming with marvel and mystery. Carefully observing the great diversity of civilizations that he encountered, Ibn Battuta exhibited an omnivorous interest in such matters as food and drink; religious differences among Christians, Hindus, and Shia Muslims; and ideas about purity and impurity, disease, women, and sex.
David Waines offers here a graceful analysis of Ibn Battuta’s travelogue. This is a gripping treatment of the life and times of one of history’s most daring, and at the same time most human, adventurers.
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Farewell to Manzanar
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston
During World War II a community called Manzanar was created in the high mountain desert country of California. Its purpose was to house thousands of Japanese Americans. Among them was the Wakatsuki family, who were ordered to leave their fishing business in Long Beach and take with them only the belongings they could carry. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, who was seven years old when she arrived at Manzanar in 1942, recalls life in the camp through the eyes of the child she was. First published in 1973, this new edition of the classic memoir of a devastating Japanese American experience includes an inspiring afterword by the authors.
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Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
M. Mitchell Waldrop
Why did the stock market crash more than 500 points on a single Monday in 1987? Why do ancient species often remain stable in the fossil record for millions of years and then suddenly disappear? In a world where nice guys often finish last, why do humans value trust and cooperation? At first glance these questions don't appear to have anything in common, but in fact every one of these statements refers to a complex system. The science of complexity studies how single elements, such as a species or a stock, spontaneously organize into complicated structures like ecosystems and economies; stars become galaxies, and snowflakes avalanches almost as if these systems were obeying a hidden yearning for order.
Drawing from diverse fields, scientific luminaries such as Nobel Laureates Murray Gell-Mann and Kenneth Arrow are studying complexity at a think tank called The Santa Fe Institute. The revolutionary new discoveries researchers have made there could change the face of every science from biology to cosmology to economics. M. Mitchell Waldrop's groundbreaking bestseller takes readers into the hearts and minds of these scientists to tell the story behind this scientific revolution as it unfolds. -
Historical Capitalism
Immanuel Wallerstein
In this short, highly readable book, the master of world-systems theory provides a succinct anatomy of capitalism over the past five hundred years. Considering the way capitalism has changed and evolved over the centuries, and what has remained constant, he outlines its chief characteristics. In particular, he looks at the emergence and development of a world market, and of labor; in doing so, he argues that capitalism has brought about immiseration in the Global South. As long as they remain within a framework of world capitalism, Wallerstein concludes, the economic and social problems of developing countries will remain unresolved.
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The Flooded Earth: Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps
Peter D. Ward
"By 2050: the sea will rise by 2 to 3 feet. Wealthy coastal cities will fight the rising water with dykes and levees; others will lose their underground infrastructure (including electric and fiber optic systems), and face building collapses." "By 2300: the sea will rise by 65 feet. As Antarctica melts, massive floating icebergs will interfere with shipping in the southern hemisphere. The world's geography will change drastically, featuring new rivers and lakes where they never before existed." "By 2500-5000: the sea will achieve its maximum height. Most formerly coastal cities will no longer exist at all. Massive migrations will take place, all deltas and low-lying agricultural areas will have been wiped from the map, and the newly de-iced Greenland and Antarctica will be important farmlands. Humans will have to cope with the spread of tropical diseases like Malaria and Dengue Fever, and the possibility of runaway mass extinctions." "Sea Level Rise Will be an Unavoidable Part of our Future, no matter what we do. Even if we stopped all carbon dioxide emissions today, the seas will rise three feet by 2050 and nine feet by 2100. This---not drought, species extinction, or excessive heat waves---will be the most dramatic effect of global warming. The effects of three feet of sea-level rise will be massive. Nine feet will be catastrophic. Incursions of salt into the water table will destroy most of our best agricultural land---for instance, the Central Valley of California---and corrosion will devour the electrical and fiber-optic systems of coastal cities, as well as our roads and bridges. Amsterdam, Miami, Venice, and other cities, might have to be abandoned. The melting of the ice caps will not be a slow trickle of water into the sea; it will release armadas of icebergs that will make shipping in the Southern Ocean hazardous or impossible. As icebound regions melt, new sources of oil, gas, minerals, and arable land will also be revealed---as will fierce geopolitical battles over who owns the rights to them." "In The Flooded Earth, species extinction expert Peter D. Ward describes in intricate detail what our world will look like in 2050, 2100, 2300, and beyond. In this blueprint for a foreseeable future, Ward also explains what politicians and policy makers around the world should be doing now to head off the worst consequences of an inevitable transformation, including the complete melting of the ice sheets, stagnant oceans, and greenhouse extinction. --Jacket.
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The Life and Death of Planet Earth: How the New Science of Astrobiology Charts the Ultimate Fate of Our World
Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee
“They deftly bring together findings from many disparate areas of science in a book that science buffs will find hard to put down.” —Publishers Weekly Science has worked hard to piece together the story of the evolution of our world up to this point, but only recently have we developed the understanding and the tools to describe the entire life cycle of our planet. Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, a geologist and an astronomer respectively, are in the vanguard of the new field of astrobiology. Combining their knowledge of how the critical sustaining systems of our planet evolve through time with their understanding of how stars and solar systems grow and change throughout their own life cycles, the authors tell the story of the second half of Earth’s life. In this masterful melding of groundbreaking research and captivating, eloquent science writing, Ward and Brownlee provide a comprehensive portrait of Earth’s life cycle that allows us to understand and appreciate how the planet sustains itself today, and offers us a glimpse of our place in the cosmic order.
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Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Jack Weatherford
The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in twenty-five years than the Romans did in four hundred. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization. Vastly more progressive than his European or Asian counterparts, Genghis Khan abolished torture, granted universal religious freedom, and smashed feudal systems of aristocratic privilege.
From the story of his rise through the tribal culture to the explosion of civilization that the Mongol Empire unleashed, this brilliant work of revisionist history is nothing less than the epic story of how the modern world was made. -
The Fall of the Ancient Maya: Solving the Mystery of the Maya Collapse
David Webster
An account of the mysterious fall of the ancient Maya civilization evaluates current theories and myths, citing sixteenth-century evidence of a residual population and offering a portrait of its Late Classic society beset by overly ambitious nobles, wars, and an exploding population that could not be sustained by its scanty agriculture.
