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"Many people worry that we're losing genetic diversity in the foods we eat. Over the past century, crop varieties standardized for industrial agriculture have increasingly dominated farm fields. Concerned about what this transition means for the future of food, scientists, farmers, and eaters have sought to protect crop plants they consider endangered. They have organized high-tech genebanks and heritage seed swaps. They have combed fields for ancient landraces and sought farmers growing Indigenous varieties. Behind this widespread concern for the loss of plant diversity lies another extinction narrative about the survival of farmers themselves, a story that is often obscured by urgent calls...
Explores the development of natural history since the Renaissance and contextualizes current discussions of biodiversity.
Plant breeders have long sought technologies to extend human control over nature. Early in the twentieth century, this led some to experiment with startlingly strange tools like x-ray machines, chromosome-altering chemicals, and radioactive elements. Contemporary reports celebrated these mutation-inducing methods as ways of generating variation in plants on demand. Speeding up evolution, they imagined, would allow breeders to genetically engineer crops and flowers to order. Creating a new food crop or garden flower would soon be as straightforward as innovating any other modern industrial product. In Evolution Made to Order, Helen Anne Curry traces the history of America’s pursuit of tools that could intervene in evolution. An immersive journey through the scientific and social worlds of midcentury genetics and plant breeding and a compelling exploration of American cultures of innovation, Evolution Made to Order provides vital historical context for current worldwide ethical and policy debates over genetic engineering.
In this suspense thriller, Craig Andrews survives a gut-wrenching divorce and begins a new life only to be targeted by a mass murderer. A hard-nosed detective is motivated to stop the killing spree and is closing in on the killer. Weeds in The Garden of Love is a gritty "slice-of-life" tale exposing dysfunctional people trying to ease their suffering through alcohol, illicit sex, and cold-blooded murder. It’s a story about more than winning and losing. It’s about survival.
A New York Times bestseller! A visit to Washington, DC’s National Portrait Gallery forever alters Parker Curry’s young life when she views First Lady Michelle Obama’s portrait. When Parker Curry came face-to-face with Amy Sherald’s transcendent portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama at the National Portrait Gallery, she didn’t just see the First Lady of the United States. She saw a queen—one with dynamic self-assurance, regality, beauty, and truth who captured this young girl’s imagination. When a nearby museum-goer snapped a photo of a mesmerized Parker, it became an internet sensation. Inspired by this visit, Parker, and her mother, Jessica Curry, tell the story of a young gir...
The weekly source of African American political and entertainment news.
Thirteen leading actors take us behind the scenes, each recreating in detail a memorable performance in one of Shakespeare's major roles. * Brian Cox on Titus Andronicus in Deborah Warner's visceral RSC production * Judi Dench on being directed by Franco Zeffirelli as a twenty-three-year-old Juliet * Ralph Fiennes on Shakespeare's least sympathetic hero Coriolanus * Rebecca Hall on Rosalind in As You Like It, directed by her father, Sir Peter * Derek Jacobi on his hilariously poker-backed Malvolio for Michael Grandage * Jude Law on his Hamlet, a palpable hit in the West End and on Broadway * Adrian Lester on a modern-dress Henry V at the National, during the invasion of Iraq * Ian McKellen o...
I Was a Spectator in the Greatest Generation By: H. Lloyd Wilkerson The 20th Century took H. Lloyd Wilkerson from rural Obion County, TN to the Pacific in WWII and service with some of the greatest military leaders of his time. Prior to his military service, Wilkerson attended Erskine College and completed his degree during the war. Pearl Harbor was a turning point for Wilkerson. He rushed to the Marine Corps Recruiting station on December 8, 1941 to enlist. His first assignment after boot camp was orderly-driver for Colonel James W. Webb, CO 7th Marines. Their first overseas deployment was British Samoa. At Guadalcanal Wilkerson became a rifleman under the notorious LtCol “Chesty” Pulle...
A Chicago Tribune Book of 2019, Notable Chicago Reads A Booklist Top 10 Arts Book of 2019 A No Depression Top Music Book of 2019 Curtis Mayfield. The Chi-Lites. Chaka Khan. Chicago’s place in the history of soul music is rock solid. But for Chicagoans, soul music in its heyday from the 1960s to the 1980s was more than just a series of hits: it was a marker and a source of black empowerment. In Move On Up, Aaron Cohen tells the remarkable story of the explosion of soul music in Chicago. Together, soul music and black-owned businesses thrived. Record producers and song-writers broadcast optimism for black America’s future through their sophisticated, jazz-inspired productions for the Dells...
This work covers 840 intentional suicide cases initially reported in Daily Variety (the entertainment industry's trade journal), but also drawing attention from mainstream news media. These cases are taken from the ranks of vaudeville, film, theatre, dance, music, literature (writers with direct connections to film), and other allied fields in the entertainment industry from 1905 through 2000. Accidentally self-inflicted deaths are omitted, except for a few controversial cases. It includes the suicides of well-known personalities such as actress Peg Entwistle, who is the only person to ever commit suicide by jumping from the top of the Hollywood Sign, Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Dandridge, who are believed to have overdosed on drugs, and Richard Farnsworth and Brian Keith, who shot themselves to end the misery of terminal cancer. Also mentioned, but in less detail, are the suicides of unknown and lesser-known members of the entertainment industry. Arranged alphabetically, each entry covers the person's personal and professional background, method of suicide, and, in some instances, includes actual statements taken from the suicide note.