The Darien Venture was the singular event at the end of the seventeenth century that fundamentally altered Scotland's future.'A powerfully clear account . . . Highly recommended for anyone interested in the colonial history of Scotland' – Paterson Joseph, actor and author of the award-winning The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius SanchoIt took place on the other side of the world, amid the jungle-coastline at the junction between ...

For anyone who feels caught in the tension between the beauty of God's story and the ugliness of human hypocrisy, Why I Still Believe offers a stirring story of hope.Why would anyone be a Christian when there is so much hypocrisy in the church? Mary Jo Sharp shares her journey as a skeptical believer who still holds to a beautiful faith despite wounding experiences in the Christian community.At a time when de-conversion stories have become all too ...

“An immersive tale of betrayal and injustice that reverberates with a howl of anguish three centuries old.”—Chris Brookmyre, author of The Cracked MirrorFrom internationally bestselling author Val McDermid and Geographer Royal of Scotland Jo Sharp, a heart-wrenching novella about an ill-fated colonial scheme that bankrupted a country and forever altered the trajectory of historyAt the end of the seventeenth century, a brave group o...

The first step on the road to change is to imagine possibility.Imagine A Country offers visions of a new future from an astonishing array of Scottish voices, from comedians to economists, writers to musicians. Edited, curated and introduced by bestselling author Val McDermid and geographer Jo Sharp, it is a collection of ideas, dreams and ambitions, aiming to inspire change, hope and imagination.Featuring:Ali Smith, Phill Jupitus, A.L. Kenne...

It has been increasingly impossible to think about our changing world without coming across the term 'geopolitics'. In the wake of the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the United States, United Kingdom, and others, geopolitics has been offered as an explanation for the occupation's failure to reinvent the Iraqi state and as a blueprint for future action. But what is 'geopolitics'?Drawing both on academic and political material, this book introduces readers to the concept of geopo...

Subaltern Geographies is the first book-length discussion addressing the relationship between the historical innovations of subaltern studies and the critical intellectual practices and methodologies of cultural, urban, historical, and political geography. This edited volume explores this relationship by attempting to think critically about space and spatial categorizations.Editors Tariq Jazeel and Stephen Legg ask, What methodological-philosophical potential does a rigoro...

“An immersive tale of betrayal and injustice that reverberates with a howl of anguish three centuries old.”—Chris Brookmyre, author of The Cracked MirrorFrom internationally bestselling author Val McDermid and Geographer Royal of Scotland Jo Sharp, a heart-wrenching novella about an ill-fated colonial scheme that bankrupted a country and forever altered the trajectory of historyAt the end of the seventeenth century, a brave group o...

Award-winning novelist Val McDermid and Geographer Royal Professor Jo Sharp bring Scotland’s greatest historical catastrophe vividly to life.The Darien Venture was the singular event at the end of the seventeenth century that fundamentally altered Scotland's future.It took place on the other side of the world, amid the jungle-coastline at the junction between the continents of North and South America. And most of us know next to nothing about it.Now it's time to reme...

For anyone who feels caught in the tension between the beauty of God's story and the ugliness of human hypocrisy, Why I Still Believe offers a stirring story of hope.Why would anyone be a Christian when there is so much hypocrisy in the church? Mary Jo Sharp shares her journey as a skeptical believer who still holds to a beautiful faith despite wounding experiences in the Christian community.At a time when de-conversion stories have become all too ...

Geopolitics is a way of looking at the world: one that considers the links between political power, geography, and cultural diversity. In certain places such as Iraq or Lebanon, moving a few feet either side of a territorial boundary can be a matter of life or death, dramatically highlighting the connections between place and politics. Even far away from these 'danger zones' - in Europe or the US for example - geopolitics remains an important part of everyday life. For a country's location an...

"We are living through the endtimes of the civilizing mission. The ineffectual International Criminal Court and its disastrous first prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, along with the failure in Syria of the Responsibility to Protect are the latest pieces of evidence not of transient misfortunes but of fatal structural defects in international humanism. Whether it is the increase in deadly attacks on aid workers, the torture and 'disappearing' of al-Qaeda suspects by American officials, the fl...

Maverick philosopher Slavoj Zizek returns to explore today's ideological, political and economic battles—and asks whether radical change is possibleIn these troubled times, even the most pessimistic diagnosis of our future ends with an uplifting hint that things might not be as bad as all that, that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Yet, argues Slavoj Zizek, it is only when we have admitted to ourselves that our situation is completely hopel...