In the span of a sunrise is a collection of emotional prose and outrageous poetic expression; from The Bird of Paradise, aka, Dionne Samuels.

Ancestral Presence tells a history that has more than one history in it while also telling the story of the relation between worlds. For the Fuyuge people of the Papuan highlands, the past is not ‘history’ in a conventional sense. For them, the world and its history derive from a creator force called Tidibe which is central to Fuyuge cosmology: the Fuyuge are at the ‘centre of the world’. But Fuyuge people are part of another history, too: they have experienced decades of mission and government influence from centres of power located elsewhere, to which their mountain home is marginal and remote. Through a detailed exploration of Fuyuge myth, changes to ritual life and cosmology, Eric Hirsch weaves an account of the relationship between these two histories. He documents the real changes wrought by colonialism, government and Christianity from the late nineteenth century to the turn of the millennium. Yet this is not a story of ‘continuity and change’. Hirsch demonstrates how transformation was always central to Fuyuge life: changes brought by missionaries and government were processes they themselves initiated in the ancestral past through Tidibe, the cosmological creator force. Engaging in debates that have been pivotal to Melanesian anthropology, the book presents an ethnographically rich account of a distinctive world, cosmology and ideas of historical change. It also raises questions regarding assumptions central to Western History, its worldview and ideas of historical time.

What begins as just another case for Jake Stewart, a rather cynical Houston based on private detective, turns out to be an introduction to the mysteriously cultural world of the Hawaiian Islands. When everyone seems to have a different story surrounding the ten-year-old disappearance of a local man, Jake and his brother, Marshall, wonder if they'll ever be able to report the truth to the man's long distraught daughter. When Jake and Marshall stumble onto the truth, the action heats up as they race against time and the Hawaiian underworld to make things right for all concerned. The islands of Hawaii provide the backdrop for this intriguing mystery filled with the magical atmosphere found only in the deep, southern tropics where sunsets are a major daily event and surprises await around every turn.

From 1910 to 1913 A. F. R. Wollaston took a part in a couple of expeditions in New Guinea, to the Snow Mountains of Netherlands New Guinea. The main aim was to climb the highest mountains there as well as to collect biological and ethnological specimens. There he succeeded in climbing to within 150 m of the summit of the Carstensz Pyramid, at 4884 m the highest peak on the island, and one not summited until 1962. He is commemorated in the names of a bat, a skink (lizard) and a frog from New Guinea. After the second expedition, Wollaston wrote a detailed account of the journey and adventures, but he was strictly careful to give only True Relations and Descriptions of Things.

How can anthropology improve our understanding of the interrelationship between nature and culture?- What can anthropology contribute to practical debates which depend on particular definitions of nature, such as that concerning sustainable development?Humankind has evolved over several million years by living in and utilizing 'nature' and by assimilating it into 'culture'. Indeed, the technological and cultural advancement of the species has been widely acknowledged to rest upon human domination and control of nature. Yet, by the 1960s, the idea of culture in confrontation with nature was being challenged by science, philosophy and the environmental movement. Anthropology is increasingly concerned with such issues as they become more urgent for humankind as a whole. This important book reviews the current state of the concepts of 'nature' we use, both as scientific devices and ideological constructs, and is organised around three themes:- nature as a cultural construction;- the cultural management of the environment; and- relations between plants, animals and humans.

A journal of Mormon thought.