- Table View
- List View
Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species
by James T. CostaCharles Darwin is often credited with discovering evolution through natural selection, but the idea was not his alone. The naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, working independently, saw the same process at work in the natural world and elaborated much the same theory. Their important scientific contributions made both men famous in their lifetimes, but Wallace slipped into obscurity after his death, while Darwin's renown grew. Dispelling the misperceptions that continue to paint Wallace as a secondary figure, James Costa reveals the two naturalists as true equals in advancing one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time. Analyzing Wallace's "Species Notebook," Costa shows how Wallace's methods and thought processes paralleled Darwin's, yet inspired insights uniquely his own. Kept during his Southeast Asian expeditions of the 1850s, the notebook is a window into Wallace's early evolutionary ideas. It records his evidence-gathering, critiques of anti-evolutionary arguments, and plans for a book on "transmutation. " Most important, it demonstrates conclusively that natural selection was not some idea Wallace stumbled upon, as is sometimes assumed, but was the culmination of a decade-long quest to solve the mystery of the origin of species. Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species also reexamines the pivotal episode in 1858 when Wallace sent Darwin a manuscript announcing his discovery of natural selection, prompting a joint public reading of the two men's papers on the subject. Costa's analysis of the "Species Notebook" shines a new light on these readings, further illuminating the independent nature of Wallace's discoveries.
The Walleye War: The Struggle for Ojibwe Spearfishing and Treaty Rights
by Larry NesperFor generations, the Ojibwe bands of northern Wisconsin have spearfished spawning walleyed pike in the springtime. The bands reserved hunting, fishing, and gathering rights on the lands that would become the northern third of Wisconsin in treaties signed with the federal government in 1837, 1842, and 1854. Those rights, however, would be ignored by the state of Wisconsin for more than a century. When a federal appeals court in 1983 upheld the bands' off-reservation rights, a deep and far-reaching conflict erupted between the Ojibwe bands and some of their non-Native neighbors. Starting in the mid-1980s, protesters and supporters flocked to the boat landings of lakes being spearfished; Ojibwe spearfisher-men were threatened, stoned, and shot at. Peace and protest rallies, marches, and ceremonies galvanized and rocked the local communities and reservations, and individuals and organizations from across the country poured into northern Wisconsin to take sides in the spearfishing dispute. From the front lines on lakes to tense, behind-the-scenes maneuvering on and off reservations, The Walleye War tells the riveting story of the spearfishing conflict, drawing on the experiences and perspectives of the members of the Lac du Flambeau reservation and an anthropologist who accompanied them on spearfishing expeditions. We learn of the historical roots and cultural significance of spearfishing and off-reservation treaty rights and we see why many modern Ojibwes and non-Natives view them in profoundly different ways. We also come to understand why the Flambeau tribal council and some tribal members disagreed with the spearfishermen and pursued a policy of negotiation with the state to lease the off-reservation treaty rights for fifty million dollars. Fought with rocks and metaphors, The Walleye War is the story of a Native people's struggle for dignity, identity, and self-preservation in the modern world. Larry Nesper an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Wallless Cities: Cities and Nature in American History
by Shen HouThis book aims to outline the detailed process of integrating nature and cities in a historical context through the lens of urban environmental history, capturing how the most ordinary yet enduring natural forces have shaped the form of cities and the thoughts of individuals. It provides a detailed examination of the development trends, achievements, and existing issues in this field, and a profound understanding of the urgency and necessity of nurturing new ideas to guide cities out of their "ecological paradox". It also summarizes the formation and development, challenges, and missions of American cities centered around the core image of the "City Without Walls".
The Walls Have Eyes
by Clare B. DunkleMartin may have seen his sister, Cassie, to safety at the end of The Sky Inside, but his adventure is far from over. There's still a totalitarian regime in place, murderous game shows on the air, and a couple of government agents on Martin's tail. When Martin and his AllDog, Chip, go back to his old suburbs to check up on Mom, they get a lot more than they bargained for when they end up escaping with both parents. But the biggest surprise is yet to come--the heart of the government's central power is closer to Martin than he ever suspected.
Walt Disney (I Am #11)
by Ms. Grace NorwichI am the creator of Mickey Mouse. I am Walt Disney.As a child, I had a wild imagination and a great curiosity. As I grew up, I used those qualities to become a cartoonist. Eventually, I turned these drawings into films and began my own animation business. One of my characters, Mickey Mouse, became so popular that movie theaters sold out and I won an Academy Award. After pursuing a career as a film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, entrepreneur and entertainer, I added developer to my resume when I created Disneyland amusement park. I became tremendously successful and beloved by children of all ages because of my belief that even the impossible is possible. I am Walt Disney.To this day, Walt Disney's characters remain some of the most recognizable images in the world. With books, TV shows, films, and amusement parks devoted to his creations, the Walt Disney name lives on. Learn all about this remarkable man's fascinating life in Scholastic's biography series, I AM.
Walter Baade: A Life in Astrophysics
by Donald E. OsterbrockAlthough less well known outside the field than Edwin Hubble, Walter Baade was arguably the most influential observational astronomer of the twentieth century. Written by a fellow astronomer deeply familiar with Baade and his work, this is the first biography of this major figure in American astronomy. In it, Donald Osterbrock suggests that Baade's greatest contribution to astrophysics was not, as is often contended, his revision of Hubble's distance and age scales for the universe. Rather, it was his discovery of two distinct stellar populations: old and young stars. This discovery opened wide the previously marginal fields of stellar and galactic evolution--research areas that would be among the most fertile and exciting in all of astrophysics for decades to come. Baade was born, educated, and gained his early research experience in Germany. He came to the United States in 1931 as a staff member of Mount Wilson Observatory, which housed the world's largest telescope. There, he pioneered research on supernovae. With the 100-inch telescope, he studied globular clusters and the structure of the Milky Way, every step leading him closer to the population concept he discovered during the wartime years, when the skies of southern California were briefly darkened. Most Mount Wilson astronomers were working on weapons-development crash programs devoted to bringing Baade's native country to its knees, while he, formally an enemy alien in their midst, was confined to Los Angeles County but had almost unlimited use of the most powerful telescope in the world. After his great discovery, Baade continued his research with the new 200-inch telescope at Palomar. Always respected and well liked, he became even more famous among astronomers as they shifted their research to the fields he had opened. Publicity-shy and seemingly unconcerned with publication, however, Baade's celebrity remained largely within the field. This accomplished biography at last introduces Baade--and his important work--to a wider public, including the newest generation of skywatchers.
The Wandering Astronomer
by Patrick MooreDrawing on his vast knowledge and direct experience of most of the key events in astronomy and space exploration during this century, Patrick Moore takes a sideways look at the historical reports and contemporary thought behind a wide range of astronomical topics. The Wandering Astronomer presents his personal accounts of the towering characters of 20th-century astronomy, intriguing facts about puzzling astronomical phenomena, and amusing stories about the quirkier side of astronomy and space exploration. This collection of essays covers everything from the case of vanishing planets to UFOs over Selsey.
The Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess: Race, Religion, and DNA
by Jeff WheelwrightA brilliant and emotionally resonant exploration of science and family history. A vibrant young Hispano woman, Shonnie Medina, inherits a breast-cancer mutation known as BRCA1.185delAG. It is a genetic variant characteristic of Jews. The Medinas knew they were descended from Native Americans and Spanish Catholics, but they did not know that they had Jewish ancestry as well. The mutation most likely sprang from Sephardic Jews hounded by the Spanish Inquisition. The discovery of the gene leads to a fascinating investigation of cultural history and modern genetics by Dr. Harry Ostrer and other experts on the DNA of Jewish populations. Set in the isolated San Luis Valley of Colorado, this beautiful and harrowing book tells of the Medina family's five-hundred-year passage from medieval Spain to the American Southwest and of their surprising conversion from Catholicism to the Jehovah's Witnesses in the 1980s. Rejecting conventional therapies in her struggle against cancer, Shonnie Medina died in 1999. Her life embodies a story that could change the way we think about race and faith.
The Wandering Mind: What the Brain Does When You're Not Looking
by Michael CorballisRooted in neuroscience, psychology and evolutionary biology, this study explores what happens when we stop paying attention and the effect on our behavior.If we’ve done our job well—and, let’s be honest, if we’re lucky—you’ll read to the end of this description. Most likely, however, you won’t. Somewhere in the middle of the next paragraph, your mind will wander off. Minds wander. That’s just how it is.That may be bad news for me, but is it bad news for people in general? Does the fact that as much as fifty percent of our waking hours find us failing to focus on the task at hand represent a problem? Michael Corballis doesn’t think so. With The Wandering Mind, he shows us why, rehabilitating woolgathering and revealing its incredibly useful effects. Drawing on the latest research from cognitive science and evolutionary biology, Corballis shows us how mind-wandering not only frees us from moment-to-moment drudgery, but also from the limitations of our immediate selves. Mind-wandering strengthens our imagination, fueling the flights of invention, storytelling, and empathy that underlie our shared humanity; furthermore, he explains, our tendency to wander back and forth through the timeline of our lives is fundamental to our very sense of ourselves as coherent, continuing personalities.Full of unusual examples and surprising discoveries, The Wandering Mind mounts a vigorous defense of inattention—even as it never fails to hold the reader’s.Praise for The Wandering Mind“[A] conversational, sincere and amusing book about the tendency of our minds to stray from whatever it is we are actually supposed to be focusing on. . . . [An] engaging exploration of the subject.” —Times Higher Education, Book of the Week“Michael Corballis, the scientist, takes you by the hand and weaves through an avalanche of information from psychology, literature, history, and more to elucidate my favorite mental state—mind wandering. His high capacity for erudition, lucidity, and warmth have never shined more brightly.” —Michael S. Gazzaniga“The Wandering Mind is a pleasure to read—a lively book that will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers.” —Thomas Suddendorf, author of The Gap
Wandering Towards a Goal: How Can Mindless Mathematical Laws Give Rise To Aims And Intention? (The Frontiers Collection)
by Anthony Aguirre Brendan Foster Zeeya MeraliThis collection of prize-winning essays addresses the controversial question of how meaning and goals can emerge in a physical world governed by mathematical laws. What are the prerequisites for a system to have goals? What makes a physical process into a signal? Does eliminating the homunculus solve the problem? The three first-prize winners, Larissa Albantakis, Carlo Rovelli and Jochen Szangolies tackle exactly these challenges, while many other aspects (agency, the role of the observer, causality versus teleology, ghosts in the machine etc.) feature in the other award winning contributions. All contributions are accessible to non-specialists.These seventeen stimulating and often entertaining essays are enhanced versions of the prize-winning entries to the FQXi essay competition in 2017.The Foundational Questions Institute, FQXi, catalyzes, supports, and disseminates research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology, particularly new frontiers and innovative ideas integral to a deep understanding of reality, but unlikely to be supported by conventional funding sources.
Wanderlust: A History of Walking
by Rebecca SolnitDrawing together many histories-of anatomical evolution and city design, of treadmills and labyrinths, of walking clubs and sexual mores-Rebecca Solnit creates a fascinating portrait of the range of possibilities presented by walking. Arguing that the history of walking includes walking for pleasure as well as for political, aesthetic, and social meaning, Solnit focuses on the walkers whose everyday and extreme acts have shaped our culture, from philosophers to poets to mountaineers. She profiles some of the most significant walkers in history and fiction-from Wordsworth to Gary Snyder, from Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennet to Andre Breton's Nadja-finding a profound relationship between walking and thinking and walking and culture. Solnit argues for the necessity of preserving the time and space in which to walk in our ever more car-dependent and accelerated world.
Wandler für Luftschallmessungen (Fachwissen Technische Akustik)
by Michael MöserLuftschall überstreicht nicht nur den Bereich menschlicher Sprachkommunikation, sondern belegt als Infraschall und Ultraschall Bereiche, die auch intensiv technisch oder medizinisch genutzt werden. Diese Nutzung setzt die Kenntnis seiner Eigenschaften voraus, die mit dem zeitlichen und räumlichenVerlauf der Druckänderungen im Schallfeld beschrieben werden können. Für die Wandlung der Schallparameter in registrierbare Werte stehen verschiedene Möglichkeiten zur Verfügung. Die Umsetzung in elektrische Spannungen mit Mikrofonen steht dabei weit an der Spitze. Je nach erforderlicher Genauigkeit werden hierbei Konstruktionen auf unterschiedlicher Basis verwendet. Dieser Band befasst sich mit den Eigenschaften und Möglichkeiten der verschiedenen Lösungen, den damit verbundenen Grenzen der Schallgrößenerfassung sowie einem Ausblick auf zukünftige Entwicklungen.
Wanted: Flesh-Eating Beetles (Fountas & Pinnell Classroom, Guided Reading Grade 4)
by Lynda JonesBEETLES TO THE RESCUE When scientists look to nature to help them, they can find surprising solutions to some messy problems. NIMAC-sourced textbook
Wanted, More than Human Intellectual Property: Animal Authors and Human Machines
by Johanna GibsonThis book analyses animal creativity in order to unsettle the dominant assumptions that underpin current ideas of authorship and ownership in intellectual property.Drawing upon theories of animal behaviour and cognitive ethology, the book exposes and disrupts the anthropocentrism that informs prevailing assumptions about creativity, intentionality, and authorship within the field of intellectual property, towards a new theory of authorship and personhood through play and the playful. Moving on to challenge the invocation of a more general human-nonhuman distinction in this context, the book also engages the challenge to this distinction posed by artificial intelligence. Incorporating critical animal studies, behavioural science, ethology, critical legal studies, and legal philosophy, the book presents a new idea of creativity, which undermines the kind of rivalrous models now common in the field of intellectual property.This book will be of considerable interest to those studying and teaching in the area of intellectual property, as well as in animal law. It will also appeal to legal theorists and others working in the social sciences in the areas of posthumanism and animal studies.
Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
by Luke BurgisA groundbreaking exploration of why we want what we want, and a toolkit for freeing ourselves from chasing unfulfilling desires.Gravity affects every aspect of our physical being, but there’s a psychological force just as powerful—yet almost nobody has heard of it. It’s responsible for bringing groups of people together and pulling them apart, making certain goals attractive to some and not to others, and fueling cycles of anxiety and conflict. In Wanting, Luke Burgis draws on the work of French polymath René Girard to bring this hidden force to light and reveals how it shapes our lives and societies. According to Girard, humans don’t desire anything independently. Human desire is mimetic—we imitate what other people want. This affects the way we choose partners, friends, careers, clothes, and vacation destinations. Mimetic desire is responsible for the formation of our very identities. It explains the enduring relevancy of Shakespeare’s plays, why Peter Thiel decided to be the first investor in Facebook, and why our world is growing more divided as it becomes more connected.Wanting also shows that conflict does not arise because of our differences—it comes from our sameness. Because we learn to want what other people want, we often end up competing for the same things. Ignoring our large similarities, we cling to our perceived differences.Drawing on his experience as an entrepreneur, teacher, and student of classical philosophy and theology, Burgis shares tactics that help turn blind wanting into intentional wanting--not by trying to rid ourselves of desire, but by desiring differently. It’s possible to be more in control of the things we want, to achieve more independence from trends and bubbles, and to find more meaning in our work and lives.The future will be shaped by our desires. Wanting shows us how to desire a better one.
The War Against America: Study of Revenge
by Laurie MylroieThe destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon -- all within one hour on September 11, 2001 -- demonstrated America's shocking vulnerability to terrorism.Yet terror had already emerged on America's shores eight years earlier, when the mysterious terrorist mastermind, Ramzi Yousef (arrested after a botched attempt to down a dozen U.S. airlines) bombed the World Trade Center in an attempt to fell the buildings.His attacks were viewed as the harbinger of a new terrorism, carried out by an elusive enemy driven by religious fanaticism to unprecedented hatred of the United States.But is that perception accurate? A real-life detective story, The War Against America engages the reader in a gripping examination of the evidence regarding Yousef and his terrorism. It reveals the split between New York and Washington that emerged during the investigation and tells a terrifying tale of America left exposed and vulnerable following the mishandling of what was once the most ambitious terrorist attack ever attempted on U.S. soil.
War Against The Weak: Eugenics And America's Campaign To Create A Master Race
by Edwin BlackIn War Against the Weak, award-winning investigative journalist Edwin Black connects the crimes of the Nazis to a pseudoscientific American movement of the early 20th century called eugenics. Based on selective breeding of human beings, eugenics began in laboratories on Long Island but ended in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Cruel and racist laws were enacted in 27 U.S. states, and the supporters of eugenics included progressive thinkers like Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Ultimately, over 60,000 "unfit" Americans were coercively sterilized, a third of them after Nuremberg declared such practices crimes against humanity. This is a timely and shocking chronicle of bad science at its worst — with many important lessons for the impending genetic age.
War and Aesthetics: Art, Technology, and the Futures of Warfare (Prisms: Humanities and War #1)
by Jens Bjering, Anders Engberg-Pedersen, Solveig Gade, and Christine Strandmose ToftA provocative edited collection that takes an original approach toward the black box of military technology, surveillance, and AI—and reveals the aesthetic dimension of warfare.War and Aesthetics gathers leading artists, political scientists, and scholars to outline the aesthetic dimension of warfare and offer a novel perspective on its contemporary character and the construction of its potential futures. Edited by a team of four scholars, Jens Bjering, Anders Engberg-Pedersen, Solveig Gade, and Christine Strandmose Toft, this timely volume examines warfare through the lens of aesthetics, arguing that the aesthetic configurations of perception, technology, and time are central to the artistic engagement with warfare, just as they are key to military AI, weaponry, and satellite surveillance.People mostly think of war as the violent manifestation of a political rationality. But when war is viewed through the lens of aesthesis—meaning perception and sensibility—military technology becomes an applied science of sensory cognition. An outgrowth of three war seminars that took place in Copenhagen between 2018 and 2021, War and Aesthetics engages in three main areas of inquiry—the rethinking of aesthetics in the field of art and in the military sphere; the exploration of techno-aesthetics and the wider political and theoretical implications of war technology; and finally, the analysis of future temporalities that these technologies produce. The editors gather various traditions and perspectives ranging from literature to media studies to international relations, creating a unique historical and scientific approach that broadly traces the entanglement of war and aesthetics across the arts, social sciences, and humanities from ancient times to the present. As international conflict looms between superpowers, War and Aesthetics presents new and illuminating ways to think about future conflict in a world where violence is only ever a few steps away.ContributorsLouise Amoore, Ryan Bishop, Jens Bjering, James Der Derian, Anthony Downey, Anders Engberg-Pedersen, Solveig Gade, Mark B. Hansen, Caroline Holmqvist, Vivienne Jabri, Caren Kaplan, Phil Klay, Kate McLoughlin, Elaine Scarry, Christine Strandmose Toft, Joseph Vogl, Arkadi Zaides
War and Health: The Medical Consequences of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (Anthropologies of American Medicine: Culture, Power, and Practice #4)
by Catherine Lutz and Andrea MazzarinoProvides a detailed look at how war affects human life and health far beyond the battlefield Since 2010, a team of activists, social scientists, and physicians have monitored the lives lost as a result of the US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan through an initiative called the Costs of War Project. Unlike most studies of war casualties, this research looks beyond lives lost in violence to consider those who have died as a result of illness, injuries, and malnutrition that would not have occurred had the war not taken place. Incredibly, the Cost of War Project has found that, of the more than 1,000,000 lives lost in the recent US wars, a minimum of 800,000 died not from violence, but from indirect causes. War and Health offers a critical examination of these indirect casualties, examining health outcomes on the battlefield and elsewhere—in hospitals, homes, and refugee camps—both during combat and in the years following, as communities struggle to live normal lives despite decimated social services, lack of access to medical care, ongoing illness and disability, malnutrition, loss of infrastructure, and increased substance abuse. The volume considers the effect of the war on both civilians and on US service members, in war zones—where healthcare systems have been destroyed by long-term conflict—and in the United States, where healthcare is highly developed. Ultimately, it draws much-needed attention to the far-reaching health consequences of the recent US wars, and argues that we cannot go to war—and remain at war—without understanding the catastrophic effect war has on the entire ecosystem of human health.
War and Moral Dissonance
by Peter A. FrenchThis collection of essays, inspired by the author's experience teaching ethics to Marine and Navy chaplains during the Iraq War, examines the moral and psychological dilemmas posed by war. The first section deals directly with Dr Peter A. French's teaching experience and the specific challenges posed by teaching applied and theoretical ethics to men and women wrestling with the immediate and personal moral conflicts occasioned by the dissonance of their duties as military officers with their religious convictions. The following chapters grew out of philosophical discussions with these chaplains regarding specific ethical issues surrounding the Iraq War, including the nature of moral evil, forgiveness, mercy, retributive punishment, honour, torture, responsibility and just war theory. This book represents a unique viewpoint on the philosophical problems of war, illuminating the devastating toll combat experiences take on both an individual's sense of identity and a society's professed moral code.
War and Remembrance: Recollecting and Representing War (Human Dimensions in Foreign Policy, Military Studies, and Security Studies)
by Renée Dickason, Delphine Letort, Michel Prum, and Stéphanie A.H. BélangerMemory, while seemingly a thing of the past, has much to reveal in the present. With its focus on memory, War and Remembrance provides new viewpoints in the field of war representation.Bringing an interdisciplinary approach to discussions of the cultural memory of war, the collection focuses on narratives, either fictional or testimonial, that challenge ideological discourses of war. The acts of remembrance and of waging war are constantly evolving. A range of case studies – analyzing representations of war in art, film, museums, and literature from Nigeria, Australia, Sri Lanka, Canada, and beyond – questions our current approaches to memory studies while offering reinterpretations of established narratives. Throughout, a commitment to Indigenous perspectives, to examining the ongoing legacy of colonialism, and to a continued reckoning with the Second World War foregrounds what is often forgotten in the writing of a single, official history.War and Remembrance invites readers to cast a reflexive look at wars and conflicts past – some of them forgotten, others still vividly commemorated – the better to understand the cultural, political, and social stake of memory as a source of conflict and exchange, of resistance and opposition, and of negotiation and reconciliation.
War and Technology: Society, Technology, And War From Ancient Times To The Present (Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology)
by Jeremy Black&“[A] scholarly overview of military technology throughout history—starting roughly in the 15th century and extending into the future . . . insightful.&”—Publishers Weekly In this engaging book, Jeremy Black argues that technology neither acts as an independent variable nor operates without major limitations. This includes its capacity to obtain end results, as technology&’s impact is far from simple and its pathways are by no means clear. After considering such key conceptual points, Black discusses important technological advances in weaponry and power projection from sailing warships to aircraft carriers, muskets to tanks, balloons to unmanned drones—in each case, taking into account what difference these advances made. He addresses not only firepower but also power projection and technologies of logistics, command, and control. Examining military technologies in their historical context and the present centered on the Revolution in Military Affairs and Military Transformation, Black then forecasts possible future trends. &“Clear, concise, and thoughtful. An eminently readable synthesis of historical literature on technology and war.&”—John France, author of Perilous Glory: The Rise of Western Military Power &“An interesting, thought provoking work by a major military historian . . . whose depth and wide range of knowledge across the entire sweep of world military history is without parallel.... Those who read this book closely will be richly rewarded for it is a mine of useful information and grist for discussion.&”—Spencer C. Tucker, author of The European Powers in the First World War &“A most useful introduction to a very complex subject, and particularly valuable for its notes and references to other works. Provocative and vigorously argued . . . Highly recommended.&”—Choice
War and Tropical Forests: Conservation in Areas of Armed Conflict
by Steven PriceExplore the conservation implications of recent armed conflicts in the tropical forest regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America! From the lowland rainforests of the Colombian Amazon to the rugged habitat of Rwanda's mountain gorillas, civil, ethnic, and international wars have had severe impacts on tropical forests and the communities they sustain. The reemergence of war and the persistence of its impacts have led many conservationists to reassess their efforts and adapt their strategies to a new set of responsibilities and urgent challenges. War and Tropical Forests: Conservation in Areas of Armed Conflict explores these challenges and the lessons learned by conservationists working in conflict zones around the world. It combines case studies and comparative analyses by leading experts in ecological research, environmental policy, and conservation field programs to provide insight into the environmental dimensions of recent social, political, and humanitarian crises. War and Tropical Forests reviews lessons learned from conflict zones around the world and explores: the potential of conservation to reduce the frequency, duration, and impact of war preparation of conservation programs and local communities for crises strategies for maintaining conservation capacity during times of conflict the underlying political and economic factors that fuel war legal mechanisms for addressing wartime damage to tropical forests building partnerships amidst civil strife and political upheaval This essential book also examines: the Indonesian military's role in illegal logging and deforestation violent conflict and gorilla poaching in the Democratic Republic of Congo armed movements and forest conservation in Nicaragua's largest protected area and much more! War and Tropical Forests also addresses the role of militaries in the inequitable control and illicit use of forest resources, the environmental impact of refugees, the growing social and environmental costs of efforts to eradicate drug crops, and the impact of conflict on protected area management in the habitat of Africa's endangered great apes. War and Tropical Forests is an essential resource for conservation practitioners and policymakers, as well as anyone involved with human rights, conflict resolution, rural development, international law, or foreign relations.
War at the Speed of Light: Directed-Energy Weapons and the Future of Twenty-First-Century Warfare
by Louis A. Del MonteWar at the Speed of Light describes the revolutionary and ever-increasing role of directed-energy weapons (such as laser, microwave, electromagnetic pulse, and cyberspace weapons) in warfare. Louis A. Del Monte delineates the threat that such weapons pose to disrupting the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, which has kept the major powers of the world from engaging in nuclear warfare. Potential U.S. adversaries, such as China and Russia, are developing hypersonic missiles and using swarming tactics as a means to defeat the U.S. military. In response, the U.S. Department of Defense established the 2018 National Security Strategy, emphasizing directed-energy weapons, which project devastation at the speed of light and are capable of destroying hypersonic missiles and enemy drones and missile swarms. Del Monte analyzes how modern warfare is changing in three fundamental ways: the pace of war is quickening, the rate at which weapons project devastation is reaching the speed of light, and cyberspace is now officially a battlefield. In this acceleration of combat called &“hyperwar,&” Del Monte shows how disturbingly close the world is to losing any deterrence to nuclear warfare.
The War Behind the Wire: Second World War POW Experiences (Voices of the Veterans)
by Patrick WilsonPublished to coincide with the major 2 part BBC1 series (Autumn 2000) of the same name, War Behind the Wire focuses on the capture, interrogation, the comradeship of camp life, escape planning and forgery techniques, tunnelling, the thrill of life on the run, re-capture and punishment, the joy of liberation. All these experiences and more are vividly described by former POWs of the Second World War and their German camp guards, in War Behind the Wire.Through gripping first-hand accounts enhanced with numerous illustrations, we learn the true story of the ill-fated Great Escape, which ended in the barbaric murder of 50 gallant men of many nationalities. Former inmates tell what life in Colditz Castle was really like.War Behind the Wire is an inspiring book of memories and experiences of those who never gave up hope. These will be as unforgettable for the reader as they were for those who found themselves in captivity.