"Photojournalist Eddy van Wessel has journeyed time and again to conflicted regions in order to document the lives of people and refugees there. Bosnia, Gaza, Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria have all been the subject of his award-winning photographs. This book offers an intimate and confronting look into the world of a conflict photographer. Through raw commentary, Van Wessel addresses difficult questions, as he repeatedly places himself in dangerous situations in order to tell a story while capturing shocking and multifaceted imagery. Links to extra documentary videos can be found on certain pages of the book using a smartphone with the mobile browser Layar."--Publisher.

From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower “A dazzling history of Western ideas.” —The Economist “Mr. Ferguson tells his story with characteristic verve and an eye for the felicitous phrase.” —Wall Street Journal “[W]ritten with vitality and verve . . . a tour de force.” —Boston Globe Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors. Yet now, Ferguson shows how the Rest have downloaded the killer apps the West once monopolized, while the West has literally lost faith in itself. Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside clashes (and fusions) of civilizations, Civilization: The West and the Rest recasts world history with force and wit. Boldly argued and teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.

Earl Hollsopple lived on the edge of civilization in a deserted shack for nearly forty years. His life was one beautiful night of stargazing after another, until a helicopter flies overhead, and exposing his meager world. It is a sign; it is time for him to return to civilization Unknowingly, Earl's journey parallels another he had deeply repressed, and that is his return from the Vietnam War. The lone survivor of a plane crash, Earl waits for rescue that never comes. He is left to find his way home alone. On his quests, old Earl and young Earl learn lessons of survival, overcoming isolation and handling conflicts; his travels teach him not just about himself, but humankind. Reaching pivotal points in both journeys, Earl meets fateful loves, leading to destinies that are ultimately intertwined. Everything in life circles until we are able to answer the riddles that plaque man and humanity. Only until we take the journey, solve the problems of our own existence, do we find our way home.

As a resurgent Poland emerged at the end of World War I, an eclectic group of Polish border guards, state officials, military settlers, teachers, academics, urban planners, and health workers descended upon Volhynia, an eastern borderland province that was home to Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews. Its aim was not simply to shore up state power in a place where Poles constituted an ethnic minority, but also to launch an ambitious civilizing mission that would transform a poor Russian imperial backwater into a region that was at once civilized, modern, and Polish. Over the next two decades, these men and women recast imperial hierarchies of global civilization-in which Poles themselves were often viewed as uncivilized-within the borders of their supposedly anti-imperial nation-state. As state institutions remained fragile, long-debated questions of who should be included in the nation re-emerged with new urgency, turning Volhynia's mainly Yiddish-speaking towns and Ukrainian-speaking villages into vital testing grounds for competing Polish national visions. By the eve of World War II, with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union growing in strength, schemes to ensure the loyalty of Jews and Ukrainians by offering them a conditional place in the nation were replaced by increasingly aggressive calls for Jewish emigration and the assimilation of non-Polish Slavs. Drawing on research in local and national archives across four countries and utilizing a vast range of written and visual sources that bring Volhynia to life, On Civilization's Edge offers a highly intimate story of nation-building from the ground up. We eavesdrop on peasant rumors at the Polish-Soviet border, read ethnographic descriptions of isolated marshlands, and scrutinize staged photographs of everyday life. But the book's central questions transcend the Polish case, inviting us to consider how fears of national weakness and competitions for local power affect the treatment of national minorities, how more inclusive definitions of the nation are themselves based on exclusions, and how the very distinction between empires and nation-states is not always clear-cut.

"Interesting interviews in this book about the future of the world including #degov #bitcoin #crypto." TIM DRAPER, Venture capitalist "A conversation that explores new frontiers of politics and technology, as well as depicts the shadowland of our unfolding strange and ominous future as a species." RICHARD FALK, Public Intellectual CIVILIZATION IN OVERDRIVE: Conversations on the Edge of the Human Future provides an astonishing tour of how the world’s future looks to those likely to know the most about it. Journalist Konrad Stachnio engages 17 experts, global opinion leaders in their respective fields, in discussions on artificial intelligence, finance, the economy, technology, world order, the military, cultural change and more. His well-researched and probing questions draw out striking revelations from his guests on where 21st century civilization is leading us, raising further questions as to whether we want to go there, and if that could be prevented. This book is a plunge into the unexpected, forcing us to bid farewell to our familiar yet increasingly complex world which is irrevocably disappearing before our eyes and morphing into dimensions even more complex and less comprehensible

A study of the decades leading up to World War II profiles the world leaders, politicians, business people, and others whose personal politics and ideologies provided an inevitable barrier to the peace process and whose actions led to the outbreak of war.

A Conversation -- On the Edge, In the World -- Democracy as Civilizing Mission -- The Integration Myth -- The Many Meanings of the Border -- Polish Towns? Jewish Towns? -- Depoliticizing the Volhynian Village -- Regionalism, or The Limits of Inclusion -- Thinking Technocratically.