Accustomed to the dark, dripping stands of Douglas–fir, spruce and hemlock that blanketed the Hudson's Bay Company outposts on the remote western coast of the "new World" the first Europeans were surely startled to see the wide–open landscapes of the Garry oak meadows they encountered on Southern Vancouver Island ––– landscapes that might have reminded any explorers who had ventured into the African savannahs of what they had seen there. Though slow in comprehending what they had stumbled upon, the Europeans immediately recognized the deep, rich deposits of black soil that extended many feet below the surface, and James Douglas chose the site as the ideal location for the HBC's new fort, and settlement. What the newcomers failed to appreciate is that these meadows were not the work of nature alone, but of the Coast Salish peoples who had been living in these parts for millennia. With the construction of the fort of Victoria began an encroachment on these Garry oak meadows, built up over centuries if not millennia, a process that continues today. In Gardens Aflame, Victoria writer and environmentalist Maleea Acker tells us about this unique and vanishing ecosystem, and the people who have made it their life's work to save the Garry oak and the environment ––– including the human environment ––– it depends on. Acker tells us about the Garry oak species and its unique habits and requirements, including its unusual summer dormancy period, when all the surrounding plants are coursing with life. We learn something about the scientists, arborists, and Garry oak–loving volunteers who have dedicated themselves to this tree; and about Theophrastus, Humboldt, and their other forebearers who are still reshaping our notions of nature and humans' place in it. And in the course of Acker's story, we see her fall under the spell of the strange beauty woven by these magnificent trees, and the ecosystems they tower over ––– until, in the final act, she decides to turn her own front yard into her own version of a Garry oak meadow, defying City Hall and the neighbours, and bringing to a head in 2011 all the issues raised 150 years ago when Europeans first saw the open meadows of Southern Vancouver Island. Gardens Aflame is number 21 in the Transmontanus series.

"This collection of articles from the Soviet and Russian press paints an intriguing portrait of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Unlike Western media outlets, this conflict has been a mainstay in the Soviet, then Russian press. The present collection of articles--carefully translated, edited, and culled from a vast repository of Russian-language press curated by East View--presents in book form for the first time in English some of the most important material that has appeared from 1988 to the present. By bringing together this unique collection, East View Press aims to provide readers with the immediate context of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict through the lens of Moscow, along with some insight into its complex historical, political and ethnic underpinnings. Black Garden Aflame will be of interest to specialists and general readers alike"--

In this spellbinding new history, David Goldfield offers the first major new interpretation of the Civil War era since James M. McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. Where past scholars have limned the war as a triumph of freedom, Goldfield sees it as America's greatest failure: the result of a breakdown caused by the infusion of evangelical religion into the public sphere. As the Second GreatAwakening surged through America, political questions became matters of good and evil to be fought to the death. The price of that failure was horrific, but the carnage accomplished what statesmen could not: It made the United States one nation and eliminated slavery as a divisive force in the Union. The victorious North became synonymous with America as a land of innovation and industrialization, whose teeming cities offered squalor and opportunity in equal measure. Religion was supplanted by science and a gospel of progress, and the South was left behind. Goldfield's panoramic narrative, sweeping from the 1840s to the end of Reconstruction, is studded with memorable details and luminaries such as HarrietBeecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, and Walt Whitman. There are lesser known yet equally compelling characters, too, including Carl Schurz-a German immigrant, warhero, and postwar reformer-and Alexander Stephens, the urbane and intellectual vice president of the Confederacy. America Aflame is a vivid portrait of the "fiery trial"that transformed the country we live in.

"The garden has always been a place of peace and perseverance, of nurture and reward. Using contemporary neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and compelling real-life stories, The Well-Gardened Mind investigates the remarkable effects of nature on our health and well-being."--Dust jacket.

Winner of the Rachel Carson Award for Excellence in Environmental Journalism, Water Always Wins is a hopeful journey around the world and across time, illuminating better ways to live with water. Nearly every human endeavor on the planet was conceived and constructed with a relatively stable climate in mind. But as new climate disasters remind us every day, our world is not stable—and it is changing in ways that expose the deep dysfunction of our relationship with water. Increasingly severe and frequent floods and droughts inevitably spur calls for higher levees, bigger drains, and longer aqueducts. But as we grapple with extreme weather, a hard truth is emerging: our development, including concrete infrastructure designed to control water, is actually exacerbating our problems. Because sooner or later, water always wins. In this quietly radical book, science journalist Erica Gies introduces us to innovators in what she calls the Slow Water movement who start by asking a revolutionary question: What does water want? Using close observation, historical research, and cutting-edge science, these experts in hydrology, restoration ecology, engineering, and urban planning are already transforming our relationship with water. Modern civilizations tend to speed water away, erasing its slow phases on the land. Gies reminds us that water’s true nature is to flex with the rhythms of the earth: the slow phases absorb floods, store water for droughts, and feed natural systems. Figuring out what water wants—and accommodating its desires within our human landscapes—is now a crucial survival strategy. By putting these new approaches to the test, innovators in the Slow Water movement are reshaping the future.

This fascinating memoir recounts two years of adventure, hardship, and life lessons as a woman moves her family to the Camelsfoot Commune in BC, Canada. The time is the early 1980s. Judith Plant and her new partner, Kip, are ready for a change. Inspired by Fred Brown, their professor at Simon Fraser University, they join a commune in a remote valley near the Yalakom River, deep in Coast Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. Culture Gap tells the story of Judith and Kip’s two-year sojourn. The challenges and privations, the joys and adventures of rural communal living, form the backdrop to a moving human drama. Judith’s son Willie takes to the new life, but Willie’s sisters feel the strong pull of the life they left behind. Meanwhile Fred, the inspiration for the commune, is dying of cancer. An absorbing account of a lifestyle emblematic of a time, Culture Gap also shows a young mother's struggle to reconcile her ideals and her responsibility to those closest to her.

Sturgeon Reach is the name some have given to a stretch of the Fraser River between Hope and Pitt Meadows, where its flow slows, and it deposits the gravel it's been carrying from the province's interior. Its story is one of rocks and stones, from its geological origins, from the mythic beginnings of human settlement, and from the arrival of Simon Fraser through to the onslaught of dykes and roads and bridges and foundations that today threaten the river's essential nature. Sturgeon Reach hosts an incredible array of life, from giant black cottonwoods to a creature that dates from the age of dinosaurs –– the remarkable white sturgeon. This stretch of river is the spawning ground for major salmon runs. And for millennia, it has also been the home of the Sto:lo Indians. How can we now live well along a river that has a ceaseless desire to overflow its banks and set its own course? How can we allow the life that the river's character fosters to persist in the face of overwhelming development? In the 20th book in the Transmontanus series, Terry Glavin and Ben Parfitt explore Sturgeon Reach — its geography, its history, its critical role in the coastal ecosystem, and the compelling story it tells about competing human needs.