This work examines the nature of good and evil. Set at a time when violence has replaced moral, religious and philosophical concerns, the author places evil back where it belongs, in nature and in our lives. Lyall Watson is also the author of Supernature.

A fun exploration of the darker side of the natural world reveals the fascinating, weird, often perverted ways that Mother Nature fends only for herself. It may be a wonderful world, but as Dan Riskin (cohost of Discovery Canada’s Daily Planet) explains, it’s also a dangerous, disturbing, and disgusting one. At every turn, it seems, living things are trying to eat us, poison us, use our bodies as their homes, or have us spread their eggs. In Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You, Riskin is our guide through the natural world at its most gloriously ruthless. Using the seven deadly sins as a road map, Riskin offers dozens of jaw-dropping examples that illuminate how brutal nature can truly be. From slothful worms that hide in your body for up to thirty years to wrathful snails with poisonous harpoons that can kill you in less than five minutes to lustful ducks that have orgasms faster than you can blink, these fascinating accounts reveal the candid truth about “gentle” Mother Nature’s true colors. Riskin’s passion for the strange and his enthusiastic expertise bring Earth’s most fascinating flora and fauna into vivid focus. Through his adventures— which include sliding on his back through a thick soup of bat guano just to get face-to-face with a vampire bat, befriending a parasitic maggot that has taken root on his head, and coming to grips with having offspring of his own—Riskin makes unexpected discoveries not just about the world all around us but also about the ways this brutal world has shaped us as humans and what our responsibilities are to this terrible, wonderful planet we call home.

Preface -- List of Contributors -- List of Illustrations -- 1. Steven Pinker and the Nature of Violence in History Philip Dwyer and Mark Micale -- Part One: Interpretations -- 2. The Inner Demons of The Better Angels of Our Nature Dan Smail -- 3. The Use and Abuse of Statistics in Writing the History of Violence Dag Lindström -- 4. Progress and Its Contradictions: Human Rights, Inequality, and Violence Eric D. Weitz -- 5. Pinker's Technocratic Neoliberalism, and Why It Matters David Bell -- 6. Steven Pinker, Norbert Elias and the 'Civilizing Process' Philip Dwyer and Elizabeth Roberts-Pedersen -- Part Two: Periods -- 7. Steven Pinker's 'Prehistoric Anarchy': A Bioarchaeological Critique Linda Fibiger -- 8. Getting Medieval on Steven Pinker: Violence and Medieval England Sara M. Butler -- 9. History, Violence and the Enlightenment Philip Dwyer -- Part Three: Places -- 10. The Complexity of History: Russia and Steven Pinker's Thesis Nancy Kollmann -- 11. Necrology of Angels: Violence in Japanese History as a Lens of Critique Michael Wert -- 12. The 'Moral Effect' of Legalized Lawlessness: British Imperial Violence and the Middle East Caroline Elkins -- Part Four: Themes -- 13. A History of Violence and Indigeneity: Pinker and the Native Americas Matthew Restall -- 14. The Rise and Rise of Sexual Violence Joanna Bourke -- 15. The Better Angels of Which Nature? Violence and Environmental History in the Modern World Corey Ross -- 16. On Cool Reason and Hot-Blooded Impulses? Violence and the History of Emotion Susan K. Morrissey -- Part Five: Coda 17. Pinker and Contemporary Historical Consciousness Mark Micale -- Bibliography -- Index.

Black Nature is the first anthology to focus on nature writing by African American poets, a genre that until now has not commonly been counted as one in which African American poets have participated. Black poets have a long tradition of incorporating treatments of the natural world into their work, but it is often read as political, historical, or protest poetry--anything but nature poetry. This is particularly true when the definition of what constitutes nature writing is limited to work about the pastoral or the wild. Camille T. Dungy has selected 180 poems from 93 poets that provide unique perspectives on American social and literary history to broaden our concept of nature poetry and African American poetics. This collection features major writers such as Phillis Wheatley, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling Brown, Robert Hayden, Wanda Coleman, Natasha Trethewey, and Melvin B. Tolson as well as newer talents such as Douglas Kearney, Major Jackson, and Janice Harrington. Included are poets writing out of slavery, Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century African American poetic movements. Black Nature brings to the fore a neglected and vital means of considering poetry by African Americans and nature-related poetry as a whole. A Friends Fund Publication.

By the spring of 1945, the Second World War was drawing to a close in Europe. Allied troops were sweeping through Nazi Germany and discovering the atrocities of SS concentration camps. The first to be reached intact was Buchenwald, in central Germany. American soldiers struggled to make sense of the shocking scenes they witnessed inside. They asked a small group of former inmates to draft a report on the camp. It was led by Eugen Kogon, a German political prisoner who had been an inmate since 1939. The Theory and Practice of Hell is his classic account of life inside. Unlike many other books by survivors who published immediately after the war, The Theory and Practice of Hell is more than a personal account. It is a horrific examination of life and death inside a Nazi concentration camp, a brutal world of a state within state, and a society without law. But Kogon maintains a dispassionate and critical perspective. He tries to understand how the camp works, to uncover its structure and social organization. He knew that the book would shock some readers and provide others with gruesome fascination. But he firmly believed that he had to show the camp in honest, unflinching detail. The result is a unique historical document—a complete picture of the society, morality, and politics that fueled the systematic torture of six million human beings. For many years, The Theory and Practice of Hell remained the seminal work on the concentration camps, particularly in Germany. Reissued with an introduction by Nikolaus Waschmann, a leading Holocaust scholar and author of Hilter's Prisons, this important work now demands to be re-read.