"Even in our parceled-out, paved-over urban environs, nature is all around us, it is in us. It is us. This is what Rob Cowen discovered after moving to a new home in northern England. After ten years in London, he was suddenly adrift, searching for a sense of connection. He found himself drawn to a square-mile patch of waste ground at the edge of town. Scrappy, weed-filled, this heart-shaped tangle of land was the very definition of overlooked - a thoroughly in-between place that capitalism had no further use for, leaving nature to take its course. Wandering in meadows, woods, hedges, and fields, Cowen found it was also a magical, mysterious place, haunted and haunting, abandoned but wildly alive - and he fell in fascinated love."--Book jacket.

A pioneering examination of history, current affairs, and daily life along the RussiaÐChina border, one of the worldÕs least understood and most politically charged frontiers. The border between Russia and China winds for 2,600 miles through rivers, swamps, and vast taiga forests. ItÕs a thin line of direct engagement, extraordinary contrasts, frequent tension, and occasional war between two of the worldÕs political giants. Franck BillŽ and Caroline Humphrey have spent years traveling through and studying this important yet forgotten region. Drawing on pioneering fieldwork, they introduce readers to the lifeways, politics, and history of one of the worldÕs most consequential and enigmatic borderlands. It is telling that, along a border consisting mainly of rivers, there is not a single operating passenger bridge. Two different worlds have emerged. On the Russian side, in territory seized from China in the nineteenth century, defense is prioritized over the economy, leaving dilapidated villages slumbering amid the forests. For its part, the Chinese side is heavily settled and increasingly prosperous and dynamic. Moscow worries about the imbalance, and both governments discourage citizens from interacting. But as BillŽ and Humphrey show, cross-border connection is a fact of life, whatever distant authorities say. There are marriages, friendships, and sexual encounters. There are joint businesses and underground deals, including no shortage of smuggling. Meanwhile some indigenous peoples, persecuted on both sides, seek to ÒreviveÓ their own alternative social groupings that span the border. And Chinese towns make much of their proximity to ÒEurope,Ó building giant Russian dolls and replicas of St. BasilÕs Cathedral to woo tourists. Surprising and rigorously researched, On the Edge testifies to the rich diversity of an extraordinary world haunted by history and divided by remote political decisions but connected by the ordinary imperatives of daily life.

"The Way of the Strangers is an intimate journey into the minds of the Islamic State's true believers. From the streets of Cairo to the mosques of London, Wood interviews supporters, recruiters, and sympathizers of the group...Wood speaks with non-Islamic State Muslim scholars and jihadists, and explores the group's idiosyncratic, coherent approach to Islam...Through character study and analysis, Wood provides a clear-eyed look at a movement that has inspired so many people to abandon or uproot their families.

Surveys the stand-up comedy of the 1970s, citing the contributions of celebrity comics, from George Carlin and Richard Pryor to Robin Williams and Andy Kaufman, in an account that also evaluates the roles played by such clubs as Catch a Rising Star, the Improv, and the Comedy Store.

Six short stories and a novella from a master of science fiction, Peter F. Hamilton. This collection includes Sonnie's Edge, as seen in the award-winning Netflix anthology series Love, Death & Robots. Set in the same universe as the Night’s Dawn trilogy, Peter F. Hamilton presents a compelling mix of human dilemmas, imagined technologies and extraordinary new cultures. Among others, this collection includes Sonnie’s Edge, a story of contests to the death between constructed monsters. But one has a special advantage . . . We also visit an abandoned alien spacecraft in Escape Route. Abandoned, but is it really as empty as it seems? In the title novella, A Second Chance at Eden, the co-creator of a genetically-engineered habitat is found murdered. But nobody can identify the perpetrator – or the motive. Featuring a diverse selection of stories set far in the future and beyond the stars, A Second Chance at Eden is a must-have collection from a writer at the top of his game.

In March 1797, five British sailors and 12 Bengali seamen struggled ashore after their longboat broke apart in a storm. Their fellow-survivors from the wreck of the Sydney Cove were stranded more than 500 kilometres southeast in Bass Strait. To rescue their mates and to save themselves the 19 men must walk 700 kilometres north to Sydney. That remarkable walk is a story of endurance but also of unexpected Aboriginal help. From the Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories recounts four such extraordinary and largely forgotten stories: the walk of shipwreck survivors; the founding of a 'new Singapore' in western Arnhem Land in the 1840s; Australia's largest industrial development project nestled amongst outstanding Indigenous rock art in the Pilbara; and the ever-changing story of James Cook's time in Cooktown in 1770. This new telling of the central drama of Australian history ;the encounter between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians, may hold the key to understanding this land and its people.

Gripping accounts of all known fatal mishaps in the most famous of the World's Natural Wonders.

A relational approach to the study of interpersonal communication Close Encounters: Communication in Relationships, Fifth Edition helps students better understand their relationships with romantic partners, friends, and family members. Bestselling authors Laura K. Guerrero, Peter A. Andersen, and Walid A. Afifi offer research-based insights and content illustrated with engaging scenarios to show how state-of-the-art research and theory can be applied to specific issues within relationships—with a focus on issues that are central to describing and understanding close relationships. While maintaining the spotlight on communication, the authors also emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of the study of personal relationships by including research from such disciplines as social psychology and family studies. The book covers issues relevant to developing, maintaining, repairing, and ending relationships. Both the "bright" and "dark" sides of interpersonal communication within relationships are explored.

Everybody Out of the Pond At the Water's Edge will change the way you think about your place in the world. The awesome journey of life's transformation from the first microbes 4 billion years ago to Homo sapiens today is an epic that we are only now beginning to grasp. Magnificent and bizarre, it is the story of how we got here, what we left behind, and what we brought with us. We all know about evolution, but it still seems absurd that our ancestors were fish. Darwin's idea of natural selection was the key to solving generation-to-generation evolution -- microevolution -- but it could only point us toward a complete explanation, still to come, of the engines of macroevolution, the transformation of body shapes across millions of years. Now, drawing on the latest fossil discoveries and breakthrough scientific analysis, Carl Zimmer reveals how macroevolution works. Escorting us along the trail of discovery up to the current dramatic research in paleontology, ecology, genetics, and embryology, Zimmer shows how scientists today are unveiling the secrets of life that biologists struggled with two centuries ago. In this book, you will find a dazzling, brash literary talent and a rigorous scientific sensibility gracefully brought together. Carl Zimmer provides a comprehensive, lucid, and authoritative answer to the mystery of how nature actually made itself.

A pioneering work of environmental journalism that vividly depicts the people, animals and landscapes on the front lines of change's inexorable march. A species nearing extinction, a tribe losing centuries of knowledge, a tract of forest facing the first incursion of humans-how can we even begin to assess the cost of losing so much of our natural and cultural legacy? For forty years, environmental journalist and author Eugene Linden has traveled to the very sites where tradition, wildlands and the various forces of modernity collide. In The Ragged Edge of the World, he takes us from pygmy forests to the Antarctic to the world's most pristine rainforest in the Congo to tell the story of the harm taking place-and the successful preservation efforts-in the world's last wild places. The Ragged Edge of the World is a critical favorite, and was an editors' pick on Oprah.com.