"This book, from the previously unpublished manuscript in the National Library of Ireland, is a valuable and deeply detailed edition of the diary kept by Casement during his journey into the South American rainforests. He had been sent by the British government to report on atrocities against tribal people while being forced to collect rubber in the Putumayo region in the north-west Amazon. Genocide among the Amazon Indians has continued, but external investigations of this kind have been rare. The way in which Roger Casement carried out his work is still relevant to all kinds of humanitarian and whistle-blowing activities. It is also a key text charting Casement's transition from observer to anti-imperial revolutionary and Irish independence leader, culminating in his execution by the British government in August 1916 after the Easter Rising."

This book is the first truly interdisciplinary intervention into the burgeoning field of Irish ecological criticism. Providing original and nuanced readings of Irish cultural texts and personalities in terms of contemporary ecological criticism, Flannery’s readings of Irish literary fiction, poetry, travel writing, non-fiction, and essay writing are ground-breaking in their depth and scope. Explorations of figures and texts from Irish cultural and political history, including John McGahern, Derek Mahon, Roger Casement, and Tim Robinson, among many others, enable and invigorate the discipline of Irish cultural studies, and international ecocriticism on the whole. This book addresses the need to impress the urgency of lateral ecological awareness and responsibility among Irish cultural and political commentators; to highlight continuities and disparities between Irish ecological thought, writing, and praxis, and those of differential international writers, critics, and activists; and to establish both the singularity and contiguity of Irish ecological criticism to the wider international field of ecological criticism. With the introduction of concepts such as ecocosmopolitanism, "deep" history, ethics of proximity, Gaia Theory, urban ecology, and postcolonial environmentalism to Irish cultural studies, it takes Irish cultural studies in bracing new directions. Flannery furnishes working examples of the necessary interdisciplinarity of ecological criticism, and impresses the relevance of the Irish context to the broader debates within international ecological criticism. Crucially, the volume imports ecological critical paradigms into the field of Irish studies, and demonstrates the value of such conceptual dialogue for the future of Irish cultural and political criticism. This pioneering intervention exhibits the complexity of different Irish cultural and historical responses to ecological exploitation, degradation, and social justice.

“Rohter’s crisp biography is a welcome addition to the new, more inclusive canon.” —Rachel Slade, New York Times Book Review A thrilling biography of the Indigenous Brazilian explorer, scientist, stateseman, and conservationist who guided Theodore Roosevelt on his journey down the River of Doubt. Cândido Rondon is by any measure the greatest tropical explorer in history. Between 1890 and 1930, he navigated scores of previously unmapped rivers, traversed untrodden mountain ranges, and hacked his way through jungles so inhospitable that even native peoples had avoided them—and led Theodore Roosevelt and his son, Kermit, on their celebrated “River of Doubt” journey in 1913–14. Upon leaving the Brazilian Army in 1930 with the rank of a two-star general, Rondon, himself of indigenous descent, devoted the remainder of his life to not only writing about the region’s flora and fauna, but also advocating for the peoples who inhabited the rainforest and lobbying for the creation of a system of national parks. Despite his many achievements—which include laying down a 1,200-mile telegraph line through the heart of the Amazon and three nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize—Rondon has never received his due. Originally published in Brazil, Into the Amazon is the first comprehensive biography of his life and remarkable career.

Looking at travelogues, ethnographic monographs, consular reports, diaries and letters, sketches, photography and more, Burroughs examines eyewitness travel reports of atrocities committed in European-funded slave regimes in the Congo Free State, Portuguese West Africa, and the Putumayo district of the Amazon rainforest during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. As Burroughs articulates, as well as bringing home to readers ongoing brutalities, eyewitness narratives importantly contributed to debates on humanitarianism, trade, colonialism, and race and racial prejudice in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

If you read technology news, you’ll notice it’s not just a story of amazing new product introductions, or even that plus copycat product introductions. All the usual aspects of business are there: fierce competition, new contenders, old survivors, great ideas but business failures, mediocre ideas that somehow seem to succeed and prosper. As a reporter, commentator and blogger on mobile technology, I’ve collected what happened in the industry in 2013 and make predictions on what will and won’t happen in 2014. You can read what did happen in the mobile technology in 2013. Often I deliver a comment with the news item and usually there is a link to the web page of the original announcement. This way you can dive into any detail level you desire, read my news feed for the overview or follow the related web link to the longer article. History is moving so fast now that it is all recorded electronically, but I’m surprised no one else has collected it and presented it for consideration. Here is 2013 from the mobile technology industry for your consideration along with my own observations and opinions about where things are headed. It’s often overlooked that the technology industry is an industry. By that I mean its main concerns are profit and growth. As consumers we love the new products and unique abilities we are gaining from technology, but it is a business akin to any other, trying to seduce us to pry money out of our wallets. So I cover the horse race aspect of the business, who’s up, who’s down. Is that changing? Is that likely to change? The longer implications of what the technology industry is doing are vast and social. We are moving to an always on, always connected society where we can communicate with someone instantly and find an answer to any question quickly. The entire database of human knowledge is now available in the palm of your hand whenever you desire it. Everything is there, the good, the bad, right and wrong, hate and love, music and noise. We are obsessed with technology, not in and of itself, but as a means to an end. Technology is the means to satisfy our curiosity or even our desire for self-expression. We are taking photos machine gun-style with our smartphones and choose the few to share. As humans we are gathering ever more data about ourselves and sharing more about ourselves than we probably thought possible. Bill Gates was once asked why the computer industry had generated so much improvement in its products over a relatively few years. He gave some boring answer about Moore’s Law, but the real answer is that computers are in their teenage years. They are growing and growing. They will not always do so. So too the technology industry is in a state of rapid change. I see the shift to smaller devices as a new paradigm, smashing some businesses and growing others into giants. Their stories are here in the news. In short here are predictions for what won’t and will happen in 2014 for the mobile technology industry, breakdowns of marketshare figures on the horse race aspect of the business, chapters on Apple, Samsung, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Blackberry, Amazon, Yahoo, news about social media giants Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, SnapChat and the carriers themselves Verizon, AT&T, Sprint andT-Mobile. You can also review my 2013 mobile predictions and see my track record on predictions. Finally there are some essays on how all this mobile tech is figuring into our lives. I’ve divided the news into the subjects it covers, but also put in the appendix all the news as it came out in chronological ordering. You can read the firehose of events in the appendix, or just read about one topic at a time in the earlier chapters. Table of Contents Preface Introduction Chapter 1: 2014 Predictions Chapter 2: Mobile Marketshare Chapter 3: Apple Chapter 4: Samsung Chapter 5: Google Chapter 6: Microsoft Chapter 7: Nokia Chapter 8: Blackberry Chapter 9: Amazon Chapter 10: Social Media Chapter 11: Yahoo Chapter 12: Carriers Chapter 13: 2013 Predictions Chapter 14: Essays Appendix

Born in Ireland in 1864 Roger Casement acted as British Consul in various parts of Africa (1895-1904) and Brazil (1906-11) where he denounced atrocities among Congolese and Putumayo rubber workers. knighted in 1911, He returned to Ireland, where as an ardent nationalist he attempted to enlist German help for the cause. He was hanged for high treason in London in 1916. A compulsive diary writer, his so-called 'Black' Diaries were finally released into the public domain in 1994. At the time of his trial, these diaries-detailing his promiscuous homosexual activities in Brazil-were used to condemn him and, subsequently, to poison his reputation. Published here for the first time-as are his more public 'White' Diaries of the same year-they not only offer the reader the opportunity to judge their authenticity-still a matter of heated debate-but they also take us deep into the mind of the bravest, most selfless and practical humanitarian of the Edwardian age.