Natalie Bennett

The tragic recognition of the extinction of the Yangtze River Dolphin or baiji in 2007 became a major news story and sent shockwaves around the world. It made a romantic story, for the baiji was a unique and beautiful creature that features in many Chinese legends and folk tales. The Goddess of the Yangtze, as it was known, was also the lone representative of an entire and ancient branch of the Tree of Life. But perhaps the greater tragedy is that its status as one of the world's most threatened mammals had been widely recognized, yet despite wide publicity virtually no international funds became available. Samuel Turvey here tells the story of the plight of the Yangtze River Dolphin from his unique perspective as a conservation biologist deeply involved in the struggle to save the dolphin. This is both a celebration of a beautiful and remarkable animal that once graced one of China's greatest rivers, its natural history and its role as a cultural symbol; and also a personal, eyewitness account of the failures of policy and the struggle to get funds that led to its tragic demise. It is a true cautionary tale that we must learn from, for there are countless other threatened species that will suffer from the same human mistakes, and whose loss we shall not know until it is too late.

Rebuilding the Houses of Parliament explores the history of the UK Houses of Parliament in Westminster from an environmental design perspective, and the role David Boswell Reid played in the development of the original ventilation and climate control system in parliament. This book retraces and critically examines the evolution of the environmental principles underlying the design of the Houses of Parliament, engaging with fundamental questions about air quality, energy efficiency and thermal comfort. This yields insights into the historic methods of environmental design that were characterised by physical experimentation and post-occupancy evaluation. Rebuilding the Houses of Parliament examines the history of the buildings’ operation, studying the practical reality of its performance in use and offers the opportunity to reflect on current challenges faced by architects and engineers adapting to the realities of climate change. This book is an ideal read for academics, politicians and practitioners with an interest in architectural history and heritage, theory, engineering and conservation.

Oxford University political theorist Stein Ringen offers a thought-provoking meditation on the art of democratic rule: how does a government persuade the people to accept its authority? Every government must make unpopular demands of its citizens, from levying taxes to enforcing laws and monitoring compliance to regulations. The challenge, Ringen argues, is that power is not enough; the populace must also be willing to be led. Ringen addresses this political conundrum unabashedly, using the United States and Britain as his prime examples, providing sharp opinions and cogent analyses on how the culture of national obedience is created and nurtured. He explores the paths leaders must choose if they wish to govern by authority rather than power, or, as the philosopher Immanuel Kant put it, to “maintain order in a nation of devils.”

Examining a series of El Nino-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned around the globe in the last third of the 19th century, Mike Davis discloses the intimate, baleful relationship between imperial arrogance and natural incident that combined to produce some of the worst tragedies in human history. Late Victorian Holocausts focuses on three zones of drought and subsequent famine: India, Northern China; and Northeastern Brazil. All were affected by the same global climatic factors that caused massive crop failures, and all experienced brutal famines that decimated local populations. But the effects of drought were magnified in each case because of singularly destructive policies promulgated by different ruling elites. Davis argues that the seeds of underdevelopment in what later became known as the Third World were sown in this era of High Imperialism, as the price for capitalist modernization was paid in the currency of millions of peasants’ lives.

The Enchantment of the Long-haired Rat tells the story of a small Australian rodent known for its fast and prodigious spread after big rains: plagues for the European colonists who feared and loathed all rats; an abundance of food for the indigenous peoples who feasted with delight in these times of plenty. While the rats brought despair and hardship for the early colonist eating not only crops and supplies but clothes, boots and saddlery, their presence also offered a lifeline as a food source. The Burke and Wills story might well have had a different ending had the hapless explorers been tempted to follow the example of the Aboriginal people and make use of a nutritious and readily available meal. Tim Bonyhady's account - from the earliest evidence of it, found in caves and overhangs, to its most recent boom triggered by the immense rains across Australia of 2010 - 11 and current research of its mysterious life - presents a fascinating view of Australias history, illuminating a species, a continent, its climate and its people.

A guide to being courageous and community-minded, and to disrupting and dismantling age-old power structures in work, life and politics, written by someone who has done exactly that. Let's be honest. Magid Magid's story seems an unlikely one. He's a Somali-born black Muslim refugee who became the youngest ever Lord Mayor of Sheffield and one of the last UK MEPs. Magid has made headlines nationally and internationally for his creative ways of campaigning while not conforming to tradition and being unapologetically himself. Magid had no idea that the poster he dreamed up for a local music festival in 2018 would go viral. The poster contained the 10 commandments he tries to live by. He had no idea that this poster would come to represent a movement that has swept him to the heart of local and European establishment politics. Now, for the first time, he reveals the stories behind each of these 'commandments'; what drives him, the obstacles he overcame and what makes him hopeful.