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Mirages In The Desert
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Book Synopsis The Waterless Sea by : Christopher Pinney
Download or read book The Waterless Sea written by Christopher Pinney and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mirages have long astonished travelers of the sea and beguiled thirsty desert voyagers. Traditional Chinese and Japanese poetry and art depict the above-horizon, superior mirage, or fata morgana, as exhalations of clam-monsters. Indian sources relate mirages to the “thirst of gazelles,” a metaphor for the futility of desire. Starting in the late eighteenth century, mirages became a symbol in the West of Oriental despotism—a negative, but also enchanted, emblem. But the mirage motif is rarely simply condemnatory. More often, our obsession with mirages conveys a sense of escape, of fascination, of a desire to be deceived. The Waterless Sea is the first book devoted to the theories and history of mirages. Christopher Pinney navigates a sinuous pathway through a mysterious and evanescent terrain, showing how mirages have impacted politics, culture, science, and religion—and how we can continue to learn from their sublimity.
Download or read book The Desert written by Michael Welland and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From endless sand dunes and prickly cacti to shimmering mirages and green oases, deserts evoke contradictory images in us. They are lands of desolation, but also of romance, of blistering Mojave heat and biting Gobi cold. Covering a quarter of the earth’s land mass and providing a home to half a billion people, they are both a physical reality and landscapes of the mind. The idea of the desert has long captured Western imagination, put on display in films and literature, but these portrayals often fail to capture the true scope and diversity of the people living there. Bridging the scientific and cultural gaps between perception and reality, The Desert celebrates our fascination with these arid lands and their inhabitants, as well as their importance both throughout history and in the world today. Covering an immense geographical range, Michael Welland wanders from the Sahara to the Atacama, depicting the often bizarre adaptations of plants and animals to these hostile environments. He also looks at these seemingly infertile landscapes in the context of their place in history—as the birthplaces not only of critical evolutionary adaptations, civilizations, and social progress, but also of ideologies. Telling the stories of the diverse peoples who call the desert home, he describes how people have survived there, their contributions to agricultural development, and their emphasis on water and its scarcity. He also delves into the allure of deserts and how they have been used in literature and film and their influence on fashion, art, and architecture. As Welland reveals, deserts may be difficult to define, but they play an active role in the evolution of our global climate and society at large, and their future is of the utmost importance. Entertaining, informative, and surprising, The Desert is an intriguing new look at these seemingly harsh and inhospitable landscapes.
Download or read book Desert written by Roslynn D. Haynes and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2013-11-15 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sand. Cacti. Lizards. Mirages. Deserts call to mind exotic places, a sense of adventure and freedom, but also thirst and desolation. In Desert, Roslynn D. Haynes takes a fresh look at this geographical feature and cultural entity as it becomes an increasingly threatened environment. Considering the immense geographical diversity of deserts from the Sahara to Antarctica, Haynes explores the intriguing and often bizarre ways plants and animals adapt to such a hostile environment, as well as the diverse peoples that have inhabited deserts and evolved unique lifestyles and cultures in response to their surroundings. She asks why Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all originated in the deserts of the Middle East and traces the connections between the minimalism of desert existence and the pursuit of a spiritual dimension. Finally, she describes the allure deserts have exerted on the West, the significance of desolate landscapes in literature and film, and the revolution in artists’ responses to the desert as an empty space and as an inspiration for new visual techniques with which to view it. Ending with a look at how commercial and military interests threaten desert ecologies, Desert casts new light on our view of these seemingly barren places.
Book Synopsis Why Oh Why Are Deserts Dry? All About Deserts by : Tish Rabe
Download or read book Why Oh Why Are Deserts Dry? All About Deserts written by Tish Rabe and published by Random House Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laugh and learn with fun facts about desert animals, cacti, sand dunes, and more—all told in Dr. Seuss’s beloved rhyming style and starring the Cat in the Hat! “You may think that deserts are empty and bare, but you’ll be surprised by the things we’ll find there...” The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library series combines beloved characters, engaging rhymes, and Seussian illustrations to introduce children to non-fiction topics from the real world! Journey through the deserts of the world and learn: how plants and animals have adapted to survive the unforgiving climate why deserts don’t have to be hot what causes us to see mirages and much more! Perfect for story time and for the youngest readers, Why Oh Why Are Deserts Dry? All About Deserts also includes an index, glossary, and suggestions for further learning. Look for more books in the Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library series! Cows Can Moo! Can You? All About Farms Hark! A Shark! All About Sharks If I Ran the Dog Show: All About Dogs Oh Say Can You Say Di-no-saur? All About Dinosaurs On Beyond Bugs! All About Insects One Vote Two Votes I Vote You Vote There’s No Place Like Space: All About Our Solar System Who Hatches the Egg? All About Eggs Wish for a Fish: All About Sea Creatures
Book Synopsis Color and Light in Nature by : David K. Lynch
Download or read book Color and Light in Nature written by David K. Lynch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-06-11 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a world of optical marvels - from the commonplace but beautiful rainbow, to the rare and eerie superior mirage. But how many of us really understand how a rainbow is formed, why the setting sun is red and flattened, or even why the sky at night is not absolutely black? This beautiful and informative guide provides clear explanations to all naturally occurring optical phenomena seen with the naked eye, including shadows, halos, water optics, mirages and a host of other spectacles. Separating myth from reality, it outlines the basic principles involved, and supports them with many figures and references. A wealth of rare and spectacular photographs, many in full color, illustrate the phenomena throughout. In this new edition of the highly-acclaimed guide to seeing, photographing and understanding nature's optical delights, the authors have added over 50 new images and provided new material on experiments you can try yourself.
Book Synopsis Water, Civilisation and Power in Sudan by : Harry Verhoeven
Download or read book Water, Civilisation and Power in Sudan written by Harry Verhoeven and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-05 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water, Civilisation and Power in Sudan offers an alternative account of how water policy, violence, and economic modernisation are linked.
Download or read book The Sahara Quest written by Blake Hudson and published by RWG Publishing. This book was released on 2023-07-26 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Description: Embark on an exhilarating adventure into the heart of the Sahara in "The Sahara Quest: A Journey Through the Desert." Join Captain Drake and his intrepid team as they venture into the vast and enigmatic desert, seeking the secrets of the Lost Oasis. In a race against time, the team battles treacherous sandstorms, navigates unforgiving dunes, and encounters mythical creatures that lurk beneath the desert's surface. They unravel ancient riddles, uncover hidden civilizations, and traverse perilous terrain, all in pursuit of the ultimate prize—the fabled Lost Oasis and its untold treasures. Along their journey, they encounter nomadic tribes, mysterious guides, and desert wildlife, forming alliances and forging unbreakable bonds of unity. They delve into hidden caves, unravel mirage mysteries, and discover the echoes of ancient times that whisper through the desert winds. But their quest is not without its challenges. They face betrayal, confront illusions and deception, and navigate through treacherous territories where every step could mean triumph or tragedy. As they press forward, the team must rely on their resilience, resourcefulness, and unwavering perseverance to overcome the obstacles that stand in their way. "The Sahara Quest: A Journey Through the Desert" is an action-packed adventure that seamlessly blends elements of fantasy and reality. With vivid descriptions that bring the Sahara to life, readers will be transported into a world of stunning landscapes, rich cultural tapestries, and the allure of the unknown. This epic tale takes readers on a rollercoaster ride through the desert's unforgiving terrain, exploring themes of friendship, sacrifice, and the pursuit of wisdom. As Captain Drake and his team uncover the secrets of the desert, they also discover the transformative power of the journey itself—a quest that not only tests their physical limits but also challenges their beliefs and redefines their understanding of the world. If you crave thrilling action, captivating mysteries, and the allure of far-off lands, "The Sahara Quest: A Journey Through the Desert" is the perfect adventure for you. Join Captain Drake and his team on an unforgettable expedition, as they navigate the vastness of the Sahara, uncover ancient treasures, and ultimately, discover the true essence of the desert's magic.
Book Synopsis Rainbows, Halos and Glories by : Greenler
Download or read book Rainbows, Halos and Glories written by Greenler and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1989 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Very Good,No Highlights or Markup,all pages are intact.
Book Synopsis The Mystic Mid-region by : Arthur Jerome Burdick
Download or read book The Mystic Mid-region written by Arthur Jerome Burdick and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Mirage Factory written by Gary Krist and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From bestselling author Gary Krist, the story of the metropolis that never should have been and the visionaries who dreamed it into reality Little more than a century ago, the southern coast of California—bone-dry, harbor-less, isolated by deserts and mountain ranges—seemed destined to remain scrappy farmland. Then, as if overnight, one of the world’s iconic cities emerged. At the heart of Los Angeles’ meteoric rise were three flawed visionaries: William Mulholland, an immigrant ditch-digger turned self-taught engineer, designed the massive aqueduct that would make urban life here possible. D.W. Griffith, who transformed the motion picture from a vaudeville-house novelty into a cornerstone of American culture, gave L.A. its signature industry. And Aimee Semple McPherson, a charismatic evangelist who founded a religion, cemented the city’s identity as a center for spiritual exploration. All were masters of their craft, but also illusionists, of a kind. The images they conjured up—of a blossoming city in the desert, of a factory of celluloid dreamworks, of a community of seekers finding personal salvation under the California sun—were like mirages liable to evaporate on closer inspection. All three would pay a steep price to realize these dreams, in a crescendo of hubris, scandal, and catastrophic failure of design that threatened to topple each of their personal empires. Yet when the dust settled, the mirage that was LA remained. Spanning the years from 1900 to 1930, The Mirage Factory is the enthralling tale of an improbable city and the people who willed it into existence by pushing the limits of human engineering and imagination.
Book Synopsis A Desert Named Peace by : Benjamin C. Brower
Download or read book A Desert Named Peace written by Benjamin C. Brower and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-07 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-nineteenth century, French colonial leaders in Algeria started southward into the Sahara, beginning a fifty-year period of violence. Lying in the shadow of the colonization of northern Algeria, which claimed the lives of over a million people, French empire in the Sahara sought power through physical force as it had elsewhere; yet violence in the Algerian Sahara followed a more complicated logic than the old argument that it was simply a way to get empire on the cheap. A Desert Named Peace examines colonial violence through multiple stories and across several fields of research. It presents four cases: the military conquests of the French army in the oases and officers' predisposition to use extreme violence in colonial conflicts; a spontaneous nighttime attack made by Algerian pastoralists on a French village, as notable for its brutality as for its obscure causes; the violence of indigenous forms of slavery and the colonial accommodations that preserved it during the era of abolition; and the struggles of French Romantics whose debates about art and politics arrived from Paris with disastrous consequences. Benjamin Claude Brower uses these different perspectives to reveal the unexpected causes of colonial violence, such as France's troubled revolutionary past and its influence on the military's institutional culture, the aesthetics of the sublime and its impact on colonial thinking, the ecological crises suffered by Saharan pastoralists under colonial rule, and the conflicting paths to authority inherent in Algerian Sufism. Directly engaging a controversial history, A Desert Named Peace offers an important backdrop to understanding the Algerian war for independence (1954-1962) and Algeria's ongoing internal war, begun in 1992, between the government and armed groups that claim to fight for an Islamist revolution.
Book Synopsis The Desert by : John Charles Van Dyke
Download or read book The Desert written by John Charles Van Dyke and published by . This book was released on 1901 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert by : Steven J. Phillips
Download or read book A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert written by Steven J. Phillips and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert provides the most complete collection of Sonoran Desert natural history information ever compiled and is a perfect introduction to this biologically rich desert of North America."--BOOK JACKET.
Book Synopsis Armies of Sand by : Kenneth Michael Pollack
Download or read book Armies of Sand written by Kenneth Michael Pollack and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the Second World War, Arab armed forces have consistently punched below their weight. They have lost many wars that by all rights they should have won, and in their best performances only ever achieved quite modest accomplishments. Over time, soldiers, scholars, and military experts have offered various explanations for this pattern. Reliance on Soviet military methods, the poor civil-military relations of the Arab world, the underdevelopment of the Arab states, and patterns of behavior derived from the wider Arab culture, have all been suggested as the ultimate source of Arab military difficulties. Armies of Sand, Kenneth M. Pollack's powerful and riveting history of Arab armies from the end of World War Two to the present, assesses these differing explanations and isolates the most important causes. Over the course of the book, he examines the combat performance of fifteen Arab armies and air forces in virtually every Middle Eastern war, from the Jordanians and Syrians in 1948 to Hizballah in 2006 and the Iraqis and ISIS in 2014-2017. He then compares these experiences to the performance of the Argentine, Chadian, Chinese, Cuban, North Korean, and South Vietnamese armed forces in their own combat operations during the twentieth century. The book ultimately concludes that reliance on Soviet doctrine was more of a help than a hindrance to the Arabs. In contrast, politicization and underdevelopment were both important factors limiting Arab military effectiveness, but patterns of behavior derived from the dominant Arab culture was the most important factor of all. Pollack closes with a discussion of the rapid changes occurring across the Arab world-political, economic, and cultural-as well as the rapid evolution in war making as a result of the information revolution. He suggests that because both Arab society and warfare are changing, the problems that have bedeviled Arab armed forces in the past could dissipate or even vanish in the future, with potentially dramatic consequences for the Middle East military balance. Sweeping in its historical coverage and highly accessible, this will be the go-to reference for anyone interested in the history of warfare in the Middle East since 1945.
Book Synopsis Dwellers in the Mirage by : Abraham Merritt
Download or read book Dwellers in the Mirage written by Abraham Merritt and published by eStar Books. This book was released on 2014-11-10 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Leif Langdon who discovers an amazing warm valley in Alaska! Two races inhabit the valley, the Little People and a branch of an ancient Mongolian race and they worship the Kraken named Khalk'ru which they summon from another dimension to offer human sacrifice. The inhabitants believe Langdon to be the reincarnation of their long dead hero, Dwayanu...
Book Synopsis Camels in the Sky by : V. Muzafer Ahamed
Download or read book Camels in the Sky written by V. Muzafer Ahamed and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-11 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Journeying from the green, rain-soaked Kerala into the amphitheatre of the Sun, our traveller-journalist finds that there is no better metaphor than the desert to instil the lessons of life and death, love and hatred, thirst and water. From a single shower of rain which brings the gaaf tree back to life after a decade to the ever-shifting dunes of gold and thousand-year-old sand palaces, the mysterious poetry of the desert is everywhere on display, if one but has the eye and heart to see it. As the deserts of Nafud, Dahna, and Rub’ al Khali in Arabia both embrace and trap the travellers, the outpouring of the landscape’s longing for rivers recalls a past filled with water. This narrative describes the history, prehistory, archaeology, legends, folklore, and travails of the émigré Asian work force that tames the harsh desert as never before.
Book Synopsis Mirages and Other Marvels of Light and Air by : Barbra Penne
Download or read book Mirages and Other Marvels of Light and Air written by Barbra Penne and published by Encyclopaedia Britannica. This book was released on 2016-07-15 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fabled oasis in the desert mirage is just one example of the strange things that can happen when light hits the air in certain atmospheric conditions. This captivating volume takes a closer look at mirages and similar phenomena, explaining to elementary readers that there is much more to these natural optical illusions than meets, or doesn't meet, the eye. Topics covered include refraction, the difference between superior and inferior mirages, green flashes, and the famous Fata Morgana castle in the sky mirage. Vocabulary boxes identify key terms, while Think About It and Compare and Contrast questions prompt critical thinking about optics and light.
