Rivers under Siege is a wrenching firsthand account of how human interventions, often well intentioned, have wreaked havoc on West Tennessee's fragile wetlands. For more than a century, farmers and developers tried to tame the rivers as they became clogged with sand and debris, thereby increasing flooding. Building levees and changing the course of the rivers from meandering streams to straight-line channels, developers only made matters worse. Yet the response to failure was always to try to subdue nature, to dig even bigger channels and construct even more levees-an effort that reached its sorry culmination in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' massive West Tennessee Tributaries Project during the 1960s. As a result, the rivers' natural hydrology descended into chaos, devastating the plant and animal ecology of the region's wetlands. Crops and trees died from summer flooding, as much of the land turned into useless, stagnant swamps. The author was one of a small group of state waterfowl managers who saw it all happen, most sadly within the Obion-Forked Deer river system and at Reelfoot Lake. After much trial and error, Johnson and his colleagues in the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency began by the 1980s to abandon their old methods, resorting to management procedures more in line with the natural contours of the floodplains and the natural behavior of rivers. Preaching their new stewardship philosophy to anyone who might listen-their supervisors, duck hunters, conservationists, politicians, federal agencies-they were often ignored. The campaign dragged on for twenty years before an innovative and rational plan came from the Governor's Office and gained wide support. But then, too, that plan fell prey to politics, legal wrangling, self-interest, hardheadedness, and tradition. Yet, despite such heartbreaking setbacks, the author points to hopeful signs that West Tennessee's historic wetlands might yet be recovered for the benefit of all who use them and recognize their vital importance. Jim W. Johnson, now retired, was for many years a lands management biologist with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. He was responsible for the overall supervision and coordination of thirteen wildlife management areas and refuges, primarily for waterfowl, in northwest Tennessee.

It has been almost two years since the Michaluk virus outbreak began, and Kimberly Gellar has helped her newfound friends establish Woodside, a walled-in community of survivors in South Carolina, led by a committee of the best, brightest, and most heroic among them. But underneath the veneer of simplicity that their day-to-day lives become, not all is as it seems. Dr. Derek Rivers, a former CDC scientist, has created the most hopeful version of a cure for the virus and has tested it on a single subject, who promptly begins showing strange and concerning side effects. After the members of a supply run bring back a set of twin survivors they’ve rescued, a horde of infected follow them back to Woodside. Within hours, the community is besieged by the infected. Desperate to get the potential cure out of their safe haven before the infected get in, Kimberly smuggles it out of Woodside to search for a still-operational CDC facility with only one person to guide and protect her. As the community collapses and the lives of the survivors are threatened, can Kimberly get the cure to where it can do some good, and can she get help to Woodside before the friends she left behind end up dead at the hands of the infected after nearly two years of survival?

SOLDIER OF FORTUNE CAPTAIN DANIEL RAWSON FACES HIS TOUGHEST BATTLE YET Despite winning a resounding victory at the battle of Oudenarde, the Duke of Marlborough finds his position as captain-general threatened by political enemies back in England, and his campaign to strike deeper into French Flanders is stalled at the siege of Lille, the 'pearl of fortresses'. To help facilitate the new Allied strategy, Captain Daniel Rawson is given the treacherous task of entering Lille undercover to steal vital plans. Meanwhile, in England, Daniel's beloved Amalia is herself under siege - a dangerous admirer is determined to have her, even if he has to have Daniel murdered first. As the weather worsens and Lille's famed defences appear to be holding, Daniel has to fight against one of his own allies, dwindling supplies, weakening morale, French patrols and a hired assassin. He must battle bravely on or risk losing everything . . .

Richmond became the capital of the Confederacy when Virginia joined the Southern cause, marking the city as a prime target for the Union army. General McClellan was the first Union leader to lay siege to Richmond, and that was just the beginning. The attractive and genteel city of Richmond would be transformed into a refugee camp, a scene of riots, and a city-sized hospital before the war was over. Making use of diaries, letters, and newspaper accounts from the era, Wright brings readers face to face with the men and women who fought for the city, endured starvation, observed Lee's defeats and Grant's progress, and witnessed the Confederacy's last days.

Figuring in myth, religion, law, the military, commerce, and transportation, rivers were at the heart of Rome's increasing exploitation of the environment of the Mediterranean world. In Rivers and the Power of Ancient Rome, Brian Campbell explores the role and influence of rivers and their surrounding landscape on the society and culture of the Roman Empire. Examining artistic representations of rivers, related architecture, and the work of ancient geographers and topographers, as well as writers who describe rivers, Campbell reveals how Romans defined the geographical areas they conquered and how geography and natural surroundings related to their society and activities. In addition, he illuminates the prominence and value of rivers in the control and expansion of the Roman Empire--through the legal regulation of riverine activities, the exploitation of rivers in military tactics, and the use of rivers as routes of communication and movement. Campbell shows how a technological understanding of--and even mastery over--the forces of the river helped Rome rise to its central place in the ancient world.

The World of the Siege examines relations between the conduct and representations of early modern sieges. The volume offers case studies from various regions in Europe (England, France, the Low Countries, Germany, the Balkans) and throughout the world (the Chinese, Ottoman and Mughal Empires), from the 15th century into the 18th. The international contributors analyse how siege narratives were created and disseminated, and how early modern actors as well as later historians made sense of these violent events in both textual and visual artefacts. . The volume's chronological and geographical breadth provides insight into similarities and differences of siege warfare and military culture across several cultures, countries and centuries, as well as its impact on both combatants and observers. See inside the book.