America's national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges, Bureau of Land Managemnt holdings, and other Federally owned areas encompass more than 700 million acres. This volume covers the beauty of the American landscape and wildlife and the threats that development presents to these national treasures. It also chronicles the history of the Federal lands, their many uses, the laws and policies that affect them, and the problems these areas face, and explores possible solutions. The author documents both efforts to preserve and restore the land's glories and plans to put the same land to more profitable economic use. Over 300 evocative photographs help to record the splendor of nature and tragedy of its devastation. ISBN 0-87044-512-X: $19.95 (For use only in the library).

Miss Elizabeth Knight received an unexpected legacy upon her uncle’s death: a collection of occult books. When one of the books begins talking to her, she discovers an entire world of female occultist history opened to her—a legacy the Royal Occult Society had purposely hidden from the world. However, the magic allowing the book to speak to Miss Knight is fading and she must gather a group of female acquaintances of various talents. Together, they’ll need to work to overcome social pressures, ambitious men, and tyrannical parents, all to bring Mrs. Egerton, the book ghost, back.

A collection of writings from one of the most significant political figures of our time.

Readers of The New York Times know David Sanger as one of the most trusted correspondents in Washington, one to whom presidents, secretaries of state, and foreign leaders talk with unusual candor. Now, with a historian’s sweep and an insider’s eye for telling detail, Sanger delivers an urgent intelligence briefing on the world America faces. In a riveting narrative, The Inheritance describes the huge costs of distraction and lost opportunities at home and abroad as Iraq soaked up manpower, money, and intelligence capabilities. The 2008 market collapse further undermined American leadership, leaving the new president with a set of challenges unparalleled since Franklin D. Roosevelt entered the Oval Office. Sanger takes readers into the White House Situation Room to reveal how Washington penetrated Tehran’s nuclear secrets, leading President Bush, in his last year, to secretly step up covert actions in a desperate effort to delay an Iranian bomb. Meanwhile, his intelligence chiefs made repeated secret missions to Pakistan as they tried to stem a growing insurgency and cope with an ally who was also aiding the enemy–while receiving billions in American military aid. Now the new president faces critical choices: Is it better to learn to live with a nuclear Iran or risk overt or covert confrontation? Is it worth sending U.S. forces deep into Pakistani territory at the risk of undermining an unstable Pakistani government sitting on a nuclear arsenal? It is a race against time and against a new effort by Islamic extremists–never before disclosed–to quietly infiltrate Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. “Bush wrote a lot of checks,” one senior intelligence official told Sanger, “that the next president is going to have to cash.” The Inheritance takes readers to Afghanistan, where Bush never delivered on his promises for a Marshall Plan to rebuild the country, paving the way for the Taliban’s return. It examines the chilling calculus of North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il, who built actual weapons of mass destruction in the same months that the Bush administration pursued phantoms in Iraq, then sold his nuclear technology in the Middle East in an operation the American intelligence apparatus missed. And it explores how China became one of the real winners of the Iraq war, using the past eight years to expand its influence in Asia, and lock up oil supplies in Africa while Washington was bogged down in the Middle East. Yet Sanger, a former foreign correspondent in Asia, sees enormous potential for the next administration to forge a partnership with Beijing on energy and the environment. At once a secret history of our foreign policy misadventures and a lucid explanation of the opportunities they create, The Inheritance is vital reading for anyone trying to understand the extraordinary challenges that lie ahead.

As a meeting point for world cultures, the USA is characterized by its breadth and diversity. Acknowledging that diversity is the fundamental feature of American culture, this volume is organized around a keen awareness of race, gender, class and space and with over 1,200 alphabetically-arranged entries - spanning 'the American century' from the end of World War II to the present day - the Encyclopedia provides a one-stop source for insightful and stimulating coverage of all aspects of that culture. Entries range from short definitions to longer overview essays and with full cross-referencing, extensive indexing, and a thematic contents list, this volume provides an essential cultural context for both teachers and students of American studies, as well as providing fascinating insights into American culture for the general reader. The suggestions for further reading, which follows most entries, are also invaluable guides to more specialized sources.

Gardener's-eye account of 50 years on a Pennsylvania farm Vivid and complete description of the nurturing of a unique legacy Rare, original, full of sharp insight and hard-earned wisdom Lacking inherited wealth, Edwin and Mimi Peeples invested their energy in an abandoned farmhouse and its fields and woods to create a different kind of wealth: mature plantings of box and yew, magnificent specimen trees, unusual ornamentals. There were natural treasures on their grounds, too, so they husbanded the wildflowers and fragrant herbs, the native berries and volunteer fruits, the precious hardwood and aromatic trees. "The fortunate thing about a farm," Peeples writes, "is that whatever wild plant you have at all, you generally have by the acre." Now surrounded by subdivisions, the landscape is at risk, but Peeples will not sell out. What could any man buy worth more than a bequest of beauty?