Drawing on recently opened archives, ethnography, and oral interviews that were unavailable a decade ago, A Biography of No Place reveals Stalinist and Nazi history from the perspective of the remote borderlands, thus bringing the periphery to the center of history.
“Why are Kazakhstan and Montana the same place?” asks one chapter of Kate Brown’s surprising and unusual journey into the histories of places on the margins, overlooked or erased. It turns out that a ruined mining town in Kazakhstan and Butte, Montana—America’s largest environmental Superfund site—have much more in common than one would think thanks to similarities in climate, hucksterism, and the perseverance of their few hardy inhabitants. Taking readers to these and other unlikely locales, Dispatches from Dystopia delves into the very human and sometimes very fraught ways we come to understand a particular place, its people, and its history. In Dispatches from Dystopia, Brown wanders the Chernobyl Zone of Alienation, first on the Internet and then in person, to figure out which version—the real or the virtual—is the actual forgery. She also takes us to the basement of a hotel in Seattle to examine the personal possessions left in storage by Japanese-Americans on their way to internment camps in 1942. In Uman, Ukraine, we hide with Brown in a tree in order to witness the annual male-only Rosh Hashanah celebration of Hasidic Jews. In the Russian southern Urals, she speaks with the citizens of the small city of Kyshtym, where invisible radioactive pollutants have mysteriously blighted lives. Finally, Brown returns home to Elgin, Illinois, in the midwestern industrial rust belt to investigate the rise of “rustalgia” and the ways her formative experiences have inspired her obsession with modernist wastelands. Dispatches from Dystopia powerfully and movingly narrates the histories of locales that have been silenced, broken, or contaminated. In telling these previously unknown stories, Brown examines the making and unmaking of place, and the lives of the people who remain in the fragile landscapes that are left behind.
While many transnational histories of the nuclear arms race have been written, Kate Brown provides the first definitive account of the great plutonium disasters of the United States and the Soviet Union. In Plutopia, Brown draws on official records and dozens of interviews to tell the extraordinary stories of Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia-the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium. To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias--communities of nuclear families living in highly-subsidized, limited-access atomic cities. Fully employed and medically monitored, the residents of Richland and Ozersk enjoyed all the pleasures of consumer society, while nearby, migrants, prisoners, and soldiers were banned from plutopia--they lived in temporary "staging grounds" and often performed the most dangerous work at the plant. Brown shows that the plants' segregation of permanent and temporary workers and of nuclear and non-nuclear zones created a bubble of immunity, where dumps and accidents were glossed over and plant managers freely embezzled and polluted. In four decades, the Hanford plant near Richland and the Maiak plant near Ozersk each issued at least 200 million curies of radioactive isotopes into the surrounding environment--equaling four Chernobyls--laying waste to hundreds of square miles and contaminating rivers, fields, forests, and food supplies. Because of the decades of secrecy, downwind and downriver neighbors of the plutonium plants had difficulty proving what they suspected, that the rash of illnesses, cancers, and birth defects in their communities were caused by the plants' radioactive emissions. Plutopia was successful because in its zoned-off isolation it appeared to deliver the promises of the American dream and Soviet communism; in reality, it concealed disasters that remain highly unstable and threatening today. An untold and profoundly important piece of Cold War history, Plutopia invites readers to consider the nuclear footprint left by the arms race and the enormous price of paying for it.
A chilling exposé of the international effort to minimize the health and environmental consequences of nuclear radiation in the wake of Chernobyl. Dear Comrades! Since the accident at the Chernobyl power plant, there has been a detailed analysis of the radioactivity of the food and territory of your population point. The results show that living and working in your village will cause no harm to adults or children. So began a pamphlet issued by the Ukrainian Ministry of Health—which, despite its optimistic beginnings, went on to warn its readers against consuming local milk, berries, or mushrooms, or going into the surrounding forest. This was only one of many misleading bureaucratic manuals that, with apparent good intentions, seriously underestimated the far-reaching consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe. After 1991, international organizations from the Red Cross to Greenpeace sought to help the victims, yet found themselves stymied by post-Soviet political circumstances they did not understand. International diplomats and scientists allied to the nuclear industry evaded or denied the fact of a wide-scale public health disaster caused by radiation exposure. Efforts to spin the story about Chernobyl were largely successful; the official death toll ranges between thirty-one and fifty-four people. In reality, radiation exposure from the disaster caused between 35,000 and 150,000 deaths in Ukraine alone. No major international study tallied the damage, leaving Japanese leaders to repeat many of the same mistakes after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. Drawing on a decade of archival research and on-the-ground interviews in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, Kate Brown unveils the full breadth of the devastation and the whitewash that followed. Her findings make clear the irreversible impact of man-made radioactivity on every living thing; and hauntingly, they force us to confront the untold legacy of decades of weapons-testing and other nuclear incidents, and the fact that we are emerging into a future for which the survival manual has yet to be written.
Unraveling and alone in India, newlywed Molly Brown is forced to traverse her inner landscape with new eyes while navigating a culture so different from her own in Boulder, Colorado. When a life-altering illness brings her to her knees at age thirty-two, Molly's long-held dream to travel solo through India is shattered, giving way to a journey of another kind. Set against the vivid sensuality of India's sounds, colors, smells, and nuanced contours, Learning to Walk in India is a true tale of love, loss, friendship, and the power of the human spirit. Told with unflinching honesty, Molly's raw and often humorous account takes us on her wild, unforgettable ride as she surrenders to India, to her herself, and ultimately to the unknown as she learns to walk again"--Back cover.
Demonstrating the relevance of theory to political and policy debates and practice, this dynamic and fully updated second edition helps students to grasp the real-life implications of social policy theory. It includes a new chapter featuring debates around disability, sexuality and the environment.
Book II: "The Book of Nice" is a draw your own pictures book in grayscale. There are blank pages where creative kids can draw their own pictures. The Book of Nice is based on "The Golden Rule." Treat others like you want them to treat you. Skeetle and Duke's adventures continue when Hezzra-The-Centipede regains his sight from the evil Ruby. The Ruby gives him firesight too. Skeetle-The-Beetle is rescued from a deep hole by Mother 'Possum. Skeetle, Duke, and Hezzra have a final battle in the Crystal Cave where Hezzra almost dies. Queeny puts Witch Hazel leaves on Hezzra's wounds. Grandfather Beetle gets lost and ends up in Tal-wee Territory where he is put in prison by the mean, greedy Tal-wees. Grandfather escapes. After Christmas, rain floods The United Acres of Sassafras. Then snow and ice cover everything. Mrs. Persnickety Fox tells Red-tailed Hawk to steal Skeetle's magic backpack. Inside is "The Book of Nice." The Tal-wees plan to invade the U.A.S. on killer bees. Two Tal-wees change from mean to nice. The magic backpack and "The Book of Nice" save The United Acres of Sassafras on Earth Day. Praecher, the spirit of peace, blesses The United Acres of Sassafras. I am Kate Brown, the author. I live in the woods of Tennessee, where the wonders of nature inspire me to create these magical Sassafras Tales. The stories are full of fun and adventure that always end up with the characters doing the right thing. Even though some of the characters are greedy, selfish, and mean, kindness prevails. Skeetle-The-Beetle, Duke-The-Chameleon, Queeny-The-Mouse, Hezzra-The-Centipede, Winter-The-Black-Widow-Spider, Mrs. Pernickety Fox, even Tal-wees learn lessons of kindness. I hope you enjoy Sassafras Tales.
Book II, "The Book of Nice" is a draw your own pictures book, with a blank page after each chapter where creative kids to draw their own pictures. "The Book of Nice" is based on the Golden Rule: Treat others like you want them to treat you. It is written for elementary school readers. In "The Book of Nice", Hezzra-The-Centipede regains his sight from the Evil Ruby. The Ruby gives him firesight too. Skeetle-The-Beetle is rescued from a deep hole by Mother 'Possum. Skeetle, Duke, and Hezzra have a final battle in the Crystal Cave where Hezzra almost dies. Queeny puts Witch Hazel leaves on Hezzra's wounds. Grandfather Beetle gets lost. After Christmas, rain floods The United Acres of Sassafras . Then snow and ice cover everything. Ms. Persnickety Fox tells Red-tailed Hawk to steal Skeetle's magic backpack. Inside is "The Book of Nice." The Tal-wees plan to invade The United Acres of Sassafras on killer bees. Two Tal-wees change from mean to nice. The magic backpack and "The Book of Nice" save the United Acres of Sassafras on Earth Day. Praecher-The-Spirit-of-Peace blesses The United Acres of Sassafras.
Dani Demeco has always had nightmares. For as long as she can remember, her dreams have been of death, destruction, and chaos. But when she finds herself the subject of her violent dreams, Dani cannot deny her fears. As her dreams worsen, some of them begin to come true.
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