A middle-aged hack joins Kate in the Sahara for the world’s toughest foot-race, The Marathon des Sables. Pain, heat and the biggest blisters on the planet – it’s the perfect recipe for falling in love.

Offers a photographic record of the annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in Northern Nevada, from its beginning as a performance art exhibit to its current status as a pop culture destination.

Willy falls in love with Native life first through an Elderhostel program, teaching Najavos how to read and write. Reluctantly, she returns home to visit her three children, Dusty, Stephanie, and Mike. Her pastor informs her of the need for teachers with a different tribe. There she meets Jim and Alice, pastor and nurse, supportive and jolly, workhorses like herself. Her grandson Kelly arrives to paint several Indians'portraits which eventually sell well enough for him to open his own gallery. When Navajo men and women leave to help fight forest fires, perhaps it is foreordained that some of them will sacrifice their lives. Though he doesn't die, Billy, son of Miriam Whitehawk who has already lost Blossoming Dove to an epidemic, is helped through painful burn treatments by Tess, a young Teach for America black woman, whom he soon marries. Willy consoles Jim when Alice is killed in a snowstorm driving tiny Little Moon to a hospital for delivery of her baby.Natives cheering them on, especially Navajo Joe, Willy and Jim marry. They answer a call from their synod to go to the Cherokees in North Carolina, then the Shoshones in Wyoming where Red Thunder aims to call tribal Nations together to heal Mother Earth, as he had previously done in Colorado at a convocation. Willy's expertise as a writer and public relations speaker helps Red Thunder and his wife, Shelly of the Light, call a convocation of many Nations at Ringing Rock in Pennsylvania. Reluctantly, Red Thunder agrees to hold the convocation on Independence Day in spite of the fact that "We're not independent" because that date will draw larger crowds. Staying with Willy and Jim, Red Thunder and Shelly are drawn to fireworks at the town's football field that evening. After many months of no rain, on the way home, a shower cools them. "Thank you Great Eagle, Jesus, Buddha, and Mary,"Red Thunder exalts. Indeed.

2022 Pura Belpré Honor Book NYPL Best Book of 2021 Texas Bluebonnet Master List Selection NPR Best Book of 2021 Based on a true story, the tale of one girl's perilous journey to cross the U.S. border and lead her family to safety during the Mexican Revolution. "Wrenching debut about family, loss, and finding the strength to carry on."—Booklist, starred review "Blazes bright, gripping readers until the novel's last page."—Publishers Weekly, starred review "Vital and perilous and hopeful."—Alan Gratz, New York Times bestselling author of Refugee It is 1913, and twelve-year-old Petra Luna's mama has died while the Revolution rages in Mexico. Before her papa is dragged away by soldiers, Petra vows to him that she will care for the family she has left—her abuelita, little sister Amelia, and baby brother Luisito—until they can be reunited. They flee north through the unforgiving desert as their town burns, searching for safe harbor in a world that offers none. Each night when Petra closes her eyes, she holds her dreams close, especially her long-held desire to learn to read. Abuelita calls these barefoot dreams: "They're like us barefoot peasants and indios—they're not meant to go far." But Petra refuses to listen. Through battlefields and deserts, hunger and fear, Petra will stop at nothing to keep her family safe and lead them to a better life across the U.S. border—a life where her barefoot dreams could finally become reality. "Dobbs' wrenching debut, about family, loss, and finding the strength to carry on, illuminates the harsh realities of war, the heartbreaking disparities between the poor and the rich, and the racism faced by Petra and her family. Readers will love Petra, who is as strong as the black-coal rock she carries with her and as beautiful as the diamond hidden within it."—Booklist, starred review

Beamte, Ingenieure und Wissenschaftler des Russischen Reiches und später der Sowjetunion planten die Ausweitung und Modernisierung der Bewässerungssysteme und des Baumwollanbaus in Zentralasien. Die Studie, die das heutige Usbekistan und Turkmenistan untersucht, betont die diskursiven und politischen Kontinuitäten über die Zäsur von 1917 hinweg. Einer der zentralen Topoi war die Umwandlung von ›toten‹ Steppen und Wüsten in ›blühende Oasen‹. Der high modernism erreichte seinen Höhepunkt in den Nachkriegsjahrzehnten. Seit den 1970er Jahren entwickelte sich eine Öko-Kritik an der sowjetischen Modernisierung, die in der Perestrojkazeit an Fahrt aufnahm. Letztendlich trugen die ökologischen und ökonomischen sowie sozialen Folgewirkungen der wachstumsfixierten Modernisierung zum Zusammenbruch des kommunistischen Regimes bei. Officials, engineers and scientists in the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union envisaged the expansion and modernization of irrigation systems and cotton growing in Central Asia. Focusing on the region of today's Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, this book highlights the continuities in discourse and policies beyond the historical divide of 1917. One of the central topoi was the transformation of 'dead' lands into 'blossoming oases'. High modernism policies hit their peak in the post-war decades. From the 1970s, an ecological critique evolved which gained momentum in the Perestroika period. Ultimately, the grave ecological, economic and social consequences of the growth-fixated modernization contributed to the downfall of the Communist regime.