"To Love the Wind and the Rain" is a groundbreaking and vivid analysis of the relationship between African Americans and the environment in U.S. history. It focuses on three major themes: African Americans in the rural environment, African Americans in the urban and suburban environments, and African Americans and the notion of environmental justice. Meticulously researched, the essays cover subjects including slavery, hunting, gardening, religion, the turpentine industry, outdoor recreation, women, and politics. "To Love the Wind and the Rain" will serve as an excellent foundation for future studies in African American environmental history.
With a basis in environmental history, this groundbreaking study challenges the idea that a meaningful attachment to nature and the outdoors is contrary to the black experience. The discussion shows that contemporary African American culture is usually seen as an urban culture, one that arose out of the Great Migration and has contributed to international trends in fashion, music, and the arts ever since. However, because of this urban focus, many African Americans are not at peace with their rich but tangled agrarian legacy. On one hand, the book shows, nature and violence are connected in black memory, especially in disturbing images such as slave ships on the ocean, exhaustion in the fields, dogs in the woods, and dead bodies hanging from trees. In contrast, though, there is also a competing tradition of African American stewardship of the land that should be better known. Emphasizing the tradition of black environmentalism and using storytelling techniques to dramatize the work of black naturalists, this account corrects the record and urges interested urban dwellers to get back to the land.
A seductive memoir of a life-changing affair during a time of revolution as it unfolds over a decade and across three continents, surprising both lovers with the power and urgency of love.
We might think humans have control over our environment, but Mother Nature has proven us wrong again and again. Earth, Wind, Fire, and Rain: Real Tales of Temperamental Elements tells the story of five of America’s deadliest natural disasters that were made worse by human error, ignorance, and greed. For example, in the fall of 1871, loggers and farmers chopped trees and burned brush in the vast forest around Peshtigo, Wisconsin. Fire was a tool they believed they could control. But on October 8, 1 million acres burned in the deadliest fire in American history. Later that century, meteorologists mistakenly predicted clearing skies for New York City on March 10, 1888. Then, two devilish storm fronts collided in what was called the Great White Hurricane. The blizzard brought New Yorkers to their knees and unprepared city leaders were powerless to help. Powerless too were the residents of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on May 31, 1889. A private club of wealthy businessmen owned a dam upriver from Johnstown. The club modified the dam to improve recreation on their private lake, but these changes weakened the structure. When heavy rains fell, the dam burst, flooding Johnstown with 20 million tons of water. Residents of San Francisco had no warning when a massive earthquake struck on April 18, 1906. It toppled buildings, ruptured gas mines and ignited fires. Years of political corruption had underfunded the fire department, leaving it without the equipment or training to quench the inferno, and San Francisco burned. In the 1920s, farmers transformed the dry, windy southern Plains by digging up the buffalo grass and planting millions of acres of wheat. But nature fought back by turning this breadbasket into a Dust Bowl. On April 14, 1935, Black Sunday, a 200-mile cloud of dirt buried fields, livestock, and people. Peoples’ choices did not cause these disasters, but they did give the forces of nature an extra nudge. However, tragedy sparked reforms in weather forecasting, soil and forest management, and emergency preparation. But remember—no one can control nature. So be prepared to get out of the way when disaster strikes. This is the tenth book in a series called Mystery & Mayhem, which features true tales that whet kids’ appetites for history by engaging them in genres with proven track records—mystery and adventure. History is made of near misses, unexplained disappearances, unsolved mysteries, and bizarre events that are almost too weird to be true—almost! The Mystery and Mayhem series delves into these tidbits of history to provide kids with a jumping off point into a lifelong habit of appreciating history. The five true tales told within Earth, Wind, Fire, and Rain are paired with maps, photographs, and timelines that lend authenticity and narrative texture to the stories. A glossary and resources page provide the opportunity to practice using essential academic tools. These nonfiction narratives use clear, concise language with compelling plots that both avid and reluctant readers will be drawn to.
An English/Spanish bilingual edition of Nancy Tillman's heartwarming debut picture book for readers of all ages, On the Night You Were Born / La Noche En Que Tu Naciste. On the night you were born, the moon smiled with such wonder that the stars peeked in to see you and the night wind whispered. "Life will never be the same." On the night you were born, the whole world came alive with thanksgiving. The moon stayed up till morning. The geese flew home to celebrate. Polar bears danced. On the night you were born you brought wonder and magic to the world. Here is a book that celebrates you. It is meant to be carried wherever life takes you, over all the roads, through all the years.
Rain is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive. It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of the world's water. Yet this is the first book to tell the story of rain. Cynthia Barnett's Rain begins four billion years ago with the torrents that filled the oceans, and builds to the storms of climate change. It weaves together science—the true shape of a raindrop, the mysteries of frog and fish rains—with the human story of our ambition to control rain, from ancient rain dances to the 2,203 miles of levees that attempt to straitjacket the Mississippi River. It offers a glimpse of our "founding forecaster," Thomas Jefferson, who measured every drizzle long before modern meteorology. Two centuries later, rainy skies would help inspire Morrissey’s mopes and Kurt Cobain’s grunge. Rain is also a travelogue, taking readers to Scotland to tell the surprising story of the mackintosh raincoat, and to India, where villagers extract the scent of rain from the monsoon-drenched earth and turn it into perfume. Now, after thousands of years spent praying for rain or worshiping it; burning witches at the stake to stop rain or sacrificing small children to bring it; mocking rain with irrigated agriculture and cities built in floodplains; even trying to blast rain out of the sky with mortars meant for war, humanity has finally managed to change the rain. Only not in ways we intended. As climate change upends rainfall patterns and unleashes increasingly severe storms and drought, Barnett shows rain to be a unifying force in a fractured world. Too much and not nearly enough, rain is a conversation we share, and this is a book for everyone who has ever experienced it.
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year Winner of the Mountains and Plains Book Seller's Association Award "Sprawling in scope. . . . Mr. Egan uses the past powerfully to explain and give dimension to the present." --The New York Times "Fine reportage . . . honed and polished until it reads more like literature than journalism." --Los Angeles Times "They have tried to tame it, shave it, fence it, cut it, dam it, drain it, nuke it, poison it, pave it, and subdivide it," writes Timothy Egan of the West; still, "this region's hold on the American character has never seemed stronger." In this colorful and revealing journey through the eleven states west of the 100th meridian, Egan, a third-generation westerner, evokes a lovely and troubled country where land is religion and the holy war between preservers and possessors never ends. Egan leads us on an unconventional, freewheeling tour: from America's oldest continuously inhabited community, the Ancoma Pueblo in New Mexico, to the high kitsch of Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where London Bridge has been painstakingly rebuilt stone by stone; from the fragile beauty of Idaho's Bitterroot Range to the gross excess of Las Vegas, a city built as though in defiance of its arid environment. In a unique blend of travel writing, historical reflection, and passionate polemic, Egan has produced a moving study of the West: how it became what it is, and where it is going. "The writing is simply wonderful. From the opening paragraph, Egan seduces the reader. . . . Entertaining, thought provoking." --The Arizona Daily Star Weekly "A western breeziness and love of open spaces shines through Lasso the Wind. . . . The writing is simple and evocative." --The Economist
A delightful picture book about a wonderfully wet walk. Simple text and colourful illustrations introduce the science of rain to very young children. This is a highly illustrated ebook that can only be read on the Kindle Fire or other tablet.
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Gutsy Girl comes this provocative, compelling novel of irrevocable consequences for people thrust unwittingly into a devastating war of nations and American identity—based on a little-known true event. December 1941. The inhabitants of Niihau lead a simple life. Mostly Hawaiian natives, they work the ranch of Niihau's eccentric haole owner, who keeps his island totally isolated from the outside world, devoid of cars, phones, and electricity. But then a plane crash-lands there, and although the villagers rescue the pilot, they have no idea that he has just attacked Pearl Harbor. War has now come to Eden, slowly undoing its tranquillity, widening the cracks in the already troubled marriage of Irene and Yoshio Harada, the island's only Japanese-American couple. It will test everyone's loyalties and all they believe in . . . as Paradise, once within reach, slowly falls victim to its own isolated innocence.
Margaret Wise Brown once observed, "To write well for children, one must love the things that children love." And write well for children she did -- with a deep love for and a keen perception of all things great and small in the world around us. Collected here for the first time are twenty-four of Margaret Wise Brown's children's poems, which range in subject from jig-dancing pigs and the wild sound of the wind to the colors of a summer day and the joy of giving oneself to the rain. With a foreword by noted children's literature scholar and Brown biographer Leonard S. Marcus, and illustrated with vibrant and sensitive paintings by Teri L. Weidner, Give Yourself to the Rain is a precious gift to be shared among children and adults everywhere.
