This book introduces the first champions of the cause of charity toward the sick and wounded: the Genevan philanthropists and physicians. It focuses on the international Red Cross movement from the first Geneva conference in 1863 until the Tenth Conference in 1921.
The Red Star and the Crescent provides an in-depth and multi-disciplinary analysis of the evolving relationship between China and the Middle East. Despite its increasing importance, very few studies have examined this dynamic, deepening, and multi-faceted nexus. James Reardon- Anderson has sought to fill this critical gap. The volume examines the "big picture" of international relations, then zooms in on case studies and probes the underlying domestic factors on each side. Reardon- Anderson tackles topics as diverse as China's security strategy in the Middle East, its military relations with the states of the region, its role in the Iran nuclear negotiations, the Uyghur question, and the significance and consequences of the Silk Road strategy. A comprehensive study of the changing forces driving one of the world's most important strategic, economic and cultural relationships
In Making the World Safe, historian Julia Irwin offers an insightful account of the American Red Cross, from its founding in 1881 by Clara Barton to its rise as the government's official voluntary aid agency. Equally important, Irwin shows that the story of the Red Cross is simultaneously a story of how Americans first began to see foreign aid as a key element in their relations with the world. As the American Century dawned, more and more Americans saw the need to engage in world affairs and to make the world a safer place--not by military action but through humanitarian aid. It was a time perfectly suited for the rise of the ARC. Irwin shows how the early and vigorous support of William H. Taft--who was honorary president of the ARC even as he served as President of the United States--gave the Red Cross invaluable connections with the federal government, eventually making it the official agency to administer aid both at home and abroad. Irwin describes how, during World War I, the ARC grew at an explosive rate and extended its relief work for European civilians into a humanitarian undertaking of massive proportions, an effort that was also a major propaganda coup. Irwin also shows how in the interwar years, the ARC's mission meshed well with presidential diplomatic styles, and how, with the coming of World War II, the ARC once again grew exponentially, becoming a powerful part of government efforts to bring aid to war-torn parts of the world. The belief in the value of foreign aid remains a central pillar of U.S. foreign relations. Making the World Safe reveals how this belief took hold in America and the role of the American Red Cross in promoting it.
This book offers new and exciting scholarship on the history of the Red Cross Movement by leading historians in the field. It re-imagines and re-evaluates the Red Cross as an institutional network and a key actor in the humanitarian space through two centuries of war and peace.
Never has the demand been so urgent for architects to respond to the design and planning challenges of rebuilding post-disaster sites and cities. In 2011, more people were displaced by natural disasters (42 million) than by wars and armed conflicts. And yet the number of architects equipped to deal with rebuilding the aftermath of these floods, fires, earthquake, typhoons and tsunamis is chronically short. This book documents and analyses the expanding role for architects in designing projects for communities after the event of a natural disaster. The fifteen case studies featured in the body of the book illustrate how architects can use spatial sensibility and integrated problem-solving skills to help alleviate both human and natural disasters. The cases include: Lizzie Babister - Department of International Development, UK. Shigeru Ban - Winner of The Pritzker Architecture Prize 2014, Shigeru Ban Architects and Voluntary Architects’ Network, Japan. Eric Cesal – Disaster Reconstruction and Resiliency Studio and Architecture for Humanity, Japan. Hsieh Ying Chun – Atelier 3, Taiwan. Nathaniel Corum - Education Outreach and Architecture for Humanity, USA. Sandra D’Urzo - Shelter and Settlements and International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Switzerland. Brett Moore - World Vision International, Australia. Michael Murphy - MASS Design Group, USA. David Perkes - Gulf Coast Community Design Studio, USA. Paul Pholeros - Healthabitat, Australia. Patama Roonrakwit - Community Architects for Shelter and Environment, Thailand. Graham Saunders - International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Switzerland. Kirtee Shah - Ahmedabad Study Action Group, India. Maggie Stephenson - UN-HABITAT, Haiti. Anna Wachtmeister - Catholic Organisation for Relief and Redevelopment Aid, the Netherlands. The interviews and supporting essays show built environment professionals collaborating with post-disaster communities as facilitators, collaborators and negotiators of land, space and shelter, rather than as ‘save the world’ modernists, as often portrayed in the design media. The goal is social and physical reconstruction, as a collaborative process involving a damaged community and its local culture, environment and economy; not just shelter ‘projects’ that ‘build’ houses but leave no economic footprint or longer-term community infrastructure. What defines and unites the architects interviewed for Humanitarian Architecture is their collective belief that through a consultative process of spatial problem solving, the design profession can contribute in a significant way to the complex post-disaster challenge of rebuilding a city and its community.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pierce Brown’s relentlessly entertaining debut channels the excitement of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. “Red Rising ascends above a crowded dystopian field.”—USA Today ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness “I live for the dream that my children will be born free,” she says. “That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.” “I live for you,” I say sadly. Eo kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.” Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he toils willingly, trusting that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children. But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and lush wilds spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class. Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’s overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies . . . even if it means he has to become one of them to do so. Praise for Red Rising “[A] spectacular adventure . . . one heart-pounding ride . . . Pierce Brown’s dizzyingly good debut novel evokes The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies, and Ender’s Game. . . . [Red Rising] has everything it needs to become meteoric.”—Entertainment Weekly “Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow.”—Scott Sigler “Red Rising is a sophisticated vision. . . . Brown will find a devoted audience.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga: RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE • LIGHT BRINGER
We are what we eat: this aphorism contains a profound truth about civilization, one that has played out on the world historical stage over many millennia of human endeavor. Using the colorful diaries of a sixteenth-century merchant as a narrative guide, Empires of Food vividly chronicles the fate of people and societies for the past twelve thousand years through the foods they grew, hunted, traded, and ate—and gives us fascinating, and devastating, insights into what to expect in years to come. In energetic prose, agricultural expert Evan D. G. Fraser and journalist Andrew Rimas tell gripping stories that capture the flavor of places as disparate as ancient Mesopotamia and imperial Britain, taking us from the first city in the once-thriving Fertile Crescent to today’s overworked breadbaskets and rice bowls in the United States and China, showing just what food has meant to humanity. Cities, culture, art, government, and religion are founded on the creation and exchange of food surpluses, complex societies built by shipping corn and wheat and rice up rivers and into the stewpots of history’s generations. But eventually, inevitably, the crops fail, the fields erode, or the temperature drops, and the center of power shifts. Cultures descend into dark ages of poverty, famine, and war. It happened at the end of the Roman Empire, when slave plantations overworked Europe’s and Egypt’s soil and drained its vigor. It happened to the Mayans, who abandoned their great cities during centuries of drought. It happened in the fourteenth century, when medieval societies crashed in famine and plague, and again in the nineteenth century, when catastrophic colonial schemes plunged half the world into a poverty from which it has never recovered. And today, even though we live in an age of astounding agricultural productivity and genetically modified crops, our food supplies are once again in peril. Empires of Food brilliantly recounts the history of cyclic consumption, but it is also the story of the future; of, for example, how a shrimp boat hauling up an empty net in the Mekong Delta could spark a riot in the Caribbean. It tells what happens when a culture or nation runs out of food—and shows us the face of the world turned hungry. The authors argue that neither local food movements nor free market economists will stave off the next crash, and they propose their own solutions. A fascinating, fresh history told through the prism of the dining table, Empires of Food offers a grand scope and a provocative analysis of the world today, indispensable in this time of global warming and food crises.