Evil Paradises

Author: Mike Davis
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1595587780
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 399

Book Description
Evil Paradises, edited by Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk, is a global guidebook to phantasmagoric but real places—alternate realities being constructed as “utopias” in a capitalist era unfettered by unions and state regulation. These developments—in cities, deserts, and in the middle of the sea—are worlds where consumption and inequality surpass our worst nightmares. Although they read like science fiction, the case studies are shockingly real. In Dubai, where child slavery existed until very recently, a gilded archipelago of private islands known as “The World” is literally being added to the ocean. In Medellín and Kabul, drug lords—in many ways textbook capitalists—are redefining conspicuous consumption in fortified palaces. In Hong Kong, Cairo, and even the Iranian desert, burgeoning communities of nouveaux riches have taken shelter in fantasy Californias, complete with Mickey Mouse statues, while their maids sleep in rooftop chicken coops. Meanwhile, Ted Turner rides herd over his bison in 2 million acres of private parkland. Davis and Monk have assembled an extraordinary group of urbanists, architects, historians, and visionary thinkers to reflect upon the trajectory of a civilization whose deepest ethos seems to be to consume all the resources of the earth within a single lifetime.

Evil Paradise

Author: Jane Schwalger-Wyatt
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency
ISBN: 1631357662
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 349

Book Description
Evil Paradise is based on the author’s unique and moving life story. Jane Schwalger-Wyatt was born the illegitimate child of a wealthy plantation owner’s nephew and a traditional village girl on the exotic Polynesian island of Samoa. Born between two cultures and classes in the turbulent post-colonial years, and unwanted by either parent, her future looked bleak. After Jane’s birth, a pact was made between her grandmother and her wealthy great aunt. Jane spent her first ten years as a village girl raised by her grandmother, with her identity kept secret. Although adored by her grandmother, she endured hardship, brutality, and sexual abuse. Upon her grandmother’s death, Jane escaped to what she thought would be paradise on earth: her rich aunt’s estate, but she discovered that it held terrible secrets. In time, Jane learned about the savage history that blighted the plantation and the bizarre secret kept hidden upstairs in the mansion. After a failed reunion with her father, she was sent to her mother in New Zealand, where she was rejected yet again. Whilst battling overwhelming obstacles to make a life for herself, Jane’s second child was diagnosed with profound disabilities. How she managed to endure proves an unparalleled feat of human endurance and faith. She clung to the few that truly loved her, striving to make a life for herself with fierce and inspirational determination.

The Flowers of Evil

Author: Charles Baudelaire
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780979984778
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Self-styled 'Satanic man' Charles Baudelaire's collection The Flowers of Evil is marked by paeans to sexual degradation such as 'The Litanies of Satan' and 'Metamorphosis of the Vampire'. A new translation vivdly brings Baudelaire's masterpiece to life for the 21st century in this collection, which also includes key texts from Artificial Paradise, Baudelaire's notorious examination of the effects of alcohol and psychotropic drugs.

The Monster at Our Door

Author: Mike Davis
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805081916
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
In this first book to sound the alarm on a possible pandemic, Davis tracks the avian flu crisis as the virus moves west and the world remains woefully unprepared to contain it.

A Devil in Paradise

Author: Henry Miller
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 9780811212441
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 126

Book Description
"A perfect expression of Miller's moral perspective as well as one of his outstanding demonstrations of narrative skill. It provides a wonderful cinematic view of two indomitable egotists in deadly conflict." --The Nation

Escape from Paradise

Author: Kathleen M. Sands
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Book Description
With a sure and profound grasp of both the Christian tradition and the postmodern situation, Sands faults mainstream and feminist theologies for failing to recognize the inescapably tragic character of life. Her work is a strong and overt challenge to theology as usual and a call to theologians of all stripes to be ruthlessly honest in their religious reflections.

Liberating the Gospel

Author: David Smith
Publisher: Augsburg Books
ISBN: 150646730X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
Liberating the Gospel is prefaced by Tom Wright's claim that Christians have for too long "read scripture with nineteenth-century eyes and sixteenth-century questions," and that it is urgently necessary they learn to read "with first-century eyes and twenty-first-century questions." The central section of the book concentrates on reading the narratives of the Galilean ministry of Jesus within their first century context, then exploring Paul's mission in the setting of the urban and imperial world of Rome, before offering reflection on the Apocalypse in the changed world following the destruction of Jerusalem. Smith then concludes his treatise facing the "twenty-first-century questions," seeking to build a hermeneutical bridge to our globalized world. As a whole, this major book on Christian mission aims to contribute toward an understanding of how the dynamic message of Christ might be liberated to be heard as genuinely good news today, in the process potentially transforming Christianity, provided there is willingness to face opposition from a world resistant to the exposure of its injustices.

Cities and Fascination

Author: Wolf-Dietrich Sahr
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317166124
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Book Description
Bringing together leading urban scholars, this book discusses the linkages between the economic, social and psychological factors of the urban environment. It focuses on the growth of private urbanity that has led to a 'spectactularization' of the city, the most extreme component of attention being the fascination which is aroused by attractions and state-managed events. The complex characteristics of this fascination are examined under the dimensions of aesthetics, emotions, lived experiences and power structures and governance. The interdisciplinary nature of this collection has wide international appeal and will be of interest to academics of social and cultural geography and cultural and media studies.

The Urbanism of Exception

Author: Martin J. Murray
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107169240
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 421

Book Description
This book argues that understanding global urbanism in the twenty-first century requires us to cast our gaze upon vast city-regions without an urban core.

Literature and the Renaissance Garden from Elizabeth I to Charles II

Author: Amy L. Tigner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317104358
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Book Description
Spanning the period from Elizabeth I's reign to Charles II's restoration, this study argues the garden is a primary site evincing a progressive narrative of change, a narrative that looks to the Edenic as obtainable ideal in court politics, economic prosperity, and national identity in early modern England. In the first part of the study, Amy L. Tigner traces the conceptual forms that the paradise imaginary takes in works by Gascoigne, Spenser, and Shakespeare, all of whom depict the garden as a space in which to imagine the national body of England and the gendered body of the monarch. In the concluding chapters, she discusses the function of gardens in the literary works by Jonson, an anonymous masque playwright, and Milton, the herbals of John Gerard and John Parkinson, and the tract writing of Ralph Austen, Lawrence Beal, and Walter Blithe. In these texts, the paradise imaginary is less about the body politic of the monarch and more about colonial pursuits and pressing environmental issues. As Tigner identifies, during this period literary representations of gardens become potent discursive models that both inspire constructions of their aesthetic principles and reflect innovations in horticulture and garden technology. Further, the development of the botanical garden ushers in a new world of science and exploration. With the importation of a new world of plants, the garden emerges as a locus of scientific study: hybridization, medical investigation, and the proliferation of new ornamentals and aliments. In this way, the garden functions as a means to understand and possess the rapidly expanding globe.