Bøger af Wade Davis

WINNER OF THE 2012 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZEA monumental work of history, biography and adventure - the First World War, Mallory and Mount Everest'The price of life is death' For Mallory, as for all of his generation, death was but 'a frail barrier that men crossed, smiling and gallant, every day'.

"Wade Davis is a true wayfinder, and these essays offer new insight into his visionary approach to culture, landscape, and the planet he loves as fiercely as any writer working today."-John Vaillant, author of Fire WeatherA timely and eclectic collection from one of the foremost thinkers of our time, "a powerful, penetrating and immensely knowledgeable writer" (The Guardian). The essays in this collection came about during the unhurried months when one who had traveled incessantly was obliged to stay still, even as events flared on all sides in a world that never stops moving. Wade Davis brings his unique cultural perspective to such varied topics as the demonization of coca, the sacred plant of the Inca; the Great War and the birth of modernity; the British conquest of Everest; the endless conflict in the Middle East; reaching beyond climate fear and trepidation; on the meaning of the sacred. His essay, "The Unraveling of America," first published in Rolling Stone, attracted five million readers and generated 362 million social media impressions. Media interest in the story was sustained over many weeks, with interview requests coming in from 23 countries. The anthropological lens, as Davis demonstrates, reveals what lies beneath the surface of things, allowing us to see, and to seek, the wisdom of the middle way, a perspective of promise and hope that all of the essays in this collection aspire to convey. "Wade Davis has a gift for saying the unsayable. He's a fearless explorer in the intellectual world, as in the physical. His refusal to embrace conventional wisdom on climate change, for example, and instead think through the issue for himself, is a model of independent thinking. Even when I disagree with Wade, as with some of his bleak comments about the United States, I'm grateful for his voice. We usually live on the surface of ideas when we talk about issues such as war and racism; Wade takes us far deeper."-David Ignatius, columnist and associate editor, Washington Post

Due to extreme drought and chronic overuse, the Colorado River and all those who depend on its waters are in peril.During a pivotal moment in the river's lifespan, acclaimed author Wade Davis tells the story of America's Nile. Blending natural and cultural history, geology and conservation, his account reveals the side effects of our centuries-old quest for progress, and presents an opportunity to learn from past mistakes and foster the rebirth of one of the world's most important rivers.

Plugged by no fewer than twenty-five dams, the Colorado is the world's most regulated river, providing most of the water supply of Las Vegas, Tucson, and San Diego, and much of the power and water of Los Angeles and Phoenix. This book takes you on a journey down the river and through mankind's relationship with it.

Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie

In a rugged knot of mountains in the remote reaches of northern British Columbia lies a spectacularly beautiful valley known to the First Nations as the Sacred Headwaters. There, on the southern edge of the Spatsizi Wilderness, the Serengeti of North America, are born in remarkably close proximity three of the continent's most important salmon rivers—the Stikine, the Skeena, and the Nass. Now, against the wishes of all First Nations, the government of British Columbia has opened the Sacred Headwaters to industrial development. In particular, Imperial Metals proposes an open-pit copper and gold mine, called the Red Chris mine, processing 30,000 tons of ore a day, and Royal Dutch Shell wants to extract coal bed methane gas from an anthracite deposit across an enormous tenure of close to a million acres.The Sacred Headwaters is both a celebration of one of the most extraordinary regions in North America and a call to arms to preserve it for future generations. A remarkable collection of photographs taken by members of the International League of Conservation Photographers stunningly portray the beauty and diversity of the ecologically diverse region.The eloquent and compelling text by Wade Davis, which describes the unparalleled beauty and grandeur of the region, the threats to it from industrial development, and the response of native groups and other inhabitants of the area, is complemented by the voices of the Tahltan elders. The inescapable message is that no amount of methane gas can compensate for the sacrifice of a place that could be the Sacred Headwaters of all North Americans and indeed of all peoples of the world.

In 1941, Richard Evans Schultes took a leave of absence from Harvard University and disappeared into the Northern Amazon of Colombia. The world's leading authority on the hallucinogens and medicinal plants of the region, he returned after twelve years of travelling through South America in a dug-out canoe.