For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson in Travels with a Donkey Few of us have the panache to put in our papers, free ourselves from our desks, and take off on a half-year-long trip along the coastal necklace of peninsular India. This richly-flavoured travelogue combines adventure, serendipity, food, and sheer joie de vivre. The narrative irresistibly draws us in as benevolent observers of the many facets and foibles of humanity. Living out of a backpack, in budget lodgings, and eating bananas as a staple, only add to the heady challenges that stimulate the spirit of wanderlust of this maverick-explorer. The tour diary, starting from the remote north-western coastal tip and climaxing, rather precariously, way above sea-level at the potentially sinister Indo-Tibetan border, is an engrossing chronicle of discoveries about the desires, views, tribulations, joys, and sheer zest for living, of the teeming millions of India. Thrown in for good measure, in a refreshingly tongue-in-cheek style, are recipes for some of the gastronomic delights offered in the places traversed. Itinerant sidelights about people of all classes and creeds – fishermen, seafarers, rickshaw-drivers, priests, salesmen, radicals, typical and atypical families, and all the rest – create a colourful kalaidescope that is quintessentially India. This book is as enjoyable and energising as a good cup of chai...

The clock is relentlessly ticking! Our world teeters on a knife-edge between a peaceful and prosperous future for all, and a dark winter of death and destruction that threatens to smother the light of civilization. Within 30 years, in the 2030 decade, six powerful 'drivers' will converge with unprecedented force in a statistical spike that could tear humanity apart and plunge the world into a new Dark Age. Depleted fuel supplies, massive population growth, poverty, global climate change, famine, growing water shortages and international lawlessness are on a crash course with potentially catastrophic consequences. In the face of both doomsaying and denial over the state of our world, Colin Mason cuts through the rhetoric and reams of conflicting data to muster the evidence to illustrate a broad picture of the world as it is, and our possible futures. Ultimately his message is clear; we must act decisively, collectively and immediately to alter the trajectory of humanity away from catastrophe. Offering over 100 priorities for immediate action, The 2030 Spike serves as a guidebook for humanity through the treacherous minefields and wastelands ahead to a bright, peaceful and prosperous future in which all humans have the opportunity to thrive and build a better civilization. This book is powerful and essential reading for all people concerned with the future of humanity and planet earth.

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

In every major city in the world there is a housing crisis. How did this happen and what can we do about it? Everyone needs and deserves housing. But today our homes are being transformed into commodities, making the inequalities of the city ever more acute. Profit has become more important than social need. The poor are forced to pay more for worse housing. Communities are faced with the violence of displacement and gentrification. And the benefits of decent housing are only available for those who can afford it. In Defense of Housing is the definitive statement on this crisis from leading urban planner Peter Marcuse and sociologist David Madden. They look at the causes and consequences of the housing problem and detail the need for progressive alternatives. The housing crisis cannot be solved by minor policy shifts, they argue. Rather, the housing crisis has deep political and economic roots—and therefore requires a radical response.

Interchange Fourth Edition is a four-level series for adult and young-adult learners of English from the beginning to the high-intermediate level. The Interchange Fourth Edition interleaved, spiral-bound Teacher's Edition with Assessment Audio CD/CD-ROM, Level 2 features complete teaching instructions, optional activities, audio scripts, language summaries, and Student's Book and Workbook answer keys. The Assessment CD/CD-ROM provides a complete assessment program, including oral and written quizzes, as well as mid-term and final tests in printable PDF and Microsoft Word formats.