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In Letters of Note: Love, Shaun Usher gathers together some of the most powerful messages about love ever composed, whether inspired by love’s first blush or the recriminations at its ending, the regrets of unrequited feelings and the joys of passions known.
Includes letters by: Simone de Beauvoir, Frida Kahlo Georgia O’Keeffe, Zora Neale Hurston Evelyn Waugh, Vita Sackville-West Nelson Mandela, John Steinbeck & many more

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The first step on the road to change is to imagine possibility.
Imagine A Country offers visions of a new future from an astonishing array of Scottish voices, from comedians to economists, writers to musicians. Edited, curated and introduced by bestselling author Val McDermid and geographer Jo Sharp, it is a collection of ideas, dreams and ambitions, aiming to inspire change, hope and imagination. Featuring:
ALI SMITH, PHILL JUPITUS, A.L. KENNEDY, ALAN CUMMING, KERRY HUDSON, GREG HEMPHILL, CAROL ANN DUFFY, CHRIS BROOKMYRE, ALISON WATT, ALASDAIR GRAY, LEILA ABOULELA, IAN RANKIN, SELINA HALES, SANJEEV KOHLI, JACKIE KAY, DAMIAN BARR, ELAINE C. SMITH, ABIR MUKHERJEE, ANNE GLOVER, ALAN BISSETT, LOUISE WELSH, JO CLIFFORD, RICKY ROSS, TRISHNA SINGH, CAMERON McNEISH, ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH, CARLA JENKINS, DON PATERSON, AND MANY MORE . . .

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The ancient world saw the birth and collapse of great civilizations. In mainstream history the Classical world is dominated by Greece and Rome, and the Biblical world is centred on the Hebrews. Yet the roughly four-and-a-half thousand years (4000 bcad 550) covered in this book saw many peoples come and go within the brawling, multi-cultural mass of humanity that occupied the ancient Middle East, Mediterranean and beyond. While a handful of ancient cultures have garnered much of the credit, these forgotten peoples also helped to lay the foundations of our modern world. This guide brings these lost peoples out of the shadows to highlight their influence and achievements. <br/> <br/>Forty-five entries span the birth of civilization in Mesopotamia to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, offering an alternative history focusing on the names we arent familiar with, from the Hurrians to the Hephthalites, as well as the peoples whose names we know, such as the Philistines and the Vandals, but whose real significance has been obscured. Each entry charts the rise and fall of a lost people, and how their culture echoes through history into the present. Important ancient artefacts are illustrated throughout and fifty specially drawn maps help orientate the reader within this tumultuous period of history. Philip Matyszak brings to life the rich diversity of the peoples founding cities, inventing alphabets and battling each other in the ancient world, and explores how and why they came to be forgotten.

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The disappearance of China&#8217;s naturally occurring forests is one of the most significant environmental shifts in the country&#8217;s history, one often blamed on imperial demand for lumber. China&#8217;s early modern forest history is typically viewed as a centuries-long process of environmental decline, culminating in a nineteenth-century social and ecological crisis. Pushing back against this narrative of deforestation, Ian Miller charts the rise of timber plantations between about 1000 and 1700, when natural forests were replaced with anthropogenic ones. Miller demonstrates that this form of forest management generally rested on private ownership under relatively distant state oversight and taxation. He further draws on in-depth case studies of shipbuilding and imperial logging to argue that this novel landscape was not created through simple extractive pressures, but by attempts to incorporate institutional and ecological complexity into a unified imperial state.Miller uses the emergence of anthropogenic forests in south China to rethink both temporal and spatial frameworks for Chinese history and the nature of Chinese empire. Because dominant European forestry models do not neatly overlap with the non-Western world, China&#8217;s history is often left out of global conversations about them; Miller&#8217;s work rectifies this omission and suggests that in some ways, China&#8217;s forest system may have worked better than the more familiar European institutions.

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In the first half of the twentieth century, when seismology was still in in its infancy, renowned geologist Bailey Willis faced off with fellow high-profile scientist Robert T. Hill in a debate with life-or-death consequences for the millions of people migrating west. Their conflict centered on a consequential question: Is southern California earthquake country?These entwined biographies of Hill and Willis offer a lively, accessible account of the ways that politics and financial interests influenced the development of earthquake science. During this period of debate, severe quakes in Santa Barbara (1925) and Long Beach (1933) caused scores of deaths and a significant amount of damage, offering turning points for scientific knowledge and mainstreaming the idea of earthquake safety. The Great Quake Debate sheds light on enduring questions surrounding the environmental hazards of our dynamic planet. What challenges face scientists bearing bad news in the public arena? How do we balance risk and the need to sustain communities and cities? And how well has California come to grips with its many faults?

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Perhaps the most explosive issue in South Africa today is the question of land ownership. The central theme in this country’s colonial history is the dispossession of indigenous African societies by white settlers, and current calls for land restitution are based on this loss. Yet popular knowledge of the actual process by which Africans were deprived of their land is remarkably sketchy. This book recounts an important part of this history, describing how the Khoisan and Xhosa people were dispossessed and subjugated from the time that Europeans first arrived until the end of the Cape Frontier Wars (1779–1878). The Land Wars traces the unfolding hostilities involving Dutch and British colonial authorities, trekboers and settlers, and the San, Khoikhoin, Xhosa, Mfengu and Thembu people – as well as conflicts within these groups. In the process it describes the loss of land by Africans to successive waves of white settlers as the colonial frontier inexorably advanced. The book does not shy away from controversial issues such as war atrocities committed by both sides, or the expedient decision of some of the indigenous peoples to fight alongside the colonisers rather than against them. The Land Wars is an epic story, featuring well-known figures such as Ngqika, Lord Charles Somerset and his son, Henry, Andries Stockenström, Hintsa, Harry Smith, Sandile, Maqoma, Bartle Frere and Sarhili, and events such as the arrival of the 1820 Settlers and the Xhosa cattle-killing. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand South Africa’s past and present.

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Joseph R. Garry (1910&#65533;1975), a Coeur d&#65533;Alene Indian, served six terms as president of the National Congress of American Indians in the 1950s. He led the battles to compel the federal government to honor treaties and landownership and dominated an era in government-Indian relations little attended by historians. Firmly believing that forced assimilation of Indians and termination of federal trusteeship over Native Americans and their reservations would doom Indian cultures, Garry had his greatest success as a leader in uniting American Indian tribes to fend off Congress&#65533;s plan to abandon Indian citizens.Born into a chief&#65533;s family and raised on the Coeur d&#65533;Alene reservation in northern Idaho, Garry rose to chairmanship of his tribal council, president of the Affiliated Tribes of the Northwest Indians, and leadership of NCAI. He was the first Native American elected to the Idaho House and Senate.Handsome, personable, and articulate, Garry traveled constantly to urge Indian tribes to hold onto their land, develop economic resources, and educate their young. In a turbulent decade, Garry elevated Indians to political and social participation in American life, and set in motion forces that underlie Indian relations today.

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Mending Fences illuminates the forces driving Moscow&#65533;s China policy, from the Ussuri River clashes in 1969 to the «strategic partnership» of the 1990s. Elizabeth Wishnick analyzes the efforts of Soviet leaders simultaneously to maintain their supremacy in the international communist movement, defend their borders from a perceived Chinese threat, and ensure the compliance of regional authorities in enforcing China policy.

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This new edition of Karen Blair&#65533;s popular anthology originally published in 1989 includes thirteen essays, eight of which are new. Together they suggest the wide spectrum of women&#65533;s experiences that make up a vital part of Northwest history.

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