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Balcony Over Jerusalem: A Middle East Memoir - Israel, Palestine and Beyond by John Lyons, 2017

A gripping memoir of life in Jerusalem from one of Australia's most experienced Middle East correspondents. Leading Australian journalist John Lyons will take readers on a fascinating personal journey through the wonders and dangers of the Middle East.

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#memoir
#MiddleEast
#Jerusalem
#Israel
#Palestine

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Balcony Over Jerusalem: A Middle East Memoir - Israel, Palestine and Beyond by John Lyons, 2017

A gripping memoir of life in Jerusalem from one of Australia's most experienced Middle East correspondents. Leading Australian journalist John Lyons will take readers on a fascinating personal journey through the wonders and dangers of the Middle East.

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#memoir
#MiddleEast
#Jerusalem
#Israel
#Palestine

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From the sheer excitement of arriving in Jerusalem with his wife and eight-year-old son, to the fall of dictators and his gripping account of what it feels like to be taken by Egyptian soldiers, blindfolded and interrogated, this is a memoir of the Middle East like no other. Drawing on a 20-year interest in the Middle East, Lyons has had extraordinary access - he's interviewed everyone from Israel's former Prime Ministers Shimon Peres and Ehud Olmert to key figures from Hezbollah and Hamas. He's witnessed the brutal Iranian Revolutionary Guard up close and was one of the last foreign journalists in Iran during the violent crackdown against the 'Green Revolution'. He's confronted Hamas officials about why they fire rockets into Israel and Israeli soldiers about why they fire tear gas at Palestinian school children. By telling the story of his family travelling through the region, this book is extremely readable and entertaining, full of humour, colour. It is sometimes dazzling in its detail, sometimes tragic. Lyons says he has written it in a way that readers can feel they are there with him - so they can smell the wonderful markets of the Middle East and feel the fear of what it is like to be blindfolded and have your hands bound with electrical cord. Lyons also looks at 50 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank - the mechanics of how this works and the effect it now has on both Israelis and Palestinians.

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@KeithDJohnson

#banned
#books
#America
#censorship

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@KeithDJohnson

#banned
#books
#America
#censorship

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Censorship has been an ongoing phenomenon even in "the land of the free." This examination of banned books across U.S. history examines the motivations and effects of censorship, shows us how our view of right and wrong has evolved over the years, and helps readers to understand the tremendous importance of books and films in our society.
• Provides readers with a broad understanding of the different levels of censorship
• Puts challenges to books into historical context of societal standards and current events
• Takes both historical and literary perspectives, recognizing the lasting cultural influences of texts and their literary significance
• Presents biographical background of major authors who have been challenged
• Identifies the source and explains the result of challenges to the most important or influential banned books
• Compares challenges to controversial books against similar challenges to controversial films, television shows, and video games

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Censorship of one form or another has existed almost as long as the written word, while definitions of what is deemed "acceptable" in published works have shifted over the centuries, and from culture to culture.

Banned Books explores why some of the world's most important literary classics and seminal non-fiction titles were once deemed too controversial for the public to read - whether for challenging racial or sexual norms, satirizing public figures, or simply being deemed unfit for young readers. From the banning of All Quiet on the Western Front and the repeated suppression of On the Origin of the Species, to 1984, Fahrenheit 45, Catcher in the Rye and Huckleberry Fin, this must-have volume examines the astonishing role that some banned books have played in changing history. 

Packed with eye-opening insights into the history of the written word, and the political and social climate during the period of suppression or censorship, this is a must-read for anyone interested in literature, creative writing, politics, history, or the law.

- Covers a broad range of genres and subject areas in fiction and non-fiction, ranging from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Spycatcher
- Offers informative insights into society, politics, law, and religious beliefs, in different countries around the world
- Features images of first editions and specially commissioned illustrations of the books' authors
- Includes extracts from the banned books along with key quotations about them

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Tracing the censorship histories of 120 works from around the world, this volume--expanded from 100 Banned Books--provides a summary of each work, its censorship history and suggestions for further reading.

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Throughout the 24 lectures of Banned Books, Burned Books: Forbidden Literary Works, author and book critic Professor Maureen Corrigan of Georgetown University will take you on a tour of some of the most challenged and controversial works of literature, from the plays of Shakespeare to 21st-century best-sellers—even including the dictionary and classic fairy tales. You will trace the history, in the United States and Great Britain, of the challenges to books, the censoring of books, book bans, and even burnings. You will explore the common reasons books have been and continue to be banned, including profanity, heresy, illicit or sexual content, racism, violence, and more. And you’ll consider the shifting trends in why books are challenged.
The challenging, censorship, and even destruction of works found to be offensive or threatening to the status quo is not new, but the nature of 21st-century communication and politics has certainly influenced the way books are evaluated and judged today. The rise of social media has blurred the line between an author’s work and their private life, while it has also given readers and would-be critics a platform to make their voices heard. And social justice movements have brought race, sexual identity, and other issues to the forefront of the consideration of literature and its influence on culture.

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Power Metal: The Race for the Resources That Will Shape the Future by Vince Beiser, 2024

The powerful ways the metals we need to fuel technology and energy are spawning environmental havoc, political upheaval, and rising violence — and how we can do better.

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#resources
#metals

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Power Metal: The Race for the Resources That Will Shape the Future by Vince Beiser, 2024

The powerful ways the metals we need to fuel technology and energy are spawning environmental havoc, political upheaval, and rising violence — and how we can do better.

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#resources
#metals

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An Australian millionaire’s plan to mine the ocean floor. Nigerian garbage pickers risking their lives to salvage e-waste. A Bill Gates-backed entrepreneur harnessing AI to find metals in the Arctic.
These people and millions more are part of the intensifying competition to find and extract the minerals essential for two crucial technologies: the internet and renewable energy. In Power Metal, Vince Beiser explores the Achilles’ heel of “green power” and digital technology – that manufacturing computers, cell phones, electric cars, and other technologies demand skyrocketing amounts of lithium, copper, cobalt, and other materials. Around the world, businesses and governments are scrambling for new places and new ways to get those metals.

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A displaced child taking shelter under a bent mattress.

@photography
@palestine
#children
#shelter

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A displaced child taking shelter under a bent mattress.

@photography
@palestine
#children
#shelter

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Israeli fighter jets have also bombed a tent housing displaced Palestinians in the al-Mawasi area of southern Gaza, killing a woman and her daughter.

@palestine
@photography
#Gaza
#children

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Israeli fighter jets have also bombed a tent housing displaced Palestinians in the al-Mawasi area of southern Gaza, killing a woman and her daughter.

@palestine
@photography
#Gaza
#children

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@ajaykaul10

A brilliant, original history of the spice trade--and the appetites that fueled it.

#books
#history
#spices

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@ajaykaul10

A brilliant, original history of the spice trade--and the appetites that fueled it.

#books
#history
#spices

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It was in search of the fabled Spice Islands and their cloves that Magellan charted the first circumnavigation of the globe. Vasco da Gama sailed the dangerous waters around Africa to India on a quest for Christians--and spices. Columbus sought gold and pepper but found the New World. By the time these fifteenth- and sixteenth-century explorers set sail, the aromas of these savory, seductive seeds and powders had tempted the palates and imaginations of Europe for centuries. 

Spice: The History of a Temptation is a history of the spice trade told not in the conventional narrative of politics and economics, nor of conquest and colonization, but through the intimate human impulses that inspired and drove it. Here is an exploration of the centuries-old desire for spice in food, in medicine, in magic, in religion, and in sex--and of the allure of forbidden fruit lingering in...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/210364.Spice

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@ajaykaul10

The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice

#books
#history
#spices

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@ajaykaul10

The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice

#books
#history
#spices

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The tales these spices could tell: of lavish Renaissance banquets perfumed with cloves, and flimsy sailing ships sent around the world to secure a scented prize; of cinnamon-dusted custard tarts and nutmeg-induced genocide; of pungent elixirs and the quest for the pepper groves of paradise. The Taste of Conquest offers up a riveting, globe-trotting tale of unquenchable desire, fanatical religion, raw greed, fickle fashion, and mouthwatering cuisine–in short, the very stuff of which our world is made. In this engaging, enlightening, and anecdote-filled history, Michael Krondl, a noted chef turned writer and food historian, tells the story of three legendary cities–Venice, Lisbon, and Amsterdam–and how their single-minded pursuit of spice helped to make (and remake) the Western diet and set in motion the first great wave of globalization. 
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the world’s peoples were irrevocably brought together as a result of the spice trade. Before the great voyages of discovery, Venice controlled the business in Eastern seasonings and thereby became medieval Europe’s most cosmopolitan urban center. Driven to dominate this trade, Portugal’s mariners pioneered sea routes to the New World and around the Cape of Good Hope to India to unseat Venice as Europe’s chief pepper dealer. Then, in the 1600s, the savvy businessmen of Amsterdam “invented” the modern corporation–the Dutch East India Company–and took over as spice merchants to the world. 

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Seven Deadly Sins: The Biology of Being Human Guy Leschziner, 2024

Gluttony. Greed. Sloth. Pride. Envy. Lust. Anger. These are the seven deadly sins, the vices of humankind that define immorality, the roots of all evil in the world. Or so some believe. But do these sins really represent moral failings, or are they simply human functions that aid us? Are they just the result of how our bodies, psyches, and brains in particular, are wired?

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#psychology

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Seven Deadly Sins: The Biology of Being Human Guy Leschziner, 2024

Gluttony. Greed. Sloth. Pride. Envy. Lust. Anger. These are the seven deadly sins, the vices of humankind that define immorality, the roots of all evil in the world. Or so some believe. But do these sins really represent moral failings, or are they simply human functions that aid us? Are they just the result of how our bodies, psyches, and brains in particular, are wired?

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#psychology

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This new book by Dr Guy Leschziner, a professor of neurology and sleep medicine, explores the underlying nature of the seven deadly sins, their neuroscientific and psychological basis, their origin in our genes and crucially how certain medical disorders give rise to them. Drawing on his clinical practice, we meet individuals whose physical and psychological conditions have given rise to these sins, where brain injury or other experiences have sparked ‘immoral’ actions. He explores how illness can simply expose what lies within us and investigates how the origins of these traits lie in evolutionary imperatives to preserve the wellbeing of the tribe. Perhaps, he suggests, these character traits are less of a moral question and more biological, which raises fundamental issues of responsibility and blame in the face of ‘sin’. Combining cutting-edge science placed in the context of real-life experience with patients, the book reexamines where the boundaries between normal human nature, pathology and sin are drawn. And, most importantly, whether these hard-wired traits truly represent sin, or simply the intensity of our intrinsic desire to survive and thrive.

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@bookstodon

Examines the ecology and ecosystems of rivers, estuaries, and deltas and how humans interact with these environments.

Additional topics include damming, climate change, water use, pollution, resource management, and planetary health, as well as future perspectives on these vital landscapes.

#books
#rivers

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@bookstodon

Examines the ecology and ecosystems of rivers, estuaries, and deltas and how humans interact with these environments.

Additional topics include damming, climate change, water use, pollution, resource management, and planetary health, as well as future perspectives on these vital landscapes.

#books
#rivers

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The World Atlas of Rivers, Estuaries, and Deltas

Jim Best, Stephen Darby, Luciana Esteves, and Carol Wilson, 2024

A stunningly illustrated atlas of the world’s rivers, estuaries, and deltas, and their ecosystems.

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hard cover/9780691244839/the-world-atlas-of-rivers-estuaries-and-deltas

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#reference
#atlas
#rivers
#estuaries
#deltas

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The World Atlas of Rivers, Estuaries, and Deltas

Jim Best, Stephen Darby, Luciana Esteves, and Carol Wilson, 2024

A stunningly illustrated atlas of the world’s rivers, estuaries, and deltas, and their ecosystems.

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hard cover/9780691244839/the-world-atlas-of-rivers-estuaries-and-deltas

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#reference
#atlas
#rivers
#estuaries
#deltas

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From the Congo and the Mekong to the Seine and the Mississippi, Earth’s rivers carve through landscapes before coursing into the world’s oceans through estuaries and deltas. Their inexorable flow carries sediment and more, acting as lifeblood for a variety of ecosystems and communities.
More than any other surface feature of Earth, rivers, estuaries, and deltas are vitally important to our economic and social well-being, and our management of them often sits at the sharp edge of today’s most pressing environmental challenges. The World Atlas of Rivers, Estuaries, and Deltas takes readers on an unforgettable tour of these dynamic bodies of water, explaining how they function at each stage of their flow. Combining maps and graphics with informative essays and beautiful photos, this invaluable reference book will give you a new appreciation for the power that rivers, estuaries, and deltas wield.

    Features a wealth of color photos, maps, and infographics
    Brings together invaluable perspectives from leading experts
    Describes the rich biodiversity associated with the world’s rivers, estuaries, and deltas
    Explains how rivers, estuaries, and deltas work, from river networks to deltaic floodplains, and sheds light on the erosion, movement, and deposition of sediment
    Describes the anatomy of rivers, estuaries, and deltas, from channel geometry and river planforms to estuarine shape and delta morphology
   

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Sharks of the World A Complete Guide by Dr. David A. Ebert et al, 2021

The most comprehensive reference guide to the world's sharks.

Sharks of the World is the essential illustrated guide for anyone interested in these magnificent creatures. Now fully revised and updated, it covers more than 525 of the world's shark species and is packed with colour illustrations, colour photos, and informative diagrams.

https://www. dymocks.com.au/sharks-of-the-w orld-by-dr-david-a-ebert-and-dr-sarah-fowler-9780691205991

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#reference
#sharks

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Sharks of the World A Complete Guide by Dr. David A. Ebert et al, 2021

The most comprehensive reference guide to the world's sharks.

Sharks of the World is the essential illustrated guide for anyone interested in these magnificent creatures. Now fully revised and updated, it covers more than 525 of the world's shark species and is packed with colour illustrations, colour photos, and informative diagrams.

https://www. dymocks.com.au/sharks-of-the-w orld-by-dr-david-a-ebert-and-dr-sarah-fowler-9780691205991

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#reference
#sharks

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This comprehensive, easy-to-use reference guide incorporates the latest taxonomic revisions of many shark families, featuring many species that were only described in recent years. It also includes a completely revised and expanded introduction and updated line drawings throughout. 

  Covers more than 525 shark species from around the world 
    Features updated species accounts, illustrations and maps 
    Gives an illustrated overview of shark biology, ecology and conservation Includes fin identification guides 
    Provides a colour distribution map for every species

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A woman looks out of a house damaged in an Israeli strike.

Photograph: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters

@photography
@palestine
#Gaza

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A woman looks out of a house damaged in an Israeli strike.

Photograph: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters

@photography
@palestine
#Gaza

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Children help push a motorcycle along a flooded road after heavy rain caused a river to overflow.

Bandung, West #Java

Photograph: Timur Matahari/AFP/Getty Images

@photography
#Indonesia
#flood

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Children help push a motorcycle along a flooded road after heavy rain caused a river to overflow.

Bandung, West #Java

Photograph: Timur Matahari/AFP/Getty Images

@photography
#Indonesia
#flood

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Protesters outside an arms fair held at the Ahoy exhibition centre. Police made several arrests during the protest after people sprayed paint and fake blood on the walls of the venue.

Rotterdam, #Netherlands

Photograph: Mouneb Taim/Anadolu/Getty Images

@photography
#activism
#protest

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Protesters outside an arms fair held at the Ahoy exhibition centre. Police made several arrests during the protest after people sprayed paint and fake blood on the walls of the venue.

Rotterdam, #Netherlands

Photograph: Mouneb Taim/Anadolu/Getty Images

@photography
#activism
#protest

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Snow turns the Glenfinnan viaduct in the Highlands into a winter wonderland. Built from 1897 to 1901, the viaduct overlooks the Glenfinnan Monument and carries the West Highland railway line.

Loch Shiel, #UK

Photograph: Dave Johnston

@photography
#winter
#viaduct

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Snow turns the Glenfinnan viaduct in the Highlands into a winter wonderland. Built from 1897 to 1901, the viaduct overlooks the Glenfinnan Monument and carries the West Highland railway line.

Loch Shiel, #UK

Photograph: Dave Johnston

@photography
#winter
#viaduct

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Lava spurts and flows after the eruption of a volcano in the Reykjanes Peninsula near Grindavik, #Iceland. via Civil Protection of Iceland

@photography
#lava
#volcano

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Lava spurts and flows after the eruption of a volcano in the Reykjanes Peninsula near Grindavik, #Iceland. via Civil Protection of Iceland

@photography
#lava
#volcano