Fifty years ago, David Wedd was a young army officer in West Africas Gold Coast, when that country became Ghana, the first black African colony to gain independence from British rule. In an account that is by turns exciting, funny and poignant, he depicts the changeover from the inside. His lively portrait of the emerging nation introduces us to a whole gallery of characters: the European and African soldiers in his Battalion; traders and market women; religious leaders and witch-doctors; sportsmen, teachers and musicians; and political leaders, including Ghanas first Prime Minister, Kwame Nkrumah. He tells of his work as an intelligence officer in the new nation and his exploration of the rain forest with its exotic scenery and wildlife, and he shares with us his journey north, through Burkina Faso and Mali to the Sahara Desert and the old town of Timbuktu. Throughout these pages his love of West Africa, with its varied landscapes and above all its exuberant people, is inescapable.

Most people equate Los Angeles with smog, sprawl, forty suburbs in search of a city-the great "what-not-to-do" of twentieth-century city building. But there's much more to LA's story than this shallow stereotype. History shows that Los Angeles was intensely, ubiquitously planned. The consequences of that planning-the environmental history of urbanism—is one place to turn for the more complex lessons LA has to offer. Working forward from ancient times and ancient ecologies to the very recent past, Land of Sunshine is a fascinating exploration of the environmental history of greater Los Angeles. Rather than rehearsing a litany of errors or insults against nature, rather than decrying the lost opportunities of "roads not taken," these essays, by nineteen leading geologists, ecologists, and historians, instead consider the changing dynamics both of the city and of nature. In the nineteenth century, for example, "density" was considered an evil, and reformers struggled mightily to move the working poor out to areas where better sanitation and flowers and parks "made life seem worth the living." We now call that vision "sprawl," and we struggle just as much to bring middle-class people back into the core of American cities. There's nothing natural, or inevitable, about such turns of events. It's only by paying very close attention to the ways metropolitan nature has been constructed and construed that meaningful lessons can be drawn. History matters. So here are the plants and animals of the Los Angeles basin, its rivers and watersheds. Here are the landscapes of fact and fantasy, the historical actors, events, and circumstances that have proved transformative over and over again. The result is a nuanced and rich portrait of Los Angeles that will serve planners, communities, and environmentalists as they look to the past for clues, if not blueprints, for enhancing the quality and viability of cities.

The book is about the place where unhappy, lonely children can go and have some fun. The story involved in the book is about good over evil. This book has a very happy ending, and here, good does win. There is a sequel to this first book, which is in the making at this point in time; its called Return to the Sunshine Land, written again by Veronica Lomas (Sandy Guiles).

Florida is a story of astonishing growth, a state swelling from 500,000 residents at the outset of the 20th century to some 16 million at the end. As recently as mid-century, on the eve of Pearl Harbor, Florida was the smallest state in the South. At the dawn of the millennium, it is the fourth largest in the country, a megastate that was among those introducing new words into the American vernacular: space coast, climate control, growth management, retirement community, theme park, edge cities, shopping mall, boomburbs, beach renourishment, Interstate, and Internet. Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams attempts to understand the firestorm of change that erupted into modern Florida by examining the great social, cultural, and economic forces driving its transformation. Gary Mormino ranges far and wide across the landscape and boundaries of a place that is at once America's southernmost state and the northernmost outpost of the Caribbean. From the capital, Tallahassee--a day's walk from the Georgia border--to Miami--a city distant but tantalizingly close to Cuba and Haiti--Mormino traces the themes of Florida's transformation: the echoes of old Dixie and a vanishing Florida; land booms and tourist empires; revolutions in agriculture, technology, and demographics; the seductions of the beach and the dynamics of a graying population; and the enduring but changing meanings of a dreamstate. Beneath the iconography of popular culture is revealed a complex and complicated social framework that reflects a dizzying passage from New Spain to Old South, New South to Sunbelt.

Includes reports, etc., of the Southwest Society of the Archaeological Institutes of America.

This kid’s story book is the first book of a new children’s series of kids learning books. Little Sally Sunshine is a combination of children’s fantasy, superhero children’s read along books, and kid’s adventure books all wrapped up into a nice addition to add to your collection of children’s inspirational books. It is a simple fantasy story book about an innocent, joyful little girl named Sally Sunshine and her faithful dog Mr. Happy who live in the “Land of Sunshine”, where life is wonderful and nothing bad ever happens to the children who live there. Then one day Sally and Mr. Happy accidentally stumble onto a world called “The Land of Frowns”, which is a place where children never smile because of a notorious villain called “The Smile Thief”, who has stolen everyone’s smiles and locked them away in a dungeon - and that’s where the adventure begins... This is a kid’s chapter book that is a wonderful bedtime kids reading book and storybook to share with your child. It is a simple story told in a way that kids can grasp. It is written in such a fashion that will give you the opportunity to gently introduce a young formative mind to the sometimes harsh realities of life that he or she will inevitably discover when they go to school and find that not everyone will love them in the unconditional way that you do. Finding this out on their own can often become a very traumatic experience for a young child with effects that can last a lifetime. But this fun children’s fairy tale about Little Sally Sunshine and the Smile Thief who symbolizes a bully, will provide an easy gradient and act as a “discover book” on the topic of bullies and bullying and the people they will come across in life who will not be very nice. We all want to shield our children from these types of people but of course this is impossible. So the next best thing is educating them before the fact so as to soften the impact of the experiences when they do happen. It is a children’s fantasy book that is guaranteed to captivate your child's imagination as each chapter is a cliff hanger that will have them wanting to see what happens next in this action packed adventure series. Suitable as a read aloud book for preschoolers or a self-read book for older children this children’s fiction book will fascinate your child while instilling in them the importance of treating others with dignity and respect despite the negative behaviors of others. The underlying theme is how to positively handle bullying and bullies. In the modern world, bullying is everywhere and the sooner your child is educated about them, the better he will be able to deal with bullying when and if he is confronted with it himself.