A young woman's very real journey of self-discovery set in the Canadian wilderness.

A frank, practical, and entertaining exploration of the pleasures and complexities of living on small islands. Many people dream of living simple lives on small islands, but few are aware of some of the unique challenges that accompany this distinctive lifestyle. From negotiating surrounding waters to creating a sustainable home and making a viable life away from urban conveniences, small-island living can be rewarding or difficult (or both), depending on myriad circumstances. Complicated Simplicity: Island Life in the Pacific Northwest draws on a variety sources to contextualize peoples' enduring fascination with islands worldwide, including the author's own experiences growing up on Bath Island (off Gabriola) and her interviews with over twenty intrepid figures who live on the San Juan Islands, the Gulf Islands, the Discovery Islands, and in Clayoquot Sound. Ingenuity, tenacity, and a passion for living in these special places shine through in the personal stories, as does a shared concern for safety, sustainability, and thoughtful stewardship. Engaging, inspiring, and often funny, Complicated Simplicity offers readers honest and useful insights on the joys, perils, and rewards of island life.

To the Islands offers a unique perspective on the evolution of economic, social and political interconnections between Australia and its island region spanning two centuries, from the early years of British colonization to the present day. The book advances the argument that globalizing processes are drawing Australia incrementally closer to modern day South East Asia and the wider Asia Pacific. While globalization is a term commonly associated with the twentieth century world, this study traces the history of Australia's regionalisation back to the nineteenth century; to the lived experiences of Australian travelers, tourists, prospectors, mining entrepreneurs in the Netherlands Indies, Malaya and Siam or Thailand as it is known today. To the Islands challenges the orthodox view that Australia's relations with its regional neighbors were insignificant before the outbreak of war in the Pacific in 1941. By the early 1900s, Java was a popular tourist destination for Australians while Malaya and Siam were emerging as major Australian foreign investment destinations. In placing economic and social interactions ahead of political and security concerns in the analysis of Australia's regional relations, the book highlights the role of non-state actors and people-to-people connections in shaping the contours of Australian diplomatic engagement with South East Asia and the South West Pacific. To the Islands is an essential book for advanced students and researchers of the history and politics of the Asia Pacific and Australia.

A couple set out on a bold and vigorous quest for independence and a more essential way of life on a Maine island

Commander Peter Wake, U.S. naval intelligence agent, is in Florida in 1888 culminating an espionage mission to learn Spain's naval readiness in Cuba. He and sidekick Sean Rork are hoping to wrap it up and head home on their annual leave. But a beautiful woman from Wake's past shows up, begging him to find her missing son. He agrees, and thus Honor Bound, Wake sets off across Florida and through the Bahamian islands with a motley band, including a Smithsonian ethnologist, a naval architect, a Bahamian Seminole sailor, Russian spies, British military intelligence, and a Polish-Haitian soldier. The search for the boy leads Wake through an ever-deepening maze of international intrigue—and an ever more passionate relationship with the boy's enticing mother. After enduring storms, mutiny, and shipwreck, Wake and his group find themselves deep in the jungles of Haiti and the alien world of the Bizango culture and the vodou religion. The trail leads Wake to the hidden lair of an anarchist group, only to learn they are planning to wreak havoc around the world—unless he stops it.

In what senses do animals, plants, and minerals “write”? How does their “writing” mark our livesour past, present, and future? Addressing such questions with an exhilarating blend of creative flair and theoretical depth, Of Sheep, Oranges, and Yeast traces how the lives of, yes, sheep, oranges, gold, and yeast mark the stories of those animals we call “human.” Bringing together often separate conversations in animal studies, plant studies, ecotheory, and biopolitics, Of Sheep, Oranges, and Yeast crafts scripts for literary and historical study that embrace the fact that we come into being through our relations to other animal, plant, fungal, microbial, viral, mineral, and chemical actors. The book opens and closes in the company of a Shakespearean character talking through his painful encounter with the skin of a lamb (in the form of parchment). This encounter stages a visceral awareness of what Julian Yates names a “multispecies impression,” the way all acts of writing are saturated with the “writing” of other beings. Yates then develops a multimodal reading strategy that traces a series of anthropo-zoo-genetic figures that derive from our comaking with sheep (keyed to the story of biopolitics), oranges (keyed to economy), and yeast (keyed to the notion of foundation or infrastructure). Working with an array of materials (published and archival), across disciplines and historical periods (Classical to postmodern), the book allows sheep, oranges, and yeast to dictate their own chronologies and plot their own stories. What emerges is a methodology that fundamentally alters what it means to read in the twenty-first century.