When Raphael Cilento drafted his unpublished autobiography, he called it ‘The World, My Oyster’. Some of the other titles he considered—such as ‘Confessions of an International Character’, ‘20th Century Spotlight’, ‘Mankind in the Raw’ and ‘Tapestry of Humanity’—similarly evoked his international career. Other alternatives—such as ‘Topical Confessions of a Tropical D…
International humanitarian law (IHL), now synonymous for many withjus inbello, is the branch of international law that governs the conduct of war. Eventhough the main instruments of IHL have been universally ratified, however,and IHL is perhaps the most effective means so far developed to limit theeffects of war, it is notoriously difficult to implement and enforce (Sassòli2007, 46–47; Bartl…
In August 2015, while we were writing this book, a group of sustainability activists were gathering in the grounds of a borrowed château on the outskirts of Paris. They were intent upon ‘eco-hacking’ the future. What this meant was turning the château into a temporary innovation camp, equipped with the tools for develop-ing a variety of technologies of practical and symbolic…
So warned the appalled editor of theChurch of England Magazine in 1840, after leaving a talk in a socialist hall by the London wine merchant and museum owner William Devonshire Saull (1783–1855). It was a reminder that the new science of the earth was not only startling and fashionable, but dangerous in dirty hands. Dissidents were harnessing geological armaments for use against t…
When Augustus De Morgan died in 1871, he was described as ‘one of the profoundest mathematicians in the United Kingdom’ and even as ‘the greatest of our mathematicians’. But he was far more than just a mathematician. Because much of his voluminous written output on various subjects was scattered throughout journals and encyclopaedias, the breadth of his interests and contributions has b…
Drylands encompass land areas characterized by a mean annual precipitation to mean annual potential evapotranspiration ratio (known as the aridity index) below 0.65. The aridity index defines four distinct dryland subtypes: hyper-arid (aridity index < 0.05), arid (0.05 ?aridity index < 0.20), semi-arid (0.20 ?aridity index < 0.50) and dry sub-humid …
What is going on when a graphic novel has a twelfth-century samurai pick up a telephone to make a call, or a play has an ancient aristocrat teaching in a present-day schoolroom? Rather than regarding such anachronisms as errors, Samurai with Telephones develops a theory of how texts can use different types of anachronisms to challenge or rewrite history, play with history, or open history up to…
Maps in this book were reproduced by Paul Heggarty from maps provided by chapter authors, by converting them into a GIS (Geographic Information System) database, collated and enriched for South America for the purposes of this book. All data used on the maps are thus geo- referenced – set to actual latitude and longitude coordi-nates – as precisely as possible. Individual p…
The Pacific Islands region has entered a new period of uncertainty precipitated in large part by the emergence of China as a major regional actor as well as the reaction of more established powers to perceived threats to their longstanding influence. In March 2019, in the wake of a flurry of activity on the part of Australia, New Zealand and the United States …
This book is for people who have to make decisions about how best to support or conserve biodiversity. These include land managers, conservationists in the public or private sector, farmers, campaigners, advisors or consultants, policymakers, researchers or people taking action to protect local wildlife. What Works in Conservation and the associated synopses summari…