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The strange death of Europe : immigration, identity, Islam / by Murray, Douglas,1979-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.This book is not only an analysis of demographic and political realities in Europe, but also an eyewitness account of a continent in self-destruct mode. It includes reporting from across the entire continent, from the places where migrants land to the places they end up, from the people who appear to welcome them in to the places which cannot accept them.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Atlas obscura. an explorer's guide to the world's living wonders / by Giaimo, Cara,author.; Foer, Joshua,author.; Fritts, Rachel,author.;
"From the bestselling authors of Atlas Obscura and Gastro Obscura, comes Wild Life, an over-the-top, dazzling collection of the world's most fascinating, most unusual, and least-understood natural wonders. It's more than a field guide -- it's an adventure. From the curious minds of Atlas Obscura, authors of #1 New York Times bestselling Atlas Obscura and Gastro Obscura, comes an unputdownable tour through the world's most extraordinary natural wonders and curiosities. Learn how dung beetles navigate by the stars and trees communicate through their roots. Meet one of the strongest animals in the world: the puny peacock mantis shrimp. Visit a 44,000 year old shrub, float along flying rivers, and explore a garbage dump teeming with endangered storks. There are first-person interviews: hear from a honey hunter and his avian partners, a scientist working to understand the hidden language of prairie dogs, an offshore radio DJ who is at the heart of the local fishing community. Examine old examples of bird song notation written on sheet music. Featuring over 500 extraordinary plants, animals, and natural phenomena with illustrations and photos on every page, first-person interviews, and engaging infographics, the book takes readers around the globe, with stops in every continent -- from Arctic deserts to lush jungles, to the deepest fathoms of the ocean, and into the heart of our densest cities. In a time where the world that feels more knowable than ever, where can access anything with the click of a mouse or a swipe of a finger, and where nature documentaries are a dime a dozen, Wild Life finds a way to reinvigorate our send of wonder about the natural world"--
Subjects: Curiosities and wonders.; Life (Biology); Voyages and travels.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Disappointment River : finding and losing the Northwest Passage / by Castner, Brian,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In 1789, Alexander Mackenzie travelled the 1,125 miles of the immense river in Canada that now bears his name, in search of the fabled Northwest Passage, only to confront impassable pack ice. In 2016, the acclaimed memoirist Brian Castner retraced Mackenzie's route by canoe in a grueling journey--and discovered the Passage he could not find. Disappointment River is a dual historical narrative and travel memoir that at once transports readers back to the heroic age of North American exploration and places them in a still rugged but increasingly fragile Arctic wilderness in the process of profound alteration by the dual forces of energy extraction and climate change. Eleven years before Lewis and Clark, the Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie actually crossed the North American continent with a team of voyageurs and Native guides. Before that he was the first to discover a route to the Arctic Ocean from the Great Lakes, along the river he named "Disappointment" because he believed he'd failed in his mission to find a trade route to the riches of the East. In fact he had--he was just two-plus centuries early. In this book, Brian Castner not only retells the story of Mackenzie's epic voyages in vivid prose, he personally retraces his travels in an 1,125-mile canoe voyage down the river that bears his name, battling exhaustion, exposure, mosquitoes, white water rapids and the threat of bears. He transports readers to a world rarely glimpsed in the media, of tar sands, thawing permafrost, remote Native villages and, at the end, a wide open Arctic Ocean that is quickly becoming a far-northern Mississippi of barges and pipelines and oil money."--
Subjects: Castner, Brian; Mackenzie, Alexander, Sir, 1764-1820; Canoes and canoeing;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Seven worlds, one planet [videorecording] / by Attenborough, David,1926-narrator.; BBC Studios,film distributor.; British Broadcasting Corporation,broadcaster,production company.;
Narrator, David Attenborough.Millions of years ago, incredible forces ripped apart the Earth's crust, creating our seven continents, each with its own distinct climate, its own distinct terrain, and its own unique animal life. From the colorful paradise of South America to the scorching heat of Africa, this showcases the true character of each continent in turn and reveals just how it has shaped all life there.Canadian Home Video Rating: PG.DVD ; widescreen presentation ; Dolby Digital 5.1.
Subjects: Nonfiction television programs.; Television mini-series.; Documentary television programs.; Wildlife television programs.; Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; Natural history.; Animal behavior.;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Checkpoint Charlie : the Cold War, the Berlin Wall, and the most dangerous place on earth / by MacGregor, Iain,author.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-326) and index."Checkpoint Charlie is the story of the men and women - from both sides of the Cold War's political divide - who lived, served on, or escaped through the Berlin Wall during its life span (13th August 1961 - 9th November 1989). This physical monstrosity created by the East German communist state was to divide one of the most beautiful and by 1961, ruined cities of the world; dividing families, friends and lovers. Its creation, and its sudden collapse twenty-seven years later, were the key moments of the Cold War. Checkpoint Charlie was the one place in a paranoid continent where East faced West across one hundred yards of No Man's Land. Where soldiers served, spies watched through trained binoculars, escapees fled, politicians made speeches, people died and, mothers wept. The Wall was seen by many as permanent as the Himalayas. Across the Wall's almost three decades of existence, over two hundred people died trying to escape through it to the West, and these are just the recorded deaths. Many more who attempted and failed to break to freedom, would later die of their wounds in an East German hospital or prison. Historian Iain MacGregor travels to America, Britain, Germany and France to talk to the many people the Berlin Wall affected and who found themselves at the gates of Checkpoint Charlie - either on the Allied, or Soviet side. He interviews soldiers, politicians, journalists, spies, policemen, refugees and escapees to build a picture of what life was like in the city that was universally seen as the "hot spot" of the Cold War for four decades"--
Subjects: Berlin Wall, Berlin, Germany, 1961-1989; Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin, Germany, 1961-1989; Cold War;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The quickening : creation and community at the ends of the Earth / by Rush, Elizabeth A.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."An astonishing, vital book about Antarctica, climate change, and motherhood from the author of Rising, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. In 2019, fifty-seven scientists and crew set out onboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer. Their destination: Thwaites Glacier. Their goal: to learn as much as possible about this mysterious place, never before visited by humans, and believed to be both rapidly deteriorating and capable of making a catastrophic impact on global sea-level rise. In The Quickening, Elizabeth Rush documents their voyage, offering the sublime--seeing an iceberg for the first time; the staggering waves of the Drake Passage; the torqued, unfamiliar contours of Thwaites--alongside the workaday moments of this groundbreaking expedition. A ping-pong tournament at sea. Long hours in the lab. All the effort that goes into caring for and protecting human life in a place that is inhospitable to it. Along the way, she takes readers on a personal journey around a more intimate question: What does it mean to bring a child into the world at this time of radical change? What emerges is a new kind of Antarctica story, one preoccupied not with flag planting but with the collective and challenging work of imagining a better future. With understanding the language of a continent where humans have only been present for two centuries. With the contributions and concerns of women, who were largely excluded from voyages until the last few decades, and of crew members of color, whose labor has often gone unrecognized. The Quickening teems with their voices--with the colorful stories and personalities of Rush's shipmates--in a thrilling chorus. Urgent and brave, absorbing and vulnerable, The Quickening is another essential book from Elizabeth Rush."--
Subjects: Climatic changes.; Explorers; Motherhood.; Nature; Women and the environment.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Tsqelmucwílc : the Kamloops Indian Residential School--resistance and a reckoning / by Haig-Brown, Celia,1947-author.; Fred, Randy,author.; Gottfriedson, Garry,1954-author.; Container of (work):Haig-Brown, Celia,1947-Resistance and renewal.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The tragic and shameful story of Indigenous erasure and genocide at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada. In May 2021, the world was shocked by news of the detection of 215 unmarked graves on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, Canada. Ground-penetrating radar confirmed the deaths of students as young as three in the infamous residential school system, which systematically removed children from their families and brought them to the schools. At these Christian-run, government-supported institutions, they were subjected to physical, mental, and sexual abuse while their Indigenous languages and traditions were stifled and denounced. The egregious abuses suffered in residential schools across the continent caused--as the 2021 discoveries confirmed--death for too many and a multigenerational legacy of trauma for those who survived. "Tsqelmucwílc" (pronounced cha-CAL-mux-weel) is a Secwepemc phrase loosely translated as "We return to being human again." Tsqelmucwílc is the story of those who survived the Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS), based on the 1988 book Resistance and Renewal, a groundbreaking history of the school and the first book on residential schools ever published in Canada. Tsqelmucwílc includes the original text as well as new material by the original book's author, Celia Haig-Brown; essays by Secwepemc poet and KIRS survivor Garry Gottfriedson and Nuu-chah-nulth elder and residential school survivor Randy Fred; and first-hand reminiscences by other survivors of KIRS, as well as their children, on their experience and the impact of their trauma throughout their lives. Read both within and outside the context of the grim 2021 discoveries, Tsqelmucwílc is a tragic story in the history of Indigenous peoples of the indignities suffered at the hands of their colonizers, but it is equally a remarkable tale of Indigenous survival, resilience, and courage."--
Subjects: Kamloops Indian Residential School.; Indigenous peoples; Indigenous peoples; Indigenous peoples; Indigenous peoples; First Nations; First Nations; First Nations; First Nations;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The looting machine : warlords, oligarchs, corporations, smugglers, and the theft of Africa's wealth / by Burgis, Tom.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.A curse of riches -- Futungo, Inc. -- "It is forbidden to piss in the park" -- Incubators of poverty -- Guanxi -- when elephants fight, the grass gets trampled -- A bridge to Beijing -- Finance and cyanide -- God has nothing to do with it -- Black gold -- the new money kings -- Complicity.The trade in oil, gas, gems, metals and rare earth minerals wreaks havoc in Africa. During the years when Brazil, India, China and the other "emerging markets" have transformed their economies, Africa's resource states remained tethered to the bottom of the industrial supply chain. While Africa accounts for about 30 per cent of the world's reserves of hydrocarbons and minerals and 14 per cent of the world's population, its share of global manufacturing stood in 2011 exactly where it stood in 2000: at 1 percent. In his first book, The Looting Machine , Tom Burgis exposes the truth about the African development miracle: for the resource states, it's a mirage. The oil, copper, diamonds, gold and coltan deposits attract a global network of traders, bankers, corporate extractors and investors who combine with venal political cabals to loot the states' value. And the vagaries of resource-dependent economies could pitch Africa's new middle class back into destitution just as quickly as they climbed out of it. The ground beneath their feet is as precarious as a Congolese mine shaft; their prosperity could spill away like crude from a busted pipeline. This catastrophic social disintegration is not merely a continuation of Africa's past as a colonial victim. The looting now is accelerating as never before. As global demand for Africa's resources rises, a handful of Africans are becoming legitimately rich but the vast majority, like the continent as a whole, is being fleeced. Outsiders tend to think of Africa as a great drain of philanthropy. But look more closely at the resource industry and the relationship between Africa and the rest of the world looks rather different.LSC
Subjects: Mineral industries; Mines and mineral resources;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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A house in the sky : a memoir / by Lindhout, Amanda.; Corbett, Sara.;
Includes bibliographical references."The spectacularly dramatic memoir of a woman whose curiosity about the world led her from rural Canada to imperiled and dangerous countries on every continent, and then into fifteen months of harrowing captivity in Somalia--a story of courage, resilience, and extraordinary grace.At the age of eighteen, Amanda Lindhout moved from her hardscrabble Alberta hometown to the big city--Calgary--and worked as a cocktail waitress, saving her tips so she could travel the globe. As a child, she escaped a violent household by paging through National Geographic and imagining herself in its exotic locales. Now she would see those places for real. She backpacked through Latin America, Laos, Bangladesh, and India, and emboldened by each experience, went on to travel solo across Sudan, Syria, and Pakistan. In war-ridden Afghanistan and Iraq she carved out a fledgling career as a TV reporter. And then, in August 2008, she traveled to Mogadishu, Somalia--"the most dangerous place on earth"--to report on the fighting there. On her fourth day in the country, she and her photojournalist companion were abducted. An astoundingly intimate and harrowing account of Lindhout's fifteen months as a captive, A House in the Sky illuminates the psychology, motivations, and desperate extremism of her young guards and the men in charge of them. She is kept in chains, nearly starved, and subjected to unthinkable abuse. She survives by imagining herself in a "house in the sky," looking down at the woman shackled below, and finding strength and hope in the power of her own mind. Lindhout's decision, upon her release, to counter the violence she endured by founding an organization to help the Somali people rebuild their country through education is a wrenching testament to the capacity of the human spirit and an astonishing portrait of the power of compassion and forgiveness"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Lindhout, Amanda.; Hostages; Journalists;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 2
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Ice walker : a polar bear's journey through the fragile Arctic / by Raffan, James,author.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 145-152)."From the top of the world, Hudson Bay looks like an enormous paw print on the torso of the continent, and through a vast network of lakes and rivers, the water in this bay connects to oceans across the globe. Here, at the heart of everything, walks Nanurjuk, or Nanu, one polar bear among the six thousand that traverse the 1.23 million square kilometres of ice and snow covering the bay. For millennia, Nanu's ancestors have roamed this great expanse, living, evolving, and surviving alongside humans in one of the most challenging and unforgiving habitats on earth. But that world is changing. In the Arctic's lands and waters, oil has been extracted and spilled. As global temperatures have risen, the sea ice that Nanu and her young need to hunt seal and fish has melted, forcing them to wait on land where the delicate balance between them and their two-legged neighbours has now shifted. This is the icescape that author and geographer James Raffan invites us to inhabit in Ice Walker. In precise and provocative prose, he brings readers inside Nanu's world as she treks uncertainly around the heart of Hudson Bay, searching for nourishment for the children that grow inside her. She stops at nothing to protect her cubs from the dangers she can see,other bears, wolves, whales, humans and those she cannot. By focusing his lens on this bear family, Raffan closes the gap between humans and bears, showing us how, like the water of the Hudson Bay, our existence and our future is tied to Nanu's, and asks us to consider what might be done about this fragile world before it is gone for good. Masterful, vivid, and haunting, Ice Walker is an utterly unique piece of creative non-fiction and a deeply affecting call to action."--
Subjects: Polar bear; Polar bear; Global warming; Climatic changes; Global temperature changes;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Results 121 to 130 of 218 | « previous |