Author: Prue Mason
Publisher: Charlesbridge Publishing
ISBN: 1580893147
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 207
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Book Description
War has broken out in the Middle East and all foreigners are fleeing. Instead of escaping with his neighbors, Adam sneaks off to save his dog, which has been left behind. Lost in the desert, Adam meets Walid, an abused camel boy who is on the run. Together they struggle to survive the elements and elude the revengeful master from whom Walid has fled. Cultural and language barriers are wide, but with ingenuity and determination the two boys bridge their differences, helping each other to survive and learn what true friendship is.
Author: Jonathon Green
Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.
ISBN: 9780304366361
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1600
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Book Description
With its unparalleled coverage of English slang of all types (from 18th-century cant to contemporary gay slang), and its uncluttered editorial apparatus, Cassell's Dictionary of Slang was warmly received when its first edition appeared in 1998. 'Brilliant.' said Mark Lawson on BBC2's The Late Review; 'This is a terrific piece of work - learned, entertaining, funny, stimulating' said Jonathan Meades in The Evening Standard.But now the world's best single-volume dictionary of English slang is about to get even better. Jonathon Green has spent the last seven years on a vast project: to research in depth the English slang vocabulary and to hunt down and record written instances of the use of as many slang words as possible. This has entailed trawling through more than 4000 books - plus song lyrics, TV and movie scripts, and many newspapers and magazines - for relevant material. The research has thrown up some fascinating results
Author: Gary Jennings
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429999942
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 802
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Book Description
“Jennings combines inexhaustible research with the yarn-spinner’s art, drawing indelible portraits of Marco [Polo] . . . on the long journey. Stunning.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review Marco Polo was nicknamed “Marco of the millions” because his Venetian countrymen took the grandiose stories of his travels to be exaggerated, if not outright lies. As he lay dying, his priest, family, and friends offered him a last chance to confess his mendacity, and Marco, it is said, replied “I have not told the half of what I saw and did.” Now, in his novel The Journeyer, New York Times–bestselling author Gary Jennings has imagined the half that Marco left unsaid as even more adventurous than the alleged tall tales. From the streets of medieval Venice to the sumptuous court of Kublai Khan, from the perfumed sexuality of the Levant to the dangers and rigors of travel along the Silk Road, Marco meets all manner of people, survives all manner of danger, and becomes an almost compulsive collector of customs, languages and women. Reimagined with all the splendor, the love of adventure, the zest for the rare and curious that are Jennings’s hallmarks, The Journeyer is the epic account of the greatest real-life adventurer in human history. “Superb.” —The New York Times “Astonishing and titillating.” —The Chicago Tribune “Fabulous. . . . Sumptuous and exceedingly bawdy.” —The Washington Post “Pound for pound, The Journeyer is a classic.” —Gene Lyons, Newsweek “Perfect entertainment.” —Philadelphia Inquirer “An impressively learned gem of the astounding and the titillating.” —Chicago Tribune Book World
Author: Elizabeth Laird
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 0230738931
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
A story of separation and the strength of family, Lost Riders is a powerful and thought-provoking novel from award-winning author Elizabeth Laird. Taken from their home in Pakistan to work in the Persian Gulf, eight-year-old Rashid and his little brother Shari cling to each other. Then they are separated and forced to become jockeys in the lucrative camel-racing business. Rashid is starved and worked to exhaustion by harsh supervisors - but he has a talent for racing and quickly becomes his stable's star jockey. Soon he begins to forget what life was like when he had a proper home. He almost begins to forget about Shari . . .
Author: Martin Heide
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 1646021703
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433
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Book Description
Camels are first mentioned in the Bible as the movable property of Abraham. During the early monarchy, they feature prominently as long-distance mounts for the Queen of Sheba, and almost a millennium later, the Gospels tell us about the impossibility of a camel passing through a needle’s eye. Given the limited extrabiblical evidence for camels before circa 1000 BCE, a thorough investigation of the spatio-temporal history of the camel in the ancient Near and Middle East is necessary to understand their early appearance in the Hebrew Bible. Camels in the Biblical World is a two-part study that charts the cultural trajectories of two domestic species—the two-humped or Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus) and the one-humped or Arabian camel (Camelus dromedarius)—from the fourth through first millennium BCE and up to the first century CE. Drawing on archaeological camel remains, iconography, inscriptions, and other text sources, the first part reappraises the published data on the species’ domestication and early exploitation in their respective regions of origin. The second part takes a critical look at the various references to camels in the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels, providing a detailed philological analysis of each text and referring to archaeological data and zoological observations whenever appropriate. A state-of-the-art evaluation of the cultural history of the camel and its role in the biblical world, this volume brings the humanities into dialogue with the natural sciences. The novel insights here serve scholars in disciplines as diverse as biblical studies, (zoo)archaeology, history, and philology.
Author: Malka Marom
Publisher: ECW Press
ISBN: 1770903429
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 517
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Book Description
"Does one honor one's country or one's heart?" Malka Marom explores this classic dilemma in her stunningly powerful first novel, an extraordinary tale of people caught up in a violent and seemingly endless historical conflict, compelled by love and grief to transcend it. "Sulha" tells the story of Leora, who, twenty years after her husband was killed in the Sinai War, is empowered by law to decide whether or not to allow her only son to serve high-risk duty as his father did. As Abraham was so severely tested, so is Leora with her son's fate in her hands. Charged with this burden, Leora leaves her uneasy exile in Toronto and ventures to Sinai. In the remote and treacherous mountain region of Sinai, Leora encounters a Bedouin clan, which offers her a glimpse of the other: the mysterious Arab world that so fascinated her as a child, the enemy that her son might face. And, indeed, mounting danger and mystery pervade the air of the Bedouin compound. "But are these people really the enemy?" "Is sulhaOCoforgiveness, reconciliation, peaceOConot possible here?" The modern Israel to which Leora then travels offers no clear answers and a deep enmity towards her. To her former compatriots, she is the otherOCooutsider, exile, even a deserter from the land to which her husband gave his life to defend. "Sulha "is the story of one woman's search for the answer to her son's future, and through it the reconciliation of her own fragmented past. In the process, it explores the interlocking and sometimes irreconcilable boundaries of love and loyaltyOCoto a person, a people, a land. This updated eBook edition of Sulha has been enhanced with an extensively annotated appendix of photographs taken by the author while she lived and roamed the desert with the Bedouins, as well as a series of questions designed as conversation starters for book clubs."
Author: Erika Pal
Publisher: Frances Lincoln Children's Books
ISBN: 9781845079826
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
In a big Arabian city, an orphan boy is forced to work as a camel jockey - a dangerous job he doesn't like. But a new friendship and a magical escape into the desert are about to change his life... Camel racing is a popular sport in the Gulf states. Child jockeys are used to ride the camels and come from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sudan, Mauritania and Eritrea. Often poor families are persuaded to sell sons as young as five years old, who are taken away to be trained and often badly treated. Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates have banned the use of child jockeys and are returning the children to their families so that they can live a normal life. Robots are now being used in place of jockeys in the United Arab Emirates, but in some Middle Eastern countries small children are still being forced to race camels. "The pictures are beautiful - really evocative." Elizabeth Laird, prize-winning author of Crusade, The Garbage King and Lost Riders (also about a camel jockey)
Author: Richard W. Bulliet
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231072359
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356
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Book Description
Why, for many centuries, was the wheel abandoned in the Middle East in favor of the camel as a means of transport? This richly illustrated study explains this anomaly. Drawing on archaeology, art, technology, anthropology, linguistics, and camel husbandry, Bulliet explores the implications for the region's economic and social development during the Middle Ages and into modern times.
Author: Jack Weatherford
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0307755460
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
A “provocative [and] vivid” (Minneapolis Star Tribune) look at the primitive cultures that have given many gifts to the modern world, and how their very existence is now threatened “This book should serve as a ‘wake-up’ call to people everywhere.”—Library Journal In Indian Givers and Native Roots, renowned anthropologist Jack Weatherford explored the clash between Native American and European cultures. Now, in Savages and Civilization, Weatherford broadens his focus to examine how civilization threatens to obliterate unique tribal and ethnic cultures around the world—and in the process imperils its own existence. As Weatherford explains, the relationship between “civilized” and “savage” peoples through history has encompassed not only violence, but also a surprising degree of cooperation, mutual influence, trade, and intermarriage. But this relationship has now entered a critical stage everywhere in the world, as indigenous peoples fiercely resist the onslaught of a global civilization that will obliterate their identities. Savages and Civilization powerfully demonstrates that our survival as a species is based not on a choice between savages and civilization, but rather on a commitment to their vital coexistence.
Author: John M. Kistler
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1598843478
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 410
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Book Description
This book pays tribute to the unrecognized warriors and unsung heroes of human warfare: millions of animals from a surprising variety of species, ranging from rodents to dolphins to llamas. When one thinks of war, armies of soldiers and assaults with bullets and bombs delivered by deadly machinery typically come to mind. Throughout human history, however, animals have also played significant roles in our armed conflicts. In Animals in the Military: From Hannibal's Elephants to the Dolphins of the U.S. Navy, author John M. Kistler examines these contributions, describing the work of animals in human warfare throughout time, from lowly insects to birds to elephants. Drawing on both ancient and modern sources, the book reveals the full scope of heroics and horror committed by—and against—animal warriors in three unique areas: animals in combat, animals in support, and animals in incidental and experimental roles. Each chapter describes a single species, chronologically recounting its fascinating place in human warfare over time, from insects used as stinging projectiles to message-delivering pigeons.
