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Jung Chang (12/06)
Jung Chang
was born in Yibin, Sichuan
Province, China, in 1952. She
was a Red Guard briefly at the
age of fourteen and then worked
as a peasant, a 'barefoot
doctor,' (A lay health care
worker who received 3-6 months
training in ...
The Satanic Verses (11/06)
Did you know?
The 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie proclaimed by Ayatollah Khomeini (then
leader of Iran) triggered by the publication of The Satantic Verses in
1988/ It was reaffirmed in 2005 by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's current spiritual leader, and again in February 2006 when the government-run Matyrs Foundation announced, &...
Victoria London (11/06)
If you had a choice between being a tosher, mudlark, rag-and-bone man, scavenger or riverman in Victorian London, which would you choose?
London was a dangerous place with an unnerving number of bodies ending up in the river - cutpurses would murder their victims and throw the bodies in the river,
drunken sailors fell overboard, dock ...
Myla Goldberg (11/06)
Myla Goldberg is the author of the bestselling
Bee
Season; an essay collection,
Time’s Magpie, which explores all
her favorite places in Prague, where she lived for a year in the early nineties;
and
Wickett’s Remedy which grew out of her fascination with the 1918
influenza epidemic. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband,...
A Short History of Venice (11/06)
Venice was founded in the River Po estuary by refugees escaping Attila the Hun in the 5th century. The city is built on more than 100 islands forming the archipelago of the Venetian Lagoon. All transport within the city of Venice is either on foot or by water. Around the 8th century Venice became a city state, like Genoa and Pisa; and ...
Background (11/06)
Carolyn Turgeon was born in Michigan grew up in Illinois, Texas, Michigan and
Pennsylvania. She studied English and Italian literature at Penn State and
received a Master's in Comparative Literature from UCLA.
Rain Village is
her first novel. She works for a non-profit in New York and lives in Queens.
Carolyn Turgeon ...
Background (11/06)
Bangladesh: In 1947 the Partition of India caused the formation of East
and West Pakistan (separated by a distance of about 1,000 miles). Although
the two regions shared a common religion (Islam) large ethnic and linguistic
differences existed which in 1971, following the Bangladesh Liberation War, led
to the formation of ...
Darjeeling, and the 1980s conflicts. (10/06)
The area around Darjeeling in North East India (
map) is populated primarily by Gorkhas (also known as Gurkhas) whose ancestors founded the Kingdom of Nepal; they have long wanted an independent state. Massive violence broke out between 1986 and 1988 but was resolved with the establishment of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council within...
Anansi (10/06)
Anansi is one of the gods in West African mythology, sometimes depicted in human form, sometimes as a spider, sometimes as a hybrid. He's tricky, greedy and lustful, but he's also good-hearted, lucky, and although often bad, never evil. The legends are believed to have originated with the Ashanti tribe (from Ghana) but spread ...
The Savannah Campaign (10/06)
The Savannah Campaign, more commonly known as The March to the Sea, took place between November 15th 1864, when Sherman's 62,000 troops left the captured city of Atlanta, and ended on December 22nd with the capture of Savannah. Sherman and Grant were in agreement that the way to end the war was to inflict a devastating defeat ...
The Equal Rights Amendment (10/06)
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that was intended to guarantee equal rights under the law for Americans regardless of sex. Although the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment guaranteed American women's right to vote, suffragette leader Alice Paul argued that vestiges of ...
Julie Powell (09/06)
Julie Powell
says... 'My answer to 'what's
your favorite read' changes
every time I'm asked it, but I
can say that as far as cookbook
authors, Paul Prudhomme*, Andries
de Groot and, yes, Nigella
Lawson are folks I enormously
...
The ETA and Basque separatists (09/06)
Euskadi Ta Azkatasuna (ETA) stands for Basque Homeland and Freedom. The group seeks independence for seven regions in northern Spain and South-West France that they claim as their own. The ETA first appeared in the 1960s as a student resistance movement opposed to General Franco's military dictatorship (Franco banned the ...
Recycling tips (09/06)
Here are a few suggestions, edited from Royte's site, on how each of us can make a
difference:
- Support recycling industries by buying goods made or packaged in
recycled content.
- Don't buy individually wrapped single servings; buy in bulk whenever possible.
- When possible, compost food and yard waste.*
- Visit
Ecocycle for...
A modern history of Trieste (08/06)
Today, Trieste is a charming Italian city bordering Slovenia (formerly Yugoslavia) on the Adriatic Sea, home to a wide mix of cultures (
map of Trieste), but in 1954 it was at the center of a Cold War quandary - what to do with this little city-state caught in the power struggle between East and West?
Over the centuries Trieste ...
Q & A (08/06)
Where is
Ulieta? The island of Ulieta,
or Ulietea, is too small to
appear in our atlas but if you
were to travel roughly
North-West of Tahiti you'd
likely come across it. We
'Google Earthed' it (16° 49' 60, 151° 25' 0 W) and
...
Warfare and Rape (08/06)
In ancient times rape was seen as a reward to the victors; for example, there are a number of references in the Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures to acts of mass rape by conquerors, and plenty in Roman and Greek history.
In modern times mass rape has been increasingly used as a premeditated terror tactic by invading armies. According to
...
Tibet (07/06)
With an average elevation of 14-16,000 feet (sources differ), it's the highest nation on earth (by comparison, the highest mountain in the 48 contiguous states is Mt. Whitney at 14,494 feet)
Five of Asia's great rivers including the Indus, Mekong and Brahmaputra have their headwaters in Tibet.
Nearly half the world's population lives ...
Honor Killings (06/06)
Map For Lost Lovers explores many issues within the Muslim community, including the central theme of honor killings. According to Amnesty International, an average of 2 women are killed each day in Pakistan for 'betraying the honor of the family' (the reasons for this loss of honor could range from infidelity, including being the victim ...
MI5 (06/06)
According to a
BBC
Interview with Rimington, there is no exact equivalent to MI5 in
the USA - the nearest equivalent is what used to be called the Foreign
Counter Intelligence arm of the FBI. She goes on to say that 'MI5 is a civilian
intelligence service with no powers of arrest or any other police ...
The Armonica (05/06)
The armonica is a musical instrument constructed of graduated glass bowls with holes and corks in the center. It was invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761. He was inspired to create it having heard a concert played on wine glasses! For a time armonicas were all the rage, Marie Antoinette (who, incidentally, historians say never did utter ...
Peoples of Finland (02/06)
To research this series, Paver spent time with a guide in the forests of Finland (some Finnish forests are still much as they would have been 6,000 years ago). She learned how the people lived by
studying archaeology; and to understand what they might have thought she
studied many groups including:
Background (02/06)
The Kurt Wallender series is set primarily in
Mankell's native Sweden. You'll find Sweden in the
north of Europe between Finland and Norway. With a population of about 9
million, a landmass about the same size as California and a stable
population, most people enjoy a good quality of life (albeit cold...
Origin of Las Vegas (02/06)
The first person of European descent to discover the location that is now Las
Vegas was a young Spanish scout named Rafael Rivera in the early
1700s. Spanish traders en route from Santa Fe to Pueblo de Los Angelos, traveling along the
Spanish
Trail, sought a route through the valley in the hope of cutting a few days
off the journey, ...
The Kingdom of Wessex (01/06)
Wessex was one of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in what is now England. With the reign of
Alfred (871-99) and the halting of the Danes, the King of Wessex became
the King of England. In the 10th century Alfred's descendents gradually acquired firm control over all England,
including the Danelaw (parts of north ...
Liberia (10/05)
Liberia is a tiny country on the west coast of Africa which was claimed by the USA in the early 19th century for the purposes of repatriating free blacks back to Africa. The 'American Colonization Society' was supported by two very different groups: abolitionists who wanted to free African slaves and their descendants and &#...
Background for Birds Without Wings (07/05)
Background: The Ottoman Empire ruled large tracts
of central Europe for about 450 years, until it was defeated by the Turkish
nationalists in 1918. The Turks were led by Mustafa Kemal, whose
story forms just one of the many threads in this tapestry of a book.
Although I obviously cannot endorse either, I ...
Burma (07/05)
Burma - now Myanmar - is located in South East Asia, west of Thailand, and borders Thailand, China, India, Laos and the Indian Ocean. It's total land area is about the size of Texas.
During much of the 19th Century and early 20th century, it was administered as a province of India by the British. In 1948 it attained independence and ...
The Higgs Boson (06/05)
The Higgs particle was first hypothesized by the Scottish scientist Peter Higgs in
1964. After taking a weekend walk in the Cairngorm Mountains he returned to his laboratory in Edinburgh on Monday and declared to his colleagues that he had just experienced his 'one big idea' and now had an answer to the mystery of ...
The Sahara Desert (04/05)
The Sahara Desert is the second largest desert on earth - the largest being Antarctica. It covers more than 3.5 million square miles of North Africa (the entire land area of the USA would fit inside it). The Arabic word for desert is sahara (or zahara depending on the phonetic translation).
Like all parts of our planet, the ...
Cuba (04/05)
Cuba is the largest country in the Caribbean - 780 miles long, 140 miles at its widest point, with a population of about 11 million, and infant mortality, life expectancy and literacy rates on a par with the USA (6.45 deaths per 1,000 live births, 77 years life expectancy, 97% literacy rate). It suffered a severe economic recession in the...
Afghanistan (04/05)
Afghanistan's strategic position between
Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent has
made it an area of conflict for millenia.
The Soviet Union intervened in 1979 to prop up a pro-communist
regime, but after they withdraw many years
later the ...
Elisabeth Kubler Ross and the Five Stages of Grief (04/05)
Elisabeth Kubler Ross was born in 1926 in Zurich, Switzerland and died of natural causes in 2004 in Arizona. Her ground breaking and bestselling book, On Death and Dying, (1969) did much to change the treatment of terminally ill patients. She was compelled to write it while working as a doctor in hospitals in New York, Colorado and ...
Zimbabwe (04/05)
Zimbabwe (formerly known as Rhodesia) is a landlocked nation in the southern
part of Africa surrounded by the countries of Zambia, Botswana,
Mozambique and South Africa.
According to the
CIA
Factbook, its population is approximately 12 million. Per capita
income is $1,900 and the % of those with AIDS/HIV is...
U.S. Graduation Rates (04/05)
Oral Lee Brown was born in
Mississippi in the early 1940s. She is the ninth of twelve children
born to 'old-fashioned farming folk' who grew cotton and corn. Today
she lives in Oakland, California.
Although California reports an
official graduation rate of 87% to the Federal Government using a Federal
...
Paulo Coelho (03/05)
Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, the city where he now lives. In 1970, after deciding that law
school was not for him, he traveled through much of South America, North
Africa, Mexico, and Europe. Returning to Brazil after two years, he
began a successful career as a popular songwriter. In 1974, he was
...
Gozo (03/05)
Trezza Azzopardi was born in Cardiff, Wales, and lives in Norwich,
on the East coast of England.
As a little girl growing up in Cardiff, Trezza would listen to her Gozitan father recount tales and describe the
heat haze in Malta. Her first novel, The Hiding Place, published in 2000, is
the ...
Indonesia (02/05)
Tracy Dahlby
is a former managing editor of Newsweek
International and an expert in the affairs of Asia, where
he lived for thirteen years, serving as Tokyo bureau chief for
the Washington Post and Newsweek. He is also a regular
contributor to National Geographic
magazine.&...
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (02/05)
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was originally compiled on the orders of King Alfred the Great in approximately A.D. 890. It was subsequently maintained and added to by generations of anonymous scribes until the middle of the 12th Century. Because of this, the accuracy of the entries for the first few centuries should be taken with a pinch of ...
