eBooks - Social Issues - Environmental Issues - Mark London - Brian Kelly - The Last Forest
The Last Forest eBooks
By: Mark London, Brian Kelly
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Windows Vista / XP / 2000, Mac OS X, Sony Reader Features
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Windows PC, Windows Mobile 5.0-6.0, Pocket PC 2003 Features
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Windows PC, Palm, Windows Mobile, Pocket PC, Symbian OS, Blackberry, iLiad, and more. Features
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Platforms
Palm, Windows Mobile, Pocket PC, Windows PC, Mac, iPhone/iPod Touch Features
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Availability:
Download Now Price: $25.95
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The Last Forest Summary
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Chapter 1 AN UNEXPECTED BEGINNING From the time he was a small boy, Nelsi Sadeck heard about the cave paintings out beyond the sandstone ridges that fingered their way down toward the north bank of the Amazon River. He and his friends already were well acquainted with the paintings high on the cliffs closer to town, really nothing more than lines of dull colors against gray rock. Because they knew only their small river town of Monte Alegre and its environs, they never knew just how special these paintings were in the region. Along the main Amazon for two thousand miles upstream, there was nothing taller than a tree, except for these rocks. And other than the chocolate brown water of the swift- moving river and the sentries of green trees guarding the riverbank, there was no color. Anyone from anywhere else in the region would have known Sadeck had seen something special up in those rocks, but for him, these were nothing more than local artwork. Then, in the early 1970s, Sadeck started to hear stories about other paintings, ones scattered randomly in caves hidden in the small hills farther inland. He had heard by then from enough visitors that there was nothing else like them in the vast green sea of Amazon forest. So, he went exploring. The paintings he found were simple red and yellow renderings of animals and people, childish and exuberant— primitive depictions of spiders, frogs, owls, and giant snakes. He saw stick figures of men and women and a rail-thin cow with horns. Bright suns and handprints mixed with geometric spirals and concentric squares. One painting looked to be a calendar, a six-by- eight-foot rectangle lined by precise squares, some with X’s through them. No recor... |
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With a landmass larger than the continental U.S. west of the Mississippi and the richest diversity of plant and animal species on earth, the Amazon has always struck its explorers and would-be exploiters as infinite and largely impenetrable. For decades, anthropologists assumed that permanent human habitation was impossible–but they were wrong. Recently, proof of centuries-old Amazonian civilizations has been unearthed, shifting perceptions of the inhospitability of the rain forest–and providing a precedent for human occupation. Today, as developers and environmentalists clash over the region’s future, the seemingly endless forest is fast disappearing in fires, rampant mineral extraction, rogue logging operations, and encroaching urban sprawl. Through a series of startling human encounters–interviews with government ministers and environmental crusaders, millionaire ranchers and disenfranchised slum dwellers–Mark London and Brian Kelly, longtime explorers and trailblazing chroniclers of the Amazon basin, trace the region’s transformation. Logging thousands of miles, London and Kelly take readers from the mushrooming shopping malls of Manaus to the pristine rain forest that still seems beyond the reach of civilization, from the ghostly ruins of abandoned factories and failed plantations to the thriving agribusinesses that one day may feed the entire world and change this landscape forever. Again and again, they collide with the same fundamental question: Is it too late to strike a balance in the Amazon between economic sustenance for the twenty-one million Brazilians who live there and protection for the world’s last great forest? London and Brian Kelly have fashioned a complex, vibrant portrait of a region on the edge of crisis. At once a seductive journey and a searing account of political, environmental, and social tumult, The Last Forest is a masterpiece of contemporary reporting. From the Hardcover edition. |
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eBooks - Titles - Authors - Social Issues - Environmental Issues - Mark London - Brian Kelly - The Last Forest