Strange Trade tells the compelling stories of Mary, a Liberian drug courier with a college education, and Pauline, a Ugandan wife, mother, and drug cartel boss. A leading expert on women and organized crime, Asale Angel-Ajani spent years interviewing these women in Italy's notorious Rebibbia Prison—and gained unprecedented access into the narcotics trade. Herself the daughter of a drug trafficker, Angel-Ajani brings a wrenching, deeply personal perspective to the account of these women's lives, and offers a nuanced understanding of the global context within which African women are entering the drug trade in ever-increasing numbers. Strange Trade follows Pauline and Mary as they traverse three continents, survive wars, poverty, and shattered families, secure drug shipments, and commit murder. Angel-Ajani paints rich, intimate, and profoundly surprising portraits without glamorizing, sanitizing, or offering judgment. The result is an unvarnished journey into a world that, until now, has remained hidden; and a glimpse into the motives that led these women to risk—and ultimately lose—everything.

A groundbreaking examination of the implications of synthetic biology for biodiversity conservation Nature almost everywhere survives on human terms. The distinction between what is natural and what is human-made, which has informed conservation for centuries, has become blurred. When scientists can reshape genes more or less at will, what does it mean to conserve nature? The tools of synthetic biology are changing the way we answer that question. Gene editing technology is already transforming the agriculture and biotechnology industries. What happens if synthetic biology is also used in conservation to control invasive species, fight wildlife disease, or even bring extinct species back from the dead? Conservation scientist Kent Redford and geographer Bill Adams turn to synthetic biology, ecological restoration, political ecology, and de-extinction studies and propose a thoroughly innovative vision for protecting nature.

Writing Global Trade Governance operationalises a key post-structuralist methodology in order to expand understanding on the institution at the heart of the global political economy. Despite the WTO’s centrality and the growing popularity of methods utilizing discourse theory, no other text has yet demonstrated how these two fields of learning can be productively combined. The book seeks to move beyond existing literatures that assume the WTO to be a structure, institution or normative framework, in order to enquire into the discursive processes of identity formation that make the WTO both possible and contested. The book criticises conventional approaches that treat critical civil society as distinct to the WTO, arguing instead that it is only through including such social practices within the field of relations making the WTO that we can properly understand what makes the WTO work. The book presents an empirical analysis of the discursive character of the present-day WTO (including its formation and operation) and then moves on to evaluate how it is subject to change within a broader social context. The final stage of the book seeks to discuss the impact of the findings on future research, both on the WTO and other institutions. This work is a significant intervention in the literature on the World Trade Organization and the politics of global trade and social movements, and will be of great interest to students and scholars of global governance, discourse theory and international organizations

“Full of storytelling that is untamed, writing that is superb, and tales that are expansive and suggestive . . . a wry romp worthy of your attention” (Strange Horizons). In these eleven stories, including Nebula Award finalist “Kid Charlemagne,” Paul Di Filippo applies his armamentarium of vastly varied literary skills to an examination and definition of the outer limits of an almost unbearably mundane-sounding subject: daily toil or, in a word, jobs. In “Spondulix,” Rory Honeyman, desperate to preserve the meager cash flow in his sandwich shop, starts offering store coupons that somehow take on a life of their own. “The Mill” is the only place in the universe where Luxcloth, treasured and worn by many, can be manufactured and only at the direction of one man. “The Boredom Factory” gives meaning to the phrase “living to work.” Keep reading—it will be the easiest job you’ve ever had. You can try to escape from the mundane, or with the help of Paul Di Filippo, you can take a brief, meaningful break from it. In the vein of George Saunders or Michael Chabon, Di Filippo uses the tools of science fiction and the surreal to take a deep, richly felt look at humanity. His brand of funny, quirky, thoughtful, fast‐moving, heart‐warming, brain‐bending stories exist across the entire spectrum of the fantastic from hard science fiction to satire to fantasy and on to horror, delivering a riotously entertaining string of modern fables and stories from tomorrow, now, and anytime. After you read Paul Di Filippo, you will no longer see everyday life quite the same. Strange Trades includes an introduction by Bruce Sterling.

In AD 60 the Roman Empire occupies Britannia, destroying its ancient culture. Under the leadership of Boudicca, the Iceni rise up against Nero's forces but it is a losing battle. Yet the Druids are masters of nature, and in a final desperate strategy to avoid slavery, the priests summon their greatest magic to open a portal into an alternative world. One last Celtic tribe, the Ordoveteii, race to cross the threshold…