Bücher veröffentlicht von Combined Academic Publ.

An exploration of the explosive illegal trade in succulents and the passion that drives it Cacti and succulents are phenomenally popular worldwide among plant enthusiasts, despite being among the world’s most threatened species. The fervor driving the illegal trade in succulents might also be driving some species to extinction. Delving into the strange world of succulent collecting, The Cactus Hunters takes us to the heart of this conundrum: the mystery of how and why ardent lovers of these plants engage in their illicit trade. This is a world of alluring desires, where collectors and conservationists alike are animated by passions that at times exceed the limits of law.    What inspires the desire for a plant? What kind of satisfaction does it promise? The answer, Jared D. Margulies suspects, might be traced through the roots and workings of the illegal succulent trade—an exploration that traverses the fields of botany and criminology, political ecology and human geography, and psychoanalysis. His globe-spanning inquiry leads Margulies from a spectacular series of succulent heists on a small island off the coast of Mexico to California law enforcement agents infiltrating a smuggling ring in South Korea, from scientists racing to discover new and rare species before poachers find them to a notorious Czech “cacto-explorer” who helped turn a landlocked European country into the epicenter of the illegal succulent trade.    A heady blend of international intrigue, social theory, botanical lore, and ecological study, The Cactus Hunters offers complex insight into species extinction, conservation, and more-than-human care.     Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.

Pioneering the field of Springsteen scholarship when it first appeared in 1997, Born in the U.S.A. remains one of the definitive studies of Springsteen’s work and its impact on American culture. This fully revised third edition addresses Springsteen’s evolving attitudes toward politics, religion, masculinity, and racial justice in the 21st century.

Ideal Beauty reveals the woman behind the Garbo mystique, a tough negotiator who used her newfound power in Hollywood to develop a distinctly new feminist screen persona. Examining how she was an icon who helped to define female beauty in the twentieth century, the book also considers Garbo’s spiritual and sexual exploration away from the camera’s glare.

"Would you read this book if a computer wrote it? Would you even know? And why would it matter? Today's eerily impressive artificial intelligence writing tools present us with a crucial challenge: As writers, do we unthinkingly adopt AI's time-saving advantages or do we stop to weigh what we gain and lose when heeding their siren call? To understand how AI is redefining what it means to write and think, linguist and educator Naomi Baron leads us on a journey connecting the dots between human literacy and today's technology. From nineteenth century lessons in composition, to mathematician Alan Turing's work creating a machine for deciphering war-time messages, to contemporary engines like ChatGPT, Baron gives readers a spirited overview of the emergence of both literacy and AI, and a glimpse of their possible future. As the technology becomes increasingly sophisticated and fluent, it's tempting to take the easy way out and let AI do the work for us. Baron cautions that such efficiency isn't always in our interest. As AI plies us with suggestions or full-blown text, we risk losing not just our technical skills but the power of writing as a springboard for personal reflection and unique expression. Funny, informed, and conversational, Who Wrote This? urges us as individuals and as communities to make conscious choices about the extent to which we collaborate with AI. The technology is here to stay. Baron shows us how to work with AI and how to spot where it risks diminishing the valuable cognitive and social benefits of being literate"--

Heaven's Wrath explores the religious thought and religious rites of the early Dutch Atlantic world. D. L. Noorlander argues that the Reformed Church and the West India Company forged and maintained a close union, with considerable consequences across the seventeenth century.Dutch merchants, officers, sailors, and soldiers found in their faith...

In 1990, Sinéad O'Connor's video for "Nothing Compares 2 U? turned her into a superstar. Two years later, an appearance on Saturday Night Live turned her into a scandal. For many people?including, for years, the author?what they knew of O'Connor stopped there. Allyson McCabe believes it's time to reassess our old judgments about Sinéad O'Connor and to expose the machinery that built her up and knocked her down. Addressing triumph and struggle, sound and story, Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters argues that its subject has been repeatedly manipulated and misunderstood by a culture that is often hostile to women who speak their minds (in O'Connor's case, by shaving her head, championing rappers, and tearing up a picture of the pope on live television). McCabe details O'Connor's childhood abuse, her initial success, and the backlash against her radical politics without shying away from the difficult issues her career raises. She compares O'Connor to Madonna, another superstar who challenged the Catholic Church, and Prince, who wrote her biggest hit and allegedly assaulted her. A journalist herself, McCabe exposes how the media distorts not only how we see O'Connor but how we see ourselves, and she weighs the risks of telling a story that hits close to home. In an era when popular understanding of mental health has improved and the public eagerly celebrates feminist struggles of the past, it can be easy to forget how O'Connor suffered for being herself. This is the book her admirers and defenders have been waiting for.

"The story of the Minneapolis musicians who were unexpectedly summoned to re-record half of the songs on Bob Dylan's most acclaimed album When Bob Dylan recorded Blood on the Tracks in New York in September 1974, it was a great album. But it was not the album now ranked by Rolling Stone as one of the ten best of all time. "When something's not right, it's wrong," as Dylan puts it in "You're Going to Make Me Lonesome When You Go"-and something about that original recording led him to a studio in his native Minnesota to re-record five of the songs on that landmark album, including "Idiot Wind" and "Tangled Up in Blue." Six Minnesota musicians sat in on that two-night recording session at Sound 80, bringing their unique sound to some of Dylan's best-known songs-only to have their names left off the album and their contribution unacknowledged for more than forty years. This book tells the story of those two nights in Minneapolis, of the musicians who gave the album so much of its ultimate form and sound, and of their decades-long fight for recognition. Blood in the Tracks takes readers behind the scenes with these "mystery" Minnesota musicians: twenty-one-year-old mandolin virtuoso Peter Ostroushko; drummer Bill Berg and bass player Billy Peterson, the house rhythm section at Sound 80; progressive rock keyboardist Gregg Inhofer; guitarist Chris Weber, who owned The Podium guitar shop in Dinkytown; and Kevin Odegard, whose own career as a singer-songwriter had paralleled Dylan's until he had to take a job as a railroad brakeman to make ends meet. Through in-depth interviews and assiduous research, Paul Metsa and Rick Shefchik trace the twists of fate that brought these musicians together and set them on different paths in its wake: their musical experiences leading up to the December 1974 recording session, the divergent careers that followed, and the painstaking work it took to finally get the official credit that was their due. A rare look at the making-or remaking-of an all-time-great album, and a long overdue acknowledgment of the musicians who helped make it happen, Blood in the Tracks brings to life a transformative moment in the history of rock and roll, for the first time in its true context and with its complete cast of players"--

"Offering cocktails for every academic occasion along with spirited, amusing commentary, The Faculty Lounge is the perfect gift for graduate students, tenure-track professors, and disillusioned administrators"--

Amid the historical decimation of species around the globe, a new way into the language of loss  An endling is the last known individual of a species; when that individual dies, the species becomes extinct. These “last individuals” are poignant characters in the stories that humans tell themselves about today’s Anthropocene. In this evocative work, Lydia Pyne explores how discussion about endlings—how we tell their histories—draws on deep traditions of storytelling across a variety of narrative types that go well beyond the science of these species’ biology or their evolutionary history.Endlings provides a useful and thoughtful discussion of species concepts: how species start and how (and why) they end, what it means to be a “charismatic” species, the effects of rewilding, and what makes species extinction different in this era. From Benjamin the thylacine to Celia the ibex to Lonesome George the Galápagos tortoise, endlings, Pyne shows, have the power to shape how we think about grief, mourning, and loss amid the world’s sixth mass extinction.