A Natural History of Nettles

Book Description

The first book ever on the much maligned nettles of the world presents a story of these followers of mankind and his cattle throughout history. This study centres on the most abundant and sub-cosmopolitan common stinging nettle (Urtica dioica), but also deals with other nettles throughout the world. Tropical tormentors rich in species include the notorious nettle trees with their formidable stings which fascinated the Europeans after their discovery by botanists on the round-the-world trips of exploration in the 17-19th centuries. Many people on their travels will have met the nettle trees of the Indo-Malay region and other stinging nettles in North and South America, India, etc., which sting and have beautiful flowers but are called nettles; these are also dealt with. The first microscopists and their descriptions of the beautiful stinging hair; the uncovering of the mechanism of its action and the more recent elucidation of the toxins causing the characteristic symptoms is a fascinating one and takes up 3 chapters.

The book includes the 100 major scientific works published on the common stinging nettle and never brought to the notice of the general public before. The author spent six years studying the ecology of the nettle patch, its invertebrate herbivores (mainly insects) and vertebrate herbivores (cattle, deer, etc.,) and their interactions with other plants: its secret life is recorded in line drawings and photographs (1000+ individual items). It was not possible to publish these in colour but they are in full colour on a CD-ROM (300 dpi) at the back of the book. Covered also are nettle folklore, fibre use in World War I & II, as a food, fodder, herbal medicine, growth as a competitor plant, habitats, sex (unique exploding stamens), breeding systems, variation, evolution etc.!! Some the world's most beautiful butterflies would not exist without nettles.

Book Description

Practical information on how to travel Tibet. Colour road maps for the entire region. Where to stay, eat and retreat. Nomadic grasslands, sandstone gorges, sacred mountains and arid plateaux.

Customer Reviews:

The most comprehensive and updated of all Tibet guidebooks.......2005-02-07

This book provides a more profound insight into Tibet for those interested in Tibetan culture, trekking and adventure travel, than the others that are on the market. It is the most comprehensive guide- uniquely including the vast eastern regions of Kham, Amdo and Gyarong, as well as Ngari and Utsang. The book avoids the traditional steriotypes of Tibet and includes much information directly translated from original Tibetan sources as well as data derived from more than 50 fieldwork expeditions and trips in Tibet. The author, Dr Gyurme Dorje, is a Tibetologist, who has been involved in Tibetan studies for over 30 years, and has authored several books on diverse aspects of Tibetan culture. His handbook has the advantage of being continuously updated.

An indispensable guidebook with great scope for improvement.......1999-11-25

Tibet Handbook with Bhutan, by Gyurme Dorje (Footprint Handbooks, Bath, England, 2nd edition 1999, 952pp plus maps).

The greatest strength of this book is that it is the only guidebook to give a substantial account of all parts of the Tibetan plateau, both inside and outside the so-called Tibetan Autonomous Region. For that reason it is, despite its conspicuous faults, indispensable for the traveller to Tibet whose itinerary extends beyond the familiar lands of central Tibet. The book is not to be confused with "Tibet Handbook" by Victor Chan.

"Tibet Handbook with Bhutan" is a guide to all Tibetan regions governed by the People's Republic of China, with additional chapters on Bhutan and the Kathmandu valley of Nepal. It would have been useful to include the Tibetan borderlands in Nepal and north-west India Ä although it is no doubt expedient politically to imply that no part of Tibet lies outside the territory China governs.

At 650 grams, the new edition (paperback) is almost twice the weight of the first, hardback, edition - a curious development for a travel guidebook.

The book includes useful background information about Tibetan religion, iconography and history. The bulk of the book deals with the regions of the Tibetan plateau by devoting a section to each one of the 158 counties into which the People's Republic of China divides it. This approach turns out to be surprisingly intelligible.

There is extensive information about religious places, and buildings and their contents. There is much less information about other matters such as topography, agriculture, educational facilities, military establishments, and political structures. It is as though, in a way, those things belong to a different Tibet.

The book enjoys the benefit of the author's experience as a scholar and tour guide. It also suffers the limitations of that experience, and is often short on practical details for the independent traveller. It is written in a concise style that betrays no trace of personality.

The second edition has been expanded considerably, mainly with valuable information about counties where information in the first edition was inadequate. Unfortunately, the author has not taken the opportunity to check the much more extensive material carried over from the first edition. If he would make time to do that, he would find innumerable internal contradictions within the text and between the text and the often wildly inaccurate small county maps. Almost any numeral, particularly distances, should be treated with suspicion. The relationship between the county population figures and those in the 1996 edition show impossible fluctuations; they go unremarked, but indicate that at least one of the sets of figures is worthless, and perhaps both. The inherent confusion in the existence of both Tibetan and Chinese names for the same places demands a consistency of usage in a guidebook which this one does not quite manage to attain.

Book Description

Birthplace of the Buddha, home of the Gurkhas, roof of the world, land of legend and beauty - within its narrow confines Nepal contains an utterly spectacular variety of culture and landscapes. This guide includes coverage of Kathmandu, trekking in the Himalayas, how to get to Tibet and practical information on Lhasa plus colour maps covering the whole country.

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Footprint Handbook Tibet
Gyurme Dorje
Manufacturer: Footprint Handbooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000MHRNTM

Footprint Tibet Handbook : The Travel Guide

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Footprint Tibet Handbook : The Travel Guide
Gyurme Dorje
Manufacturer: Footprint Handbooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Tibet | Asia | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000MC8OM2

Book Description

While the dream of moving to a small town in a beautiful rural area is common among many Americans, that dream often turns into a nightmare for those who decide to follow it. More than half of the people who move to small towns in recreational places will move away in less than five years, and their rapid successive moves are often marked by anger and frustration as they encounter the realities of poor job possibilities, an impersonal life, and a deteriorating natural environment. Jobes describes the experiences of newcomers, and oldtimers, to Bozeman, Montana, a small Rocky Mountain town Jobes has observed and researched since the early 1970s. Through interviews and observations, Jobes has found that newcomers arrive with unrealistic illusions about life in a small town and that life in such places is simultaneously complex and dynamic. According to Jobes, people who make the move to small towns surrounded by a beautiful natural environment tend to experience a short period of euphoria followed by disillusionment and the decision to move away, while those who stay accommodate to the inevitable transformations of the local community and the surrounding natural environment that they and other newcomers have created. Jobes examines the changes that take place in these areas as development and growth cause the natural environment to rapidly develop and as the influx and constant turnover of new residents gradually undermine the personal and familiar foundations for the social community. The demographic and environmental changes, Jobes concludes, impose dynamic adjustments within the community, and the slower patterns of small town life give way to the faster and disjointed styles of the city.

Eaters of the Dry Season: Circular Labor Migration in the West African Sahel

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Sahelian Migration As Economic Strategy

Eaters of the Dry Season: Circular Labor Migration in the West African Sahel
David Rain
Manufacturer: Westview Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Workplace | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0813338727

Book Description

Explores the activities of seasonal migrants in the changing geography of the African Sahel, revealing the underlying story behind the headlines of African famine and drought, and unraveling the dynamics behind population, environment, and poverty. The first book-length treatment of the subject, Eaters of the Dry Season explores the changing geography of seasonal mobility in the critical region of the African Sahel. Author David Rain focuses on the strategies and the stories of migrants in Maradi, a border town in southern Niger, against a contextual backdrop of demographic, ecological, and political-economic changes in the region. The author finds that instead of being desperate harbingers of future disorder, seasonal migrants are simply resourceful-and sometimes restless-people who realize the benefits of spreading interests and activities around. In the words of one migrant, some people "just like it better going away." In this illuminating new work on the geography of poverty, David Rain dispels the notion that relentless human mobility is a byproduct of Western technological advances like superhighways and airports. Instead, it is much older and more deeply ingrained in the human spirit. Every year after the rainy season ends in the arid West African Sahel, hundreds of thousands of men and women leave their villages to work in the informal economies of West African cities. The seasonal flux of peasants swells urban markets and neighborhoods, as it has for centuries. These migrants, called masu cin rani in Hausa, or "those who eat the dry season," travel after their crops are harvested in order to conserve household food supplies and earn money which is funneled back to their villages of origin. These "eaters" come from all walks of life, though they are more commonly poor and living by their wits. This book focuses on the activities of the seasonal migrants, persisting as they have through colonial and postcolonial changes, and constituting an important response to uncertainty in the region. Based on a combination of survey-interviews and geographic analysis, the book regards the migrants as practical people who are simply making the best of what has been dealt to them. Contextual andpanoramic, and centered on the immediacy of daily and seasonal routines, Eaters of the Dry Season delves deeper than typical alarmist accounts of African drought and famine, which are all too common in current literature. It will challenge laypeople as well as scholars and policymakers to consider how actual people respond to global changes in the next century, especially for the billions who are labeled "poor." Unraveling the dynamics behind population, environment, and poverty requires us to set our sights on the intersection of the human and the physical realms, and to enter the worlds inhabited by the poor.

"Rain uses the first-person singular, describing vividly his experiences in the region and his reactions to them. He explains many contradictions, noting humorous elements and offering profound insights as well as his own conclusions on many subjects. The people come to life, as a group and as individuals. This book dispels many misconceptions and is an education in itself." -Choice

Customer Reviews:

Sahelian Migration As Economic Strategy.......2004-01-10

"Eaters of the Dry Season" (masu cin rani in Hausa) corrects the stereotype of Sahel migrants as hapless, helpless victims of drought and poverty. Most are poor, of course, but this work on rural-urban mobility in Niger documents a centuries-old way of maximizing labor and resources following each rainy season. This is not news, since fine earlier research by Ken Swindell and Polly Hill, among others, found similar patterns, but David Rain's data provides a new level of concreteness on the topic. His fieldwork in villages and the city of Maradi is precise, though the sheer amount of detail is rather overwhelming at times. But it clearly shows Nigeriens' resilience and ingenuity, with circular migration vital to their risk-aversion strategies. Significantly, Rain locates migrants themselves at the center of his study, not the usual official statistics or theories of development experts. He summarizes surveys and paraphrases interviews well, with many men (and some women) emerging as individuals, though their stories would be further enhanced with more of their own words. For this see N. Cross & R. Barker eds, "At the Desert's Edge" which covers the whole Sahel region. There is a wonderful social history in B. Cooper, "Marriage in Maradi," while W. Miles, "Hausland Divided" notes interesting contrasts between Francophone Niger and Anglophone Nigeria. N.B. The dust jacket does not list Rain as having a professional position; "Eaters" is certainly strong enough to earn him a good job in his field.

The Amenity Migrants: Seeking and Sustaining Mountains and Their Cultures (Cabi Publishing)

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The Amenity Migrants: Seeking and Sustaining Mountains and Their Cultures (Cabi Publishing)

Manufacturer: CABI
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Emigration & Immigration | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Environmental Science | Earth Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

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ASIN: 0851990843

Book Description

Places with perceived high environmental quality and distinctive culture are globally attracting amenity migrants. Today this societal driving force is particularly manifest in mountain areas, and while beneficial for both the newcomers and locals, is also threatening highland ecologies and
their human communities. This book describes and analyses the challenges and opportunities of amenity migration and its management, and offers related recommendations. The books chapters cover the subject through case studies at international, regional and local levels, along with overarching themes
such as environmental sustainability and equality, mountain recreation users, housing, and spiritual motivation. A crucial issues addressed is the relationship of amenity migration to tourism, and migration motivated by economic gain. The introduction and concluding chapters bring all of the
information and analyses together strategically, summarizing in a manner of theoretical and practical value for both academics and practitioners.

Bird Conservation International Special Issue: Neotropical Migrants: Growing Points in Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Papers from the Neotropical ... Quito, Eq (Bird Conservation International)

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Bird Conservation International Special Issue: Neotropical Migrants: Growing Points in Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Papers from the Neotropical ... Quito, Eq (Bird Conservation International)
Eugene S. Morton , Kimberley Young , and Mario A. Ramos
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Conservation | Environment | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

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Reference | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

Conservation and Management of Neotropical Migrant Landbirds in the Northern Rockies and Great Plains (Northwest Naturalist Books)

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Conservation and Management of Neotropical Migrant Landbirds in the Northern Rockies and Great Plains (Northwest Naturalist Books)
David S. Dobkin
Manufacturer: University of Idaho Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Conservation | Environment | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

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Endangered Species | Conservation | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

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Reference | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0893011681

Environmental Migrants (People on the Move)

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Environmental Migrants (People on the Move)
Dave Dalton
Manufacturer: Heinemann
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Emigration & Immigration | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Ecology | Science & Technology | Teens | Subjects | Books

All 4-for-3 Deals | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books
ASIN: 1403469652

Human Rights, Refugees, Migrants & Development: Directory of Ngos in OECD Countries = Droits de L'Homme, Refugies, Migrants Et Developpement: Repertoi

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Human Rights, Refugees, Migrants & Development: Directory of Ngos in OECD Countries = Droits de L'Homme, Refugies, Migrants Et Developpement: Repertoi

Manufacturer: OECD
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 9264038698

Book Description

A comprehensive source of information on non-governmental organizations providing resources and educational programs in the human rights, refugee, migrant, and development fields. The result of cooperation between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Human Rights Information and Documenation System International, and the OECD Development Centre, the directory includes detailed profiles of 591 NGOs and indexes of their activities. Profiles describe each organizations aims, structure, activities, address, phone/fax, contact name, budget, funding, and publications.

Migrants in three Willamette Valley towns: Why they move and how they adapt (Man's activities as related to environmental quality)

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Migrants in three Willamette Valley towns: Why they move and how they adapt (Man's activities as related to environmental quality)
John A Young
Manufacturer: Oregon State University
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Urban Planning & Development | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0006XPZHE

Minority Migrants Urban Community: Mexican American & Negro Adj

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Minority Migrants Urban Community: Mexican American & Negro Adj
Lyle W. Shannon , and Magdaline W. Shannon
Manufacturer: Sage Publications, Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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

Environmental Science | Earth Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

Saving Migrant Birds: Developing Strategies for the Future (Corrie Herring Hooks Series)

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Saving Migrant Birds: Developing Strategies for the Future (Corrie Herring Hooks Series)
John Faaborg
Manufacturer: University of Texas Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Birds | Animal Care & Pets | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

Conservation | Environment | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

General | Conservation | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0292725485

Book Description

"This book will attract a great deal of attention and some controversy, and it is very timely.... It presents a carefully and closely reasoned argument about the magnitude of the conservation problems facing migrant birds, how we can reduce these problems, and how current conservation efforts have enormous value even if there is no immediate crisis."

—Scott K. Robinson, Professor and Head, Department of Animal Biology, University of Illinois

In the 1980s, numerous scientific surveys documented both declining bird populations, especially among Neotropical songbirds that winter in the tropics, and the loss of tropical rain forest habitat. Drawing the seemingly obvious conclusion, scientists and environmental activists linked songbird declines to loss of tropical habitats and alerted the world to an impending ecological catastrophe. Their warnings led to the establishment of the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Program, also known as Partners in Flight, the self-proclaimed largest conservation effort in history.

Looking back over more than a decade of efforts to save migrant birds, John Faaborg offers the first serious evaluation of the state of songbird populations today, the effectiveness of conservation programs such as Partners in Flight, and the reliability and completeness of scientific research on migrant birds. Taking neither an alarmist nor a complacent approach, he shows that many factors besides habitat loss affect bird populations and that Neotropical migrants as a group are not declining dramatically, though some species adapt to habitat alteration more successfully than others. Faaborg's state-of-the-art survey thus clarifies the kinds of information we will need and the conservation efforts we should undertake to ensure the long-term survival of Neotropical migrant birds.

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