Right now, an unprecedented land grab is taking place around the world. Every day, parcels of land
- the size of Wales & larger
-

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What do City speculators, Gulf oil sheikhs, Chinese entrepreneurs, big-name financiers like George Soros & industry titans like Richard Branson buy when they go shopping? L&. Parcels the size of Wales are being snapped up across the plains of Africa, the paddy fields of Southeast Asia, the jungles of the Amazon & the prairies of Eastern Europe. Why? The money men will tell you that their investments will bring an end to world famine. But is this more about fat profits & food security for the few? The race is on to grab the world`s most precious & irreplaceable resource. In this brilliant piece of investigative journalism Fred Pearce moves from boardroom & trading floor to goat-herder`s hut & flooded forest. The result is an eye-opening, extraordinarily important examination of the most profound ethical & economic issue in the world today. ...

In the 5th century BC an adventurous Ionian Greek, Herodotus of Halicarnassus, journeyed extensively through the lands of the eastern Mediterranean, from Egypt to Asia Minor, collecting tales of the upheavals that had afflicted the region in the earlier part of the century. The fruits of his wanderings were The Histories, in which he used his narrative gifts not only to chronicle the rise of the Achaemenid Persian Empire & its war with the Greek city-states, but also to recount his experiences with the varied peoples & cultures he had encountered during his journey. Herodotus earned the nickname 'the father of history' for this, the first authentic work of historical writing in the Western literary canon. In it he explored such universal themes as the nature of freedom, the role of religion, the human costs of war, & the dangers of absolute power. But in addition to his narrative of the Greek-Persian conflict, he included in The Histories rich seams of anthropology, ethnography, geology, & geography, pioneering these fields of study. Successful navigation of this sprawling, monumental work requires an understanding of ancient geography & events that will often be unfamiliar to the modern reader. Ten years in the making, Robert Strassler's magisterial new edition of The Histories is amplified by a veritable battery of editorial features
- illustrations, maps, annotations, explanatory synopses, & state-of-the-art appendices on such critical themes as Athenian government, Egypt, Persian weaponry & tactics, oracles, religion tyranny & the position of women
- that makes Herodotus' masterpiece more comprehensible, more accessible, even more enjoyable than ever before. The Landmark Herodotus is the definitive edition of a Western cultural milestone. It belongs on the bookshelf of every literate individual.

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After a career spanning sixty years, Sir Don Mc Cullin, once a witness to conflict across the globe, has become one of the great landscape photographers of our time. Mc Cullin`s pastoral view is far from idyllic. Though the woods & stream close to his house in Somerset have offered some respite, he has not sought out the quiet corners of rural Engl&. He is drawn, instead, to the drama of approaching storms. He has an acute sense of how the emptiness of his immediate landscape echoes a wider tone of disquiet. Mc Cullin is based in the geographical centre of southern Engl&. The presence of sacred mounds, hill forts, ancient roads & the nearby monuments of the prehistoric era have shaped his sense of nationhood. But down on the Somerset Levels, he has tramped through the flooded lowlands. The imagery of his home county, ravaged by storms, inevitably projects the associations of a battlefield, or, at least, the views of one intimate with scenes of war. He is not alone in his preference for darkened clouds over clear skies. Mc Cullin`s West Country is not far removed from the East Anglia of Constable`s Dedham Vale two centuries earlier. His knowledge of his historical predecessors places him deep in a Romantic tradition. His experience as a traveller reinforces the sense of a man on the edge of civilisation under siege. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his repeated views of the glories of Palmyra & of the destruction of this ancient Syrian city. The Landscape is the last in a long series of books published by Jonathan Cape, which encompasses the entirety of Mc Cullin`s working life. ...

It is 2003, & Paul Arimond is serving as a paramedic in Afghanistan. The twenty-four-year-old has no illusions of becoming a hero. Rather, he has chosen the army to escape the tragedies of his past & his own feelings of guilt. As a result, he finds himself in the same l&, now war-torn, where an ancestor of his, Ambrosius Arimond, a late eighteenth-century traveler & ornithologist, once explored & developed the theory of a universal language of birds. As visceral horrors & everyday banalities of the war threaten to engulf Paul, he, like his great-great-grandfather, finds his very own refuge in Afghanistan s natural world. In a diary filled with exquisite drawings of birds & ruminations on the life he left behind, Paul describes his experiences living with two comrades who are fighting their own demons & his befriending of an Afghan man, Nassim, as well as his dreams of escaping the restrictive base camp & visiting the shores of a lake visible from the lookout tower. But when he finally reaches the lake one night, he finds himself in the midst of a chain of events that, with his increasingly fragile state of mind, has dramatic & ultimately heartbreaking consequences. A meditative novel that shows a new side to the conflict in Afghanistan, The Language of Birds takes a moving look at the all-too-human costs of war & questions what it truly means to fight for freedom. ” ...

This beautifully packaged & accessible guide is the perfect companion to learning the phrases of London's East End & the interesting origins behind Cockney Rhyming Slang
- a language first invented as a secret code among the thieves of London's underworld. Organized thematically, rather than alphabetically, this book allows the reader to gain a full & comprehensive understanding of how to use a range of cockney phrases in each given scenario. Covering all the popular, traditional cockney phrases, as well as some more modern additions that aren't as well known, hundreds of sayings are featured & explained. So, if you're gagging to get your Hampstead Heath into popular reference at its most fascinating, pull up a Vanity Fair, pour your self a cup of Rosie Lee & get stuck into this highly enter taining Captain Cook.
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Steve Jones`s highly acclaimed, double prize-winning, bestselling first book is now fully revised to cover all the new genetic breakthroughs from GM food to Dolly the sheep.` An essential sightseer`s guide to our own genetic terrain.` Peter Tallack, Sunday Telegraph ` Superb & stimulating...an exhilarating trip around the double spiral of DNA, a rush of gravity-defying concepts & wild swerves of the scientific imagination.` J.G. Ballard, Daily Telegraph ` Not so much divination as demystification... An attempt to bring genetics & evolution more into the public domain. If, for instance, you ever wondered just what genetic engineering is about, here is as good a place as any to discover. Few have Jones`s ability to communicate a difficult idea with such humour, clarity, precision & ease.` Laurence Hurst, Times Higher; ` Sensitive to the social issues raised by genetics...yet Jones`s interest reaches beyond contemporary social issues to the human past, to what genetics can & cannot tell us about our evolution & patterns of social development. He interleaves a broad knowledge of biology with considerations of cultural, demographic &
- as his title indicates
- linguistic history. At once instructive & captivating.` Daniel J. Kevles, London Review of Books

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This third edition of Kenneth Katzner`s best-selling guide to languages is essential reading for language enthusiasts everywhere. Written with the non-specialist in mind, its user-friendly style & layout, delightful original passages, & exotic scripts, will continue to fascinate the reader. This new edition has been thoroughly revised to include more languages, more countries, & up-to-date data on populations. Features include: *information on nearly 600 languages *individual descriptions of 200 languages, with sample passages & English translations *concise notes on where each language is spoken, its history, alphabet & pronunciation *coverage of every country in the world, its main language & speaker numbers *an introduction to language families ...

The Landscape of London is a 3D map revealing the natural landscape of Greater London at a scale of 1:65, 000. Topography is defined with digital hill-shading, spot heights & detailed contours at just 10metre intervals. Urban area & road network overlay are featured for ease of orientation, whilst the paths of rivers & canals show the Thames Basin drainage system. Areas of parkland or forest are shown & unitary boundaries are demarcated. ...

When Eve falls for the secretive, charming Dom, their whirlwind relationship leads them to purchase Les Genevriers, an abandoned house in a rural hamlet in the south of France. As the beautiful Provence summer turns to autumn, Eve finds it impossible to ignore the mysteries that haunt both her lover & the run-down old house, in particular the mysterious disappearance of his beautiful first wife, Rachel. Whilst Eve tries to untangle the secrets surrounding Rachel`s last recorded days, Les Genevriers itself seems to come alive. As strange events begin to occur with frightening regularity, Eve`s voice becomes intertwined with that of Benedicte Lincel, a girl who lived in the house decades before. As the tangled skeins of the house`s history begin to unravel, the tension grows between Dom & Eve. In a page-turning race, Eve must fight to discover the fates of both Benedicte & Rachel, before Les Genevriers` dark history has a chance to repeat itself. ...