"The weather has always been a topic of conversation; it is probably the most common dialogue between human beings. We often fear the weather, yet out apparent dread of it is puzzling, since we generally adapt to it remarkably well. The Weather in the Imagination investigates the theories, scenarios and psychoses caused by climate. These fall into three main categories: anthropological and psychological; historical; and catastrophic. The weather has long served as a means of explaining human diversity: other people are different because they live under different skies. Climate has also been used to explain the dynamic of the historical process, the rise of certain civilizations and the stagnation and regression of others. Catastrophe is also invoked in theories of the weather: what could destroy a civilization - or arouse the fear of humanity's total extinction - more effectively than a climatic disaster? The prototype of this kind of upheaval is the pre-biblical Flood, one of the most gripping and influential myths the human imagination has ever produced. Lucian Boia does not take sides in the current debates about climate; he does not exaggerate or play down global warming and its consequences, or try to forecast the weather of the future. What he does tell is a story that runs parallel with the 'true' story of climate and its future: the story of a human imagination that has been stimulated, baffled, infuriated and, from time to time, terrified by the weather." -- Blackwells.

As global temperatures rise under the forcing hand of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions, new questions are being asked of how societies make sense of their weather, of the cultural values, which are afforded to climate, and of how environmental futures are imagined, feared, predicted, and remade. Weather, Climate, and Geographical Imagination contributes to this conversation by bringing together a range of voices from history of science, historical geography, and environmental history, each speaking to a set of questions about the role of space and place in the production, circulation, reception, and application of knowledges about weather and climate. The volume develops the concept of “geographical imagination” to address the intersecting forces of scientific knowledge, cultural politics, bodily experience, and spatial imaginaries, which shape the history of knowledges about climate.

Why is the Weather Channel one of the top ranked cable networks? Why was The Day After Tomorrow a summer blockbuster? The Weather in the Imagination seeks to answer these and other questions about our fascination with the weather, as Lucian Boia offers an.

"By far the single most important account and analysis of the Katrina catastrophe." David L. Clark, McMaster University In his newest provocative book, prominent social critic Henry A. Giroux shows how the tragedy and suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina signals a much larger crisis in the United States-one that threatens the very nature of individual freedom and inclusive democracy. This crisis extends far beyond matters of leadership, governance, or the Bush administration. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart of democracy and must be understood within a broader set of antidemocratic forces that not only made the social disaster underlying Katrina possible, but also contribute to an emerging authoritarianism in the United States. Questions regarding who is going to die and who is going to live are driving a new form of authoritarianism in the United States. Within this form of "dirty democracy" a new and more insidious set of forces-embedded in our global economy-have largely given up on the sanctity of human life, rendering some groups as disposable and privileging others. Giroux offers up a vision of hope that creates the conditions for multiple collective and global struggles that refuse to use politics as an act of war and markets as the measure of democracy. Making human beings superfluous is the essence of totalitarianism, and democracy is the antidote in urgent need of being reclaimed. Katrina will keep the hope of such a struggle alive because for many of us the images of those floating bodies serve as a desperate reminder of what it means when justice, as the lifeblood of democracy, becomes cold and indifferent.

No other figure embodies revolutionary politics and radical chic quite like Ulrike Meinhof, who formed, with Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin, the Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the Baader–Meinhof Gang, notorious for its bombings and kidnappings of the wealthy in the 1970s. But in the years leading up to her leap into the fray, Meinhof was known throughout Europe as a respected journalist, who informed and entertained her loyal readers with monthly magazine columns. What impels someone to abandon middle-class privilege for the sake of revolution? In the 1960s, Meinhof began to see the world in increasingly stark terms: the United States was emerging as an unstoppable superpower, massacring a tiny country overseas despite increasingly popular dissent at home; and Germany appeared to be run by former Nazis. Never before translated into English, Meinhof's writings show a woman increasingly engaged in the major political events and social currents of her time. In her introduction, Karin Bauer tells Meinhof's mesmerizing life story and her political coming-of-age; Nobel Prize–winning author Elfriede Jelinek provides a thoughtful reflection on Meinhof's tragic failure to be heard; and Meinhof ’s daughter—a relentless critic of her mother and of the Left—contributes an afterword that shows how Meinhof's ghost still haunts us today.

Winner of the Living Now Awards 2013, International Latino Book Awards 2013 and Moonbeam Children Books Awards 2013. There is a door in every one of us that leads to our imagination, a world where anything is possible. Dou you dare to embark on the most wonderful journey to our inner-self? One day when I was reading my story, I breathed in one of the words and something magical happened... I entered my imagination! We have always been told about the power of imagination, but what is imagination? How does it work? There is a magical place where you can always be yourself. In there you can turn on your light and illuminate your life with it. That place is your imagination. Your imagination has a life and a voice of its own. It is like a voice that speaks inside of you and paints everything around you with vivid colors. Within your imagination you are the king or queen of your creation. Open the door and discover how that place where we can always be ourselves is like and how does it work. And within your imagination... what is there? Read the first pages of Inside my imagination here below: