The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
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Wonderful Lines in a Wonderful Book

The Outermost House: A Yeaar of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod

Beston is without a doubt the best!

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Bird-watching the Soul

The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
Henry Beston
Manufacturer: Owl Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Cape Cod

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ASIN: 080507368X

Book Description

A chronicle of a solitary year spent on a Cape Cod beach, The Outermost House has long been recognized as a classic of American nature writing. Henry Beston had originally planned to spend just two weeks in his seaside home, but was so possessed by the mysterious beauty of his surroundings that he found he 'could not go.' Instead, he sat down to try and capture in words the wonders of the magical landscape he found himself in thrall to: the migrations of seabirds, the rhythms of the tide, the windblown dunes, and the scatter of stars in the changing summer sky. Beston argued that, 'The world today is sick to its thin blood for the lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot.' Seventy-five years after they were first published, Beston's words are more true than ever.

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful Lines in a Wonderful Book.......2007-09-23

Note: I made some Mormon reader angry over my negative reviews of books written by Mormons out to prove the Book of Mormon, and that person has been slamming my reviews.
Your "helpful" votes are appreciated. Thanks.

On The Outermost House: Henry Beston's account of his year on Cape Code in the 1920s is a classic. It's worth reading just for the poetic lines. Here is an example:

"For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars--pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time."

Highly recommended!

The Outermost House: A Yeaar of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod.......2007-01-05

I particularly enjoyed this book as it is set in an area that has a large simularity to where I grew up and I particularly liked the lonliness and bleakness that I identified with.

Beston is without a doubt the best!.......2006-10-03

I wouldn't dream of heading for the Cape without this book--Henry Beston captures the Cape more beautifully than any other author. THE OUTERMOST HOUSE is one of those enchanting books which improves with each rereading.

Customers interested in this title may also be interested in ..........2006-08-04

Since Amazon hasn't provide a link between Outermost House, by Beston, and The Winter Beach, by Charlton Ogburn (ISBN 068809418X), I would like to suggest here that, if you like Outermost House, you will almost certainly enjoy The Winter Beach, as well. From the jacket description: "A naturalist and man of rare wisdom shares with you his journeys along the Atlantic shore."

Bird-watching the Soul.......2005-11-13

There's an H.G. Wells story (in Bloom's anthology for children) called "The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes"; the title character is struck by lightning and undergoes a visual hallucination in which he believes he sees a desolate island, or as he puts it, "Dark sea and sunrise! And yet I'm sitting on a sofa in old Boyce's room!...God help me!" I didn't think much of the story at the time I read it, but now, on reading "The Outermost House," I find it a remarkably excellent and relevant critique of American nature writing. Surrounded by friends and family, Davidson's gaze is turned inward-or rather projected far outward-to a pristine setting that becomes a horror to the reader.

I'm surprised I didn't like Beston's book better. The introduction makes comparisons to Whitman, which drives me crazy. There is no triad of selves; in fact, I didn't find the author good company, with his external, concrete eye. The objective details never gain in implicit resonance like those in Hemingway's "Great Two-Hearted River," for example, in which concrete actions assume ritualistic meaning. The book is a quick read, and it's a good thing, because there's only so much I can take of foam, little birds, wind direction, and dunes. (There's something passive about the narrator; I'm trying to remember something Bloom wrote about Robinson Crusoe in this context.) Perhaps it's a matter of temperament; I mean, I'm as introverted as they come, but I was lonely reading this book, and I kept waiting for augmenting meanings; perhaps it appeals to a more concrete, introverted type, a bird-watcher in other words.

The prose is beautiful in places, but it's not exactly Proust on the ocean, either. It's always so curious to me that American writers, to get elemental or visionary, go to nature, while Europeans still get to enjoy culture. I guess we don't have a Bois, like Proust, with which to associate feelings of longing, nor do we have earthy peasants or Duchesses whose very names carry traces of soil. And isn't there something ultimately selfish in the isolated nature-observer? Maybe that's part of the appeal-the freedom from the demands of family and culture-the illusion of primal interconnectedness. In any event, not Whitman! Matthew Arnold, sure! Ironically enough, I felt Arnold's "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" every other paragraph. Ultimately, this is a thoroughly PAGAN book in which the soul-less thrumming of cold insect life is celebrated, the sun is worshipped, and human sacrifice (in the form of deaths and drownings at sea) is required. Have we progressed no farther in the past millennium or so? Cold comfort.

The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod

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Great Listening!!!

The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod
Henry Beston
Manufacturer: Silver Hollow Audio
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: 0979311500
Release Date: 2007-05-25

Product Description

In 1926, Henry Beston spent two weeks in a two-room cottage on the sand dunes of Cape Cod. He had not intended to stay longer, but, as he later wrote, "I lingered on, and as the year lengthened into autumn, the beauty and mystery of this earth and outer sea so possessed and held me that I could not go." Beston stayed for a year, meditating on humanity and the natural world. In The Outermost House, originally published in 1928, he poetically chronicled the four seasons at the beach; the ebb and flow of the tides, the migration of birds, storms, stars, and solitude. The landscape was his major character, and his writing provides a snapshot of the Cape, a place physically changed yet as soulful 80 years later. Like Henry D. Thoreau before him, and Rachel Carson after him, Beston was a writer of stunning beauty, importance and vision. Robert Finch once wrote of him, His are burnished, polished sentences, richly metaphoric and musical, that beg to be read aloud. The Outermost House is a classic of American nature literature. It is now available, for the first time, on audio. *Including an interview with Beston biographer, Dr. Daniel G. Payne *Unabridged on 5 CDs / approximately 5 hours *Narrated by Brett Barry

Customer Reviews:

Great Listening!!!.......2007-10-14

It's almost as if Henry Beston himself is reading his own words. The reader has a candor and tone that is absolutely perfect for this work and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this wonderfully executed piece from Silver Hollow Audio. I highly recommend this book to anoyne that enjoys either audio books, nature, or Cape Cod. I found myself quickly searching for the next disc as each one came to an end. The end of the last disc left me wanting for more - and with this set is a nicely done interview with Beston's biographer. The interview answered some lingering questions about both the house and the author himself. I rate this one a must have.

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The outermost house;: A year of life on the great beach of Cape Cod
Henry Beston
Manufacturer: Viking
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: B0007FTIM4

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The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod
Henry Beston
Manufacturer: Rinehart & Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Birdwatching | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0007DL6TY

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The Outermost House: a Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod
Henry Beston
Manufacturer: Penguin Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000IMYFSI

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The outermost house;: A year of life on the great beach of Cape Cod,
Henry Beston
Manufacturer: Doubleday, Doran and Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Birdwatching | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000860UN8

The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod (Unabridged)

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The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod (Unabridged)
Henry Beston
Manufacturer: audible.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Download
ASIN: B000SAGYXY

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The outermost house: A year of life on the great beach of Cape Cod
Henry Beston
Manufacturer: Doubleday, Doran
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Birdwatching | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0008CEBBY

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THE OUTERMOST HOUSE A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod

Manufacturer: Doubleday Doran
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000F3OMHY

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The Outermost House : A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod
Henry. Beston
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OJ2OJC

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They lost the cause, but not their faith.......2006-11-28

Perhaps a decade ago I listened to Professor James I. Robertson lecture on Stonewall Jackson. In the course of it, he emphasized the importance of Jackson's religion on his life. A devout Presbyterian, Robertson explained that, in his view, Jackson saw the Civil War as a great test, and that he, Jackson, believed it was his duty to try as best he could to discern God's will and to fight to make it happen. However, in the end, God would decide. The South would win only if that was God's will. Afterwards, I began to wonder about what Jackson would have done had he survived the war. Wouldn't he have readily accepted what he would see as God's verdict that the North should have won? And then I wondered, with all the fervor Jackson had to pursue God's will, would Jackson then have become a Republican?
Professor Robertson seemed to say that Jackson was somehow different in the depth of his religious beliefs, and in his belief that God's will would be done. I thought then, and now, that in actuality Jackson was typical of many people living at that time, many of whom saw the war as a great and inevitable contest that would in the end see God's will done, by either preserving Southern society as it was, or stamping out the great sin of slavery, whichever God thought best. One need only read the verses of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and reflect upon its popularity, to get a sense of that.
In this very thoughtful study, Kent Dollar delves into questions such as those as he explores the effect the war had on the faith of nine Confederate soldiers. Two died for the Cause. All seven others survived the war with their religious beliefs in tact, and in most cases, argues the author, strengthened by the experience. This is not a book for those of you who want to know why Pickett failed, or for those others of you who want to know what the scene looked like at the height of the fighting in the Mule Shoe. But for those who may want to settle into the minds of a few very good men who fought with sincerity for the South, this book offers the opportunity to do just that. And not to spoil the ending for those of you who are wondering, but so far as I know none of these sincere Christian Southerners became Republicans.

Accurate & Interesting.......2006-05-08

A very well written book that is both historically accurate and an interesting read.

Well Researched Civil War and Christianity Book.......2005-10-24

Extremely well researched and unique in its approach, citing nine individual Confederate soldiers and the impact of the Civil War on their Christianity. These case studies, largely drawn from their own words in letters and diaries, give a personal and individual perspective that has largely been overlooked in other similar works.

Soldiers of the Cross: Confederate Soldier-Christians and the Impact of War on Their Faith.(Book review): An article from: Journal of Southern History

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Soldiers of the Cross: Confederate Soldier-Christians and the Impact of War on Their Faith.(Book review): An article from: Journal of Southern History
C. David Dalton
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000NOK990
Release Date: 2007-02-16

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of Southern History, published by Thomson Gale on February 1, 2007. The length of the article is 593 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Soldiers of the Cross: Confederate Soldier-Christians and the Impact of War on Their Faith.(Book review)
Author: C. David Dalton
Publication: Journal of Southern History (Magazine/Journal)
Date: February 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 73 Issue: 1 Page: 192(2)

Article Type: Book review

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America's Other War: Terrorizing Colombia
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Review by International Affairs Volume 81, Issue 3, Pages 635-667

Scholarly account by British author on the horrors our government is committing in Colombia

Excellent account of yet another illegal US aggressive war

America's Other War: Terrorizing Colombia
Doug Stokes
Manufacturer: Zed Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1842775472
Release Date: 2005-03-10

Book Description

This controversial book maintains that in Colombia the US has long supported a pervasive campaign of state violence directed against both armed insurgents and a wide range of unarmed progressive social forces. While the context may change from one decade to the next, the basic policies remain the same: maintain the pro-US Colombian state, protect US economic interests and preserve strategic access to oil. Colombia is now the third largest recipient of US military aid in the world, and the largest by far in Latin America. Using extensive declassified documents, this book shows that the so-called "war on drugs", and now the new war on terror in Colombia are actually part of a long-term Colombian "war of state terror" that predates the end of the Cold War with US policy contributing directly to the human rights situation in Colombia today.

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Review by International Affairs Volume 81, Issue 3, Pages 635-667.......2006-02-08

Studies that seek to provide an all-encompassing explanation for the protracted internal conflict that has afflicted Colombia since the 1940s, if not earlier, have been fairly rare. In his Systems of violence: the political economy of war and peace in Colombia, political scientist Nazih Richani put forward an integral explanatory model which posited the development over time of a 'war system', one whose dynamics were largely determined by endogenous factors. The 'comfortable impasse' that had developed between the Colombian military and the guerrillas of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) between the 1980s and the mid-1990s, he argued, was upset both by the rise of the right-wing paramilitaries as independent actors with an agenda different from their erstwhile military sponsors and by the dramatic increase in US military aid in the late 1990s, the only (belated) exogenous variable he allows. By contrast, Doug Stokes proffers an explanation that focuses primarily on the dominant role played by the United States in Colombian affairs over the last four decades, thereby downplaying the autonomy of indigenous political actors.

Stokes contends that there has been an underlying continuity in US foreign policy goals in Colombia from the 1960s to the present day, despite the change in official discourse in Washington from an avowed concern with the containment of communist insurgency during the Cold War to a post-Cold War rhetorical emphasis on drugs interdiction in the 1990s and on counter- terrorism following the September 11 attacks. Despite the shifting rationale, US policy has been impelled throughout the postwar period by concerns more to do with Colombia's strategic location near the Panama Canal, a desire to maintain a favourable trade and investment climate and a growing concern over continued access to the country's oil reserves. 'The US imperial state', he somewhat grandiloquently proclaims in an argument that has been popularized by Noam Chomsky, 'acted to protect the interests of capital through the maintenance of an international system open to capital penetration while destroying social forces that threatened the process of global capital accumulation' (p. 25). Colombia is, thus, another instance, following Guatemala in the 1950s, Cuba after the revolution, Chile under Allende and Nicaragua in the 1980s, that offered, at least potentially, a nationalist challenge to US economic and strategic hegemony in the western hemisphere.

It was through the diffusion of its counter-insurgency doctrine, beginning in the 1960s, that the US was able to inculcate in the Colombian military the requisite will to prosecute the war against the various guerrilla movements and their purported civilian auxiliaries. US-sponsored counter-insurgency discourse was 'directly responsible for the ideological legitimation of wide-spread state terror directed specifically at civil society in the name of anti-communism', since it 'served to delegitimate particular social identities' (p. 59). This accounts for the high incidence of murder of trade unionists and human rights workers by the paramilitaries, so intimately linked to the counter-insurgent state yet distanced enough to allow plausible deniability. The end of the Cold War represented no hiatus for, according to Stokes, the US 'has continued to fund and support a pervasive strategy of [counter-insurgency] in Colombia that has been reliant on the principal Colombian drug traffickers and terrorists' (p. 84).

Stokes offers a detailed and convincing analysis of the reality behind the ostensible 'war on drugs' in the 1990s. From its inception in 1989, the US 'Andean Initiative' sought to link the FARC with drug trafficking; the author cites reports by the CIA and DEA that acknowledge that the guerrillas were not the primary drug traffickers. He argues that the decertification of Colombia during the presidency of Ernesto Samper on account of credible charges of links to the drug cartels and the placing of the paramilitary Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia on a list of terrorist organizations in 2001 were essentially public relations exercises; US military aid to Colombia continued to flow through other channels throughout the period of decertification. He contests too the claim that 'Plan Colombia' was designed to promote alternative development; it bears the hallmarks of standard counter-insurgency doctrine by 'displacing target populations con- sidered potentially pro-insurgency, and concentrating them in controllable (often urban) areas' (p. 95). The US militarization of 'Plan Colombia' resulted in over 80 per cent going in military aid, rather than the 55 per cent originally envisaged by President Andrés Pastrana. Stokes charges the US with turning a blind eye to the paramilitaries' involvement in drugs, just as the Reagan administration had done with the Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s, 'as long as they cooperate with the wider US objective of [counter-insurgency]' (p.104).

This is, as the author forthrightly declares, a work of 'revisionist' scholarship. Some of the criticisms that have been levelled at other authors who tilt against the academic mainstream are applicable here too. The picture he presents of a US aligned with a deeply elitist and reactionary Colombian state against a popular sector opposition appears too Manichaean. How to account for the (abortive) peace process launched by conservative President Belisario Betancur in the 1980s and revived by conservative President Pastrana in the late 1990s? How to account also for the willingness to consider a negotiated settlement with the FARC by the economic conglomerates (at 'the forefront of globalizing agents in Colombia', according to Richani) in the face of opposition from the landowning elite, who had the most to lose from land reform (a minimum guerrilla demand in any settlement)? The dominant classes in Colombia at the present conjuncture are more fractured than Stokes seems willing to concede. The portrayal of the FARC as well is rather one-dimensional.

His conclusions sometimes tend to outstrip the documentary evidence that he marshals to buttress his overall thesis. For example, he implies, but fails to demonstrate, that US counter-insurgency doctrine (rather than the much vaguer word 'discourse' that he employs so often) explicitly condoned the murder of trade unionists and human rights workers. More discussion too might have been devoted to detailing the growing US economic stake in Colombia and the ramifications of neo-liberalism for the Colombian economy.

This, then, is a rather provocative book. There is certainly a case to answer about the US role in Colombia. Doug Stokes has mounted a vigorous opening case for the prosecution, yet has stopped short of ensuring a unanimous verdict.

Scholarly account by British author on the horrors our government is committing in Colombia.......2006-01-03

The author of this book is Doug Stokes; Noam Chomsky writes the Forward to it.

The author shows that the bugaboo about Soviet expansionism during the Cold War was designed to cover efforts to roll back threats to the domination of the third world masses by third world elites and U.S. corporations. For instance, the case of Guatemala whose democratic government was overthrown in a elaborate CIA backed coup in 1954 based on U.S. allegations that it was an agent of Soviet expanisionism. However a secret paper by State Department official Charles Burrows in 1953 stated that the Arbenz government in Guatemala threatened the stability of other Latin American nations by the fact that its agrarian reform program was inspiring the suffering masses in other countries to political action against oppression by U.S. corporations and indigenous elites. Similarly in January 1961, special Assistant to President Kennedy, Arthur Schlesinger reported to the President that in Latin America the "poor and unprivileged stimulated by the example of the Cuban revolution, are now demanding opportunities for a decent living." The U.S. worked to cut off all aid and sources of convertible currency for Cuba in the Western world and thus Castro turned to the Russians.

While weak tiny Nicaragua was publicly being parroted by the Reaganites as a Soviet tool about to swallow up Texas,according to a 1984 State Dpeartment document quoted by the author the Soviet role in Nicaragua was rather modest. In its early years, the Sandinistas won Nicaragua awards from the World Health Organization and the UN literacy program. The author shows how the U.S. attempted to make the Sandinistas dependent on the Soviet block, so they could have an excuse of destroying them, in such ways as blocking arms sales to Nicaragua from France as the U.S. backed Contra terrorists gained in strength. George Schultz threatened the Inter American Development Bank in 1985 with a withdraw of U.S. support for it if it gave a major loan for private sector agriculture in Nicaragua. Refering to other methods of subversion the author notes U.S. efforts against Chavez in Venezuela. He also notes the international investor draining of currency from Brazil in the year before the anticipated election of the ostensibly radical leftist Lula De Silva as President in Oct. 2002, and the IMF loan agreement signed by outgoing President Cardoso in August 2002--all of which have set Lula on virtually the same neoliberal economic course of his predecessors.

The author quotes a U.S. counterinsurgency manual which explains that Latin American militaries can discover communist subversion within their country by such signs as worker strikes, increased letters to newspapers criticizing governments, increased petitions sent to the government for redress of grievances....i.e. real democracy not communism was the real threat.

The focus of this book is on Colombia, a country extraordinarily rich in natural resources but most of whose wealth is controlled by a wealthy few and Western corporations who have kept the masses in extreme squalor by robbery and extreme violence over the centuries. The U.S.State Department admits that right wing paramilitaries are responsible for most of the human rights violations in Colombia. 8000 people were killed there for political reasons in 2002.Most of the union activists murdered in the world are in Colombia (370 in 2001-02). Almost 3 million Colombians have been driven from their homes. Major Colombian and International human rights organizations have consistently shown that the paramilitaries are under the firm control and direction of the Colombian military and political leadership. The U.S. government pretends otherwise, of course. Noam Chomsky notes in the Forward that one of the rare investigations into a military massacre in Colombia was in 1990 after 60 peasants in the village of Trujillo were cut to pieces with chain saws. A government pointed out the military commanders overseeing the massacre but no one was brought to justice.

The most recent paramilitary groups have their basis in the early 80's as assassins funded by rural ranchers, mining owners, drug growers and others, who murdered demobilized soldiers of the FARC guerillas, peasant activists, priests, etc. A 1983 report of the Colombian Procurator General discovered many Colombian military officers involved in one major death squad funded by the Medellin cartel. The members included General Gil Bermudez, who gave an address to students at his alma matter, the School of Americas at Fort Benning GA in 1988. In 1986, a left wing political party, the Patriotic Union (UP) won, in spite of massive terror against it and lack of resources, five percent of the seats in Colombia's congress and won a number of local mayorships. Over the next decade, the death squads would assasinate two UP presidential candidates and about 3000 UP party activists.

One of the most important points raised by this book is the issue of the FARC guerillas and the U.S. inspired talking point that they are "narcoguerillas." However the author quotes declassified a 1992 CIA report and a 1994 DEA report which state that the FARC's involvement with drugs has been relatively limited. The leader of the largest death squad, the AUC, Carlos Castano was a leader of secret group put together by the Colombian military with aid from the CIA, DEA, DIA, etc. and funds from the Cali Cartel called Los Pepes. Los Pepes engineered the killing of Medellin Cartel leader Pablo Escobar in May 1993. The CIA has refused Amnesty International's demand that it turn over documents related to the U.S. relationship to the Castano family and Los Pepes. Castano has admitted on Colombian TV that his group has recieved 70 percent of its income from drugs.

The Justice Department has engaged in the quite meaningless gesture of indicting Castano and two of his associates for drug trafficking. Of course, U.S. military aid and planning to Colombia targets the FARC guerillas in Southern Colombia on anti-drug grounds. Of course it does not target the right wing death squads like the AUC who dominate the East, West and North of the country and who protect the drug organizations in those areas according to former DEA administrators quoted by Stokes, and who are backed by the Colombian military and who export drugs to the United States. Meanwhile private U.S. mercenary firms have taken over some functions of U.S. military aid such as the horrible anti-drug fumigation program.. The author shows that the drug war in Colombia is merely a pretext to intervene to protect U.S. corporate control of its resources such as oil.

Meanwhile President Alvaro Uribe, backed by the Bush administration, has formed civil defense patrols whose members seem to be substantially made up of the ostensibly disbanding paramilitaries. Uribe came to power in 2002 in an election that had only 38 percent of Colombian voters participating. There were reports of the death squads threatening peasants with violence if they didn't vote for him.

Excellent account of yet another illegal US aggressive war .......2005-05-12

This excellent book tests the conventional theory that US foreign policy has always been driven by its commitment to spreading democracy. It looks at the evidence, examining US policy towards Latin America, focusing on Colombia.

Chapter 1 explores various interpretations of US foreign policy, conservative, liberal and radical. Chapters 2 and 3 show how the USA's aims in Latin America were the same during and after the Cold War. Chapter 4 shows how in the 1980s the US state backed state terrorism across Latin America, including in Guatemala where government forces killed 200,000 people. During Colombia's 1980s peace process, the US state aided and trained Colombia's army: by the end of the 1990s, Colombia got the third largest amount of US military aid, helping its army and its allied paramilitaries to kill tens of thousands.

The US state's motives were and are material: the open door for US and European corporations, access to oil. Colombia supplies 3% of US oil imports. BP pays paramilitaries to protect its pipelines. Attacking Colombia also puts pressure on Venezuela, which has 7.4% of the world's oil reserves - and also has a patriotic government that runs its own oil industry.

Only the US state's pretexts have changed. Until 1991 it was anti-communism. In the 1990s it was the `war on drugs' - as a US Special Forces trainer said, "the counter-narcotics thing was an official cover story." After 9/11 it was the `war on terror'.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration "has no evidence that [the insurgents] have been involved in the transportation, distribution, or marketing of illicit drugs in the United States or Europe." The Council on Hemispheric Affairs and the UN Drug Control Programme agree that drugs are smuggled into the USA by the US state's allies - "right-wing paramilitary groups in collaboration with wealthy drug barons, the armed forces, key financial figures and senior government bureaucrats."

The US state's allies are also the main terrorists. The US State Department concedes that the Colombian army and its allies have committed more than 80% of the country's human rights abuses.

Notable publications.(Do Not Disturb: Is The Media Failing Australia?)(The Collapse Of Globalism: And the Reinvention of the World)(Climate Change Begins ... Review) : An article from: Arena Magazine

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Notable publications.(Do Not Disturb: Is The Media Failing Australia?)(The Collapse Of Globalism: And the Reinvention of the World)(Climate Change Begins ... Review) : An article from: Arena Magazine
Alice Coster
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Arena Magazine, published by Thomson Gale on August 1, 2005. The length of the article is 727 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Notable publications.(Do Not Disturb: Is The Media Failing Australia?)(The Collapse Of Globalism: And the Reinvention of the World)(Climate Change Begins At Home: Life On the Two Way Street of Global Warming)(America's Other War: Terrorizing Colombia)(Selling Sickness: How the Drug Companies are Turning Us All Into Patients)(Power, Politics & Culture)(books)(Book Review)
Author: Alice Coster
Publication: Arena Magazine (Magazine/Journal)
Date: August 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Issue: 78 Page: 23(1)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

Most of the world's population now lives in cities. So if we are to address the problems of environmental deterioration and peak oil adequately, the city has to be a major focus of attention.

EcoCities is about re-building cities and towns based on ecological principles for the long term sustainability, cultural vitality and health of the Earth's biosphere. Unique in the literature is the book's insight that the form of the city really matters - and that it is within our ability to change it, and crucial that we do. Further, that the ecocity within its bioregion is comprehensible and do-able, and can produce a healthy and potentially happy future.

EcoCities describes the place of the city in evolution, nature and history. It pays special attention to the key question of accessibility and transportation, and outlines design principles for the ecocity. The reader is encouraged to plunge in to its economics and politics: the kinds of businesses, planning and leadership required. The book then outlines the tools by which a gradual transition to the ecocity could be accomplished. Throughout, this new edition is generously illustrated with the author's own inspired visions of what such rebuilt cities might actually look like.

Customer Reviews:

A pattern of urban design we will rediscover.......2007-04-09

EcoCities is a book I have returned to repeatedly and discovered new insights every time. Register is no utopian dreamer; he's addressing real problems in contemporary urban design and land use patterns that cannot be sustained in a lower-energy future. Register's personality comes through loud and clear in his writing--this is no dry treatment of the subject.

Through this book, Register helps us to envision with some specificity what urban landscapes light on automobiles but rich in biodiversity could look like. It's as if he's illustrating a series of before and after treatments of various spaces, but the before picture is now and the after is a future yet to be realized. Highly recommended reading for anyone who wants to help actively design their built environment towards sustainability.

One of the keys to Sustainability.......2007-01-12

Along with books like Natural Capitalism and Cradle to Cradle, Ecocities takes its place among the most important environmental tomes of our day. In a nutshell, Richard Register's vision (replete with a plan to get us there) could transform our world. In fact a structural response like ecocities (and smart growth) may be the best tools available to bring us to our only destination, sustainability. In his thoughtful book, Register waxes poetic on the environmental crisis we face, shares a grand vision for addressing the crisis -- while simultaneously improving our everyday lives -- and wraps it up with a road map for getting there. His many illustrations spark the imagination and are guaranteed to put a smile on your face. If you haven't read it, just do. Buy this important book now.

moderate environmental views.......2006-09-24

Here is an ambitious remit. Register gives a history of the development of cities. And he offers suggestions for what he calls eco-modern designs. That attempt to minimise energy consumption and maximise biodiversity. The former is an obvious laudable aim for any city and its occupants. Rising energy costs, due in part to ever increasing global industrialisation, can adversely affect everyone in a city. Reducing consumption is shown to involve such trends as more energy efficient cars.

But he also advocates a greater biodiversity within cities. More gardens, including on rooftops. Multiple benefits are offered. A more pleasant recreational environment. And reduced cooling costs for buildings.

Register offers a light leftist approach. He does not seem anticapitalist, unlike some radical environmentalists.

Ecocities: Building Cities in Balance with Nature

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Ecocities: Building Cities in Balance with Nature
Richard Register
Manufacturer: Berkeley Hills Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Urban & Land Use Planning | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

General | Urban Planning & Development | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Conservation | Environment | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

General | Conservation | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Toward Sustainable Communities: Resources For Citizens And Their Governments
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century
Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature
Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble

ASIN: 1893163377

Book Description

This visionary book by the leader of the ecocity movement outlines a plan for developing existing cities in a way that lessens their destructive impact on the environment and increases their support of healthy social interaction. Ecocities is both a philosophical discussion and a call to arms by an activist who has worked for decades to restore and transform blighted urban areas.

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